Information packed. The discoveries of new lands, and science.

I recall spending some time with this book, but details now, years later, are vague. ( )

The Discoverers (Vintage) by Daniel J. Boorstin (1985)

The Discoverers is a genial, readable, welcome overview of some of the major scientific discoveries in human history, linked together by theme, and a good candidate for "best book that should have been one of my textbooks in high school but inexplicably wasn't". Boorstin is apparently a generally strong historian, having written several other acclaimed works like the 1974 History Pulitzer winner The Americans, and if that one was anything like this it should be a great read. The Discoverers takes a strongly narrative approach to its scope of inquiry, which endeared it to me. It's divided into four main sections: Time, which discusses the inventions of the calendar and clock; The Earth and Seas, which recounts the refinement of mapping, geography, and exploration; Nature, which covers astronomy, medicine, and physics; and Society, which wraps up the modern era as an age where people have studied themselves and their works in unprecedented detail. These general topics are related to the reader through the stories of the explorers and scientists who uncovered new lands and new knowledge, and Boorstin's smooth writing style and talent for both panoramic surveys and detailed explanations should make the content stick in the mind a bit better than the somewhat disjointed style of most textbooks.

I like the way that he treats the "story of progress" as the stories of people, both because he's a great humanist, sensitive to the struggles of people to shrug off constraints of ignorance and see a little farther, and also because that way he's better able to impart just how difficult those struggles were. The overall lesson is that progress is very difficult: people's prejudices - be they the spontaneous generation, geocentrism, the threefold world map - are almost always seemingly reasonable and justifiable by simple inspection, and it takes a lot of deep thinking and hard work to advance the frontiers of knowledge. Boorstin is able to incite both sympathy for the inhabitants of the old worlds and admiration for the pioneers of the new worlds, while returning again and again to a sentiment we would all do well to remember: "I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever." Well said. Here's hoping that more people read this book, both to celebrate the great scientists and adventurers of the past, and keep in mind that spirit of discovery. ( )

Boorstin opens up history from a Discoverers point of view in a way that James Burke in his "connections" never seems to pull off. While the latter's "connections" are tenuous at best, Boorstine's are solid: they lead to something tangible.

I loved it. ( )

At 684 densely printed pages, plus a further sixty for the author's notes and index, this is neither a light nor an easy read - but very well worthwhile. It was not till I'd finished that I read on to discover, inside the back cover, that Boorstin had been Librarian of Congress the last time I was able to visit that wondeful place, back in the 1980s. Plans to visit this Spring have been dashed by some pandemic - next year perhaps (2022).
Although the general thrust of 'discovery' (the long evolution of man's understanding of our world and ourselves) may be well known to most prospective readers, don't let this put you off - I defy anyone to read almost and chapter without discovering some new personality or some new insight.
And don't be so foolish as to assume that, published in 1983, the book is dated, Yes, of course, we've continued to learn many things about distant black holes, the inner space of atoms and the inner space of our own minds, but this book is about the journey - a journey that will never end. ( )

For years this was one of those books in my collection that I would read a chapter that I was interested in then put down. Finally, I decided I was going to read everything that I hadn't read already. I did that as well as rereading quite a few chapters that I had already covered a few years ago. What a wonderful work of art this very lengthy book is! So many literary portraits of so many fascinating characters. I wish this would have been required reading when I took a history of science class in college (or at least parts of it). With the right guide, I would have come out better educated and perhaps chose a more interesting research project. The Discovers turns out to be an extremely engaging tour of the history of science in western civilization by the late erudite Daniel Boorstin. More accurately, it is a history of those who shaped our understanding of the world as we know and live it today. For instance, Columbus was not a scientist as we think of a scientist but his voyages cannot be separated from the development of the sciences of cartography, navigation and geography. While a popular history, The Discovers always draws the reader deeper in individual subjects rather than leading to a smug superficial knowledge. If I could provide one humble criticism it is that Boorstin, for all his reputation, is philosophically shallow. Such a lengthy treatise should ask some deeper questions about what we've lost in the pursuit of science. Everywhere, philosophical progress and theological collapse are assumed to be inseparable from the Western trajectory of scientific knowledge and advance. Nonetheless, the Discoverers is better than an encyclopedia because Boorstin is a master of narrative. Yet, it is also, I believe, purposefully non-encyclopedic in its breadth. It ends with Faraday and Maxwell and only alludes to the 20th c. atomic scientists and says nothing about the moon landing. Is the anticlimactic ending to the book the point? There is no climax to the pursuit of knowledge. ( )

