A People's History of Science

Clifford D. Conner
November 2005     ISBN: 1560257482

We all know the history of science that we learned from grade-school textbooks: Galileo used his telescope to show that the earth was not the center of the universe. Newton divined gravity from the falling apple. Einstein unlocked the mysteries of time and space with a simple equation. But what we tend to forget is that preliterate ancient people began the science of medicine by discovering plants' therapeutic properties. Chemistry and metallurgy originated with ancient miners, smiths, and potters. Mathematics owes its existence and a great deal of its development to surveyors, merchants, clerk-accountants, and mechanics of many millennia. And the empirical method that characterized the Scientific Revolution, as well as the mass of scientific data upon which it built, emerged from the workshops of European artisans.

Science has always been a collective endeavor. In A People's History of Science, hunter-gatherers, peasant farmers, sailors, miners, blacksmiths, folk healers, and others who wrested the means of their survival from daily encounters with nature are returned to their rightful place in the history of science.

Clifford D. Conner has published a number of articles on the history of science in scholarly journals and has participated in international colloquia on various subjects, including the history of science. He taught history in the CUNY system (John Jay College and Lehman College) for several years before deciding to devote full time to writing.