Portal:History of science
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The History of Science Portal
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| An 18th-century Persian astrolabe |
In ancient Greek time the science can be recognized by the word Scientia Latin, at the end of 18th century the [people called it natural philosophy
The content of science, as well as the meaning of the very idea of science, has continually evolved since the rise of modern science and before. The history of science is concerned with the paths that led to our present knowledge as well as those that were abandoned (thus overlapping with the history of ideas, history of philosophy and intellectual history). The history of science seeks to explain past beliefs—even those now considered erroneous—in their social, cultural and intellectual contexts. It also forms the foundation of the philosophy of science and the sociology of science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and society, and is closely related to the history of technology.
The study of science and technology includes both processes and bodies of knowledge. Scientific processes are the ways scientists investigate and communicate about the natural world. The scientific body of knowledge includes concepts, principles, facts, laws, and theories about the way the world around us works. Technology includes the technological design process and the body of knowledge related to the study of tools and the effect of technology on society. Science is continuously growing with technology today. Thanks to technology scientists have been able to better prove their theories.
Periodization in the historiography of science is usually oriented around the Scientific Revolution that culminated in the work of Isaac Newton. In this scheme, science (or more precisely, natural philosophy) before Copernicus was pre-modern science. European and Islamic science from antiquity to the 16th century was primarily derived from the work of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers (though historians now recognize the significant influence of Chinese knowledge as well); it included alchemy, astrology, and other subjects no longer considered as scientific, as well as the precursors of the modern sciences. Science (still in the form of natural philosophy) from roughly the late 16th century until the early- to mid-19th century was early-modern science; the birth of the experimental method in the 17th and 18th centuries is often considered a central event in the history of science. The 19th century saw the professionalization and secularization of science and the creation of independent scientific disciplines; modern science can denote science since this period (in distinction to early-modern), all science since Newton (in distinction to pre-modern), or simply science as practiced now.
Selected article
In the late 19th century luminiferous aether ("light-bearing aether") was the term used to describe a medium for the propagation of light. Later theories including special relativity were formulated without the ether concept, and today the aether is considered to be an obsolete scientific theory.
Isaac Newton had assumed that light was made up of numerous small particles, in order to explain features such as its ability to travel in straight lines and reflect off surfaces. This theory was known to have its problems; although it explained reflection well, its explanation of refraction and diffraction was less pleasing. In order to explain refraction, in fact, Newton's Opticks (1704) postulated an "Aethereal Medium" transmitting vibrations faster than light, by which light (when overtaken) is put into "Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission" (causing refraction and diffraction).
As optical theories changed, new, increasingly technical ether theories were proposed to explain the known properties of light; by the late 19th century, ether theories were important across the sciences, from physical chemistry to electron theory to optics and astronomy. In the early 20th century, after the acceptance of special relativity, many of the aether's hypothetical functions quickly became unnecessary.
Selected picture
During the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, several teams of scientists attempted to verify Einstein's prediction of the bending of light around the sun using photographic measurements. This negative, taken from Arthur Eddington's report of the expedition to the African island Príncipe, was presented as part of a successful test of general relativity, based on the positions of stars near the eclipsed sun. The original caption reads:
- In Plate 1 is given a half-tone reproduction of one of the negatives taken with the 4-inch lens at Sobral. This shows the position of the stars, and, as far as possible in a reproduction of this kind, the character of the images, as there has been no retouching. A number of photographic prints have been made and applications for these from astronomers, who wish to assure themselves of the quality of the photographs, will be considered as as far as possible acceded to.
Selected inventor
Vannevar Bush (March 11, 1890 – June 30, 1974) was an American engineer and science administrator, known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb, and the idea of the memex—seen as a pioneering concept for the World Wide Web. A leading figure in the development of the military-industrial complex and the military funding of science in the United States, Bush was a prominent policymaker and public intellectual ("the patron saint of American science") during World War II and the ensuing Cold War. Through his public career, Bush was a proponent of democratic technocracy and of the centrality of technological innovation and entrepreneurship for both economic and geopolitical security.
Topics
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 the history of biochemistry spans approximately 400 years, but the word "biochemistry" in the modern sense was first proposed only in 1903, by German chemist Carl Neuberg?
...that the Great Comet of 1577 was viewed by people all over Europe, including famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and the six year old Johannes Kepler?
...that the Society for Social Studies of Science (often abbreviated as 4S) is, as its website claims, "the oldest and largest scholarly association devoted to understanding science and technology"?
Selected anniversaries
July 29:
- 1781 - Death of Johann Kies, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1713)
- 1839 - Death of Gaspard de Prony, French mathematician (b. 1755)
- 1898 - Birth of Isidor Isaac Rabi, American physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1988)
- 1982 - Death of Vladimir Zworykin, Russian physicist and inventor (b. 1889)
- 1994 - Death of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, British chemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1910)
- 1996 - Death of Marcel-Paul Schützenberger, French mathematician (b. 1920)
- 2005 - Astronomers announce their discovery of Eris
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