A few decades back, it was quite trendy in the media and the pop history of science to announce in bold capital letters SHOCK! HORROR! Did you know that Isaac Newton, regarded as the father of modern science, had faith in alchemy? Historians of science would then attempt to calmly clarify that this was widely recognized and had been since at least 1936, when the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) acquired a collection of Newton’s alchemical manuscripts at an auction, prompting him to write an essay, Newton the Man, which contains the now iconic quote
Newton was not the initial figure of the age of reason. He was the final magician, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great intellect who gazed upon the visible and intellectual world with the same perspective as those who began constructing our intellectual legacy nearly 10,000 years ago.
As the narrative of alchemy became more established, this surge of “discoveries” subsided, and the masses moved on to revealing other subjects regarding which historians of science have not adequately informed the general public, such ongoing news such as the assertion that Watson and Crick appropriated the DNA structure from Rosalind Franklin or that Galileo faced trial by the Inquisition for having “demonstrated” that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
It appears a new issue is surfacing to challenge the historians of science, namely, the history of science being too Eurocentric! By history of science, I gather the authors are referring to, though they do not specify, English-language history of science. While this may have been true at some point in the past, it simply has not reflected reality for decades.
Joseph Needham (1900–1995) initiated his Science and Civilisation in China project in 1948, and the first volume came out in 1954. By 2004, it had expanded to seven volumes in twenty-seven parts. A single volume summary was published in 1986, and Colin Ronan’s The Shorter Science and Civilisation: An abridgement of Joseph Needham’s original work was released in five volumes between 1980 and 1995. Nathan Sivin (1931–2022), who originally collaborated with Needham, has also written extensively about the history of science in China, along with numerous other historians.
The narrative of Islamic science took off a few years later, with Edward S Kennedy beginning his long series of publications on the subject in 1956. David A. King (1941), who studied under Kennedy, began his even more extensive series of publications in 1972 and continues to thrive. There exists a long list of other historians who have published in English on various dimensions of the history of Islamic science throughout the decades. Notably, Roshi Rashed edited an exceptional three-volume Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, published by Routledge in 1986. Other distinguished historians of Islamic science who write in English include J. L. Berggren, Sonja Brentjes (1951), Petra Schmidl, Donald Routledge Hill (1622–1994), Jan P. Hogendijk (1955), George Saliba (1939).
The body of literature regarding the history of science in antiquity, from the Mesopotamians to the Egyptians to the Ancient Greeks, who were significantly influenced by both civilizations, is extensive. It encompasses classics such as Science Awakening, originally published in 1957 by B. L. van der Waerden (1903–1996), a student of Emmy Noether, and The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, also initially published in 1957, by Otto Neugebauer (1899–1990), a mathematician drawn to the study of Egyptian mathematics by Harald Bohr (1887–1951), mathematician and Olympic footballer, brother of Niels. For a contemporary perspective on Mesopotamian mathematics, there is Eleanor Robinson’s Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History (Princeton University Press, 2008).
Beginning somewhat later, there is an equally impressive array of English-language literature on the history of science in India. For instance, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918–1993) authored History of Science and Technology in Ancient India: The Beginnings, with a foreword by Joseph Needham, published in 1977. In more modern contributions, Kim Plofker’s Mathematics in India (Princeton University Press, 2009), which also addresses astronomy, as many prominent figures were both mathematicians and astronomers, includes a twenty-six-page bibliography.
There are numerous books and articles focusing on the history of Aztec science, Inca science, Native American science, Australian indigenous science, and the science of various regions across Africa, among other topics.
I could continue, but I believe I have illustrated my point.