Encyclopedia
Science is a body of empirical and theoretical knowledge, produced by a global community of researchers, making use of specific techniques for the observation and explanation of real phenomena, this
techne as a whole being summed up under the heading of
scientific method. As such, the
history of science draws on the historical methods of both intellectual history and social history.
The Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century saw the inception of modern scientific methods to guide the evaluation of knowledge. This change is considered to be so fundamental that some — especially philosophers of science and practicing scientists — consider such earlier inquiries into nature to be
pre-scientific. Traditionally, historians of science have defined science sufficiently broadly to include those inquiries.
The
history of mathematics,
history of technology, and
history of philosophy are covered in other articles. Mathematics is closely related to, but distinct from science . Technology concerns the creative process of designing useful objects and systems, which differs from the search for empirical truth. Philosophy differs from science in that, while both the
natural and the
social sciences attempt to base their theories on established fact, philosophy also enquires about other areas of knowledge, notably ethics. In practice, each of these fields is heavily used by the others as an external tool.
Theories and sociology of the history of science
Much of the study of the history of science has been devoted to answering questions about what science
is, how it
functions, and whether it exhibits large-scale patterns and trends. The sociology of science in particular has focused on the ways in which scientists work, looking closely at the ways in which they "produce" and "construct" scientific knowledge. Since the 1960s, a common trend in the science studies has been to emphasize the "human component" to scientific knowledge, and to de-emphasize the view that scientific data is self-evident, value-free, and context-free.
A major subject of concern and controversy in the philosophy of science has been to inquire about the nature of
theory change in science. Three philosophers in particular who represent the primary poles in this debate have been Karl Popper, who argued that scientific knowledge is progressive and cumulative;
Thomas Kuhn, who argued that scientific knowledge moves through "
paradigm shifts" and is not necessarily progressive; and Paul Feyerabend, who argued that scientific knowledge is not cumulative or progressive, and that there can be no demarcation between science and any other form of investigation.
Since the publication of Kuhn's
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is an analysis of the history of science [i]. ...
in 1962, there has been much debate in the academic community over the meaning and objectivity of "science." Often, but not always, a conflict over the "truth" of science has split along the lines of those in the scientific community and those in the social sciences or humanities .
Early cultures
In prehistoric times, advice and knowledge was passed from generation to generation in an oral tradition. The development of writing enabled knowledge to be stored and communicated across generations with much greater fidelity. Combined with the development of agriculture, which allowed for a surplus of food, it became possible for early civilizations to develop, because more time could be devoted to tasks other than survival.
Many ancient civilizations collected astronomical information in a systematic manner through simple observation. Though they had no knowledge of the real physical structure of the planets and stars, many theoretical explanations were proposed.
Basic facts about human physiology were known in some places, and
alchemy was practiced in several civilizations. Considerable observation of macrobiotic flora and fauna was also performed.
Science in Classical Antiquity
In
Antiquity, the inquiry into the workings of the universe took place both in investigations aimed at such practical goals as establishing a reliable calendar or determining how to cure a variety of illnesses and in those abstract investegations known as natural philosophy. The ancient peoples who are considered the first
scientists may have thought of themselves as
natural philosophers, as practitioners of a skilled profession , or as followers of a religious tradition .
The earliest Greek philosophers, known as the
pre-Socratics, provided competing answers to the question found in the myths of their neighbors: "How did the ordered
cosmos in which we live come to be?" Subsequently, Plato and Aristotle produced the first systematic discussions of natural philosophy, which did much to shape later investigations into nature.
The important legacy of this period included substantial advances in factual knowledge, especially in anatomy, zoology, and astronomy; an awareness of the importance of certain scientific problems, especially those related to the problem of change and its causes; and a recognition of the methodological importance of applying mathematics to natural phenomena and of undertaking empirical research.
Science in China
China has a long and rich history of scientific and technological contributions. The
Four Great Inventions of ancient China are the
compass,
gunpowder,
papermaking, and
printing. These four discoveries had an enormous impact on the development of
Chinese civilization and a far-ranging global impact. According to
English philosopher Francis Bacon, writing in
Novum Organum,
Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries."
