Forensic view of science past and present takes an unusual approach

Steven Weinberg takes an unusual approach to this survey of science from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment. While historians generally studiously avoid viewing the past through a contemporary lens, Weinberg, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, sets out to interpret past scientific developments using the knowledge of the present.

An example of the insights gleaned using this modus operandi occurs during an investigation of the early Greek period, ...