Newton's apple and other myths about science

Numbers, Ronald L., Editor. (Author). Numbers, Ronald L., (editor.). Kampourakis, Kostas, (editor.).

Summary: This book debunks the widespread belief that science advances when individual geniuses experience 'Eureka!' moments and suddenly comprehend what those around them could never imagine. Science has always been a cooperative enterprise of dedicated, fallible human beings, for whom context, collaboration, and sheer good luck are the essential elements of discovery.

Record details

ISBN: 9780674967984 (hc)
ISBN: 0674967984
Physical Description: print
xiv, 287 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Publisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2015.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-270) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Medieval and early modern science. Myth 1. That there was no scientific activity between Greek antiquity and the scientific revolution / Michael H. Shank ; Myth 2. That before Columbus, geographers and other educated people thought the earth was flat / Lesley B. Cormack ; Myth 3. That the Copernican revolution demoted the status of the Earth / Michael N. Keas ; Myth 4. That alchemy and astrology were superstitious pursuits that did not contribute to science and scientific understanding / Lawrence M. Principe ; Myth 5. That Galileo publicly refuted Aristotle's conclusions about motion by repeated experiments made from the Campanile of Pisa / John L. Heilbron; Myth 6. That the apple fell and Newton invented the law of gravity, thus removing God from the cosmos / Patricia Fara -- Nineteenth century. Myth 7. That Friedrich Wohler's synthesis of urea in 1828 destroyed vitalism and gave rise to organic chemistry / Peter J. Ramberg ; Myth 8. That William Paley raised scientific questions about biological origins that were eventually answered by Charles Darwin / Adam R. Shapiro ; Myth 9. That nineteenth-century geologists were divided into opposing camps of Catastrophists and Uniformitarians / Julie Newell ; Myth 10. That Lamarckian evolution relied largely on use and disuse and that Darwin rejected Lamarckian mechanisms / Richard W. Burkhardt Jr ; Myth 11. That Darwin worked on his theory in secret for twenty years, his fears causing him to delay publication / Robert J. Richards ; Myth 12. That Wallace's and Darwin's explanations of evolution were virtually the same / Michael Ruse ; Myth 13. That Darwinian natural selection has been "the only game in town" / Nicolaas Rupke ; Myth 14. That after Darwin (1871), sexual selection was largely ignored until Robert Trivers (1972) resurrected the theory / Erika Lorraine Milam ; Myth 15. That Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation on the basis of scientific objectivity / Garland E. Allen ; Myth 16. That Gregor Mendel was a lonely pioneer of genetics, being ahead of his time / Kostas Kampourakis ; Myth 17. That social Darwinism has had a profound influence on social thought and policy, especially in the United States of America / Ronald L. Numbers -- Twentieth century. Myth 18. That the Michelson-Morley experiment paved the way for the special theory of relativity / Theodore Arabatzis and Kostas Gavroglu ; Myth 19. That the Millikan oil-drop experiment was simple and straightforward / Mansoor Niaz ; Myth 20. That neo-Darwinism defines evolution as random mutation plus natural selection / David J. Depew ; Myth 21. That melanism in peppered moths is not a genuine example of evolution by natural selection / David W. Rudge ; Myth 22. That Linus Pauling's discovery of the molecular basis of sickle-cell anemia revolutionized medical practice / Bruno J. Strasser ; Myth 23. That the Soviet launch of Sputnik caused the revamping of American science education / John L. Rudolph -- Generalizations. Myth 24. That religion has typically impeded the progress of science / Peter Harrison ; Myth 25. That science has been largely a solitary enterprise / Kathryn M. Olesko ; Myth 26. That the scientific method accurately reflects what scientists actually do / Daniel P. Thurs ; Myth 27. That a clear line of demarcation has separated science from pseudoscience / Michael D. Gordin.