Science Since Babylon

Science Since Babylon
Information
Author	Derek J. de Solla Price
Language	English
Genre	History of Science Philosophy of Science
Publisher	Yale University Press
Publication Date	1961 1975 (Enlarged Edition)
Pages	240
ISBN-13	978-0300017984

Science Since Babylon is a book by historian of science Derek J. de Solla Price, first published in 1961 by Yale University Press. Based on a series of five lectures delivered at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library in 1959, the book traces the historical development of science, its cultural uniqueness in the West, and the exponential growth of scientific activity. An enlarged edition was issued in 1975, incorporating revised material and three new chapters.

Science Since Babylon is notable due to Price's observation of the exponential trajectory of scientific growth, and his subsequent prediction of that growth leveling off due to saturation. The book is often cited by Eric Weinstein for its observations about growth. Weinstein also notes that it is odd how few people know about this book given the implications of its predictions for science and research.

An Open Access PDF of the book is available here.

Derek de Solla Price with a model of the Antikythera Mechanism

Publication History

• 1961 – First published in London and New Haven by Yale University Press.
• 1962 – Released as a Yale Paperbound edition.
• 1975 – Enlarged edition published, adding new chapters and revised commentary.

The book is notable for Price’s pioneering observation of the exponential growth of science and his prediction that such growth would eventually encounter natural limits. It remains a foundational text in the field of scientometrics.

Themes and Contributions

• Exponential Growth of Science: Scientific publications and the number of working scientists double at regular intervals, a trend that cannot continue indefinitely.
• Peculiarity of Western Science: The scientific revolution was a cultural anomaly, made possible by the merger of Greek logical traditions with Babylonian computational skills.
• Science and Technology: Price stressed the distinction between science as an intellectual pursuit and technology as applied practice, criticizing the tendency to view science only as a source of “technological fixes.”
• Crises in Scientific Development: The book highlights pivotal moments where civilizations made decisions that shaped the trajectory of science.
• Limits of Planning: Scientific breakthroughs often arise from accidents or cross-pollination rather than deliberate planning.

Structure of the Original Lectures

The original lectures around which the book is structured highlight five major “crises”:

1. The origins of a scientific civilization that set the West apart.
2. The transformation of science from abstract thought into technology.
3. The Renaissance fusion of technology and natural philosophy.
4. The transition from 19th-century classical theories to the explosion of 20th-century discoveries.
5. Speculation on a future “internal economy” of science.

Enlarged Edition (1975)

The revised edition added three chapters:

• The History of Automata: Linking mechanical inventions to mechanistic philosophy.
• Geometrical Amulets: Exploring connections between science, symbolism, and pseudoscience.
• Relating Science and Technology: A deeper examination of their distinctions and interdependence.

In the new preface, Price warned against the utilitarian view of science and argued for preserving libertas philosophandi—freedom of inquiry for its own sake.

Chapter Summaries

Preface

to the Enlarged Edition

Now, more than ever, science if being used as the hammer to solve all of society’s problems. Thus taking it away from it’s true purpose.

“Today as never before, our higher educational system and the cul­ture it enfolds teeter critically on a sharp division between education in the ancient sense of the term and a somewhat blatantly utilitarian viewpoint in which science is seen as a begetter of technological fixes for national needs.”

“Science is a very ex­ceptional and peculiar activity of all mankind, and one is not at liberty to regard it as that which can be applied to make technology.”

This new edition has 3 extra chapters:

1. The history of automata
   1. “[it] serves as a link between the development of clockwork and the mechanistic philosophy that has played a central role in the conceptual side of science.”
2. The Geometrical amulets
   1. “Links science with magical pseudoscience”
3. Relating science and technology

to Original Edition

“I hoped, in addition, to show scientists that we ought to be able to talk about science with as much scholarly right as other humanists receive, and that our approach might (if successful) lead to a different or better understanding than one could get by just "doing” science.”

This book is centered around crises, vital decisions that had to be taken in order for civilization to turn out the way it did.

The 5 lectures this book is based on are broken down as follows:

1. The crisis which set our civilization on the course of science, “thereby setting it apart from all other cultures.”
2. “The departure of science from the realm of pure thought and its transformation into scientific technology.”
3. Follows the “technological thread back into the web of Ren­aissance and modem science.”
4. Pin-pointing “the stark transition from classical theories in the nineteenth century to the explosive multiplication of discoveries of the twentieth.”
5. Attempting to guess a future transition from our current state of science to a “future internal economy of science that already looks quite different.”

1. The Peculiarity of a Scientific Civilization

Modern science is unique to Western civilization, emerging from the synthesis of Greek logical mathematics and Babylonian numerical computation. Other civilizations, like China, had both traditions but did not combine them into a scientific revolution. Price emphasizes that science is a cultural cornerstone of the West, comparable to Graeco-Roman antiquity.

