Ebook: A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks

We all know the history of science that we learned from grade school textbooks: How Galileo used his telescope to show that the earth was not the center of the universe; how Newton divined gravity from the falling apple; how Einstein unlocked the mysteries of time and space with a simple equation. This history is made up of long periods of ignorance and confusion, punctuated once an age by a brilliant thinker who puts it all together. These few tower over the ordinary mass of people, and in the traditional account, it is to them that we owe science in its entirety. This belief is w.;Acknowledgments; 1 What Science? What History? What People?; 2 Prehistory: Were Hunter-Gatherers Stupid?; 3 What ""Greek Miracle""?; 4 Blue-Water Sailors and the Navigational Sciences; 5 Who Were the Revolutionaries in the Scientific Revolution?; 6 Who Were the Winners in the Scientific Resolution?; 7 The ""Union of Capital and Science""; 8 The Scientific-Industrial Complex; Bibliography; Index.