Raised in the London suburbs by her mother, a housewife trained as a nurse, and her father, who was a lawyer, Fara studied physics at Oxford University in the sixties. Her writing often emphasizes the contributions of translators, teachers, and technicians-previously unrecognized people whose work was crucial to the global development of science. Fara has spent her career unearthing new ways of viewing scientific history, and she has written about women’s contributions to science dating back to the Enlightenment period. This applies not only to wars and political movements, but also to the lives of scientists, along with their discoveries. “Every person who goes back can fish out a completely different set of facts and tell a completely different story,” said Fara, a historian of science at Cambridge University in the UK.
Politicians, movies, and schoolteachers might have you believe that events unfolded one way, but the truth is far more complex and contradictory, as Patricia Fara well knows. And rather than glorifying scientists as idealized heroes, she tells true stories about real people-men (and some women) who needed to earn their living, who made mistakes, and who trampled down their rivals.The past is messy.
Instead of focussing on esoteric experiments and abstract theories, she explains how science belongs to the practical world of war, politics, and business. We see for instance how Muslim leaders encouraged science by building massive libraries, hospitals, and astronomical observatories and we rediscover the significance of medieval Europe-long overlooked-where, surprisingly, religious institutions ensured science's survival, as the learning preserved in monasteries was subsequently developed in new and unique institutions: universities. Sweeping through the centuries from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, Fara's book also ranges internationally, challenging notions of European superiority by emphasizing the importance of scientific projects based around the world, including revealing discussions of China and the Islamic Empire alongside the more familiar stories about Copernicus's sun-centered astronomy, Newton's gravity, and Darwin's theory of evolution. In Science, Patricia Fara rewrites science's past to provide new ways of understanding and questioning our modern technological society.
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