,
7 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Good thread on Ben Shapiro’s ahistorical (and frankly racist) claim that “the West invented science”; even better thread on how the Right is leading America to abandon it. It’s bizarre to even see Shapiro die on this hill while conservatives proudly advocate scientific denialism.
Adding to the thread: Empirical observation and materialist rationalism, the roots of what would become scientific method, emerged out of Egypt, Babylonia and India. Experiment and quantification (and the use of hypotheses and testing) originated in the Islamic world. See: Geber 
Meanwhile, Chinese scholars were doing taxonomic observation and sophisticated engineering before Europe even existed, though the road to scientific method got sidetracked in mysticism there (shakes fist at The Book of Changes) and didn’t re-emerge for millennia.
Still: the compass, gunpowder, papermaking, and printing, the blast furnace, shadow clock, crossbow, porcelain, boat rudder, abacus, paper currency and animal harnesses are just a fraction of the innovations created in China during Europe’s prehistory and dark ages.
And to @Noahpinion’s point, China and Japan have continued to invest in basic research while America is cutting back on it at the government and academic level. Meanwhile, in applied, commercializable research, China and Japan continue to grow while America stagnates.
So whatever cultural-supremacist point Shapiro is trying to make is not only false, it’s also moot. His own party is destroying whatever lead America has in basic and applied science, while celebrating know-nothings and denialists, all a part of making America great again I guess
Great additional thoughts from a history of science perspective here!
