Some time back, I was offered a review copy of Why the Sky Is Blue by Götz Hoeppe by Princeton University Press. Looking at their web site, I noticed a forthcoming book by an emeritus professor at my alma mater, so I asked if they’d send me a copy of that, too. I’m all about the free books.
The Grand Contraption is an excellent example of what I call a Smart People Book, in which the author pulls together a wide range of material to take an exhaustive look at some topic or another, and basically show what a smart person he or she is. This particular book is subtitled “The World as Myth, Number and Chance,” and is a survey of systematic attempts to explain the world from ancient Mesopotamia to the Standard Model:
The gods of ancient Mesopotamia knew the future, but humans could know it too. If the world’s structural unity allowed gods to read human minds, knowledge traveled the other way too, and if you looked carefully there were omens everywhere to tell you what the gods were thinking. About seven thousand omens are listed in a series of tablets called Enuma Anu Enlil. They are dated c. 700 BCE but their contents are probably much older, and there are other collections as well. […]
There is a whole book on the meanings of monstrous births, disturbances of the natural order so great that they could threaten a kingdom:
If a suppu sheep gives birth to a goat there will be destruction in the land. The reign of the king will end and the son of a widow will seize the thronw. Pestilence will follow. If a mare bears a colt and a filly and they each have one eye, an enemy will attack and overthrow the land of Akkad.
The next one is less likely, though of course one should be prepared for anything that might happen: “If a woman gives birth to an elephant, the land will be laid waste.”
That passage pretty much gives you the flavor of the book. It draws on a huge range of sources, many of them pretty obscure, and presents them clearly and with a dry wit.
The really obvious knock on this book would have to be that it’s hugely Eurocentric. It starts in Mesopotamia, and has a few passing references to Native American beliefs, but on the whole, it’s a book dealing with the Western canon: Greek philosophy, the Hebrew Bible, Roman philosophy, medieval cosmology, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and on to modern science. The whole continent of Asia is basically an afterthought– there isn’t even an index entry for “China” (it skips directly from “Chambers, Robert, on evolution” to “Chumash Indians, their cosmos).
Putting that aside, in the areas of world thought that it does cover, it provides a fascinating survey of ways that people have looked at the world around them through the centuries. It doesn’t go into very great depth about any of the world systems it discusses, but even the quirkier ideas of close-minded medieval scholars get a fair description. It’s not a book that’s going to revolutionize the study of the history of science, or anything, but it’s a good read in a very academic way. It’s really fascinating to see how our current understanding of the universe evolved in fits and starts over a period of a few thousand years.
This isn’t a book that’s likely to rocket up the best-seller lists, and I wouldn’t recommend reading it if you’re not used to academic prose. If you’re looking for a scholarly but readable survey of scientific (and proto-scientific) thought through the ages, though, this is a very well done book.