A large volume from a used bookstore full of historical connections of not only those who sailed off to find the west and create science but also the development of key ideas and the people (often unheard of by me) and the events that allowed for the eventual fruition science. I read this over a year during nights while working away. ( )

Fabulous! ( )

I just finished rereading this. It took a while. It's a very l-o-n-g book about a great many things and people. - What I especially like is that this work of history concentrates on the important stuff, not the wars and generals or rulers of nations, but man's progressive discovery of the world and himself. The stuff you usually find in history books is a backdrop, a part of the setting to the real story of what people have accomplished. I recommend it for people interested in the evolution of human thought and understanding of the universe. ( )

Outstanding summary of how we came to know details regarding time, navigation, and multiple aspects of science. ( )

Dry reading, but TONS of information -- the history of science and scientific thought and even the history of the social sciences, including the history of history. Fascinating between the drier portions. ( )

Boorstin's celebration of humanity's intellectual curiosity. ( )

I read this book several times in the 1990's. I was reminded of it because my nearly three year old granddaughter was sitting on my lap and I asked her if she would like me to read to her the article I was reading about human pair bonding. She listened very quietly, then I looked at my 27 year old daughter and asked if she remembered me reading this book, The Discoverers, to her and her siblings when they were very young. The four of us would lay in my bed and they would listen to me read The Discoverers until they fell asleep and I carried them to their own beds. Wonderful book full of humanities beauty through creation and learning. Everyone should read it, or at least have it and page through to find the parts that interest them most. ( )

One of the best books I've ever read. Temendous overview mankind's discoveries. It's divided into broad categories: Time, Earth & Seas, Nature, and Society. I actually read this some 25 years ago and looking at it again, I think it's time to read it a second time. ( )

The under title is: 'a history of man's search to know his world and himself', and is very suitable. In different chapters a thematically search of the human search for knowledge is brought. The book is subdivided in 4 parts: knowledge of time (moon - sun calendars, clocks, …), geographical discoveries (the earth as part of the universe, the earth itself …), the man and the society (the origin of anthropology, economics etc.)

+
Very well written
Testifies of quite some knowledge
enlightens the origin of the words (Greek - Latin), as History comes from inquiry
All but a dry account of facts; with some fine humor and mild critic on society

-
Not all parts are as valuable; for example the discovery of the world is excellent with quite some background info, I have never met before. The parts on physics and psychology are a bit less.

Conclusion:
All sort of facts on the discovery of the world, the universe, science etc.
Incredible ( )

A magisterial history of how we have inched forwards in our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. This is a big book, over 700 pages, but it is so beautifully written that it was a delight to pick it up each time, and I could and will read it through again. It encompasses science of course, but also many other aspects of culture and our world view. This truly is a book in a million. ( )

This is an engaging and beautifully well-written history of science. Basically, imagine the most fascinating essays and magazine articles on science you've ever read, stick 'em in a 700 page book, and you have The Discoverers.

For those who actually want details on just how much this book covers, here is the shortest summary I could come up with:
- Humankind's first attempts at astronomy and time-keeping. (The history of clocks was probably my favorite part of the entire book, though the competition was quite fierce.)
- Geography, exploration, navigation, and the inventions of maps and atlases.
- The controversial sciences of Copernicus and Galileo, and the unpleasant reaction of the religious authorities.
- The first explorations into the world of microbes and the rather ghoulish beginnings of anatomy & medicine (another of my favorite parts).
- Isaac Newton and the formation of long-titled Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. (There are some anecdotes in this part that give one the impression that Newton was not a particularly nice guy.)
- The history of zoology, botany, taxonomy, and the theory of evolution.
- Musings on human memory from Homer to Freud, the history of libraries (we can thank the monks for that), printing & book-making, and those illustrious and odd writers of the first generation of dictionaries.
- A history of history (because people used to just make that stuff up before Herodotus came along & he still made a lot of stuff up), archaeology, museums & preservation, anthropology, economics, & statistics.
- Finally, the end of this incredibly wide-ranging work summarizes progress in atomic theory (up to 1911, that is).

