History of Science

Science means "knowing" in Latin. It is the process of learning things about the world. People have always wanted to learn more about their world, and they have tried a lot of different ways to find things out. Some of the ways they tried might seem silly to you, others are at the root of all modern science. But it all comes from the same desire to find out how things work.

The history of science is the study of the development of science and scientific knowledge, including both the natural sciences and social sciences. The English word scientist is very recent—first used by William Whewell in the 1900's. Previously, people investigating nature called themselves natural philosophers becaused they studied nature over a period of time. In prehistoric times, advice and knowledge was passed from generation to generation in an oral tradition. The development of writing allowed knowledge to be stored and communicated across generations with much greater accuracy. Many ancient civilizations collected information about the Universe in an organized way and through simple observation.

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The Mesopotamian people began to attempt to record some observations of the world with numerical data. But their observations and measurements were believed to have been taken for purposes other than for scientific laws. In Babylonian astronomy, records of the motions of the stars, planets, and the moon are left on thousands of clay tablets created by scribes. Ancient Egypt made significant advances in astronomy, mathematics and medicine. Their development of geometry was a necessary development to observe the area and to preserve the layout and ownership of farmland, which was flooded annually by the Nile river.

In Classical Antiquity, the investigations into the workings of the universe took place both in investigations aimed at such practical goals as establishing a reliable calendar or determining how to cure a variety of illnesses and in those ideas known as natural philosophy. Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature was the philosophical study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. We must understand that when a scientist conducted a philosophical study they examined general and basic problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The ancient people who are considered the first scientists may have thought of themselves as natural philosophers, as practitioners of a skilled job (for example, doctorss), or as followers of a religious tradition (for example, temple healers).

Syllogistic Reasoning

Aristotle (pronounciation) described something called syllogistic reasoning. A syllogism is an argument. Arguments are statements used when you describe things with logic. There are four different types of syllogistic arguments.

(1) All A's are B's (universal affirmative)
(2) No A's are B's (universal negative)
(3) Some A's are B's (particular affirmative)
(4) Some A's are not B's (particular negative)

If you look at these statements, they all start with the basic idea that A (a thing) exists. You can't make any of those four statements if A does not exist or is not true.

As logic has evolved, modern logic has changed the first statement to say, "If something is A, then it is also B." It can get a bit confusing. For many scientists, logic is a completely separate branch of science and philosophy. Don't worry if you don't get it from our quick overview. Try this example.

(1) All cats are animals (universal affirmative)
(2) No cats are plants (universal negative)
(3) Some animals are cats (particular affirmative)
(4) Some animals are not cats (particular negative)

Each of these arguments (statements) is true and they all are examples of the four different types of syllogistic arguments

In medicine, Hippocrates (Pronounciation) (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC) and his followers were the first to describe many diseases and medical conditions and developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, still relevant and in use today. Herophilos (335–280 BC) was the first to base his conclusions on dissection of the human body and to describe the nervous system. Galen (129 – c. 200 AD) performed many audacious operations—including brain and eye surgeries— that were not tried again for almost two millennia.

The willingness to question previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major scientific advancements, now known as the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is traditionally held by most historians to have begun in 1543, when the books De humani corporis fabrica which mean (On the Workings of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius, and also De Revolutionibus, by the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, were first printed. The thesis of Copernicus' book was that the Earth moved around the Sun. The Age of Enlightenment was a European affair. The 17th century "Age of Reason" opened the avenues to the decisive steps towards modern science, which took place during the 18th century "Age of Enlightenment".

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, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and others developed quantum theories to explain various anomalous experimental results, by introducing discrete energy levels. In 1938 Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission with radiochemical methods, and 1939 Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch wrote the first theoretical interpretation of the fission process, which was later improved by Niels Bohr and John A. Wheeler. Further 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. 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).

The history of science is marked by a chain of advances in technology and knowledge that have always complemented each other. Technological innovations bring about new discoveries and are bred by other discoveries, which inspire new possibilities and approaches to long standing science issues. Much of the study of the history of science has been devoted to answering questions about what science is, how it functions, and whether it exhibits large-scale patterns and trends

Time

During most of human history, people told time by the sun. They arranged to meet at dawn, when the sun came up, or at noon, when the sun was highest in the sky, or at sunset, when the sun went down. When you agreed to work for somebody, you measured your working hours by the day, from sunup to sundown. The time from one new moon to another was a month, and the time from one spring to the next was a year.

Around 2000 BC, the Sumerians in West Asia began to develop ways to measure shorter periods of time. Just as the year was divided into twelve months, they decided to divide the day into twelve hours, and the night into twelve hours too. In the summer, when days were longer, the daytime hours were longer too. People used the length of shadows to tell time - when the shadow of a tall pillar was a certain length, it was the second hour.

By about 1200 BC, people in West Asia and Egypt began to use water clocks and sand hour glasses to keep track of these hours, so you could tell time at night. By about 300 BC, people were using sundials from Greece all the way east to Central Asia. By 500 AD, people were using candle clocks to tell time in China. They marked on a candle how much of the candle would burn in an hour. In this way you could tell time in the dark.

