SCIENCE science.org 29 APRIL 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6592 467PHOTO: BABAK TAFRESHI/SCIENCE SOURCE
By Jorge Cañizares-EsguerraH
istorian James Poskett sees modern
science as the product of ceaseless
cross-cultural, geopolitical transfor-
mations. In his new book, Horizons,
Poskett argues that the so-called
“Western” revolution in science was
actually the result of global transcultural
and transregional interactions, all triggered
by global socio-cum-geopolitical shifts. He
brings his model of transculturation and
global geopolitics transformations to bear on
nearly every major breakthrough in modern
science, from Newton’s physics to Lavoisier’s
chemistry to Mendel’s genetics. The result is
a bold new interpretation of the history of
the field.
Take, for example, the work of Coperni-
cus. Poskett locates Renaissance astronomy
within the much larger context of the
expansion of Islam in North Africa
and Eurasia. Islam, he reveals, de-
manded great accuracy in the obser-
vations of solar, lunar, and planetary
movements, which were used to or-
ganize ritual calendars and sanction
political power. The fall of Constan-
tinople in 1453 triggered an influx
of texts, exiles, and learned captives
into Europe, and Copernicus drew on
these resources when formulating his
heliocentric theory of the Universe. It
was therefore, in Poskett’s estimation,
the combined effort of many scholars,
rather than the work of a lone genius,
that led to the demise of Aristotelian
and Ptolemaic geocentric models.
Similarly, Poskett demonstrates
how all the key evidence Isaac New-
ton relied on to revitalize physics
came from comparative studies con-
ducted in equatorial and Arctic loca-
tions. To reach isolated islands in the
Pacific to obtain such data, nations
needed considerable seafaring capa-
bilities. Ultimately, Poskett argues,
it was the Atlantic slave trade that
made the accumulation of evidence
for Newtonian physics possible.
According to Poskett, 19th-century
industrialization, nationalism, settlercolonialism, and imperialism drove the de-
velopment of evolutionary biology, particu-
larly Darwinian natural selection. The idea
of evolution as the survival of the fittest was
a trope that informed the development of
national armies and frontier societies. Nine-
teenth-century Argentina, Russia, Japan,
and China, he notes, excelled in paleontology
and evolutionary biology.
It was the pursuit of communication in
scattered imperial polities that led to break-
throughs in telegraphy and radio, particu-
larly in Russia, Japan, and China, argues
Poskett. The rush to industrialization in the
19th century, in turn, sparked much research
in chemistry. During this period, the Russian
chemist Dmitri Mendeleev spearheaded in-
quiries into the periodic table, and the Japa-
nese physicist Hantaro Nagaoka headed up
efforts that led to the first model of the atom.Poskett sees Marxist ideologies and Cold
War conflict as two of the main forces be-
hind the global spread of relativity, quantum
mechanics, and genetics. The new physics
advanced by Einstein and Bohr was received
by Bolshevik radicals in Russia as a welcome
challenge to bourgeois complacency, he ar-
gues. Nationalists and republican radicals in
India and China also embraced these ideas
with gusto. Meanwhile, the fear of famine
and atomic warfare during the Cold War
greatly facilitated the spread of population
and agricultural genetics in Mexico,
China, and India.
Poskett’s main contribution with
this book is to demonstrate that “Eu-
ropean” knowledge has long been
the result of global efforts and that
science is intimately attached to co-
lonialism, capitalism, slavery, indus-
trialization, and geopolitical conflict.
Poskett offers countless examples of
non-European scientists whose re-
search changed the sciences in radi-
cal new ways.
Yet, for all his sharp insights, Pos-
kett remains firmly grounded in Eu-
rocentric teleologies. In his account,
science moves through familiar Eu-
ropean markers of progress: Coper-
nicanism, Newtonianism, Linnaean
natural history, Maxwellian electro-
magnetism. And nearly all the non-
European innovators he highlights
first trained in either European or US
institutions. Nor does he question the
Eurocentric assumptions that underlie
the historiographical categories that
are traditionally used to organize the
history of science (the print revolu-
tion, the Republic of Letters, the public
sphere, the Enlightenment, democracy,
and the Industrial Revolution). Despite
these shortcomings, Horizons is nev-
ertheless a challenging book that de-
serves a wide readership. j10.1126/science.abo5229HISTORY OF SCIENCERethinking the “Western” revolution in science
A historian sees global cultural and geopolitical roots in Europe’s scientific breakthroughs
Horizons:
The Global Origins
of Modern Science
James Poskett
Mariner Books, 2022.
464 pp.Islamic astronomy informed the work of Copernicus, argues Poskett.The reviewer is at the Department of History,
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Email: [email protected]