STS MIDTERM

• From the Greek word empeirikos meaning "experienced’
• the term empirical was originally used in medicine for doctors making choices based on observation and experiment rather than theoretical ideas.
• Science is an empirical field.

  simply means that it is a body of knowledge built up out of the elements of experience. You

  need to use your senses- seeing, hearing, tasting touching, and smelling. But most importantly, we use our common sense above all! Simply put, science is not science without proof.
• At its core lies a problem-solving approach called

  the scientific method. Everything starts with an observation and naturally, questions will pop-up, making you curious of something.
• Science is a systematic field

  it follows specific steps in order to reach a certain conclusion. The same goes with science as it requires a system so it can work.
• Science Covers General Truths and Facts

  In this day of fake news and conspiracy theories, it’s quite difficult to know the truth about almost

  anything. So how do you get truths and facts Fortunately, science is there!
• Science is a Total Societal Enterprise

  From the term itself, science achieves social impact alongside a financial return. So it is a balance between profit and social value.
• Technology is an Applied science is a discipline that is used to apply existing scientific method and knowledge drawn from conclusions to develop more practical goals and applications.
• Society is a group of people with common interests, traditions, purpose, and/or activity. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions.
• Science, Technology and Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that studies the conditions under which the production, distribution and utilization of scientific knowledge and technological systems occur; the consequences of these activities upon different groups of people.
• Technology is a Body of Knowledge and Skills by which We Control and Modify the World

  From intelligent robots and self-driving cars to gene editing and 3D printing, dramatic technological change is happening at lightning speed all around us with the use of systematized knowledge and skills. With the rise of the digital age, technology has the power to do many things, and changing the world is one of them.
• Stone age

  This era, which started at the beginning of human existence until about 3,000 BCE, is marked by the invention and use of stone tools by our early human ancestors and the eventual transformation of the society from a culture of hunting and gathering to farming and food production.
• Archaeologists have found Stone Age tools 25,000-50,000 year-old all over the world. The most common are daggers and spear points for hunting, hand axes and choppers for cutting up meat and scrapers for cleaning animal hides.
• The Stone Age is divided into three separate periods – Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic period

  – based on the degree of sophistication in the fashioning and use of these stone tools.
• Paleolithic period

  humans were food gatherers/hunters, depending on hunting wild animals and birds, fishing, and collecting wild fruits, nuts, and berries. They are nomads with no permanent shelters.
• Venus, a carving of a voluptuous woman out of ivory of stone. It is not definite as to what this carving means to the early humans, but historians infer that this is an ancient representation of beauty while for some, a penchant for fertility.
• The Paleolithic people are credited with inventing the needle for sewing.
• Fur clothing were also made from the fur of the animals they hunted, as well as leather from animal skin and linen from flax.
• Paleolithic people also invented pit houses, temporary shelters that they can bring with them and reassemble to a new location.
• Paleolithic people also invented containers like pottery and baskets, which they used for gathering and storing various liquid and dry goods, to keep them from spoiling.
• Likewise, personal ornaments and crude (not polished) hunting tools made of stone were invented during paleolithic period.
• Mesolithic Period

  This period marked the end of the last Ice Age, which resulted in the extinction of many large mammals and rising sea levels and climate change that eventually caused man to migrate.
• Humans used small stone tools (microliths), now also more polished and sometimes crafted with points and attached to antlers, bone or wood to serve as spears and arrows.
• Agriculture was introduced during this time, which led to more permanent settlements in villages. Some Mesolithic settlements were villages of huts and walled cities.
• Neolithic Period

  ancient humans switched from hunter/gatherer mode to agriculture and food production.
• With the development of agriculture, technology and the inventions of more sophisticated tools, people of the Neolithic Era were able to build permanent shelters.
• Neolithic period

  Advancements were made not only in tools but also in farming, home construction, and art, including pottery, sewing and weaving using the loom, allowing them to begin making textiles and clothing with the materials they harvested from nature and their livestock.
• During the Bronze Age, advances in metallurgy to working were made, as bronze, a copper and tin alloy, was discovered.
• Bronze is made up of 88% copper and 12% tin.
• Metals are obtained from ores (a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be extracted) through smelting.
• The Bronze Age changed the face of farming with the invention of irrigation, the process of using man-made canals and ditches to divert water from natural sources or floodplains to fields for crops or to reservoir lakes to use at a later time, and the field system, wherein they rotate the crops planted in a number of fields to replenish nutrients in the soil.
• Historical records also tell us that the first ever soap of Human History was invented during the Bronze Age. The three main ingredients of soap at that time were cassia oil, water and soluble base also known as Alkali.
• Organized government, law and warfare, as well as beginnings of religion, also came into play during the Bronze Age. It was during this time that ancient Egyptians built their pyramids to honor their dead pharaohs. It was also marked by the rise of states or kingdoms—large-scale societies joined under a central government by a powerful ruler.
• The Iron Age lasted roughly from 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, depending on the region. During this era, people across much of Europe, Asia and parts of Africa began making tools and weapons from iron and steel.
• Iron was first smelted from ore in South Caucasus (a region presently occupied by Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan).
• Smelting iron, a metal harder than copper and tin, requires a more intensive process and with the development of better smelting pits (equipment for smelting) that the ability to produce higher temperatures paved the way to the extraction of iron from ores.
• iron age

  • At this time, iron was seen as more precious than gold! Better, sturdier, and more reliable agricultural tools were produced in this age making agriculture a lot easier than the previous period.
• Gold and silver weights existed during the Bronze Age, but the first coins, imprinted metal pieces for exchange, seem to have emerged in Iron Age
• Middle Ages is also known as the Medieval Period and has started with the fall of the Roman Empire that lasted for 1,000 years until 1450.
• The beginning of the Middle Ages is called the Dark Ages because the great civilizations of Rome and Greece had been conquered.