History of science

Modern science is a body of verifiable empirical knowledge, a global community of scholars, and a set of techniques for investigating the universe known as the scientific method. The history of science traces these phenomena and their precursors back in time, all the way into human prehistory.

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.

Related Topics:
19th century - 20th century

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Natural sciences

Physics {{seemain1|History of physics}}

The scientific revolution, beginning about year 1600, is a convenient boundary between ancient thought and classical physics. In the 16th century Nicholas Copernicus revived the heliocentric model of the solar system devised by Aristarchus . This was followed by the first known model of planetary motion given by Kepler in the early 17th century, where he proposed that the planets follow not circular orbits, but elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse. Also in the early 17th century, Galileo pioneered the use of experiment to validate physical theories, which is the key idea in the scientific method.

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In 1687, Isaac Newton published the Principia Mathematica, detailing two comprehensive and successful physical theories: Newton's laws of motion, from which arise 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 and led to the unification of the two phenomena into a single theory of electromagnetism, by Maxwell in 1855 which is described by Maxwell's equations.

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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, Planck, Einstein, 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 didn't hold on small scales, but even more disturbingly, the thoery 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, Heisenberg and 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.

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Important 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.

Related Topics:
World War II - Radar - Atomic bomb - Cyclotron - Ernest O. Lawrence - Big Science

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Chemistry {{seemain1|History of chemistry}}

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The precursor to modern chemistry was alchemy.

Related Topics:
Chemistry - Alchemy

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The history of chemistry may be said to begin with the distinction of chemistry from alchemy by Robert Boyle in his work The Skeptical Chymist (1661), but is often more strictly dated to Antoine Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen and the law of conservation of mass, and thereby to his refutation of the phlogiston theory of combustion in 1783. Proof that all matter is made of atoms, which are the smallest indestructible part of matter, was provided by John Dalton in 1803. He also formulated the law of mass relationships. In 1869, Dmitry Mendeleyev composed his periodic table of elements on the basis of Dalton's discoveries.

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The synthesis of urea by Friedrich Wöhler opened a new research field in chemistry, and by the end of the 19th century, scientists were able to synthesize hundreds of organic compounds. The later part of the nineteenth century saw the exploitation of the Earth's petrochemicals, after the exhaustion of the oil supply from whaling in the previous centuries. By the twentieth century, systematic production of refined materials provided a ready supply of products which provided not only energy, but also synthetic materials for clothing, medicine, and everyday disposable resources.

Related Topics:
Urea - Friedrich Wöhler - Petrochemical - Whaling

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Also by the twentieth century, the integration of physics and chemistry was complete, with chemical properties explained as the result of the electronic structure of the atom; Linus Pauling's book on The Nature of the Chemical Bond used the principles of quantum mechanics to deduce bond angles in ever-more complicated molecules, culminating in the physical modelling of the DNA molecule, in essence, the secret of life, in the words of Francis Crick. In the same year, the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that basic constituents of DNA, simple amino acids, could themselves be built up from simpler molecules in a simulation of primordial processes on Earth.

Related Topics:
Electron - Atom - Linus Pauling - Bond angle - DNA - Francis Crick - Miller-Urey experiment - Amino acid - Simulation - Process

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Geology {{seemain1|History of geology}}

Chinese polymath Shen Kua (1031 - 1095) formulated a hypothesis for the process of land formation: based on his observation of fossil shells in a geological stratum in a mountain hundreds of miles from the ocean, he inferred that the land was formed by erosion of the mountains and by deposition of silt.

Related Topics:
Polymath - Shen Kua - Fossil - Shell - Stratum - Erosion - Mountain - Deposition - Silt

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The work on rocks Peri lithōn by Theophrastus, remained authoritative for millennia: its interpretation of fossils was not overturned until after the Scientific Revolution. By the 1700s Jean-Etienne Guettard and Nicolas Desmarest hiked central France and recorded their observations on geological maps; Guettard recorded the first observation of the volcanic origins of this part of France. James Hutton recorded his Theory of the Earth in the 1788 Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, later called uniformitarianism.

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In 1811 Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart published their explanation of the antiquity of the Earth, inspired by Cuvier's discovery of fossil elephant bones in Paris. They formulated the principle of stratigraphic succession of the layers of the earth. They were independently anticipated by William Smith's stratigraphic studies on England and Scotland. By 1827 Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology reiterated Hutton's uniformitarianism, which influenced the thought of Charles Darwin.

