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. Protoscience, early sciences, and natural philosophies such as alchemy and astrology during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, classical antiquity, and the Middle Ages declined during the early modern period after the establishment of formal disciplines of science in the Age of Enlightenment.
Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3000 to 1200 BCE. These civilizations' contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine influenced later Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, wherein 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 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. Traditions of early science were also developed in ancient India and separately in ancient China, the Chinese model having influenced Vietnam, Korea and Japan before Western exploration. Among the Pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica, the Zapotec civilization established their first known traditions of astronomy and mathematics for producing calendars, followed by other civilizations such as the Maya.
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 Earth, and evolution came into focus. And in the 20th century, new discoveries in genetics and physics laid the foundations for new sub disciplines such as molecular biology and particle physics. Moreover, industrial and military concerns as well as the increasing complexity of new research endeavors ushered in the era of "big science," particularly after World War II. (Full article...)
Selected article -
The Condemnations at the medieval University of Paris were enacted to restrict certain teachings as being heretical. These included a number of medieval theological teachings, but most importantly the physical treatises of Aristotle. The investigations of these teachings were conducted by the Bishops of Paris. The Condemnations of 1277 are traditionally linked to an investigation requested by Pope John XXI, although whether he actually supported drawing up a list of condemnations is unclear.
Approximately sixteen lists of censured theses were issued by the University of Paris during the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of these lists of propositions were put together into systematic collections of prohibited articles. Of these, the Condemnations of 1277 are considered particularly important by those historians who consider that they encouraged scholars to question the tenets of Aristotelian science. From this perspective, some historians maintain that the condemnations had positive effects on the development of science, perhaps even representing the beginnings of modern science. (Full article...)Selected image
Ernst Haeckel, the great populariser of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, was the first to use a literal tree of life to express evolutionary relationships based on common descent. This version comes from his 1866 General Morphology; several different versions, some highly elaborate and artistic, are found in other Haeckel works. The icon of a tree of life has been used widely since that time; some modern versions include a tangled root system to represent the effects of horizontal gene transfer and symbiogenesis early in evolutionary history.
Did you know
...that in the history of paleontology, very few naturalists before the 17th century recognized fossils as the remains of living organisms?
...that on January 17, 2007, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved to "5 minutes from midnight" in part because of global climate change?
...that in 1835, Caroline Herschel and Mary Fairfax Somerville became the first women scientists to be elected to the Royal Astronomical Society?
Selected Biography -
_in_1936_at_Princeton_University.jpg)
Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (/ˈtjʊərɪŋ/; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. He is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science.
Born in London, Turing was raised in southern England. He graduated in maths from King's College, Cambridge, and in 1938, earned a maths PhD from Princeton University. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. He led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bomba method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. Turing played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic. (Full article...)Selected anniversaries
- 1650 - Death of Christoph Scheiner, German astronomer
- 1178 - Five Canterbury monks see what was possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed.
- 1845 - Birth of Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, French physician and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1922)
- 1858 - Charles Darwin receives from Alfred Russel Wallace a paper that included nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin's own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.
- 1886 - Birth of Alexander Wetmore, American ornithologist (d. 1978)
- 1905 - Death of Per Teodor Cleve Swedish chemist (b. 1840)
- 1918 - Birth of Jerome Karle, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1922 - Death of Jacobus Kapteyn, Dutch astronomer (b. 1851)
- 1930 - Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute held.
- 1932 - Birth of Dudley R. Herschbach, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
- 1971 - Death of Paul Karrer, Swiss chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1889)
- 1976 - Gravity Probe A, a satellite-based experiment to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, is launched.
Related portals
Topics
| Background |  | |
|---|---|---|
| By era | ||
| By culture | ||
| Natural sciences | ||
| Mathematics | ||
| Social sciences | ||
| Technology | ||
| Medicine | ||
General images
-
Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustrée, Amsterdam, 1670 (from Scientific Revolution) -
The Abbasid Caliphate, 750–1261 (and later in Egypt) at its height, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
A page from al-Khwarizmi's Algebra (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Vesalius's intricately detailed drawings of human dissections in Fabrica helped to overturn the medical theories of Galen. (from Scientific Revolution) -
Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661 (from Scientific Revolution) -
The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666. (from Scientific Revolution) -
-
Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering 1600 work of experimental science (from Scientific Revolution) -
-
-
Self trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir's treatise on mechanical devices, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
A 19th-century portrait of Pliny the Elder (from Science in classical antiquity) -
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) -
Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought iron Pillar of Delhi. (from Science in the ancient world) -
An Egyptian practice of treating migraine in ancient Egypt. (from Science in the ancient world) -
Omar Khayyam's "Cubic equation and intersection of conic sections" (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Detail showing columns of glyphs from a portion of the 2nd century CE La Mojarra Stela 1 (found near La Mojarra, Veracruz, Mexico); the left column gives a Long Count calendar date of 8.5.16.9.7, or 156 CE. The other columns visible are glyphs from the Epi-Olmec script. (from Science in the ancient world) -
Portrait of Johannes Kepler, one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science (from Scientific Revolution) -
The first treatise about optics by Johannes Kepler, Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur (1604) (from Scientific Revolution) -
Page from the Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals) by Al-Jahiz. Ninth century (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Francis Bacon was a pivotal figure in establishing the scientific method of investigation. Portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger (1617). (from Scientific Revolution) -
-
A coloured illustration from Mansur's Anatomy, c. 1450 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
George Trebizond's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Almagest (c. 1451) (from Science in classical antiquity) -
The physician Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine" (from Science in classical antiquity) -
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) -
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) -
Modern copy of al-Idrisi's 1154 Tabula Rogeriana, upside-down, north at top (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Surviving fragment of the first World Map of Piri Reis (1513) (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Diagram of the Antikythera mechanism, an analog astronomical calculator (from Science in classical antiquity) -
-
Apollonius wrote a comprehensive study of conic sections in the Conics. (from Science in classical antiquity) -
The physical exercise chart; a painting on silk depicting calisthenics; unearthed in 1973 in Hunan Province, China, from the 2nd-century BC Western Han burial site of Mawangdui, Tomb Number 3. (from Science in the ancient world) -
-
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), (965–1039 Iraq). A polymath, sometimes considered 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) -
Scholar Nersi with Anahita in Persia (from Science in the ancient world) -
An early Western Han (202 BC – AD 9) silk map found in tomb 3 of Mawangdui, depicting the Kingdom of Changsha and Kingdom of Nanyue in southern China (note: the south direction is oriented at the top) (from Science in the ancient world) -
Ibn Sina teaching the use of drugs. 15th-century Great Canon of Avicenna (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Quince, cypress, and sumac trees, in Zakariya al-Qazwini's 13th century Wonders of Creation (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) -
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) -
Islamic expansion:under Muhammad, 622–632under Rashidun caliphs, 632–661under Umayyad caliphs, 661–750(from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
-
Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474. (from Scientific Revolution) -
The eye according to Hunayn ibn Ishaq, c. 1200 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th-century portrait (from Science in the ancient world)
-
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) -
Isaac Newton's Principia developed the first set of unified scientific laws. (from Scientific Revolution) -
Mesopotamian clay tablet-letter from 2400 BC, Louvre. (from King of Lagash, found at Girsu) (from Science in the ancient world) -
-
Schematics of the Antikythera mechanism (from Science in the ancient world)
-
A mosaic depicting Plato's Academy, from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii (1st century AD). (from Science in classical antiquity)
.jpg)
_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
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
