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Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?

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Re: Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?

#41
post #6

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

Not Kuhn's fault, but this book started a different kind of revolution:

> Postmodernists interpreted Thomas Kuhn's ideas about scientific paradigms to mean that scientific theories are social constructs, and philosophers like Paul Feyerabend argued that other, non-realist forms of knowledge production were better suited to serve people's personal and spiritual needs.

> Kuhn described the development of scientific knowledge not as a linear increase in truth and understanding, but as a series of periodic revolutions which overturned the old scientific order and replaced it with new orders (what he called "paradigms"). Kuhn attributed much of this process to the interactions and strategies of the human participants in science rather than its own innate logical structure.

> Some interpreted Kuhn's ideas to mean that scientific theories were, either wholly or in part, social constructs, which many interpreted as diminishing the claim of science to representing objective reality

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars]

Re: Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very interested in a follow-up. Have there been any real paradigm shifts since?

The increased role of computation and machine learning in many scientific fields is a paradigm shift.

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?

#43
post #6

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

I'd be very interested in a follow-up. Have there been any real paradigm shifts since?

Sure. In the last 100 years, "bohr's" non-deterministic quantum physics has all but overtaken "einstein's" deterministic physics. The final nail in the coffin for einstein will be a theory of quantum gravity. Can't get a bigger paradigm shift than switching from a deterministic to a non-deterministic world.

Re: Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?

#50
I recommend the series of books by Morris Kline on mathematics and its connection with other spheres of activity. They're all good, but I especially liked _Mathematics in Western Culture_ and _Mathematics and the Physical World_. I know that math isn't science, but, since math underlies much of science and a lot of everything else, you gain a deeper understanding of the development of ideas in science by reading Kline's books.
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