A Brief History of Time

But all through this time, most people just didn't need to know what time it was. They kept right on telling time by dawn, noon, and twilight; that was good enough. Then the new religion of Islam got going in the 600s AD. Islam called for everybody to pray five times a day, at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and dark. It became more important for most people to know what time it was. The muezzin began to call the adhan, the call to prayer, from the top of minarets in each town. This provided an easy way of telling about what time it was, and it gave people the idea that telling time was a public responsibility.

By the late 1200s Europeans began to build mechanical clocks. These clocks worked by winding them up and then letting a weight slowly descend to the ground. The clocks had to be near the top of towers to give the weights room to move down. By 1369 there was a clock on the castle at Vincennes, and the next year there was a clock on the Conciergerie in Paris. These early clocks weren't accurate, and they were expensive, so medieval people also continued to use older methods of telling time, like sundials and candle clocks. Soon after the invention of the clock, in 1335, some Catholic priests in Milan found a cheaper way: they began to ring all the hours on the bells in their church tower (at the church now called San Gottardo). They rang the bell once at 1 am and twice at 2 am and so on until they rang 24 times at midnight. A lot of people thought this was a good idea, and soon most of the church towers in Europe rang out the time every hour, as they still do now. But all the way through the middle ages, most people really only needed to know morning, noon, and evening, as they always had.

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History of Medicine

There are really three branches of medicine in antiquity and through the Middle Ages. One of these might be called "doctor medicine," or "scientific medicine," where people try to observe sicknesses and look for logical patterns and figure outhow the human body works and from there figure out what treatments might work. This kind of medicine really started with the Egyptians and Indians. The Greeks and the Romans went on with it, and it was very highly developed under the Islamic Empire and in China. It is very organized and today it is successful, but in the ancient world this theoretical approach probably did not cure very many patients.

A second kind of medicine might be called "natural cures," or "folk medicine", where less educated and less intellectual people try to cure sicknesses with various herbs like pennyroyal or valerian, such as you find in health food stores today. These people are also using observation and logic, but they are not so aware of it. On the other hand, they probably had more success in antiquity than the scientific doctors did. They tried things until they found something that seemed to work, and then they kept doing that. This kind of medicine probably goes back to the Stone Age, and after weakening some in the Roman Empire, became very strong again in the Middle Ages. The Islamic doctors took over some of these natural cures and brought them into scientific medicine.

History of Medicine Part 1

The third kind might be called "health spas," or it might be called "faith healing." This is where religious figures - priests or magicians or monks or holy men and women - ran centers where sick people could come and be healed by the gods. Sometimes this might be as simple as touching the holy man and being immediately healed - Jesus did a lot of this kind of healing. Sometimes even just touching a saint's bone, or a piece of clothing which had belonged to a saint, might be enough to heal you.

Other times, a magician might make you a magic charm, or say a spell, to cure you (usually you would have to pay for this).
Some religious groups organized special healing shrines, that people went to when they were sick. People would often live there until they got better (or until they died). In these places people rested, got plenty of sleep, ate healthy food, drank water instead of wine, and exercised in various ways. Sometimes you took special baths in natural hot springs. You also talked to the priests and priestesses (or monks and nuns) at the shrine, who may have acted a lot like counselors or therapists today. If you were suffering from depression or you were just overweight or you had been working too hard, these places might be just the thing to have you feeling a lot better soon.

History of Diseases

Ancient doctors tried to cure everyone who was sick, but they did better with some diseases than with others. Let's look at some common diseases and see what Egyptian, Roman, or Islamic doctors were able to do about them:

1) the common cold virus: fortunately, it doesn't matter much what the doctor does here, because you will probably get better on your own. Still if you get a fever and then the doctor bleeds you to reduce your blood humors, that will make you sicker not better. You were probably better off not going to the doctor. An herbalist, on the other hand, might have been able to give you willow bark (aspirin) for your fever, which would at least have made you more comfy, and maybe a cough syrup like slippery elm tea too. But in the form of willow bark, aspirin gives you terrible stomach aches. And if you had gone to a healing shrine, the extra rest and healthy food and hot baths might help you feel better quicker.

History of Medicine Part 2

2) ear infections, or bronchitis : what you really need is antibiotics, and those were not invented until about the 1930s. So you would have to get better on your own if you were going to get better. Again, good food and plenty of rest, not being bled, and maybe some cough syrup would be your best bet. But people died of these diseases in antiquity, or they went deaf from earaches.

3) a broken leg : doctors were probably better at treating broken bones than other people were, because they understood anatomy (the inside of the human body) better. Hippocrates gives a pretty good description of how to set bones. Without a doctor, if the bone wasn't set right, you could end up not ever being able to use that leg again. But the greatest danger was probably from infection.

d clean water.

4) malaria : nobody had any idea what to do about malaria, which was much more common in ancient Greece or Rome than it is today. Healthy adults usually do not die of malaria, but children and old people and sick people often do. Even today malaria is difficult to cure completely. Healing shrines, where you could get rest and good food, may have helped some people recover.