Related Topics:
1811 - Georges Cuvier - Alexandre Brongniart - Stratigraphic - William Smith - 1827 - Charles Lyell - Charles Darwin

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The most significant advance in 20th century geology has been the development of the theory of plate tectonics in the 1960s. Plate tectonic theory arose out of two separate geological observations: seafloor spreading and continental drift. The theory revolutionized the Earth sciences.

Related Topics:
20th century - Plate tectonics - 1960s - Seafloor spreading - Continental drift - Earth sciences

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Astronomy {{seemain1|History of astronomy}}

Advances in astronomy and in optical systems in the 19th century resulted in the first observation of an asteroid (Ceres) in 1801, and the discovery of Neptune in 1846. In the 1840s, the first galaxies outside our solar system were observed by (William Parsons).

Related Topics:
Asteroid - Ceres - 1801 - Neptune - 1846 - 1840s - Galaxies - William Parsons

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George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Hermann had calculated that there should be evidence for a Big Bang in the background temperature of the universe{{fn|1}}. In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson{{fn|2}} discovered a 3 kelvin background hiss in their Bell Labs radiotelescope, which was evidence for this hypothesis, and formed the basis for a number of results that helped determine the age of the universe.

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Supernova SN1987A was observed by astronomers on Earth both visually, and in a triumph for neutrino astronomy, by the solar neutrino detectors at Kamiokande. But the solar neutrino flux was a fraction of its theoretically-expected value. This discrepancy forced a change in some values in the standard model for particle physics.

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Biology and medicine {{seemain2|History of biology|History of medicine}}

Hungarian physician Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis in 1847 dramatically reduced the occurrency of puerperal fever by the simple experiment of requiring physicians to wash their hands before attending to women in childbirth. His discovery predated the germ theory of disease. However, his discoveries were not appreciated by his contemporaries and came into use only with discoveries of British surgeon Joseph Lister, who in 1865 proved the principles of antisepsis.

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His work is based on the very important discoveries made by French biologist Louis Pasteur. He was able to link some microorganisms with disease. This brought a revolution in medicine. He also devised one of the most important methods in preventive medicine, when in 1880 he produced the vaccine against rabies. Pasteur also invented the process of pasteurization to help prevent the spread of disease through milk and other foods.

Related Topics:
Louis Pasteur - Medicine - Preventive medicine - 1880 - Vaccine - Rabies - Pasteurization

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Among the most prominent and far-reaching theories in all of science was the theory of evolution by natural selection put forth by the British naturalist Charles Darwin in his On the Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin's theory proposed that all differences in animals were formed by natural processes over long periods of time, and that even humans were simply evolved organisms. Implications of evolution on fields outside of pure science have led to both opposition and support from different parts of society, and profoundly influenced the popular understanding of "man's place in the universe".

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In the early 20th century, the study of heredity became a major investigation after the rediscovery in 1900 of the laws of inheritance developed by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel in 1866. Mendel's laws provided the beginnings of the study of genetics, which became a major field of research for both scientific and industrial research. By 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick clarified the basic structure of DNA, the genetic material for expressing life in all its forms{{fn|3}}. In the late 20th century, the possibilities of genetic engineering became practical for the first time, and a massive international effort began in 1990 to map out an entire human genome (the Human Genome Project) has been touted as potentially having large medical benefits.

Related Topics:
Heredity - 1900 - Gregor Mendel - 1866 - Genetics - 1953 - James Watson - Francis Crick - DNA - Genetic material - Life - Genetic engineering - 1990 - Genome - Human Genome Project

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Ecology {{seemain1|History of ecology}}

The famous Earthrise picture, taken in 1968 by the astronauts of Apollo 8, was important in creating awareness of the finiteness of Earth, and the limits of its natural resources. The interconnection and interpendence of each component ecosystem may imply that human beings should not overexploit Earth's resources, without regard for its main ecosystems (air, water, ground, plants and animals). This change of sensitivity to ecological issues has now been well established in Western civilization. Still, industrialized deforestation has occurred in the exploitation of the forests of Southeast Asia and the Amazon rainforest. It may be hypothesized that other vital and free goods (such as air) will, one day, be subject to price.

Related Topics:
Earthrise - Apollo 8 - Earth - Natural resource - Ecosystem - Human being - Air - Water - Ground - Plant - Animal - Deforestation - Southeast Asia - Amazon rainforest - Free goods - Price

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Social sciences

Successful use of the scientific method in the physical sciences led to the same methodology being adapted to better understand the many fields of human endeavor. From this effort the social sciences have been developed.

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Political science

:Main article: History of political science

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One of the basic requirements for a scientific community is the existence and approval of a political sponsor; in England, the Royal Society operates under the aegis of the monarchy; in the US, the National Academy of Sciences was founded by Act of Congress; etc.