In regards to mathematics, two early works on mathematics were
The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical ArtWestern academic thought on the history of Chinese technology and science was galvanized by the work of Joseph Needham and the Needham Research Institute. Among the scientific accomplishments of China were early
seismological detectors,
matches, the independent discovery of the decimal system,
dry docks, sliding
calipers, the double-action
piston pump,
cast iron, the
iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the
wheelbarrow, the
suspension bridge, the
parachute,
natural gas as fuel, , the relief map, the
propeller, the
crossbow, a solid fuel
rocket, and the
cannon along with other contributions in logic,
astronomy,
medicine, and numerous other fields.
The Middle Ages
Medieval Indian science and technology
- Main articles: Indian science and Indian science and technology
Before the Middle Ages, Indian philosophers in
ancient India developed
atomic theories, which included formulating ideas about the
atom in a systematic manner and propounding ideas about the atomic constitution of the material world. The principle of relativity was also available in an early embryonic form in the Indian philosophical concept of "
sapekshavad". The literal translation of this
Sanskrit word is "
theory of relativity" .
By the beginning of the Middle Ages, the wootz, crucible and
stainless steels were discovered in India. By the end of the Middle Ages,
iron rockets were developed in the
kingdom of Mysore in
South India.
Aryabhata in 499 presented a
heliocentric solar system of
gravitation where he presented astronomical and mathematical theories in which the Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given as
elliptical orbits with respect to the sun. He also believed that the moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight and that the orbits of the planets are ellipses. He carried out accurate calculations of astronomical constants based on this system, such as the periods of the planets, the circumference of the
earth, the
solar eclipse and
lunar eclipse, the time taken for a single rotation of the Earth on its axis, the length of earth's revolution around the sun, and the longitudes of planets using eccentrics and
epicycles. He also introduced a number of
trigonometric functions ,
trigonometric tables, and techniques and
algorithms of
algebra.
Arabic translations of his texts were available in the
Islamic world by the
8th-
10th century.
In the
7th century, Brahmagupta briefly described the
law of gravitation, and recognized
gravity as a force of attraction. He also lucidly explained the use of zero as both a placeholder and a decimal digit, along with the
Hindu-Arabic numerals now used universally throughout the world. Arabic translations of his texts introduced this number system to the Islamic world, where it was adapted as
Arabic numerals.
The
Siddhanta Shiromani was a mathematical astronomy text written by Bhaskara in the
12th century. The 12 chapters of the first part cover topics such as: mean longitudes of the planets; true longitudes of the planets; the three problems of diurnal rotation; syzygies; lunar eclipses; solar eclipses; latitudes of the planets; risings and settings; the moon's crescent; conjunctions of the planets with each other; conjunctions of the planets with the fixed stars; and the patas of the sun and moon. The second part contains thirteen chapters on the sphere. It covers topics such as: praise of study of the sphere; nature of the sphere; cosmography and geography; planetary mean motion; eccentric epicyclic model of the planets; the armillary sphere; spherical trigonometry; ellipse calculations; first visibilities of the planets; calculating the lunar crescent; astronomical instruments; the seasons; and problems of astronomical calculations.
From the
12th century, Bhaskara and various Keralese mathematicians first conceived differential calculus, mathematical analysis,
trigonometric series, floating point numbers, and concepts foundational to the overall development of
calculus.
Medieval Islamic and European science
With the loss of the
Western Roman Empire, much of
Europe lost contact with the knowledge of the past. While the
Byzantine Empire still held learning centers such as
Alexandria and
Constantinople,
Western Europe's knowledge was concentrated in
monasteries. The
Library of Alexandria, which had suffered during and after the period of Roman rule, had been destroyed by 642, shortly after the Arab conquest of
Egypt. Philosophical and scientific teaching of the period was based upon few copies and commentaries of ancient Greek texts that remained in Western Europe and the
Middle East.
