History of science

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. [1]

• 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 embryological development of a chick; he distinguished whales and dolphins from fish; he described the chambered stomachs of ruminants and the social organization of bees; he noticed that some sharks give birth to live young -- his books on animals are filled with such observations, some of which were not confirmed until many centuries later. [2]

• 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. [3]

Theories based on observation were not always subject to experimental 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. [4]
• 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. [5]

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. [6]

Christianity and Science

For additional details please see: Christianity and Science

A notable fact in relation to Christianity and science is that the birth of modern science (see: Scientific Revolution) occurred in Christianized Europe. 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, only one (Edmund Halley) was a skeptic and another (Paracelsus) was a pantheist. The other 50 were Christians, 30 of whom could be characterized as being devout Christians. 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 Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind."

External links

• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) - University of California Museum of Paleontology
• History topic: Theories of gravitation - School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland
• The motion of falling bodies