Because science is done by people, its progress is messy. Sometimes those who shout the loudest are initially accepted as being correct. It takes time for a rival interpretation of results to be accepted as a better explanation. Scientists themselves indulge in political manoeuvring, trying to win funding for their preferred lines of investigation, denigrating their colleagues as they do so. Ms Fara identifies the many cases where the work of various women throughout history has not been credited, and men have claimed the discoveries as their own. Similarly, Chinese inventions have been recast as European and the role of Islamic scholars ignored.

The book romps through history at a terrific rate: from ancient Greece through the Islamic empire of the 13th century, 15th-century China and Renaissance Europe to 20th-century America. It races through ideas: how learned societies emerged, how the theory of evolution affected the way people viewed themselves, how scientific progress brought power to its protagonists. Ms Fara's informal style helps to speed the pace, but sometimes grates. She also occasionally repeats the same arguments to illustrate different points. Yet the book is so wide-ranging and provocative that these faults can be forgiven.

Scientists like to present their subject as a clear progression from one idea springing from a masterful mind, through its experimental verification to the next ingenious insight; each cool and rational step taken in an orderly fashion. Ms Fara argues that there is no unique path to universal truth. Rather science progresses in fits and starts, with many avenues terminating as blind alleys. Moreover, unlike art, science is a collective activity that demands collaboration. If Isaac Newton saw farther by standing on the shoulders of giants, then those giants themselves had been standing on the shoulders of others.

... contd.