Under the Influence: History in Scientific Training, the Case of Textbooks

Scientists recognize that their work is now part of a global enterprise, thus pluricultural. Historians of science understand this pluricultural dimension has been true for millennia, with essential contributions from Babylonia, China, Persia, and India, as well as Islamic thinkers, and more, absorbed by Europe to help form the basis for modern disciplines. Scientists typically do not recognize these contributions, because history has been a minor and highly selective element in their training. The current essay, written by two scientists and historians of science, finds verification for this by examining three textbooks widely used for the training of undergraduate majors in physics, chemistry, and astronomy. The types of “history” in these texts closely parallel one another. They continue to repeat tropes of extreme Eurocentrism, directed as they are by the idea that little or no science existed before the late sixteenth century in Western Europe, with minimal input from non-Western thinkers thereafter. This has profound implications for the contemporary scientist in terms of understanding what constitutes “science” in a fundamental, epistemological sense and the process by which the relevant knowledge was actually created.