Stories of Science

The short version of the history of Europe involves a long period of intellectual stagnation following the fall of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance began in the 1400s. The Catholic Church was a slight help in some respects by salvaging some historical records and such, but was mostly a hindrance as its leadership refused to acknowledge any possible scientific advances if they contradicted the Bible.

Physicist and science historian James Hannam would beg to differ. In his 2001 book, The Genesis of Science, he argues instead that the Middle Ages offered several scientific advances that laid the groundwork for the major leaps forward that came from pioneers like Galileo and Copernicus. And far from being a hindrance to scientific and intellectual development, he says, the church and some of its officials and teachers were among those building that foundation.

Although a little pugnacious in his assertions and style, Hannam doesn't argue that the Middle Age church was responsible for all of the advances that led to our better understanding of the world where we live. He is quite clear, however, that the idea of pure stagnation between Alaric's spring break blowout in Rome in the fifth century and Nicolaus Copernicus' noodling about planetary orbits in the 15th is unfounded. And, he points out, the monks and religious scholars at the universities of Europe were those reflecting on the philosophies of Aristotle and other ancient Greek thinkers -- even more so after they were able to find manuscripts thought lost through contact with traders from the Islamic countries where they had been copied.

On the one hand, Hannam's working against a lot of preconceived notions. Even our terminology reinforces these ideas -- we talk about "Dark Ages," "Middle Ages," and a "Renaissance." That may fuel his tendency to overwrite his case a little. On the other hand, the idea of a full millennium of intellectual stagnation ending only when some Athena of Italian culture broke out fully-formed doesn't make much sense. Meaning that these preconceived notions, like a lot of others, merit some reconsideration and maybe reconceiving. Here's hoping that Hannam's book sparks a little of that.

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Eric Scerri is a chemistry professor at UCLA who also writes on the history and philosophy of chemistry. He's written several books on the development of the periodic table of the elements, that odd tiered chart we may vaguely recall from high school chemistry classroom walls.

A quick summation of the history of that table opens his 2013 book, A Tale of 7 Elements. From there he gets into the main part of his story. In the late 19th century, as the periodic table neared the form we have it in today, it accounted for most of the elements known to people at the time. But there were seven gaps -- places where the table's organizing characteristics said there should have been elements. The problem was that no substances known at the time matched what those characteristics should have been. So Scerri describes how the seven were ferreted out by researchers and scientists.

Anyone who thinks that science is a dispassionate quest for the truth unadulterated by human failings like pride, greed and nationalism will learn some things from the stories Scerri offers. Those failings and several others are on full display as claims and counterclaims are made by one team or one scientists or another, research corners are cut and contradictory evidence covered up or ignored.

Even the advancing technology that aids the search -- and in the case of a couple of the previously unknown elements is the only thing that makes their discovery possible -- doesn't completely remove the human element from it. Scerri spends perhaps more time than he needs in explaining the development of the table itself, but his clear writing style goes easy on the chemistry terms and works to explain the ones he has to use.

The book closes with a couple of entries in the search for the elements that come after the original ones listed by Dmitri Mendeleev, the ones theorized but which are so unstable their atoms exist for only fractions of a second before breaking down. So there will be plenty of opportunities for scientists to show they're human all over again, even if some of the last centuries' spats may be exchanged for new ones. Given the weirdness of the modern American college campus, at least, there's a significant likelihood of that.