Science: A History

Origins

• One potential date for the beginning of the revival of Western Europe is 1453:
  • Publication of "On the Structure of the Human Body" by Andreas Vesalius and of "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Bodies" by Copernicus", mark the start of the scientific revolution that would transform first Europe and then the world.
  • The Turks captured Constantinople marking the end of the old Roman Empire, causing many Greek-speaking scholars fled westwards to Italy with their documents, and there the Italian humanists took up these documents and the teaching found therein to -establish civilization along the lines that head existed before the Dark Ages.
  • Perhaps equally important was the depopulation of Europe by the Black Death in the 14th C, which led the survivors to question the whole basis of society, made labor expensive and encouraged the invention of technological devices to replace manpower.
  • Also, Gutenberg's development of moveable type in the mid 15th C had an obvious impact on what was to become science, and discoveries brought back to Europe by another technological development, sailing ships capable of crossing the oceans, transformed society.
• The scientific revolution did not happen in isolation, but eventually became the driving force of Western civilization over the next 450 years.
• The development of technology is more important than human genius, and it is no surprise that the start of the scientific revolution "coincides" with the development of the telescope and the microscope.
• Western science got started because the Renaissance happened. And once it got started by giving a boost to technology it ensured that it would keep on rolling, with new scientific ideas leading to improved technology, and improved technology providing the scientists with the means to test new ideas to greater and greater accuracy. Technology came first, because it is possible to make machines by trial and error without fully understanding the principles on which they operate. But once science and technology got together, progress really took off.

Renaissance Men

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) - "On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres" (1543)
• Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) - "On the Structure of the Human Body" (1543)
• William Harvey - discovery of the circulation of the blood.
• Gabriele Fallopio - discover of the fallopian tubes

The Last Mystics

• Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) - De Nova Stella (1573)
  • Sees a comet in 1577. First astronomer to imagine the planets hanging unsupported in space
• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) - The Mystery of the Universe (1597)
  • Suggested that planets were kept moving in their orbits by a force he called "the vigour" reaching out from the Sun and pushing them along.
  • "My aim is to show that the machine of the universe is not similar to a divine animated being, but similar to a clock."
  • First and second laws about planetary orbits.
  • "Astronomia Nova" (1609)
  • "Harmony of the World" (1618) - Third law about planetary orbits
  • Writes one of the first science-fiction stories, "Dream of the Moon
• John Napier (1550-1617) - Invented logarithms

The First Scientists

• William Gilbert (1544-1603)
  • Concerning Magnetism, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet Earth (1600)
  • Discovered laws of attraction and repulsion, that the Earth acts like a magnet, names the north pole and south pole
  • Nothing new was discovered about magnetism until the discovery of electromagnetism in the 1820s
  • Galileo described Gilbert as the founder of the experimental method of science.
• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
  • Always carried out experiments to test hypotheses, modifying or abandoning those hypotheses if the outcomes of the experiments did not match their predictions.
  • Also investigated hydrostatics, magnetism
  • Proved that a bullet fired from a gun describes a parabola
  • Built a telescope better than any other in just 24hrs
  • Discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter early in 1610, that the Milky Way is made up of many individual starts, and that the surface of the Moon is scarred by craters and has mountain ranges several km high in book The Starry Messenger (1610)
  • He was willing to test his reasoning by clearly thought-out experiments, in public, and to stand by the results.
  • Was one of the first to develop an effective compound microscope, involving two lenses each ground with a doubly convex shape.
  • Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1629)
  • Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638) - summed up his life’s work on mechanics, inertia, and pendulums and the strength of bodies, as well as spelling out the scientific method. The first modern scientific textbook, spelling out that the Universe is governed by laws which can be understood by the human mind and is driven by forces whose effects can be calculated using maths.
  • Realized that moving objects have a natural tendency to keep on moving, unless they are affected by friction or some other outside force.