Portal:History of science
The History of Science Portal
The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Protoscience, early sciences, and natural philosophies such as alchemy and astrology during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, classical antiquity, and the Middle Ages declined during the early modern period after the establishment of formal disciplines of science in the Age of Enlightenment.
Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3000 to 1200 BCE. These civilizations' contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine influenced later Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, wherein formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Latin-speaking Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but continued to thrive in the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. Aided by translations of Greek texts, the Hellenistic worldview was preserved and absorbed into the Arabic-speaking Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived the learning of natural philosophy in the West. Traditions of early science were also developed in ancient India and separately in ancient China, the Chinese model having influenced Vietnam, Korea and Japan before Western exploration. Among the Pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica, the Zapotec civilization established their first known traditions of astronomy and mathematics for producing calendars, followed by other civilizations such as the Maya.
Natural philosophy was transformed during the Scientific Revolution in 16th- to 17th-century Europe, as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The New Science that emerged was more mechanistic in its worldview, more integrated with mathematics, and more reliable and open as its knowledge was based on a newly defined scientific method. More "revolutions" in subsequent centuries soon followed. The chemical revolution of the 18th century, for instance, introduced new quantitative methods and measurements for chemistry. In the 19th century, new perspectives regarding the conservation of energy, age of Earth, and evolution came into focus. And in the 20th century, new discoveries in genetics and physics laid the foundations for new sub disciplines such as molecular biology and particle physics. Moreover, industrial and military concerns as well as the increasing complexity of new research endeavors ushered in the era of "big science," particularly after World War II. (Full article...)
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The presence of women in science spans the earliest times of the history of science wherein they have made significant contributions. Historians with an interest in gender and science have researched the scientific endeavors and accomplishments of women, the barriers they have faced, and the strategies implemented to have their work peer-reviewed and accepted in major scientific journals and other publications. The historical, critical, and sociological study of these issues has become an academic discipline in its own right.
The involvement of women in medicine occurred in several early western civilizations, and the study of natural philosophy in ancient Greece was open to women. Women contributed to the proto-science of alchemy in the first or second centuries CE During the Middle Ages, religious convents were an important place of education for women, and some of these communities provided opportunities for women to contribute to scholarly research. The 11th century saw the emergence of the first universities; women were, for the most part, excluded from university education. Outside academia, botany was the science that benefitted most from contributions of women in early modern times. The attitude toward educating women in medical fields appears to have been more liberal in Italy than in other places. The first known woman to earn a university chair in a scientific field of studies was eighteenth-century Italian scientist Laura Bassi. (Full article...)Selected image
This armillary sphere is one of many astronomical instruments designed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. In his Astronomiæ Instauratæ Mechanica (1598), he describe the unique features of this particular armillary device, the "equatorial armillary instrument." It featured a balanced design that circumvented problems in earlier spheres in which the weight of the poles would pull the rotating planes into a rest position.
Did you know
...that in the history of paleontology, very few naturalists before the 17th century recognized fossils as the remains of living organisms?
...that on January 17, 2007, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved to "5 minutes from midnight" in part because of global climate change?
...that in 1835, Caroline Herschel and Mary Fairfax Somerville became the first women scientists to be elected to the Royal Astronomical Society?
Selected Biography -
Joseph Priestley FRS (/ˈpriːstli/; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in several areas of science.
