Portal:History of science Information
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.
The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby 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 Eastern Roman (or 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.
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 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 the Earth, and evolution came into focus. And in the 20th century, new discoveries in genetics and physics laid the foundations for new subdisciplines such as molecular biology and particle physics. Moreover, industrial and military concerns as well as the increasing complexity of new research endeavors soon ushered in the era of " big science," particularly after the Second World War. ( Full article...)
Selected article -
The French Academy of Sciences (French: Académie des sciences) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is one of the earliest Academies of Sciences.
Currently headed by Patrick Flandrin (President of the Academy), it is one of the five Academies of the Institut de France. ( Full article...)Selected image
A lithograph from the 1904 edition of Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature), depicting a variety of sea anemones.
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 -
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John Harrison (3 April [ O.S. 24 March] 1693 – 24 March 1776) was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea.
Harrison's solution revolutionized navigation and greatly increased the safety of long-distance sea travel. The problem he solved was considered so important following the Scilly naval disaster of 1707 that the British Parliament offered financial rewards of up to £20,000 (equivalent to £3.35 million in 2022) under the 1714 Longitude Act. ( Full article...)Selected anniversaries
July 3:
- 1672 - Death of Francis Willughby, English biologist (b. 1635)
- 1749 - Death of William Jones, Welsh mathematician (b. 1675)
- 1790 - Death of Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l'Isle, French chemist (b. 1736)
- 1844 - The last pair of Great Auks is killed
- 1886 - Karl Benz officially unveils the Benz Patent Motorwagen - the first purpose-built automobile
- 1977 - Death of Alexander M. Volkov, Russian novelist and mathematician (b. 1891)
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General images
Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Leoni (from Scientific Revolution)
Francis Bacon was a pivotal figure in establishing the scientific method of investigation. Portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger (1617). (from Scientific Revolution)
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)
The 1698 Savery Engine was the first successful steam engine (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)
Diagram of the Antikythera mechanism, an analog astronomical calculator (from Science in classical antiquity)
Mesopotamian clay tablet-letter from 2400 BC, Louvre. (from King of Lagash, found at Girsu) (from History of science in early cultures)
Portrait of Johannes Kepler (from Scientific Revolution)
Surviving fragment of the first World Map of Piri Reis (1513) (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
The eye according to Hunayn ibn Ishaq, c. 1200 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustrée, Amsterdam, 1670. (from Scientific Revolution)
The physician Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine" (from Science in classical antiquity)
Islamic expansion:under Muhammad, 622–632under Rashidun caliphs, 632–661under Umayyad caliphs, 661–750(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)
Plato and Aristotle. The School of Athens (1509). (from History of science in early cultures)
Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661 (from Scientific Revolution)
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), (965–1039 Iraq). A polymath, considered to be the father of modern scientific methodology due to his emphasis on experimental data and on the reproducibility of its results. (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
A coloured illustration from Mansur's Anatomy, c. 1450 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Otto von Guericke's experiments on electrostatics, published 1672 (from Scientific Revolution)
al-Biruni's explanation of the phases of the moon (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
octahedral shape of diamond. (from History of science in early cultures)
Schematic of the antikythera mechanism (from History of science in early cultures)
Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474. (from Scientific Revolution)
On this page Galileo Galilei first noted the moons of Jupiter. Galileo revolutionized the study of the natural world with his rigorous experimental method. (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)
Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought iron Pillar of Delhi. (from History of science in early cultures)
A mosaic depicting Plato's Academy, from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii (1st century AD). (from Science in classical antiquity)
Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait (from History of science in early cultures)
A 19th-century portrait of Pliny the Elder (from Science in classical antiquity)
Newton's Opticks or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light (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)
Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller (from Scientific Revolution)
George Trebizond's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Almagest (c. 1451) (from Science in classical antiquity)
Page from the Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals) by Al-Jahiz. Ninth century (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–1261 (and later in Egypt) at its height, c. 850 (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)
Quince, cypress, and sumac trees, in Zakariya al-Qazwini's 13th century Wonders of Creation (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Isaac Newton's Principia, developed the first set of unified scientific laws. (from Scientific Revolution)
Modern copy of al-Idrisi's 1154 Tabula Rogeriana, upside-down, north at top (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Self trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir's treatise on mechanical devices, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666. (from Scientific Revolution)
Messier Object 1, the Crab Nebula. In the nebula's very centre lies a pulsar: a neutron star rotating 30 times per second. (from History of science in early cultures)
Omar Khayyam's "Cubic equation and intersection of conic sections" (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
A page from al-Khwarizmi's Algebra (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Ibn Sina teaching the use of drugs. 15th-century Great Canon of Avicenna (from Science in the medieval Islamic world)
Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering work of experimental science (from Scientific Revolution)
Apollonius wrote a comprehensive study of conic sections in the Conics. (from Science in classical antiquity)
Vesalius's intricately detailed drawings of human dissections in Fabrica helped to overturn the medical theories of Galen. (from Scientific Revolution)
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