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 during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, classical antiquity, and the Middle Ages declined during the early modern period after the establishment of formal disciplines of science in the Age of Enlightenment.
Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3000 to 1200 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 survived in the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. Aided by Arabic translations of Greek texts, the Hellenistic worldview was preserved and absorbed into the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age. Muslim scientists made advances in science between the 8th and 13th centuries, such as developing an early scientific method that emphasized experimentation. The transfer and assimilation of Greek and Islamic science into Western Europe from the 11th to 13th centuries 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 during the Scientific Revolution in 16th- to 17th-century 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 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 -
The military funding of science has had a powerful transformative effect on the practice and products of scientific research since the early 20th century. Particularly since World War I, advanced science-based technologies have been viewed as essential elements of a successful military.
World War I is often called "the chemists' war", both for the extensive use of poison gas and the importance of nitrates and advanced high explosives. Poison gas, beginning in 1915 with chlorine from the powerful German dye industry, was used extensively by the Germans and the British ; over the course of the war, scientists on both sides raced to develop more and more potent chemicals and devise countermeasures against the newest enemy gases. Physicists also contributed to the war effort, developing wireless communication technologies and sound-based methods of detecting U-boats, resulting in the first tenuous long-term connections between academic science and the military. (Full article...)Selected image
The world map from Johannes Kepler's Rudolphine Tables (1627), incorporating many of the new discoveries of the Age of Exploration.
Did you know
... that the Merton Thesis—an argument connecting Protestant pietism with the rise of experimental science—dates back to Robert K. Merton's 1938 doctoral dissertation, which launched the historical sociology of science?
...that a number of scientific disciplines, such as computer science and seismology, emerged because of military funding?
...that the principle of conservation of energy was formulated independently by at least 12 individuals between 1830 and 1850?
Selected Biography -
Louis Alexander Slotin (/ˈsloʊtɪn/ SLOHT-in; 1 December 1910 – 30 May 1946) was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project. Born and raised in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Slotin earned both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Manitoba, before obtaining his doctorate in physical chemistry at King's College London in 1936. Afterwards, he joined the University of Chicago as a research associate to help design a cyclotron.
In 1942, Slotin was invited to participate in the Manhattan Project, and subsequently performed experiments with uranium and plutonium cores to determine their critical mass values. After World War II he continued his research at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. On 21 May 1946, he accidentally triggered a fission reaction which released a burst of hard radiation. He was rushed to the hospital and died nine days later on 30 May. Slotin had become the victim of the second criticality accident in history following Harry Daghlian, who had been fatally exposed to radiation by the same plutonium "demon core" that killed Slotin. (Full article...)Selected anniversaries
- AD 79 - Death of Pliny the Elder, Roman writer and naturalist (b. 23)
- 1595 - Death of Thomas Digges, English astronomer (b. 1546)
- 1664 - Death of Maria Cunitz, Silesian astronomer (b. c.1610)
- 1787 - Birth of James Weddell, English explorer of Antarctica (d. 1834)
- 1831 - Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle
- 1832 - Death of Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, French mathematician (b. 1796)
- 1888 - Death of Rudolf Clausius, German physicist (b. 1822)
- 1891 - Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera
- 1899 - Birth of Albert Claude, Belgian biologist, Nobel laureate (d. 1983)
- 2006 - The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is considered a dwarf planet
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