Historian James Poskett sees modern science as the product of ceaseless cross-cultural, geopolitical transformations. In his new book, Horizons, Poskett argues that the so-called 'Western" revolution in science was actually the result of global transcultural and transregional interactions, all triggered by global socio-cum-geopolitical shifts. He brings his model of transculturation and global geopolitics transformations to bear on nearly every major breakthrough in modern science, from Newton's physics to Lavoisier's chemistry to Mendel's genetics. The result is a bold new interpretation of the history of the field. Take, for example, the work of Copernicus. Poskett locates Renaissance astronomy within the much larger context of the expansion of Islam in North Africa and Eurasia. Islam, he reveals, demanded great accuracy in the observations of solar, lunar, and planetary movements, which were used to organize ritual calendars and sanction political power. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 triggered an influx of texts, exiles, and learned captives into Europe, and Copernicus drew on these resources when formulating his heliocentric theory of the Universe. It was therefore, in Poskett's estimation, the combined effort of many scholars, rather than the work of a lone genius, that led to the demise of Aristotelian and Ptolemaic geocentric models.
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