Anyway, I left out quite a bit, but you get the idea. And how many gob-smacking fun-facts and anecdotes are available to wow your nerdy friends and compatriots?
A plethora, folks. This book is fantastic. Go stuff your brain. ( )

Test: this is a comprehensive readable history from former Librarian of Congress

The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin, published in 1985, is a solid, thoroughly researched and well documented series of 82 essays on the history of human discovery. Some of these discoveries are physical, such as the New World or the trade route around Africa. Some of the discoveries are scientific such as the Calculus, the atom, or Evolution.

For me, the book has two aspects that set it well above similar works on scientific history. That is, an exploration of how we discovered things that one might not normally think of as a discovery, such as the measurement of Time, or how did the idea of divisions in pre-history into Stone, Bronze and Iton ages develop. How did we start to measure Time? This is a fascinating subject and one in which Boorstin indulges enough space to make a decent foray into the subject.

The other novel aspect of the book is the occasional discussion of "why not them?". Why didn't the Chinese or Islam invent the movable printing press? They had better and more advanced technologies in printing and in paper production long before the west, but it took Gutenberg to invent it. "Why not them" is at least as interesting (if not more) a subject than why Gutenberg did invent it.

Even though 25 years has passed since its publication, the work does not seem to show its age as Boorstin's positions his text in a manner to transcend our current period. Many of these essays will be just as interesting to readers 50 or 100 years from now. ( )

A wide-ranging history book on how man's discoveries in the sciences expanded his consciousness, leading to more exploration and thereby further changing and advancing civilizations. Boorstin organizes this vast knowledge from all over the world into a readable history which in the end leaves the reader in absolute awe at how far we've come and wondering how much further can we go. Separated into four Books (Time, The Earth and Seas, Nature, Society) these books are further broken down into section and sub-sections such as Making Time Portable, The Discovery of Asia, Specimen Hunting, and The Lost Arts of Memory. ( )

Sometimes I read nonfiction to get a general idea about something I don’t know anything about or a person who intrigues me. Other times I read nonfiction to learn something specific in depth; such books may be hard to read cover to cover, but they still merit a careful reading.

The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin was a combination of both types of nonfiction. In a general way (for such a topic can hardly be comprehensive), Boorstin discusses the discovery of ideas, concepts, places, and facts from the dawn of time until about 1900. But in a very specific way, he teaches about some of the individuals and eras that make such general concepts important. I felt I read mini-biographies of hundreds of notable people, just by reading one book!

I loved the time I spent reading The Discoverers. It contains sections about the discovery (or, more accurately, the development) of concepts of time, the discovery of different lands, the discovery of science from the cosmos to the circulatory system, and the discovery of social development, from the printing press to vernacular languages. I learned a lot, both general and specific. This is a book to reread!

More detailed review on my blog

1856 The Discoverers, by Daniel J. Boorstein (read 3 Jul 1984) This is a good book, but rather wide-ranging. It is a good book to own--covers a lot of interests, with a fairly good bibliography. ( )

A very comprehensive history book without being watered down. This is one of the more interesting books that I have read. The author has obviously done a tremendous amount of research to write this book. If you want a basic understanding of how humanity has evolved into what we are today then this book is for you. ( )

This work reminded me a lot of Bill Bryson’s recent work “A Short History of Nearly Everything.” While Boorstin does not quite achieve Bryson’s level of finesse, wit, and trivia, his history of the great scientific, geographic, and philosophical discoveries is still impressive. His prose tends to give the reader a mild case of whiplash. As a bathroom reader, this volume might serve some function. ( )