Priestley is credited with his independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it in 1774. During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community. (Full article...)Selected anniversaries
April 26:
- 1774 - Birth of Christian Leopold von Buch, German geologist (d. 1853)
- 1785 - Birth of John James Audubon, French-American naturalist and illustrator (d. 1851)
- 1879 - Birth of Owen Willans Richardson, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1959)
- 1900 - Birth of Charles Richter, American geophysicist (d. 1985)
- 1920 - Death of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Indian mathematician (b. 1887)
- 1932 - Birth of Michael Smith, English-born chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 2000)
- 1933 - Birth of Arno Allan Penzias, German-born physicist, Nobel laureate
- 1940 - Death of Carl Bosch, German chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1874)
- 1951 - Death of Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist (b. 1868)
- 1986 - In Ukraine, a nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, creating the world's worst nuclear disaster
- 1994 - Physicists announce first evidence of the top quark subatomic particle
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General images
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Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), (965–1039 Iraq). A polymath, sometimes considered the father of modern scientific methodology due to his emphasis on experimental data and on the reproducibility of its results. (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
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An early Western Han (202 BC – AD 9) silk map found in tomb 3 of Mawangdui, depicting the Kingdom of Changsha and Kingdom of Nanyue in southern China (note: the south direction is oriented at the top, north at the bottom) (from Science in the ancient world) -
Page from the Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals) by Al-Jahiz. Ninth century (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
The physical exercise chart; a painting on silk depicting calisthenics; unearthed in 1973 in Hunan Province, China, from the 2nd-century BC Western Han burial site of Mawangdui, Tomb Number 3. (from Science in the ancient world) -
Quince, cypress, and sumac trees, in Zakariya al-Qazwini's 13th century Wonders of Creation (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
A coloured illustration from Mansur's Anatomy, c. 1450 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
The first treatise about optics by Johannes Kepler, Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur (1604) (from Scientific Revolution) -
Image of veins from William Harvey's Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. Harvey demonstrated that blood circulated around the body, rather than being created in the liver. (from Scientific Revolution) -
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Schematics of the Antikythera mechanism (from Science in the ancient world) -
Ibn Sina teaching the use of drugs. 15th-century Great Canon of Avicenna (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
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Self trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir's treatise on mechanical devices, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Francis Bacon was a pivotal figure in establishing the scientific method of investigation. Portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger (1617). (from Scientific Revolution) -
The physician Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine" (from Science in classical antiquity) -
Portrait of Johannes Kepler, one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science (from Scientific Revolution) -
Mesopotamian clay tablet-letter from 2400 BC, Louvre. (from King of Lagash, found at Girsu) (from Science in the ancient world) -
An ivory set of Napier's Bones, an early calculating device invented by John Napier (from Scientific Revolution) -
A page from al-Khwarizmi's Algebra (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661 (from Scientific Revolution) -
Air pump built by Robert Boyle. Many new instruments were devised in this period, which greatly aided in the expansion of scientific knowledge. (from Scientific Revolution) -
Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering 1600 work of experimental science (from Scientific Revolution) -
Apollonius wrote a comprehensive study of conic sections in the Conics. (from Science in classical antiquity) -
The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666. (from Scientific Revolution) -
The Tusi couple, a mathematical device invented by the Persian polymath Nasir al-Din Tusi to model the not perfectly circular motions of the planets (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474. (from Scientific Revolution) -
Isaac Newton's Principia developed the first set of unified scientific laws. (from Scientific Revolution) -
A mosaic depicting Plato's Academy, from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii (1st century AD). (from Science in classical antiquity) -
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Islamic expansion:under Muhammad, 622–632under Rashidun caliphs, 632–661under Umayyad caliphs, 661–750(from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Modern copy of al-Idrisi's 1154 Tabula Rogeriana, upside-down, north at top (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Surviving fragment of the first World Map of Piri Reis (1513) (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
The four classical elements (fire, air, water, earth) of Empedocles illustrated with a burning log. The log releases all four elements as it is destroyed. (from Science in classical antiquity) -
Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought iron Pillar of Delhi. (from Science in the ancient world) -
Detail showing columns of glyphs from a portion of the 2nd century CE La Mojarra Stela 1 (found near La Mojarra, Veracruz, Mexico); the left column gives a Long Count calendar date of 8.5.16.9.7, or 156 CE. The other columns visible are glyphs from the Epi-Olmec script. (from Science in the ancient world) -
Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait (from Science in the ancient world) -
Omar Khayyam's "Cubic equation and intersection of conic sections" (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
The Royal Society had its origins in Gresham College in the City of London, and was the first scientific society in the world. (from Scientific Revolution) -
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George Trebizond's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Almagest (c. 1451) (from Science in classical antiquity) -
A 19th-century portrait of Pliny the Elder (from Science in classical antiquity)
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Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustrée, Amsterdam, 1670 (from Scientific Revolution) -
The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–1261 (and later in Egypt) at its height, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
The eye according to Hunayn ibn Ishaq, c. 1200 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
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Vesalius's intricately detailed drawings of human dissections in Fabrica helped to overturn the medical theories of Galen. (from Scientific Revolution) -
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Diagram of the Antikythera mechanism, an analog astronomical calculator (from Science in classical antiquity)
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the octahedral shape of diamond. (from Science in the ancient world)
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