Portal:History of science
The History of Science Portal
The history of science is the study of the development of science, including both the natural and social sciences (the history of the arts and humanities is termed history of scholarship). Science is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by scientists who emphasize the observation, explanation, and prediction of real-world phenomena. Historiography of science, in contrast, studies the methods employed by historians of science.
The English word scientist is relatively recent, first coined by William Whewell in the 19th century. Before that, investigators of nature called themselves "natural philosophers". While observations of the natural world have been described since classical antiquity (for example, by Thales and Aristotle), and the scientific method has been employed since the Middle Ages (for example, by Ibn al-Haytham and Roger Bacon), modern science began to develop in the early modern period, and in particular in the scientific revolution of 16th- and 17th-century Europe. Traditionally, historians of science have defined science sufficiently broadly to include those earlier inquiries.
From the 18th through the late 20th century, the history of science, especially of the physical and biological sciences, was often presented as a progressive accumulation of knowledge, in which true theories replaced false beliefs. More recent historical interpretations, such as those of Thomas Kuhn, tend to portray the history of science in terms of competing paradigms or conceptual systems within a wider matrix of intellectual, cultural, economic and political trends. These interpretations, however, have met with opposition for they also portray the history of science as an incoherent system of incommensurable paradigms, not leading to any actual scientific progress but only to the illusion that it has occurred. (Full article...)
Selected article -
Evolutionary thought, the recognition that species change over time and the perceived understanding of how such processes work, has roots in antiquity—in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science. With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking: essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept which had developed from medieval Aristotelian metaphysics, and that fit well with natural theology; and the development of the new anti-Aristotelian approach to modern science: as the Enlightenment progressed, evolutionary cosmology and the mechanical philosophy spread from the physical sciences to natural history. Naturalists began to focus on the variability of species; the emergence of paleontology with the concept of extinction further undermined static views of nature. In the early 19th century Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) proposed his theory of the transmutation of species, the first fully formed theory of evolution.
In 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published a new evolutionary theory, explained in detail in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposed common descent and a branching tree of life, meaning that two very different species could share a common ancestor. Darwin based his theory on the idea of natural selection: it synthesized a broad range of evidence from animal husbandry, biogeography, geology, morphology, and embryology. Debate over Darwin's work led to the rapid acceptance of the general concept of evolution, but the specific mechanism he proposed, natural selection, was not widely accepted until it was revived by developments in biology that occurred during the 1920s through the 1940s. Before that time most biologists regarded other factors as responsible for evolution. Alternatives to natural selection suggested during "the eclipse of Darwinism" (c. 1880 to 1920) included inheritance of acquired characteristics (neo-Lamarckism), an innate drive for change (orthogenesis), and sudden large mutations (saltationism). Mendelian genetics, a series of 19th-century experiments with pea plant variations rediscovered in 1900, was integrated with natural selection by Ronald Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright during the 1910s to 1930s, and resulted in the founding of the new discipline of population genetics. During the 1930s and 1940s population genetics became integrated with other biological fields, resulting in a widely applicable theory of evolution that encompassed much of biology—the modern synthesis. (Full article...)Selected image
An engraving by Albrecht Dürer, from the title page of the Masha'allah ibn Atharī's astronomy treatise De scientia motus orbis (Latin version with engraving, 1504). As in many medieval illustrations, the compass here is an icon of religion as well as science, in reference to God as the architect of creation.
Did you know
...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 Biography -
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). (Full article...)Selected anniversaries
January 26:
- 1630 - Death of Henry Briggs, English mathematician (b. 1556)
- 1697 - Death of Georg Mohr, Danish mathematician (b. 1640
- 1904 - Birth of Ancel Keys, American scientist (d. 2004)
- 1911 - Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful seaplane
- 1911 - Birth of Polykarp Kusch, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (d. 1993)
- 1942 - Death of Felix Hausdorff, German mathematician (b. 1868)
- 1943 - Death of Nikolai Vavilov, Russian botanist (b. 1887)
- 1946 - Death of Adriaan van Maanen, Dutch-American astronomer (b. 1884)
- 1962 - Ranger program: Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon. The space probe later missed the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km)
Related portals
Topics
| Background |  | |
|---|---|---|
| By era | ||
| By culture | ||
| Natural sciences | ||
| Mathematics | ||
| Social sciences | ||
| Technology | ||
| Medicine | ||
General images
Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering work of experimental science
Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait
Islamic expansion:under Muhammad, 622–632under Rashidun caliphs, 632–661under Umayyad caliphs, 661–750
An ivory set of Napier's Bones, an early calculating device invented by John Napier
Omar Khayyam's "Cubic equation and intersection of conic sections"
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.
Isaac Newton's Principia, developed the first set of unified scientific laws.
Modern copy of al-Idrisi's 1154 Tabula Rogeriana, upside-down, north at top
Air pump built by Robert Boyle. Many new instruments were devised in this period, which greatly aided in the expansion of scientific knowledge.
The Tusi couple, a mathematical device invented by Nasir al-Din Tusi to model the not perfectly circular motions of the planets
Quince, cypress, and sumac trees, in Zakariya al-Qazwini's 13th century Wonders of Creation
Self trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir's treatise on mechanical devices, c. 850
The Royal Society had its origins in Gresham College in the City of London, and was the first scientific society in the world.
octahedral shape of diamond.
al-Biruni's explanation of the phases of the moon
Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller
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.
Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustrée, Amsterdam, 1670.
Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought iron Pillar of Delhi.
Ibn Sina teaching the use of drugs. 15th-century Great Canon of Avicenna
Messier Object 1, the Crab Nebula. In the nebula's very centre lies a pulsar: a neutron star rotating 30 times per second.
The 1698 Savery Engine was the first successful steam engine
Page from the Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals) by Al-Jahiz. Ninth century
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.
The eye according to Hunayn ibn Ishaq, c. 1200
Francis Bacon was a pivotal figure in establishing the scientific method of investigation. Portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger (1617).
Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474.
Schematic of the antikythera mechanism
Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th-century portrait.
Otto von Guericke's experiments on electrostatics, published 1672
Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661
Newton's Opticks or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light
A coloured illustration from Mansur's Anatomy, c. 1450
Portrait of Johannes Kepler
Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Leoni
A page from al-Khwarizmi's Algebra
The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666.
The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–1261 (and later in Egypt) at its height, c. 850
Surviving fragment of the first World Map of Piri Reis (1513)
Mesopotamian clay tablet-letter from 2400 BC, Louvre. (from King of Lagash, found at Girsu)
Plato and Aristotle. The School of Athens (1509).
On this page Galileo Galilei first noted the moons of Jupiter. Galileo revolutionized the study of the natural world with his rigorous experimental method.
Theophrastus noted that tourmaline attracts straws and bits of wood when heated.
_Venenbild.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Subcategories
Things you can do
Help out by participating in the History of Science Wikiproject (which also coordinates the histories of medicine, technology and philosophy of science) or join the discussion.
Associated Wikimedia
Portals