Science Since Babylon

The other day I read this article (which was probably sourced from here) about the difficulty we may face in the future disentagling the paper trail of scientific discovery. No surprise, really. More than 40 years ago, historian of science Derek J. de Solla Price described the explosion of data and information that would spew forth in the coming years. His first book, Science Since Babylon (1961), mapped the exponential growth of scientific and technical knowledge, the increasingly narrow specialization (and sub-specialization) that would develop from this phenomena, and the possibly unmanagable and overwhelming consequences of it all. Most of what de Solla Price argues is even more true now. He was the first person to point out, for example, that there are more scientist alive today than have lived in all of past human history.

But what kind of “scientistic” society have we created? Does it bear any resemblance to the utopian oligarchic technocracy described in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627)? To some extent. Truth is, big science is dominated by a pragmatic imperative to “make product” — pharmaceuticals and consumer electronics are the essential by-products of our medical and communication revolutions. Lacking strong, unifying theoretical impetus, science has also turned fetishistic, and is too often little more than a process of obsessively recording and documenting everything — maybe it was always that way, but the effect has become magnified and multiplied.

Sociologically inclined, de Solla Price wondered at the implications of these changes. But, as a historian, he also marvelled at the accomplishments of the ancients. He was, for example, the first person to investigate the Antikythera mechanism, a more than 2000 year old astronomical device whose complexity and purpose defy complete explanation…

This artifact reminds us of the twists and turns of history, for it was re-discovered in the early 20th century, but its initial effect may have followed the same pattern as many of the foundational elements of western science. The bulk of the Greek tradition was filtered through the Islamic world in the period from the fall of the Library of Alexandria (much of which was moved in the 8th and 9th century by the Abbasid Empire to places like Antioch) to the Crusades (ca. 1100), and even, arguably, to the reconquista in Spain and the early phases of the Italian Renaissance (ca. 1250-1350). In the 9th century the Caliph of Baghdad commissioned the Kitab al-Hiyal, “The Book of Ingenious Devices”, one of many texts that borrowed ideas from the Greeks (and, of course, from a host of other ancient civilizations, like the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, etc…). It was the dynamic new Islamic world that spurred the incredible marketplace of ideas in cities like Damascus, Baghdad and Samarkand, a place that linked this revolution to the far east. Before Guttenberg in Europe, the Middle East was a center of the book trade like no other. These texts — translations and commentaries of ancient classics, and new original ideas from thinkers like al-Farabi, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sinna) — helped lay the foundations of scholasticism and sparked the re-discovery of Greek philosophy (and science and technology) in the late medieval period.

One reels at the implications of all of this in light of the current world situation, of cold warrior Samuel P. Huntington‘s lame refrain about “the clash of civilizations”, of the destruction wreaked upon the ancient crossroads of knowledge. The Antikythera reminds us of the cycles and foibles of history and time. It is a symbol of what was known, but just as powerfully, of what can be lost…

In 1990, cyberpunks Bruce Sterling and William Gibson collaborated on a speculative fiction novel entitled The Difference Engine, wherein they played with history and imagined a late Victorian world where the mechanical contrivances of Charles Babbage are made real and fully functional. “Steampunk”, they called it. The Antikythera was a primitive computer, a form of difference engine…Built before the fall of Rome. The difference is in the similarities. Not so shabby those Greeks and Romans…They even developed concrete that set under water, an alchemical mixture lost for centuries, and only re-discovered in the mid-19th century.

Where have we been? Where will we go? These are the questions scientists (and science) should be grappling with, but instead they are drowning in data, building war machines for the war machine, and, eventually, leaving not even a paper trail of their passing. And, all the while, Babylon burns…

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