Iftar time is a revolution in science – 06/19/2022

It is common to believe that Sciences, as we know it today, has existed and is forever loved and respected. It’s a mistake. Before that, when knowledge was limited to very small circles of false images Scientistswho lacks style and rigor, personality scientific There is no. He was born 150 years ago, but it was not easy.

Writer and journalist Laura J. Snyder (New York, 1964) to clarify the moment when the scientific term was born, by the method of historiography, and how it was arrived at. It turned out that they were four friends of Cambridge students whose strengths exceeded good connections. His disgust at the state of science was shared. They were named William Wewell, who later became a Cambridge celebrity and Principal of Trinity College. Charles Babbage, who was later considered the inventor of the first computer; John Herschel, son of a famous astronomer who surpassed his father; and Richard Jones, the great narrator who began to shape a new science, economics, then called it political economy.

Sunday meetings for this “club breakfasts Philosophical meetings at Cambridge began to occur in 1812, after religious services each one at his own college. The first discussions were about Bacon’s writings, nearly two centuries earlier, whose attempts to reform science inspired these men. And they, by the way, were very angry. For example, because the abstract principles of analysis were not taught before they were applied. Pupils were educated only in technique, which resulted in the use of great calculators instead of great discoveries. and more.

It’s a great book, because it brings curious readers closer to a typically dry topic, and it does so in an entertaining and simple way, attracting anecdote with high-level gossip. Chapters like Dark Science have an epic character, because they describe the misery in which large sections of the English population live, and how the idea of ​​improving the lives of these people was not interested in science. or The Great Battle, on the effect of Babbage’s Reflections on the Decline of Science in England on the scientific world (they treated him as an outcast, stopped inviting him to meetings, and looked down on him).

It is the story of a real revolution with real heroes.

The Philosophical Breakfast Club, Laura J. Snyder. Cliff, 2021. Barcelona, ​​640 pages. Translated by Jose Manuel Alvarez Flores.