Islamic philosophy
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Greek philosophy was able to find some support by the newly created Arab
Caliphate. With the spread of
Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries, a period of Islamic scholarship lasted until the 14th century. This scholarship was aided by several factors. The use of a single language,
Arabic, allowed communication without need of a translator. Access to Greek and Roman texts from the
Byzantine Empire along with Indian sources of learning provided Islamic scholars a knowledge base to build upon. In addition, there was the
Hajj, which facilitated scholarly collaboration by bringing together people and new ideas from all over the Islamic world.
Islamic scientists placed far greater emphasis on
experiment than had the
Greeks. In mathematics, the
Persian scholar
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi gave his name to the Indian concept of the
algorithm, while the term
algebra is derived from
al-jabr, the beginning of the title of one of his publications. Sabian mathematician
Al-Batani contributed to astronomy and mathematics and
Persian scholar
Al-Razi to chemistry. In astronomy, Al-Batani improved the measurements of Hipparchus, preserved in the translation of the Greek
Hè Megalè Syntaxis translated as
Almagest is the Latin [i] form of the Arabic [i] name of an astronomical [i] treatis ...
. Al-Batani also improved the precision of the measurement of the precession of the earth's axis. Arab
alchemy, though flawed as a science, inspired
Roger Bacon , and later
Isaac Newton.
European science from the 12th century Renaissance
An intellectual revitalization of Europe started with the birth of
medieval universities in the 12th century. The contact with the Islamic world in Spain and Sicily after the
Reconquista and during the
Crusades allowed Europeans access to preserved copies of the Ancient Greek and Roman works along with the works of Islamic philosophers, specially
Averroes. The European universities aided materially in the translation and propagation of these texts and started a new infrastructure which was needed for scientific communities. As well as this, Europeans began to venture further and further east as a result of the Pax Mongolica. This led to the increased influence of Indian and even Chinese science on the European tradition. Technological advances were also made, such as the early flight of
Eilmer of Malmesbury , and the metallurgical achievements of the
Cistercian blast furnace at
Laskill.
At the beginning of the 13th century there were reasonably accurate Latin translations of the main works of almost all the intellectually crucial ancient authors, allowing a sound transfer of scientific ideas via both the universities and the monasteries. By then, the natural philosophy contained in these texts began to be extended by notable scholastics such as
Robert Grosseteste,
Roger Bacon,
Albertus Magnus and
Duns Scotus. Precursors of the modern scientific method can be seen already in Grosseteste's emphasis on mathematics as a way to understand nature, and in the empirical approach admired by Bacon. According to
Pierre Duhem, the Condemnation of 1277 led to
the birth of modern science, because it forced thinkers to break from relying so much on
Aristotle, and to think about the world in new ways.
The first half of the 14th century saw much important scientific work being done, largely within the framework of scholastic commentaries on Aristotle's scientific writings.
William of Ockham introduced the principle of
parsimony: natural philosophers should not postulate unnecessary entities, so that motion is not a distinct thing but is only the moving object and an intermediary "sensible species" is not needed to transmit an image of an object to the eye. Scholars such as Jean Buridan and
Nicolas Oresme started to reinterpret elements of Aristotle's mechanics. In particular, Buridan developed the theory that impetus was the cause of the motion of projectiles, which was a first step towards the modern concept of inertia. The Oxford Calculators began to mathematically analyze the kinematics of motion, making this analysis without considering the causes of motion.
In 1348, the
Black Death and other disasters sealed a sudden end to the previous period of massive philosophic and scientific development. Yet, the rediscovery of ancient texts was improved after the
Fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many
Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West. Meanwhile, the introduction of printing was to have great effect on European society. The facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. New ideas also helped to influence the development of European science at this point: not least the introduction of
Algebra. These developments paved the way for the Scientific Revolution, which may also be understood as a resumption of the process of scientific change, halted at the start of the Black Death.