5) depression : ancient doctors did not have antidepressants like Prozac, but all different kinds of healers would try to talk you through your depression. Often you would go to a healing shrine where the change of scenery and a chance to rest might help you to pull out of your depression. Talk and rest are not always enough to cure a depression though.

6) cancer : even today, doctors cannot cure all cancer, and often all a doctor can do is to give you painkillers. Ancient doctors did not have any medicines that cured cancer, and did not have as good painkillers as modern doctors have. Opium was known, but it is not clear how widely doctors used it. Most patients probably relied on wine to help them with their pain.

7) smallpox, measles, and plague: Today, smallpox has been wiped out by vaccinations, and many people are vaccinated against measles. Doctors can cure plague with antibiotics. But in antiquity, there was no medicine for anyone who had these diseases. People were more likely to live if they got good nursing care - plenty of good food, rest, and clean water.

History of Medicine Part 3

What is Engineering?

Ancient Engineering

People have been using engineering to solve the problems of their daily lives since the first caveman picked up a rock and chipped away at it to make a handaxe in thePaleolithic, about 70,000 years ago. It is impossible to list all of the inventions that people have made since then, there are so many.

For tools, there was first the stone handaxe, and then stone knives. In the Neolithic, stone sickles were invented. People used obsidian because it was sharper than flint. Around 3000 BC, people first began to make bronze knives and sickles, and also tweezers, razors, and spoons. By 1500 BC they were beginning to make iron knives and all kinds of tools out of iron. Around 1000 BC a lot more people all over the Mediterranean began to use iron. Gradually mining and smelting techniques became more and more sophisticated.

For hunting, there were bone fishhooks and wooden spears with stone tips, and later on stone arrowheads. People began to spin string and knot it together to make nets for fish and birds. They wove thin sticks together to make snares to catch rabbits and squirrels. With the invention of bronze, and later iron, people began to make fishhooks and spearheads out of these lighter, sharper metals.

For clothing, first people invented ways to tan hides, to preserve animal skins as leather and furs to keep people warm. Then they invented bone needles and thread, to sew these clothes together. Then in the Neolithic, people invented the drop spindle to spin wool and linen and looms to weave it into clothing. Gradually the design of looms improved, with the invention of the heddle. Dyes were also invented. The next big advance in clothing technology was the invention of the spinning wheel in the Middle Ages, which made it possible to spin four times as fast as before. Knitting was not invented until around 1500 AD.

For cooking, the most important invention comes right at the beginning with the invention of ways to make fire: the firestick and flints. By the Neolithic period the oven was invented, and also the spit for roasting meat over a fire. Pottery, for making cooking pots and storing water and food, was very important. People started to use pottery around 7000 BC, and the potter's wheel was invented around 2000 BC, and made pottery making much faster. The use of bronze and then iron to make spits is better because metal will not burn through like wood. But more importantly you can boil water much faster in a metal cooking pot than in a clay one, which saves on fuel. Wooden spoons have existed since the Neolithic. Scholars disagree about the date of the first forks, but certainly there were forks by the Roman period, about 100 AD. Blown glass cups became popular about the same time. The invention of the chimney, in the Middle Ages, must have helped to keep houses from being so smoky, and also reduced the risk of fire.

For farming, the most important invention is farming itself, but soon after that comes the simple plow. Later people began to have animals pull the plow, and sometimes put irontips on the plowshares. The Romans invented a longer handle for the sickle, which made reaping much more efficient. And by the later Roman Empire, around 300 AD, there were heavier plows. On some big farms, an animal-drawn automatic reaper was being used. In the Merovingian period, harrows began to be used. A better form of horse harness was also invented around this time.

For transportation, there was first the ox-cart, with the idea of wheels and axles. Horse-riding seems to have been brought to the Mediterranean by the Indo-Europeans, starting about 2500 BC. After that, horse-drawn chariots became popular, both with two wheels and with four. In the Bronze Age, donkeys became popular as pack animals, and in some places people began to build stone roads and bridges for the first time.

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The Engineering Process

The Persians, around 500 BC, pioneered the idea of a relay system to carry messages more quickly. The Romans are famous for their carefully laid roads and bridges, many of which are still in use today. It was in the early Islamic period that people first invented a good saddle forcamels, and so were able to start using caravans of camels to transport people and things in the southern Mediterranean (we can't say whether the increased use of camels was due partly to the desertification that followed the coming of Islam, when people shifted from pig to sheep and overgrazed the hills, but it seems possible).

To get drinking water, and to irrigate fields, many different inventions have been used. The first was baskets lined with tar, and leather bags. Then clay jars were used, which were heavier but didn't leak as much.Soon people began to dig wells to get water closer to home. In Egypt and Sumer, people dug huge canal systems to take the water from the river to their fields, and used levers to raise the water up into higher canals. The Greeks piped water from springs or wells to public fountains in their cities. The Romans built huge aqueducts going for miles from a mountain stream to their cities or their fields. In the Middle Ages, however, most of these aqueducts went out of use, and people went back to using wells again.

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