Is there a point in reading classical works about formal sciences and natural sciences? I'm looking at western canon lists and there's stuff like Euclid, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Copernicus, Newton, etc., but I don't get why people other than historians should bother with all of this. It's mostly outdated and any school textbook seems like a better choice.
>>24973077Hippocrates has early social science work (airs, waters and places) which studies culture and historiography. That work in particular is a keen look at world cultures of the time and includes what can be seen as predecessor to evolution in it.Pretty much the rest of the corpus you can skip over if you want to though.
>>24973077Euclid’s Elements is worth studying. Its not outdated, it was suppressed.https://elements.ratherthanpaper.com/1.1https://youtu.be/XLlThlqCFeghttps://elements.ratherthanpaper.com/1.2https://youtu.be/UHZO2dviZfUhttps://elements.ratherthanpaper.com/1.3https://youtu.be/_ZwcobIExtohttps://www.desmos.com/geometryhttps://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-jan-30-oe-crease30-story.html
>>24973077I love Diderot's and D'Alembert "Encyclopaedia", and Buffon's "Natural History".Both are gigantic works and you will only find excerpts.In French, the actual language is really interesting, peculiar, and pleasant to read.The pedagogic ambitions make every article a short essay with effort in efficiency and elegance in the delivery of the ideas.Some cultural and linguistical maneerisms are very outrageous and funny, for example I clearly laugh when reading Buffon shamelessly trashtalking the domestic cat in a supposedly scientific work and I re-read it often.
Euclid is enjoyable to read for his elegance. Euler is not only enjoyable but still very relevant. Most of the rest is irrelevant except as historical interest but that is very relevant and for that the Penguin anthology, The Dawn of Modern Cosmology: From Copernicus to Newton, is a fascinating collection of excerpts. The history of science and mathematics isn't something to be dismissed, in a way it's just as important as the history of literature and the fine arts. It also is good for actually stimulating interest in these fields. A History of Mathematics, by Boyer and Merzbach, will show you what I mean. By learning the process of how mathematicians or scientists came to conclusions and proved them in the past, it helps ferment our own brain to do so. Science and especially math are creative fields. You can learn operations but learning to prove why they're true is more interesting, and learning how to prove is the most important technical skill for mathematical breakthrough, whereas imagination and thinking outside the box is the most important faculty
>>24973077There's a nice set of books by Kerry Kuehn meant to offer this kind of education in primary texts in the history of math and science. He gives a decent and plausible justification:>Here I will offer a mild critique of textbooks typically employed in introductory university physics courses. While what follows is admittedly a bit of a caricature, I believe it to be a quite plausible one. I do this in order to highlight the unique features and emphases of the present book. In many university-level physics textbooks, the chapter format follows a standard recipe. First, accepted scientific laws are presented in the form of one or more mathematical equations. This is followed by a few example problems so the student can learn how to plug numbers into the aforementioned equations and how to avoid common conceptual or computational errors. Finally, the student is presented with contemporary applications which illustrate the relevance of these equations for various industrial or diagnostic technologies.>While this method often succeeds in preparing students to pass certain standardized tests or to solve fairly straightforward technical problems, it is lacking in important respects. First, it is quite bland. Although memorizing formulas and learning how to perform numerical calculations is certainly crucial for acquiring a working knowledge of physical theories, it is often the more general questions about the assumptions and the methods of science that students find particularly stimulating and enticing. For instance, in his famous Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Newton enumerates four general rules for doing philosophy. Now the reader may certainly choose to reject Newton’s rules, but Newton himself suggests that they are necessary for the subsequent development of his universal theory of gravitation. Is he correct? For instance, if one rejects Rules III and IV—which articulate the principle of induction—then in what sense can his theory of gravity be considered universal? Questions like “is Newton’s theory of gravity correct?” and “how do you know?” can appeal to the innate sense of inquisitiveness and wonder that attracted many students to the study of natural science in the first place. Moreover, in seeking a solution to these questions, the student must typically acquire a deeper understanding of the technical aspects of the theory. In this way, broadly posed questions can serve as a motivation and a guide to obtaining a detailed understanding of physical theories.
>>24973554>Second, and perhaps more importantly, the method employed by most standard textbooks does not prepare the student to become a practicing scientist precisely because it tends to mask the way science is actually done. The science is presented as an accomplished fact; the prescribed questions revolve largely around technological applications of accepted laws. On the contrary, by carefully studying the foundational texts themselves the student is exposed to the polemical debates, the technical difficulties and the creative inspirations which accompanied the development of scientific theories. For example, when studying the motion of falling bodies in Galileo’s Dialogues, the student must consider alternative explanations of the observed phenomena; must understand the strengths and weaknesses of competing theories; and must ultimately accept—or reject—Galileo’s proposal on the basis of evidence and reason. Through this process the student gains a deeper understanding of Galileo’s ideas, their significance, and their limitations.>Moreover, when studying the foundational texts, the student is obliged to thoughtfully address issues of language and terminology—issues which simply do not arise when learning from standard textbooks. In fact, when scientific theories are being developed the scientists themselves are usually struggling to define terms which capture the essential features of their discoveries. For example, Oersted coined a term which is translated as “electric conflict” to describe the effect that an electrical current has on a nearby magnetic compass needle. He was attempting to distinguish between the properties of stationary and moving charges, but he lacked the modern concept of the magnetic field which was later introduced by Faraday. When students encounter a familiar term such as “magnetic field,” they typically accept it as settled terminology, and thereby presume that they understand the phenomenon by virtue of recognizing and memorizing the canonical term. But when they encounter an unfamiliar term such as “electric conflict,” as part of the scientific argument from which it derives and wherein it is situated, they are tutored into the original argument and are thus obliged to think scientifically, along with the great scientist. In other words, when reading the foundational texts, the student is led into doing science and not merely into memorizing and applying nomenclature.
>>24973483>highest finite theoreticalThe Great Zoomer awakening continues!
>>24973540>>24973554I'm not OP, but thanks for these book recommendations. unfortunately I don't have the time to read them, currently reading "milestones in microbiology", so they will go into the backlog and perhaps never be read
>>24973077I have read Galen’s on natural faculties and while it’s not the most exciting it does in fact have some tangential value to philosophy. The goal of the book is to disprove atomist (materialist) takes on the nature of the body espoused by men like Epicurus and Asclepiades of Bithynia by proving a form of intelligent design ie that all body parts serve a purpose specific to them and this proves Being as opposed to atomists who claim many organs serve no purpose and that they were created at random.So Galen does tangentially relate to philosophers like Epicurus and some of the presocratics. His treatise is intended to espouse a Platonist point
>>24975825what about tailbonewhat did galen said about tailbone
>>24975863Idk what Galen said about it, but it's retarded to think it serves no purpose, there's plenty of muscles attached to it. It literally holds your asshole in place.
>>24975863>>24975875Non-shitpost response: the treaty is mainly centered on the kidneys as Asclepiades of Bithynia taught that urine is actually a gaseous vapor inside the body and the atoms rearrange as urine in the bladder meaning the kidneys serve no purpose at all in his schema which Galen refutes
Whats a good history of science besides picrel?
>>24976619that one is no good
