Myth 4. That Alchemy and Astrology Were Superstitious Pursuits That Did Not Contribute to Science and Scientific Understanding

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Acknowledgments xiii
4. Introduction 1
5. I. Medieval and Early Modern Science
6. Myth 1. That There Was No Scientific Activity between Greek Antiquity and the Scientific Revolution 7
7. Myth 2. That before Columbus, Geographers and Other Educated People Thought the Earth Was Flat 16
8. Myth 3. That the Copernican Revolution Demoted the Status of the Earth 23
9. Myth 4. That Alchemy and Astrology Were Superstitious Pursuits That Did Not Contribute to Science and Scientific Understanding 32
10. Myth 5. That Galileo Publicly Refuted Aristotle’s Conclusions about Motion by Repeated Experiments Made from the Campanile of Pisa 40
11. Myth 6. That the Apple Fell and Newton Invented the Law of Gravity, Thus Removing God from the Cosmos 48
12. II. Nineteenth Century
13. Myth 7. That Friedrich Wöhler’s Synthesis of Urea in 1828 Destroyed Vitalism and Gave Rise to Organic Chemistry 59
14. Myth 8. That William Paley Raised Scientific Questions about Biological Origins That Were Eventually Answered by Charles Darwin 67
15. Myth 9. That Nineteenth- Century Geologists Were Divided into Opposing Camps of Catastrophists and Uniformitarians 74
16. Myth 10. That Lamarckian Evolution Relied Largely on Use and Disuse and That Darwin Rejected Lamarckian Mechanisms 80
17. Myth 11. That Darwin Worked on His Theory in Secret for Twenty Years, His Fears Causing Him to Delay Publication 88
18. Myth 12. That Wallace’s and Darwin’s Explanations of Evolution Were Virtually the Same 96
19. Myth 13. That Darwinian Natural Selection Has Been “the Only Game in Town” 103
20. Myth 14. That after Darwin (1871), Sexual Selection Was Largely Ignored until Robert Trivers (1972) Resurrected the Theory 112
21. Myth 15. That Louis Pasteur Disproved Spontaneous Generation on the Basis of Scientific Objectivity 119
22. Myth 16. That Gregor Mendel Was a Lonely Pioneer of Genetics, Being Ahead of His Time 129
23. Myth 17. That Social Darwinism Has Had a Profound Influence on Social Thought and Policy, Especially in the United States of America 139
24. III. Twentieth Century
25. Myth 18. That the Michelson- Morley Experiment Paved the Way for the Special Theory of Relativity 149
26. Myth 19. That the Millikan Oil- Drop Experiment Was Simple and Straightforward 157
27. Myth 20. That Neo- Darwinism Defines Evolution as Random Mutation Plus Natural Selection 164
28. Myth 21. That Melanism in Peppered Moths Is Not a Genuine Example of Evolution by Natural Selection 171
29. Myth 22. That Linus Pauling’s Discovery of the Molecular Basis of Sickle- Cell Anemia Revolutionized Medical Practice 178
30. Myth 23. That the Soviet Launch of Sputnik Caused the Revamping of American Science Education 186
31. IV. Generalizations
32. Myth 24. That Religion Has Typically Impeded the Progress of Science 195
33. Myth 25. That Science Has Been Largely a Solitary Enterprise 202
34. Myth 26. That the Scientific Method Accurately Reflects What Scientists Actually Do 210
35. Myth 27. That a Clear Line of Demarcation Has Separated Science from Pseudoscience 219
36. Notes 227
37. Contributors 271
38. Index 279