STS-1_B

Cards (83)

  • Just like with any other discipline, the best way to truly understand where we are in science today is to look back at what happened in the past. The history of science can teach us many lessons about the way scientists think and understand the world around us. A historical perspective will make us appreciate more what science really is.
  • Science during ancient times involved practical arts like healing practices and metal tradition.
  • 3,000 years before Christ, the ancient Egyptians already had reasonably sophisticated medical practices.
  • Imhotep was renowned for his knowledge of medicine.
  • Egyptian medicine
    Trial and error - doctors would try one remedy, and if it worked, they would continue to use it. If a remedy they tried didn't work, the patient might die, but at least the doctors learned that next time they should try a different remedy.
  • Despite the fact that such practices sound primitive, the results were, sometimes, surprisingly effective.
  • Papyrus
    An ancient form of paper, made from the papyrus plant, a reed which grows in the marshy areas around the Nile river. Egyptians took thin slices of the stem of the papyrus plant, laid them crosswise on top of each other, moistened them, and then pressed and dried them.
  • Papyrus was used as a writing material as early as 3,000 BC in ancient Egypt, and continued to be used to some extent until around 1100 AD.
  • Around the time that papyrus was first being used in Egypt, the Mesopotamians were making pottery using the first known potter's wheel. Not long after, horse-drawn chariots were being used. As early as 1,000 years before Christ, the Chinese were using compasses to aid themselves in their travels.
  • The ancient world was filled with inventions that, although they sound commonplace today, revolutionized life during those times. These inventions are history's first inklings of science.
  • The ancient Greeks were the early thinkers and as far as historians can tell, they were the first true scientists. They collected facts and observations and then used those observations to explain the natural world.
  • Although many cultures like the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Chinese had collected observations and facts, they had not tried to use those facts to develop explanations of the world around them.
  • Scientific thought in Classical Antiquity becomes tangible from the 6th century BC in pre-Socratic philosophy (Thales, Pythagoras). In circa 385 BC, Plato founded the Academy. With Plato's student Aristotle begins the "scientific revolution" of the Hellenistic period culminating in the 3rd to 2nd centuries with scholars such as Eratosthenes, Euclid, Aristarchus of Samos, Hipparchus and Archimedes.
  • This period produced substantial advances in scientific knowledge, especially in anatomy, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geography, mathematics and astronomy; an awareness of the importance of certain scientific problems, especially those related to the problem of change and its cause; and a recognition of the methodological importance of applying mathematics to natural phenomena and of undertaking empirical research.
  • The scholars frequently employed the principles developed in earlier Greek thought: the application of mathematics and deliberate empirical research, in their scientific investigations. This was passed on from ancient Greek philosophers to medieval Muslim philosophers and scientists, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, to the secular sciences of the modern day.
  • The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural, economic and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the eighth century to the fourteenth century, with several contemporary scholars dating the end of the era to the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
  • This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786 to 809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where scholars from various parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds were mandated to gather and translate all of the world's classical knowledge into the Arabic language and subsequently development in various fields of sciences began.
  • Science and technology in the Islamic world adopted and preserved knowledge and technologies from contemporary and earlier civilizations, including Persia, Egypt, India, China, and Greco-Roman antiquity, while making numerous improvements, innovations and inventions.
  • Islamic scientific achievements encompassed a wide range of subject areas
    • Astronomy
    • Mathematics
    • Medicine
    • Alchemy and chemistry
    • Botany and agronomy
    • Geography and cartography
    • Ophthalmology
    • Pharmacology
    • Physics
    • Zoology
  • Islamic science was characterized by having practical purposes as well as the goal of understanding.
  • Astronomy was useful in determining the Qibla, which is the direction in which to pray, botany is applied in agriculture and geography enabled scientists to make accurate maps.
  • Mathematics also flourished during the Islamic Golden Age with the works of Al-Khwarizmi, Avicenna and Jamshid al Kashi that led to advanced in algebra, trigonometry, geometry and Arabic numerals.
  • Al-Biruni, and Avicenna produced books that contain descriptions of the preparation of hundred of drugs made from medicinal plants and chemical compounds. Islamic doctors describe diseases like smallpox and measles, and challenged classical Greek medical knowledge.
  • Islamic physicists such as Ibn Al-Haytham, Al-Biruni and others studied optics and mechanics as well as astronomy, and criticized Aristotle's view of motion.
  • Ancient Chinese scientists and engineers made significant scientific innovations, findings and technological advances across various scientific disciplines including the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, military technology, mathematics, geology and astronomy.
  • The Four Great Inventions of ancient China
    • Compass
    • Gunpowder
    • Papermaking
    • Printing
  • The Four Great Inventions were considered as among the most important technological advances and were only known to Europe 1000 years later or during the end of the Middle ages.
  • The 14th century was the beginning of the cultural movement of the Renaissance, which was considered by many as the Golden Age of Science.
  • During the Renaissance period, great advances occurred in geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, anatomy, manufacturing, and engineering.
  • The rediscovery of ancient scientific texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas.
  • Marie Boas Hall coined the term Scientific Renaissance to designate the early phase of the Scientific Revolution, 1450–1630.
  • Printing
    The most important technological advance of the Renaissance period, involving movable metal type, developed in Germany around the mid-15th century
  • Without the printing press, the Reformation would not have spread beyond a monkish quarrel, and the rise of a new science would not have occurred
  • The development of printing amounted to a communications revolution of the order of the invention of writing, transforming the conditions of life
  • The communications revolution immeasurably enhanced human opportunities for enlightenment and pleasure, but also created previously undreamed-of possibilities for manipulation and control
  • The Enlightenment's important 17th-century precursors emerged in England, including the key natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution

    1680s
  • Enlightenment
    A period characterized by a radical reorientation in science, emphasizing reason over superstition and science over blind faith
  • The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals
  • Newton's Principia Mathematica

    Comprehended a diversity of physical phenomena, including the motions of heavenly and sublunary bodies, in few relatively simple, universally applicable, mathematical laws, serving as a model and inspiration for Enlightenment thinkers
  • The rise of modern science and the Industrial Revolution were closely connected, with science offering the hope that careful observation and experimentation might improve industrial production significantly