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.

Pre-experimental "science" {{seemain1|Pre-experimental science}}

In the West, from antiquity up to the time of the Scientific Revolution, inquiry into the workings of the universe was known as natural philosophy, and those engaged in it were known as natural philosophers. This included some fields of study which are no longer considered scientific. An account of the development of (natural) philosophy from ancient times until recent times can be found in Bertrand Russell's History of Philosophy. In many cases, systematic learning about the natural world was a direct outgrowth of religion, often as a project of a particular religious community.

Related Topics:
Antiquity - Scientific Revolution - Natural philosophy - Study - Bertrand Russell - Natural world - Religion

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One important feature of "pre-scientific" inquiry (whether in the West or elsewhere) was reluctance to engage in experiment. For example, Aristotle, one of the most prolific natural philosophers of antiquity, made countless observations of nature, especially the habits and attributes of plants and animals in the world around him. He focused on categorizing, and made many observations on the large-scale workings of the universe, which led to the development of a comprehensive theory of physics (see Physics (Aristotle)). Yet, until the period of the Scientific Revolution, these theories were never really tested experimentally. At the time, the utility of experiment was unproven. Some believed that setting up artificial conditions in an experiment could never produce results that would describe nature as it was in the world around them.

Related Topics:
Experiment - Aristotle - Antiquity - Habit - Attributes - Plant - Animal - Categorizing - Observation - Physics (Aristotle) - Scientific Revolution

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