Science

2007-10-23T06:19:00Z

Jewishguy:

'''Science''', unlike other academic fields, is not just a body of knowledge but also a methodology for discovering and classifying knowledge. The scope of science encompasses all physical phenomena, but there is more for scientists to study than the material world and natural processes. Science falls under two scopes: [[natural science]], dealing with the physical, natural world, and [[social science]], dealing with society and human nature.

People who study science are called [[scientist]]s, and many of them are [[atheism|atheists]].<ref>http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism1.htm</ref>
However, most of the early scientists who started many of the scientific fields, and some of history's greatest thinkers, such as [[Isaac Newton]] and [[Albert Einstein]], believed in [[God]], or some other higher power. A distinction, however, must be drawn here between the idea that is now called creationism and the religious beheld by people like Einstein. To most Christian, the thought of Einsteinian religion seems more like agnostism or atheism than it does like an actual belief in God. According to Einstein's own book "Ideas and Opinions", he did not believe in the personal God of the traditionally religious person. Rather, he believed in a deity that functioned nearly the same as the Deity found in Deism; that is, He was the being who wrote the laws of physics into the universe, but Einstein also made it clear that he did not believe in prayer or in the personal interaction between individuals and their deity. Rather, from his point of view, God was something grander than the mere humanistic concerns written into traditional religious texts such as the Bible. And although Einstein talks about God numerous times in his writings about quantum mechanics, he is actually using God as a metaphor for the way that the laws of physics ought to be - when he says, for example, that "God doesn't play dice with the universe", he really just means that the laws of physics should be such that randomness plays no role in the ultimate foundations of the physical universe - nuclei do not just randomly decay, for instance. We now know that, in fact, Einstein was actually incorrect in this point (quantum mechanics shows that things do - and quite often do - happen for no reason whatsoever.)

==Notes==

<references/>

[[category:science]]

History of science

2007-10-23T06:07:15Z

Jewishguy:

The '''history of science''' goes back into the dim and musty reaches of antiquity, when philosophers first began to speculate about what causes things to move and grow. At first, it was hardly distinguishable from [[mythology]] or superstition.

By a process of regular observation and classification, ancient Greek philosophers tried to make sense of the natural world.

*It all began with [[Socrates]], a [[philosopher]], a lover of wisdom, who tried to elicit the truth by what has become known as the [[Socratic method]], in which by a series of probing questions he forced successive further clarification of thought. [http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/aristot2.html]

*Though [[Aristotle]]'s work in [[zoology]] was not without errors, it was the grandest biological synthesis of the time, and remained the ultimate authority for many centuries after his death. His observations on the anatomy of [[octopus]], [[cuttlefish]], crustaceans, and many other marine invertebrates are remarkably accurate, and could only have been made from first-hand experience with dissection. Aristotle described the [[embryo]]logical development of a [[chick]]; he distinguished [[whale]]s and [[dolphin]]s from [[fish]]; he described the chambered [[stomach]]s of [[ruminant]]s and the social organization of [[bee]]s; he noticed that some [[shark]]s give birth to live young -- his books on animals are filled with such observations, some of which were not confirmed until many centuries later. [http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/aristotle.html]

*Aristotle's approach to science differed from Plato's. He agreed that the highest human faculty was reason, and its supreme activity was contemplation. However, in addition to studying what he called "first philosophy" - metaphysics and mathematics, the things Plato had worked on, Aristotle thought it also very important to study "second philosophy": the world around us, from physics and mechanics to biology. Perhaps being raised in the house of a physician had given him an interest in living things. [http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/aristot2.html]

Theories based on observation were not always subject to [[experiment]]al test, and some errors lingered on for centuries. The best known was Aristotle's theory of [[falling objects]], which despite its went essentially unchallenged until the [[Renaissance]].
* Galileo dropped a cannonball and a musketball simultaneously from a tower, and observed that they hit the ground at nearly the same time. This contradicted Aristotle's long-accepted idea that heavier objects fell faster. [http://www.vias.org/physics/bk1_05_01.html]
* Galileo determined that the [[acceleration]] of these bodies is constant. He demonstrated that an object released from a height starts with zero velocity and increases its speed with time (before him it was thought that bodies when released acquire instantaneously a [[velocity]] which remained constant but was larger the heavier the object was). Experimenting with inclined planes, and measuring a ball's positions after equal time intervals Galileo discovered the mathematical expression of the law of falling bodies: the distance increases as the square of the time. [http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node49.html]

==Science becomes systematic==

*Aristotle's observations had been incomplete, his interpretation a vast oversimplification. It is inconceivable that Galileo was the first person to observe a discrepancy with Aristotle's predictions. Galileo was the one who changed the course of history because he was able to assemble the observations into a coherent pattern, and also because he carried out systematic quantitative (numerical) measurements rather than just describing things qualitatively. [http://www.vias.org/physics/bk1_05_01.html]
==Christianity and Science==

''For additional details please see: [[Christianity and Science]]''

A notable fact in relation to [[Christianity and Science|Christianity and science]] is that the birth of modern [[science]] (see: [[Scientific Revolution]]) occurred in [[Christianity|Christianized]] [[Europe]].<ref>http://www.ldolphin.org/bumbulis/#anchor5343749</ref>
[[Sociology|Sociologist]] [[Rodney Stark]] investigated the individuals who made the most significant scientific contributions between 1543 and 1680 A.D., the time of the Scientific Revolution. Despite this, it must be noted that it was only through the rejection of religious ideas that science actually came to arise. The Catholic church, which dominated the whole of Christianity at the time, was being rejected on a number of different levels - both cultural and philosophical - and this allowed the exploration of ideas that could not have been explored otherwise. It should also be noted that this was this widespread rejection and re-examination of traditional ideas that led to the rejection of British rule in the American colonies, and eventually to the founding of the United States. Without the re-examination of traditional religious ideas - including the rejection of ideas that had been held sacred for a thousand years or more - it would have been impossible for our modern world to have come to be.
In Stark's list of 52 top scientific contributors,<ref name="Origins">Williams, Alex,[http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1581/ The biblical origins of science], ''Journal of Creation'' 18(2):49–52, August 2004.</ref> only one ([[Edmund Halley]]) was a skeptic and another ([[Paracelsus]]) was a [[pantheism|pantheist]].
The other 50 were Christians, 30 of whom could be characterized as being devout Christians.<ref name="Origins" />
Sir [[Francis Bacon]], sometimes referred to as "the Father of Modern Science", wrote: "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the [[Talmud]], and the [[Koran|Alcoran]], than that this universal frame is without a mind."<ref>Bacon, Francis, [http://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francis-bacon-17.html Of Atheism]</ref>

==External links==
*[http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/aristotle.html Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)] - University of California Museum of Paleontology
*[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/PrintHT/Gravitation.html History topic: Theories of gravitation] - School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland
*[http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node49.html The motion of falling bodies]

[[category:History of Science]]
[[category:science]]

Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Science

History of science