NEWTON’S APPLE AND OTHER MYTHS ABOUT SCIENCE NEW TON’S APPLE AND OTHER MYTHS ABOUT SCIENCE Edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England 2015 Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Newton’s apple and other myths about science / edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-96798-4 (cloth) 1. Errors, Scientifi c— Popular works. 2. Errors, Scientifi c— History— Popular works. 3. Science— History— Popular works. I. Numbers, Ronald L., editor. II. Kampourakis, Kostas, editor. Q172.5.E77N49 2015 001.96— dc23 2015014096 To Nicolaas Rupke and his colleagues at Washington and Lee University for hosting a wonderful conference leading to this book in May 2014 CONTENTS Ac know ledg ments xiii Introduction 1 by Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis I. MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN SCIENCE Myth 1. That There Was No Scientifi c Activity between Greek Antiquity and the Scientifi c Revolution 7 Michael H. Shank Myth 2. That before Columbus, Geographers and Other Educated People Thought the Earth Was Flat 16 Lesley B. Cormack Myth 3. That the Copernican Revolution Demoted the Status of the Earth 23 Michael N. Keas viii CONTENTS Myth 4. That Alchemy and Astrology Were Superstitious Pursuits That Did Not Contribute to Science and Scientifi c Understanding 32 Lawrence M. Principe Myth 5. That Galileo Publicly Refuted Aristotle’s Conclusions about Motion by Repeated Experiments Made from the Campanile of Pisa 40 John L. Heilbron Myth 6. That the Apple Fell and Newton Invented the Law of Gravity, Thus Removing God from the Cosmos 48 Patricia Fara II. NINETEENTH CENTURY Myth 7. That Friedrich Wöhler’s Synthesis of Urea in 1828 Destroyed Vitalism and Gave Rise to Organic Chemistry 59 Peter J. Ramberg Myth 8. That William Paley Raised Scientifi c Questions about Biological Origins That Were Eventually Answered by Charles Darwin 67 Adam R. Shapiro Myth 9. That Nineteenth- Century Geologists Were Divided into Opposing Camps of Catastrophists and Uniformitarians 74 Julie Newell CONTENTS ix Myth 10. That Lamarckian Evolution Relied Largely on Use and Disuse and That Darwin Rejected Lamarckian Mechanisms 80 Richard W. Burkhardt Jr. Myth 11. That Darwin Worked on His Theory in Secret for Twenty Years, His Fears Causing Him to Delay Publication 88 Robert J. Richards Myth 12. That Wallace’s and Darwin’s Explanations of Evolution Were Virtually the Same 96 Michael Ruse Myth 13. That Darwinian Natural Selection Has Been “the Only Game in Town” 103 Nicolaas Rupke Myth 14. That after Darwin (1871), Sexual Selection Was Largely Ignored until Robert Trivers (1972) Resurrected the Theory 112 Erika Lorraine Milam Myth 15. That Louis Pasteur Disproved Spontaneous Generation on the Basis of Scientifi c Objectivity 119 Garland E. Allen Myth 16. That Gregor Mendel Was a Lonely Pioneer of Ge ne tics, Being Ahead of His Time 129 Kostas Kampourakis