Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and
Sensibilities by Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, HarperCollins,
拢24.99, ISBN 000223842X
THE Three-Jewel Eunuch of the Imperial Palace in Peking, Admiral Cheng Ho,
took command of 37 000 men in 62 ships to sail west in 1405. His was the first
of seven missions that allowed the Chinese fleets to assert their hegemony from
Java to Somalia over the next thirty years鈥攏o small achievement. Among the
prizes of these expeditions were giraffes, taken back for the edification of
Chinese naturalists.
Cheng Ho was poised to become a sort of Chinese Vasco da Gama and discover a
new trading route to the Mediterranean, but politics intervened. Before long an
imperial edict had successfully suppressed maritime commerce under the Chinese
flag.
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But why was Cheng Ho stopped in his tracks? You won鈥檛 find the reason in
Servants of Nature, a compendium of science history put together by Lewis
Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson. Cheng Ho鈥檚 absence is somewhat perplexing, as
the book鈥檚 scope ranges from early Islamic and Chinese observatories to the
evolution of the German doctoral system and the reception of Einstein鈥檚 theories
in India.
The authors claim to fly no philosophical, political or methodological
colours, but simply to be motivated by a belief that 鈥渉istory may help us see
clearly today鈥�, drawing on a great tradition in French scholarship that
celebrates history as a craft based on facts. The lack of overarching theory
results in a kaleidoscope of historical instances assembled as part of an
inquiry into science as a social activity.
The wealth of detail in Servants of Nature is extraordinary, but it
sometimes assumes a breathless quality and on occasion stuns the reader with its
banality (鈥淕utenberg鈥檚 invention took Europe by storm鈥�). At times it seems like
reading an interminable article in an encyclopedia for young teenagers, an
impression compounded by whole paragraphs of names and dates of birth and
death.
In any area where the reader has specialist knowledge this book is unlikely
to add to his or her store, but bringing so much together in such a compact and
mostly very readable form is a considerable achievement. What we now need is the
book of theory based on this cabinet of wonders.