The Scientific Revolution
The renewal of learning in Europe that began with 12th century Scholasticism came to an end about the time of the Black Death, and the initial period of the subsequent
Italian Renaissance is sometimes seen as a lull in scientific activity. The
Northern Renaissance, on the other hand, showed a decisive shift in focus from Aristoteleian natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological sciences . Thus modern science in Europe was resumed in a period of great upheaval: the
Protestant Reformation and
Catholic Counter-Reformation; the discovery of the Americas by
Christopher Columbus; the
Fall of Constantinople; but also the re-discovery of Aristotle during the Scholastic period presaged large social and political changes. Thus, a suitable environment was created in which it became possible to question scientific doctrine, in much the same way that
Martin Luther and
John Calvin questioned religious doctrine. The works of
Ptolemy ,
Galen , and
Aristotle were found not always to match everyday observations. For example, an arrow flying through the air after leaving a bow contradicts Aristotle's laws of motion, which say that a moving object must be constantly under influence of an external force, as the natural state of earthly objects is to be at rest. Work by
Vesalius on human cadavers also found problems with the Galenic view of anatomy.
The willingness to question previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major scientific advancements, now known as the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is traditionally held by most historians to have begun in 1543, when
De Revolutionibus, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg [i], is the seminal work on ...
, by the astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus, was first printed. The thesis of this book was that the Earth moved around the Sun. The period culminated with the publication of the
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work by Isaac Newton [i] publish ...
in 1687 by
Isaac Newton.
Other significant scientific advances were made during this time by
Galileo Galilei,
Edmond Halley,
Robert Hooke,
Christiaan Huygens,
Tycho Brahe,
Johannes Kepler,
Gottfried Leibniz, and
Blaise Pascal. In philosophy, major contributions were made by
Francis Bacon, Sir
Thomas Browne,
René Descartes, and
Thomas Hobbes. The basics of scientific method were also developed: the new way of thinking emphasized experimentation and reason over traditional considerations.
Modern science
The Scientific Revolution established science as the preeminent source for the growth of knowledge. During the 19th century, the practice of science became professionalized and institutionalized in ways which would continue through the 20th century, as the role of scientific knowledge grew and became incorporated with many aspects of the functioning of nation-states.
Physics
The Scientific Revolution is a convenient boundary between ancient thought and classical physics.
Nicolaus Copernicus revived the
heliocentric model of the solar system first devised by
Aristarchus of Samos. This was followed by the first known model of planetary motion given by
Kepler in the early 17th century, which proposed that the planets follow
elliptical orbits, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse. Also,
Galileo pioneered the use of experiment to validate physical theories, a key idea in scientific method.
In 1687,
Isaac Newton published the
Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work by Isaac Newton [i] publish ...
, detailing two comprehensive and successful physical theories:
Newton's laws of motion, which lead to classical mechanics; and
Newton's Law of Gravitation, which describes the fundamental force of gravity. The behavior of electricity and magnetism was studied by
Faraday,
Ohm, and others during the early 19th century. These studies led to the unification of the two phenomena into a single theory of electromagnetism, by
Maxwell .
The beginning of the 20th century brought the start of a revolution in physics. The long-held theories of Newton were shown not to be correct in all circumstances. Beginning in 1900,
Max Planck,
Albert Einstein,
Niels Bohr and others developed quantum theories to explain various anomalous experimental results, by introducing discrete energy levels. Not only did quantum mechanics show that the laws of motion did not hold on small scales, but even more disturbingly, the theory of
general relativity, proposed by Einstein in 1915, showed that the fixed background of spacetime, on which both
Newtonian mechanics and
special relativity depended, could not exist. In 1925,
Werner Heisenberg and
Erwin Schrödinger formulated
quantum mechanics, which explained the preceding quantum theories. The observation by
Edwin Hubble in 1929 that the speed at which galaxies recede positively correlates with their distance, led to the understanding that the universe is expanding, and the formulation of the
Big Bang theory by George Gamow.
Further developments took place during World War II, which led to the practical application of
radar and the development and use of the
atomic bomb. Though the process had begun with the invention of the
cyclotron by
Ernest O. Lawrence in the 1930s, physics in the postwar period entered into a phase of what historians have called "
Big Science", requiring massive machines, budgets, and laboratories in order to test their theories and move into new frontiers. The primary patron of physics became state governments, who recognized that the support of "basic" research could often lead to technologies useful to both military and industrial applications. Currently, general relativity and quantum mechanics are inconsistent with each other, and efforts are underway to unify the two.
Chemistry
The history of modern chemistry can be taken to begin with the distinction of chemistry from