Further Reading

• Srinivasa Ramanujan
• Professor G. H. Hardy of Cambridge
• 1729
• Herbert Butterfield and The Origins of Modern Science
• Almagest by Ptolemy
• Niels Bohr's Principle of Complementarity
• Babylonian mathematics
• Greek mathematics

2. Celestial Clockwork in Greece and China

Scientific progress is irregular and often accidental. Astronomical devices and the Antikythera mechanism demonstrate that Greek technology was highly advanced, contradicting stereotypes of a purely theoretical culture. In contrast, China achieved technological sophistication but did not develop a mathematically grounded astronomy.

Further Reading

• Whipple Museum of the History of Science
• Astrolabe
• A Treatise on the Astrolabe by Chaucer
• Escapement
• Astrarium, a clock built by Giovanni de' Dondi in 1364
• Science and Civilisation in China, initiated and edited by Joseph Needham
• Song dynasty
• Antikythera mechanism, short documentary
• On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass
• Heavenly Clockwork, the Great Astronomical Clocks of Medieval China
• Some outstanding clocks over seven hundred years

3. Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy

Theories of planetary motion inspired mechanical models, which in turn encouraged the development of automata. These devices reinforced the mechanistic philosophy, bridging astronomy, biology, and mechanics, and shaping early scientific worldviews.

Further Reading

• Jean Froissart's L'Horloge Amouresuse and L'Horloge de Sapience
• Albertus Magnus
• St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theological
• "beast-machine"
• Jonathan Swift's Yahoos
• Pascal's Pascaline of 1645: how it works
• musical automata of Achilles Lagenbucher of Augsburg
• waterworks of Canterbury Cathedral
• Duc Philippe, Count of Artois, castle of Hesdin, and the Garden of Earthly Delights, described in Magic and Mechanics in Medieval Fiction by Merriam Sherwood
• Polish scholar Witello
• Tower of the Winds, The Roman Agora in Athens: drone tour
• Strassbourg astronomical clock, made by Isaac and Josias Habrecht— watch it in action
• Cornelis Drebbel and his magical oven
• Cave of Lascaux: virtual tour, wiki article

4. The ✡, ⛤, and ۞, and Other Geometrical and Scientific Talismans and Symbolisms

Price explores the role of symbols, geometry, and talismans in connecting science with pseudoscience. Scientific and magical traditions often overlapped, and symbolic figures influenced how science was understood culturally.

Further Reading

• The Curious History of the Six Pointed Star by Gershom Scholem
• On the Sphere and Cylinder by Archimedes
• Chen-ning Yang
• Square root of 2 Proofs of irrationality

5. Renaissance Roots of Yankee Ingenuity

The Renaissance merged theory and craftsmanship, producing the experimental spirit that became the foundation of modern science. Price connects this inventive culture to later American traditions of “Yankee ingenuity.”

6. The Difference Beteween Science and Technology

Science is distinct from technology, though linked to it. Price criticizes attempts to justify science purely on utilitarian grounds, defending science for its own sake as essential to intellectual culture and education.

Key Quotes

• "Do we really have to stoop so low as to lie about it again and maintain that the latest, biggest accelerator will help us make useful things? Do we need to support mathematics for the direct utility? No, not at all. We can adopt a science-for-science’s-sake policy, provided we are clear that this can always be justified by the weak but vital link with technology. We need science so that technologists may grow up immersed in it. I do not avoid the intellectual argument that we also do it because it is the most difficult and elegant thing we can do. Like Everest it is there. The question of justification only becomes important because we ask that society pay for it, and there must therefore be some sort of social contract. Some reason must exist for society to pay; in our age, if you spend on that you must go without something else. The tradition of libertas philosophandi, the freedom to follow learning wherever it may lead, is now questioned yet again in the way in which it was questioned by the ancient Romans, by the French revolutionaries, and most recently by communist Hungary. They all thought they could junk useless sciences and pay only for the useful ones. Their civilizations and states were visibly ruined by this tragic policy. It cannot be played like that. The reason is the educational process." p 131-132
• "I think that what is happening bears close analogy to the recent divorce between physics and engineering, and the gradual loss of status and salary of the engineers. Unfortunately, however, we do not clearly understand the mechanics of scientific careers and education, and we are hesitant to manipulate the technologies with all the political brutality that seems to be needed. It is a classical situation, where we need a technology of administering technology and we do not even have a decent scientific knowledge of the way that science works. I can only suggest that the most urgent need in science teaching and in planning is more intense thought and analysis, not about the facts and theories of science or the technicalities of technology, but about the place of science and technology in science, the history of these things, and also about such naive and obviously simple things as the relation between science and technology and the difference between them." p 134-135

Further Reading

• Abraham Flexner

7. Mutations of Science

Scientific change occurs through disruptive “mutations.” The discovery of X-rays marked a transformative moment, while the episode of N rays shows how errors can spread during periods of rapid growth. The turn of the 20th century was, for Price, an “atomic explosion” within science itself.