Related Topics:
Royal Society - Monarchy - National Academy of Sciences

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Otherwise, when the basic elements of knowledge were being formulated, the political rulers of the respective communities could choose to arbitrarily either support or disallow the nascent scientific communities. For example, Alhazen had to feign madness to avoid execution. The polymath Shen Kuo lost political support, and could not continue his studies until he came up with discoveries that showed his worth to the political rulers. The admiral Zheng He could not continue his voyages of exploration after the emperors withdrew their support. Another famous example was the suppression of the work of Galileo, and before him, Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake, for his statements on cosmology; by the twentieth century, Galileo would be pardoned.

Related Topics:
Alhazen - Shen Kuo - Zheng He - Giordano Bruno - Cosmology

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Linguistics {{seemain1|History of linguistics}}

While many cultures independently developed understandings of grammar and the nature of language, the field of linguistics did not emerge as an independent field of study until the late 18th Century. A proposal by Sir William Jones that Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and Celtic languages all shared a common base spurred the creation of historical linguistics. After this thesis emerged, an effort to catalog all the languages of the world was made through the 19th and into the 20th Century.

Related Topics:
Grammar - Language - Linguistics - 18th Century - Sir William Jones - Sanskrit - Persian - Greek - Latin - Gothic - Celtic - Historical linguistics - 19th - 20th Century

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The posthumous publication of Cours de linguistique générale by Ferdinand de Saussure spawned the development of descriptive linguistics. Descriptive linguistics, and the accompaning structuralism movement, caused linguistics to focus on how a language changes over time instead of just looking at the differences between various languages. Noam Chomsky further diversified linguistics in the 1950s with the development of generative linguistics. This effort was based upon a mathematical model of language that allowed for the description and prediction of valid semantics. Additional specialties such as sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and computational linguistics grew from collaboration between linguistics and other disciplines.

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Economics {{seemain1|History of economic thought}}

The basis for classical economics was developed by Adam Smith in 1776 in his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith criticized mercantilism, advocating a system of free trade with division of labour. He postulated an "Invisible Hand" that large economic systems could be self-regulating through a process of enlightened self-interest. A different type of economics, developed by Karl Marx (so-called Marxian economics) was based on the labor theory of value and assumed the value of a good was based on the amount of labor required to produce it. Under this assumption, capitalism was based on employeers not paying the full value of workers labor to create a profit. An early response to Marxian economics was made by the Austrian school. Under this school of thought, the driving force of economic development is entrepreneurship. This replaces the labor theory of value by a system of supply and demand.

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From the 1920s, John Maynard Keynes prompted a division between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Under Keynesian economics macroeconomic trends can overwhelm economic choices made by individual. Governments should promote aggregate demand for goods as a means to encourage economic expansion.

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Following World War II, Milton Friedman created the concept of monetarism. Friedman focused on using the supply and demand of money as a method of controlling economic activity. This work was later adapted in the 1970s into supply-side economics which advocates reducing taxes as a means to increase the amount of money available for economic expansion.

Related Topics:
World War II - Milton Friedman - Monetarism - Money - 1970s - Supply-side economics

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Other modern schools of economic thought are New Classical economics and New Keynesian economics. New Classical economics, developed in the 1970s, emphasises solid microeconomics as the basis for macroeconomic growth. New Keynesian economics was created partially in response to New Classical economics, and deals with how inefficiencies in the market create a need for control by a central bank or government.

Related Topics:
New Classical economics - New Keynesian economics - 1970s - Central bank

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Psychology {{seemain1|History of psychology}}

The end of the 19th century marks the start of psychology as a scientific enterprise. The year 1879 is commonly seen as the start of psychology as an independent field of study, because in that year Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research (in Leipzig). Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in studies on memory), Ivan Pavlov (who discovered the learning process of classical conditioning), and Sigmund Freud. Freud's influence has been enormous, though more as cultural icon than a force in (scientific) psychology. Freud's basic theories postulated the existence in humans of various unconscious and instinctive "drives", and that the "self" existed as a perpetual battle between the desires and demands of the internal id, ego, and superego.

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The 20th century saw a rejection of Freud's theories as being too unscientific, and a reaction against Edward Titchener's abstract approach to the mind. This led to the formulation of behaviorism by John B. Watson, which was popularized by B.F. Skinner. Behaviorism proposed epistemologically limiting psychological study to overt behavior, since that could be quantified and easily measured. Scientific knowledge of the "mind" was considered too metaphysical, hence impossible to achieve. The final decades of the 20th century have seen the rise of a new interdisciplinary approach to studying human psychology, known collectively as cognitive science. Cognitive science again considers the "mind" as a subject for investigation, using the tools of evolutionary psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, and neurobiology. This new form of investigation has proposed that a wide understanding of the human mind is possible, and that such an understanding may be applied to other research domains, such as artificial intelligence.

