This epic history of science aims to debunk the notion of science as an objective search for truth (Image: Oxford University Press)
PATRICIA FARA‘s epic history of science ranges from the astronomers of ancient Babylon to today’s geneticists and particle physicists. But it is no ordinary account of how scientific knowledge has accumulated. Instead, Fara focuses on how science has been guided and controlled by social and political factors. Her aim is to debunk the notion of science as an objective search for truth.
Fara writes, for example, that the ancient Greeks’ attempts to understand the cosmos were…
