[MD] Oneness, Dualism & Intellect

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt]
Also enjoyed the emphasis on individuals who scored breakthroughs in
microbiology like Pasteur.

[Arlo]
Thought I'd share a relevant passages from "A People's History of Science", a
book that in many ways appears to draw heavily from a MOQ-perspective.

"Historians in general have succeeded in displacing the encomiastic tradition-
the Great Man Theory of History- as the predominant viewpoint of the educated
public, but historians of science- in spite of a great deal of effort and good
scholarship- have been less successful. "Science", Derek de Solla Price
lamented, "seems tied to its heroes more closely than other branch of
learning." Although few people today would agree with Carlyle's famous dictum
that "the history of of the world is but the biography of great men", many
continue to believe that the Scientific Revolution was the creation of a very
few extremely talented geniuses: "from Copernicus to Newton." 

Part of the problem is that although the public understanding of history in
general has been strongly influenced by professional historians, the way most
people conceive of the history of science has been shaped not by historians of
science but by scientists themselves, who often hold and propagate distorted
conceptions of their predecessors' practices. Scientists have a guild interest
in portraying their forerunners as heroes, because it adds to the heroic
stature of their profession and enhances their view of their own place in the
scheme of things.

More important, most scientists are not professional historians; their primary
concerns are not historical. Their interest in their science's path of
development is secondary to their interest in the science itself. They
therefore often unwittingly adopt a tunnel-vision view of their discipline's
past, focusing only on the narrow lineage of successes and ignoring all the
false starts and dead ends as uninteresting because they did not "lead
anywhere". Tunnel-vision history of science may be of some use as a teaching
tool in elementary science courses, but it does not constitute valid history.
Its projection of present-day concerns onto the past gives a falsified and
misleading picture of the way science has developed in real life."

"Isaac Newton's ability to 'see further' should not be attributed, as he
claimed, to his sitting 'on the shoulders of giants', but rather to his
standing on the backs of untold thousands of illiterate artisans (among
others)."