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 that existed during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, declined after the emergence of modern sciences during the Scientific Revolution.
The earliest roots of scientific thinking and practice can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia during the 3rd and 2nd millennia 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 by the Scientific Revolution that transpired during the 16th and 17th centuries in 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...)
Selected article -
Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. Fission is a nuclear reaction or radioactive decay process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller, lighter nuclei and often other particles. The fission process often produces gamma rays and releases a very large amount of energy, even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. Scientists already knew about alpha decay and beta decay, but fission assumed great importance because the discovery that a nuclear chain reaction was possible led to the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Hahn was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission.
Hahn and Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin bombarded uranium with slow neutrons and discovered that barium had been produced. Hahn suggested a bursting of the nucleus, but he was unsure of what the physical basis for the results were. They reported their findings by mail to Meitner in Sweden, who a few months earlier had fled Nazi Germany. Meitner and her nephew Frisch theorised, and then proved, that the uranium nucleus had been split and published their findings in Nature. Meitner calculated that the energy released by each disintegration was approximately 200 megaelectronvolts, and Frisch observed this. By analogy with the division of biological cells, he named the process "fission". (Full article...)
Selected image
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby which depicts a recreation of one of Robert Boyle's air pump experiments. It shows the reactions of a group of onlookers to an experiment performed by a natural philosopher in which a bird is deprived of oxygen. Scientific curiosity overcomes concern for the bird. The central figure looks out of the picture as if inviting the viewers participation in the outcome.
Did you know
...that the travel narrative The Malay Archipelago, by biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, was used by the novelist Joseph Conrad as a source for his novel Lord Jim?
...that the seventeenth century philosophers René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz, along with their Empiricist contemporary Thomas Hobbes all formulated definitions of conatus, an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself?
...that according to the controversial Hockney-Falco thesis, the rise of realism in Renaissance art, such as Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (pictured), was largely due to the use of curved mirrors and other optical aids?
Selected Biography -
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer and polymath. He was born in Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy, classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science.
He studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion, and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and "hydrostatic balances". He was one of the earliest developers of the thermoscope and the inventor of various military compasses. With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn's rings, lunar craters, and sunspots. He also built an early microscope. (Full article...)
Selected anniversaries
- 1851 - Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine
- 1865 - Death of William Jackson Hooker, English botanist (b. 1785)
- 1877 - Asaph Hall discovers Deimos
- 1883 - The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam
- 1885 - Birth of Jean Cabannes, French physicist (d. 1959)
- 1887 - Birth of Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist, Nobel laureate (d. 1961)
- 1919 - Birth of Vikram Sarabhai, Indian physicist (d. 1971)
- 1925 - Birth of George Wetherill, American scientist (d. 2006)
- 1930 - Birth of Jacques Tits, Belgian mathematician
- 1935 - Death of Friedrich Schottky, German mathematician (b. 1851)
- 1953 - Nuclear testing: the Soviet atomic bomb project continues with the detonation of Joe 4, the first Soviet thermonuclear weapon
- 1955 - Death of James B. Sumner, American chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1887)
- 1973 - Death of Karl Ziegler, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1898)
- 1979 - Death of Ernst Boris Chain, German-born biochemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1906)
- 1981 - The IBM Personal Computer is released
- 1989 - Death of William Shockley, American physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1910)
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General images
Megaliths from Nabta Playa, constructed by Neolithic populations, located in Aswan, Upper Egypt. Excavations of the megalith structures were completed in 2008. (from Science in the ancient world)
An Egyptian practice of treating migraine in ancient Egypt (from Science in the ancient world)
Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought iron Pillar of Delhi. (from Science in the ancient world)
Modern copy of al-Idrisi's 1154 Tabula Rogeriana, upside-down, north at top (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Scholar Nersi with Anahita in Persia (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)
Portrait of Johannes Kepler, one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science (from Scientific Revolution)
Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th-century portrait (from Science in the ancient world)
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) (from Science in the ancient world)
Schematics of the Antikythera mechanism (from Science in the ancient world)
Universalis Cosmographia, Waldseemüller's 1507 world map, which was the first to show the Americas separate from Asia (from Scientific Revolution)
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)
A mosaic depicting Plato's Academy, from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii (1st century AD) (from Science in classical antiquity)
Francis Bacon was a pivotal figure in establishing the scientific method of investigation. Portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger (1617). (from Scientific Revolution)
Detail showing columns of glyphs from a portion of the 2nd century AD 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 AD. The other columns visible are glyphs from the Epi-Olmec script. (from Science in the ancient world)
The first treatise about optics by Johannes Kepler, Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur (1604) (from Scientific Revolution)- Diagram of the Antikythera mechanism, an analog astronomical calculator (from Science in classical antiquity)
Detail of a portrait of Cardinal Hugh of Saint-Cher (wearing spectacles), painted by Tommaso da Modena in 1352 (from Scientific Revolution)
Ibn Sina teaching the use of drugs. 15th-century Great Canon of Avicenna (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
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)
Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661 (from Scientific Revolution)
Isaac Newton's Principia developed the first set of unified scientific laws. (from Scientific Revolution)
George Trebizond's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Almagest (c. 1451) (from Science in classical antiquity)
Galileo reported in the Starry Messenger (1610) that he saw at least ten times more stars through the telescope than are visible to the naked eye. (from Scientific Revolution)
Quince, cypress, and sumac trees, in Zakariya al-Qazwini's 13th century Wonders of Creation (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Mesopotamian clay tablet-letter from 2400 BC, Louvre (from King of Lagash, found at Girsu) (from Science in the ancient world)
Surviving fragment of the first World Map of Piri Reis (1513) (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
An ivory set of Napier's Bones, an early calculating device invented by John Napier (from Scientific Revolution)
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)
Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustrée, Amsterdam, 1670 (from Scientific Revolution)- A 19th-century portrait of Pliny the Elder (from Science in classical antiquity)
Starting in Mainz, Germany around 1440, the movable type printing-press had spread to ~270 cities and produced more than 20 million volumes by 1500. (from Scientific Revolution)
Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474. (from Scientific Revolution)
Apollonius wrote a comprehensive study of conic sections in the Conics. (from Science in classical antiquity)
A page from al-Khwarizmi's Algebra (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering 1600 work of experimental science (from Scientific Revolution)
The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–1261 (and later in Egypt) at its height, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
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)
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)
The physician Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine" (from Science in classical antiquity)
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