Science has always been a collective endeavor. In A People’s History of Science the attention is at last turned to hunter-gatherers, peasant farmers, sailors, miners, blacksmiths, folk healers, and others who wrested the means of their survival from an encounter with nature on a daily basis. The science of medicine began with knowledge of plants’ therapeutic properties discovered by preliterate ancient people. Chemistry and metallurgy originated with ancient miners, smiths, and potters; geology and archeology were also born in the mines. Mathematics owes its existence and a great deal of its development to surveyors, merchants, clerk-accountants, and mechanics of many millennia. And the empirical method that characterized the Scientific Revolution, as well as the mass of scientific data upon which it built, emerged from the workshops of European artisans.

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