This is exactly right!
Oh, how I wish there was a book on the history of science and math. Like how they went from the Four Humours or Phlogiston and Spontaneous Generation and Luminferous Ether theories to what they had later. Like how scientists all thought the earth was 100 million years old for a couple centuries until the discovery of radioactivity.
I want a book that would speak about how people made fun of Ignaz Semmelweis for washing hands in hospitals, until Pasteur in France and John Snow in England showed evidence for the germ theory of disease. How people used leeches and bloodletting, and when / why they stopped. (And maybe anecdotes like How Washington Roebling building the Brooklyn Bridge died from a gangrene because he thought pouring water over his wound was enough, and his son finished it)
I want a book that would explain the experiments that led to the theories, like Michelson-Morley that challenged the Lumeniferous Ether model. Or how people first discovered X-rays and didn’t know what to make of them.
How, indeed, did people prove to others that atoms existed? I don’t mean Democritus’ theories 2500 years ago, I mean what made people convinced the world was made from atoms?
And then the experiments that led to the standard model, how was it developed? The word Quark, where it came from, the reactions of scientists to Quantum theory etc.
Our science comes shrinkwrapped, showing only the end result, not the history of thought and the places where (eg Andalusia in the 1100s or China in 20 AD). To me it is very interesting when people weren’t sure yet but got the right result based on circumstantial reasoning, didn’t have high-powered electron microscopes and still somehow realized about atoms and molecules (Gregor Mendel etc). Or how Darwin and Mendeleev developed theories genetics, why they so thoroughly discounted Lamarckian evolution and were they correct etc.
I want a book that discusses the history including the ERRONEOUS theories, the time frames, the experiments that challenged prevailing theories, the controversies, and what made people find the correct theories.
And maybe the people (eg Newton avoided women, and studied Hebrew to reconstruct Biblical history, Michael Faraday was a devout Christian etc.)
Is there such a book? Can you guys recommend ??