Page 1 of 1

Lost science: astonishing tales of forgotten genius

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 5:31 am
by quantropy
I'm interested in the history of science, and so I thought this book would be worth a try - hopefully it will be an entertaining read. After reading a lot of history of science books, particularly those aimed at a general readership, one can find they tend to go over the same material. This may well provide something a bit different from what I've read before.

Re: Lost science: astonishing tales of forgotten genius

Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2018 11:07 am
by quantropy
Unfortunately there is no sample available for this book, so this impression is based on reading the preface. The blurb seems to suggest that this book is about scientists who have been forgotten by history, but, as Ferguson points out, its hard to claim that someone has been forgotten and then find a decent amount of interesting information about them. In fact I would say that half of the 10 people the book deals with are reasonably well known, so it looks like it is more about scientific episodes which are not commonly known. Certainly though, the subject of the first chapter, Ferdinand Verbiest and his adventures in the court of the Chinese emperor, are new to me.