Science Since Babylon

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Science Since Babylon was written by Derek J. de Solla Price based on a series of five lectures he delivered at Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library in October and November 1959 on the history of science. In 1961 it was published in London and New Haven by Yale University Press, and sold as a Yale Paperbound (paperback) in 1962. It 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.

An Open Access PDF of the book is available here.

Derek de Solla Price with a model of the Antikythera Mechanism

Preface to Enlarged Edition

Preface to Original Edition

1. The Peculiarity of a Scientific Civilization

Summary

References

2. Celestial Clockwork in Greece and China

Summary

References

3. Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy

Summary

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4. The __, __, and __, and Other Geometrical and Scientific Talismans and Symbolisms

Summary

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5. Renaissance Roots of Yankee Ingenuity

Summary

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6. The Difference Beteween Science and Technology

Summary

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

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7. Mutations of Science

Summary

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8. Diseases of Science

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9. Epilogue: Humanities of Science

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Links

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