Several people have sent me this video of an apparently drunk young man bellowing about how Europeans "invented" science and technology:
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I’m guessing that if you pinned him down he would be referring to the cluster of thinkers in early modern Europe—Newton, Hooke, Leibniz, etc.—who jump-started much of today’s physics and engineering. 2/9
Indeed, these were amazing, remarkable people. But just for a moment picture Newton in his late-17th-century Cambridge office, writing his book on optics. 3/9
The cheap(ish) wood-pulp paper he writes on: invented in China. The printed books in his office: invented in China and Korea. The numbers he is writing: invented in India. The zero that is the foundation of those numbers: invented by the Maya and, later, by Indians. 4/9
The prism that is his primary tool for working with light: descended from Assyrian lenses. The early writings on optics that Newton based his work on: Ptolemy (based in NE Africa), amplified by 10th -century Arabic writers. 5/9
The university Newton is working in: universities were first created in India (Taxila University, ~500BCE) and brought to flower in the Islamic world (e.g., Al Quaraouiyine, founded in Morocco by a woman in 859CE). 6/9
Newton’s Opticks (1704) is an assembly of a bunch of experiments. The idea of science as empirical inquiry determined by manipulating nature: the medieval Arab world. 7/9
And so on. Developments are handed from person to person, society to society—a wonderful process. It does not diminish Newton’s achievements to say that he embraced and built on others’ work, and that this work was necessary to his. 8/9
Newton himself said that he could see so far only 'cuz he stood on the shoulders of giants. He was partly being snarky—he referred to his rival Hooke, who was very short. But it is also exactly true, and makes claims about “we invented science and tech” seem kind of silly. 9/9
