Ari

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Ari is Currently Reading

Ari rated a book it was ok

Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya

by Dick Teresi

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Ari said: " By page 17, I was hate reading.

A comparative history of science and mathematics needs some working definition of those fields. That definition ought to ground the discussion of what makes science and mathematics interesting. The author does not have By page 17, I was hate reading.

A comparative history of science and mathematics needs some working definition of those fields. That definition ought to ground the discussion of what makes science and mathematics interesting. The author does not have a solid definition; the extent that he purports to have one ("a logical system of knowledge about the world"), he doesn’t use it. He explains cheerfully that proof is not so important to mathematics and evidence is not important in science and that if you make a plausible seeming guess that’s just as good as genuine scientific knowledge.

The consensus view of practitioners is that the essential ingredient in mathematics is proof, and that this originated with Hellenic-period Greeks. Likewise, the essential thing in physical science is observation, ideally quantitative observation, and that this also emerged in the eastern Mediterranean. And this matters, because scientific knowledge as different from and superior to other kinds of knowledge or belief. But Teresi instead wants to cover any true, or truth-ish, beliefs about mathematical and physical concepts. It’s not clear why this is an interesting topic. If there isn't a justification, is the true belief even knowledge?

The other crippling flaw in the book is its lack of clarity about the relationships between places and times. The title implies that it is about ancient science. The introduction implies that it is going to be about the things that the ancient knew independent of the Greeks or prior to the Greeks. Now in fact, the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had considerable mathematical and astronomical knowledge. In antiquity nobody doubted this and most modern accounts of science and mathematics treat this as a matter of course. The author's feigned shock is is not extremely convincing.

But much of the book is about settings that are not merely post Hellenistic, but causally downstream. The medieval Arabs, of course, had a tremendous amount of scientific knowledge. This is not particularly controversial; Teresi talks as though prior writers thought the Arabs had only transmitted and not developed new knowledge. This is a claim I had never heard and so I don't know why it needs such a rebuttal.

We hear a lot of nice things about Indian and Chinese science and math, chronologically after Greek developments. A better book would have traced out as much as we can of the flow of ideas. What was invented independently versus moving around Eurasia. To what extent did mathematicians in China and India think of proofs the same way the Greeks did? How did those ideas spread? The author doesn’t know and isn’t interested. ...more "

progress:

(page 17 of 464)
"I realized by about page 17 that I was going to be hate reading this." — Apr 16, 2026 02:16PM

Apr 16, 2026 05:00PM · see review

Ari is currently reading

The Hobbit (Middle Earth, #0)

by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Mar 30, 2026 02:47PM

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Lady Susan

by Jane Austen

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Mar 11, 2026 09:13PM

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Ari’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

18 notes & 139 highlights

Meechum added, “Doc, if you ask me, that one is a case for the basket before morning.” “No one asked you. Go have a cigarette with the guards. I want to think.”

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Ari’s Quotes

“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

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“Whatever you're thinking of. Just don't. I don't want anything to do with it."
"What I was about to say," said Miles, giving him an extremely dry look, "was that we, being on the side of truth and justice, need not stoop to such chicanery as, say, bribery, assassination or milder forms of physical diversion, or—heh!—blackmail. ...
"If we're not stooping, what do you call that shell game with the Vortugalovs and the uterine replicator?" Ivan demanded indignantly.
"A piece of wholly unexpected good fortune. None of us here had anything to do with it," Miles replied tranquilly.
"So it's not a dirty trick if it's untraceable?"
"Correct, Ivan. You learn fast.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

tags: dirty-tricks

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“Pym!" The Countess spotted a new victim, and her voice went a little dangerous. "I seconded you to look after Miles. Would you care to explain this scene?"

There was a thoughtful pause. In a voice of simple honesty, Pym replied, "No, Milady.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

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