Key Quotes

• "The transition from the fin de siècle state of approaching perfection of science into the turmoil of our present century is, I believe, the most interesting and also the most crucial line to follow if we wish to have an understanding of the process of modern science. If anything can, it is this that may reveal more significance than its purely local record of advances in some special area at some special time." p 142-143
• "It is a pity that it has been forgotten that the discovery of X rays became the first modern scientific break to get banner headlines in the newspapers. Its coverage exceeded that of Charles Darwin: perhaps newspapers had become more sensational in the few intervening decades. It almost rivals, too, the sort of sensation created in our own age by the first atom bomb and the manmade satellite. For weeks, running into months, there were stories, some partly true, some fantastic. The public was fascinated, often for the wrong reasons. Old ladies went into their baths fully clothed, being convinced that the scientists now had mystery rays that could look through brick walls and round corners. From this new mythology of science were born all the wonderful tales of death rays and other science-fictional flights of fantasy, vintage Jules Verne." p 148-149
• "With the consequent increase in perplexity, more scientists abroad tried the experiments, some of them spending much time and ingenuity in trying to get an effect. Some few in countries other than France were indeed successful, but for every one of these there were a dozen men of high repute who became convinced that something was very rotten in the state of French physics." p 155
• "The curious error of N rays is much more a sort of mass hallucination, proceeding from an entirely reasonable beginning. By no means can it be considered as any sort of hoax or crank delusion— it was a genuine error. It mushroomed into a complex that could have been possible only in that short and glorious epoch when physics had suddenly found the first great massive breakthrough in its modern history. Out of that arose the whole science of radioactivity, of atomic physics, and eventually all the material of particle physics." p 159
• "One may say, however, that the first atomic explosion in history was not in 1945: it took place exactly half a century earlier. And in 1895 it was not some mere laboriously built artifact of science that exploded but rather the science itself. Our modern world is largely the result of efforts to piece together the fragments left by that traumatic and crucial explosion." p 160

Further Reading

• Antoine Lavoisier
• Joseph Priestley
• Friedrich Wöhler
• Phlogiston theory
• The History Of The Phlogiston Theory by John Henry White
• James Clerk Maxwell
• Fin de siècle
• J. J. Thomson
• Cavendish Laboratory
• William Crookes
• Wilhelm Röntgen
• Henri Becquerel
• X-ray
• N ray
• Prosper-René Blondlot
• Nancy-Université
• Heinrich Rubens
• Robert W. Wood

8. Diseases of Science

The exponential growth of science produces systemic problems. Journals double every 15 years, creating unsustainable information overload. Price warned that society could not indefinitely support such unchecked expansion without crisis.

Key Quotes

• "The most remarkable conclusion obtained from the data just considered is that the number of journals has grown exponentially rather than linearly. Instead of there being just so many new periodicals per year, the number has doubled every so many years. The constant involved is actually about fifteen years for a doubling, corresponding to a power of ten in fifty years and a factor of one thousand in a century and a half. In the three hundred years which separate us from the mid-seventeenth century, this represents a factor of one million.

"One can be reasonably surprised that any accurate law holds over such a large factor of increase. Indeed, it is within the common experience that the law of exponential growth is too spectacular to be obeyed for very long. Large factors usually introduce some more-than-quantitative change that alters the process." p 169

• "Why should it be that journals appear to breed more journals at a rate proportional to their population at any one time instead of at any particular constant rate?" p 169
• '"Thus, at any one time, about three doubling periods’ worth of scientists are alive. Hence, some 8o to go per cent of all scientists that have ever been, are alive now. We might miss Newton and Aristotle, but happily most of the contributors are with us still!" p 176
• "Science in America is growing so as to double in only ten years— it multiplies by eight in each successive doubling of all nonscientific things in our civilization. If you care to regard it this way, the density of science in our culture is quadrupling during each generation.

"Alternatively, one can say that science has been growing so rapidly that all else, by comparison, has been almost stationary." p 177

• "It is indeed apparent that the process to which we have become accustomed during the past few centuries is not a permanent feature of our world. A process of growth so much more vigorous than any population explosion or economic inflation cannot continue indefinitely but must lead to an intrinsically larger catastrophe than either of these patently apparent dangers." p 182
• "To go beyond the bounds of absurdity, another couple of centuries of “normal” growth of science would give us dozens of scientists per man, woman, child, and dog of the world population." p 182
• "We must not expect such growth to continue, and we must not waste time and energy in seeking too many palliatives for an incurable process. In particular, it cannot be worth while sacrificing all else that humanity holds dear in order to allow science to grow unchecked for only one or two more doubling periods."p 186

9. Epilogue: Humanities of Science

Science must be studied with the same scholarly legitimacy as the humanities. Price argues that understanding the history of science is essential for understanding civilization itself, and calls for deeper integration of science into cultural and educational life.

References

• Technology And The Academics by Sir Eric Ashby
• Teacher in America by Jacques Barzun
• Essays on the History of Science by Herbert Butterfield
• The History of Science and the New Humanism by George Sarton

Links

• Science Since Babylon on Amazon
• Recordings of the full “Neolithic to Now” lectures by Derek de Solla Price, Yale 1976

See Also

• The Evolution of U.S. Science and Defense Research Policies
• Bayh-Dole Act (1980)
• Eilberg Amendment (1976)
• Mansfield Amendment (1969)
• IMMACT90
• Science, The Endless Frontier (1945)

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