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Sociology {{seemain1|History of sociology}}

Sociology as a scientific discipline emerged in the early 19th century as an academic response to the challenge of modernity: as the world is becoming smaller and more integrated, people's experience of the world is increasingly atomized and dispersed. Among many early sociologists, prominently including Émile Durkheim, the aim of the discipline was in structuralism, or trying to understand what holds social groups together, and to develop an "antidote" to social disintegration. Max Weber was concerned with the modernization of society through the concept of rationalization, which he believed would trap individuals in an "iron cage" of rational thought based around means ends calculation. Some early sociologists, including Georg Simmel and W. E. B. Du Bois, utilized more microsociological, qualitative analyses. This microlevel approach was especially an important aspect of early American sociology, with the theories of George Herbert Mead and his student Herbert Blumer resulting in the creation of an approach to sociology known as symbolic interactionism.

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American sociology in the 1940s and 1950s was dominated largely by the work of Talcott Parsons, who, expanding on Durkheim, believed that aspects of society that promoted structural integration were therefore "functional". This approach to sociological thinking was coined normative functionalism or structural functionalism. While Parsons was challenged by sociologists such as C. Wright Mills throughout the 1950s, it wasn't until the 1960s that the approach was popularly questioned. A number of sociologists came to see this approach to sociology as merely a justification for inequalities present in the status quo, and developed conflict theory in opposition to it. Inspired in large part by the philosophies of Karl Marx and many early European sociologists, conflict theorists saw society as an arena of conflict, with different groups competing for control over resources. Symbolic-interactionism also came to be regarded as central to sociological thinking. Erving Goffman saw social interactions as a stage performance, with individuals preparing "backstage" and attempting to control their audience through impression management. While these three theories are currently the most prominent in sociological thought, many others of importance exist, including feminist theory, post-structuralism, rational choice theory, postmodernism, and exchange theory.

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Anthropology {{seemain1|History of anthropology}}

Anthropology can best be understood as an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment. It was during this period that Europeans attempted systematically to study human behavior. Traditions of jurisprudence, history, philology and sociology developed during this time and informed the development of the social sciences of which anthropology was a part. At the same time, the romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder and later Wilhelm Dilthey whose work formed the basis for the culture concept which is central to the discipline. Traditionally, much of the history of the subject was based on colonial encounters between Europe and the rest of the world, and much of 18th- and 19th-century anthropology is now classed as forms of scientific racism. During the late 19th-century, battles over the "study of man" took place between those of an "anthropological" persuasion (relying on anthropometrical techniques) and those of an "ethnological" persuasion (looking at cultures and traditions), and these distinctions became part of the later divide between physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, the latter ushered in by the students of Franz Boas. In the mid-20th century, much of the methodologies of earlier anthropological and ethnographical study were reevaluated with an eye towards research ethics, while at the same time the scope of investigation has broadened far beyond the traditional study of "primitive cultures" (scientific practice itself is often an arena of anthropological study).

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Emerging disciplines

During the 20th century a number of new, interdisciplinary scientific fields have emerged. Communication studies combines the studies of animal communication, information theory, marketing, public relations, telecommunications and other forms of communications.

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Built mostly upon a foundation of theoretical linguistics, discrete mathematics, and electrical engineering, computer science studies the nature and limits of computation. Fields of specialization include computability, computational complexity, database design, computer networking, artificial intelligence, and the design of computer hardware. Computer science provides much of the theoretical basis for software engineering.

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Materials science is an interdisciplinary field that combines chemistry, physics, and several engineering disciplines. The field studies metals, ceramics, plastics, semiconductors, and composite materials. Its historical roots are in the disciplines of metallurgy, minerology, and crystallography.

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◄ History of science: The Scientific Revolution {{seemain1|Scientific Revolution}}

History of science: See also ►

~ Table of Content ~

►	Introduction
►	Theories and sociology of the history of science
►	Pre-experimental "science" {{seemain1\|Pre-experimental science}}
►	Early cultures {{seemain2\|History of science in early cultures\|Alchemy}}
►	The Middle Ages {{seemain1\|History of science in the Middle Ages}}
►	The Scientific Revolution {{seemain1\|Scientific Revolution}}
►	Modern science
►	See also
►	Notes
►	References
►	External links

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