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...)
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Recurring cultural, political, and theological rejection of evolution by religious groups exists regarding the origins of the Earth, of humanity, and of other life. In accordance with creationism, species were once widely believed to be fixed products of divine creation, but since the mid-19th century, evolution by natural selection has been established by the scientific community as an empirical scientific fact.
Any such debate is universally considered religious, not scientific, by professional scientific organizations worldwide: in the scientific community, evolution is accepted as fact, and efforts to sustain the traditional view are universally regarded as pseudoscience. While the controversy has a long history, today it has retreated to be mainly over what constitutes good science education, with the politics of creationism primarily focusing on the teaching of creationism in public education. Among majority-Christian countries, the debate is most prominent in the United States, where it may be portrayed as part of a culture war. Parallel controversies also exist in some other religious communities, such as the more fundamentalist branches of Judaism and Islam. In Europe and elsewhere, creationism is less widespread (notably, the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion both accept evolution), and there is much less pressure to teach it as fact. (Full article...)
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Part of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine was assembled after his death by Babbage's son, using parts found in his laboratory. The brass parts were machined by the toolmaker Joseph Clement. Babbage never completed his difference engine, partly due to problems with friction and machining accuracy, but also because he kept changing the design. Henry Provost Babbage inherited the pieces following his father's death in 1871, and some years later in 1879 he assembled several working sections of the full machine. Possibly as many as seven assembled sections exist. This portion, in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science of the University of Cambridge, demonstrates how the addition and carry mechanism works.
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 -
James Clerk Maxwell FRS FRSE (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism achieved the "second great unification in physics", where the first one had been realised by Isaac Newton.
With the publication of "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" in 1865, Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light. He proposed that light is an undulation in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. The unification of light and electrical phenomena led to his prediction of the existence of radio waves. Maxwell is also regarded as a founder of the modern field of electrical engineering. (Full article...)
Selected anniversaries
- 1555 – Death of Georg Agricola, German scientist (b. 1490)
- 1574 – Discovery of the Juan Fernández Islands off Chile
- 1652 – Death of Jan Brożek, Polish mathematician, physician, and astronomer (b. 1585)
- 1859 – Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species is first offered for sale, in London, England
- 1931 – Birth of Revaz Dogonadze, Georgian scientist (d. 1985)
- 1970 – Death of Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Indian physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1888)
- 1988 – In Palmdale, California, the first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is revealed
- 1996 – Death of Abdus Salam, Pakistani physicist and Nobel laureate (b. 1926)
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General images
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Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought iron Pillar of Delhi. (from Science in the ancient world) -
Schematics of the Antikythera mechanism (from Science in the ancient 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 19th-century portrait of Pliny the Elder (from Science in classical antiquity) -
Self trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir's treatise on mechanical devices, c. 850 (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) -
Mesopotamian clay tablet-letter from 2400 BC, Louvre (from King of Lagash, found at Girsu) (from Science in the ancient world) -
Page from the Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals) by Al-Jahiz. Ninth century (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Modern copy of al-Idrisi's 1154 Tabula Rogeriana, upside-down, north at top (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) -
Portrait of Johannes Kepler, one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science (from Scientific Revolution) -
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) -
Ptolemaic model of the spheres for Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Georg von Peuerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum, 1474. (from Scientific Revolution) -
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 Abbasid Caliphate, 750–1261 (and later in Egypt) at its height, c. 850 (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
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The first treatise about optics by Johannes Kepler, Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur (1604) (from Scientific Revolution) -
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Isaac Newton's Principia developed the first set of unified scientific laws. (from Scientific Revolution) -
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) -
Surviving fragment of the first World Map of Piri Reis (1513) (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
A mosaic depicting Plato's Academy, from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii (1st century AD) (from Science in classical antiquity) -
Title page from The Sceptical Chymist, a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661 (from Scientific Revolution) -
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George Trebizond's Latin translation of Ptolemy's Almagest (c. 1451) (from Science in classical antiquity) -
Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th-century portrait (from Science in the ancient world)
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Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (right) in Athanasius Kircher, La Chine ... Illustrée, Amsterdam, 1670 (from Scientific Revolution) -
Omar Khayyam's "Cubic equation and intersection of conic sections" (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
A page from al-Khwarizmi's Algebra (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Detail showing columns of glyphs from a portion of the 2nd century AD 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 AD. The other columns visible are glyphs from the Epi-Olmec script. (from Science in the ancient 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) -
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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) -
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Quince, cypress, and sumac trees, in Zakariya al-Qazwini's 13th century Wonders of Creation (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
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Diagram from William Gilbert's De Magnete, a pioneering 1600 work of experimental science (from Scientific Revolution) -
Apollonius wrote a comprehensive study of conic sections in the Conics. (from Science in classical antiquity) -
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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) -
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The physician Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine" (from Science in classical antiquity) -
Ibn Sina teaching the use of drugs. 15th-century Great Canon of Avicenna (from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
Islamic expansion:under Muhammad, 622–632under Rashidun caliphs, 632–661under Umayyad caliphs, 661–750(from Science in the medieval Islamic world) -
An Egyptian practice of treating migraine in ancient Egypt (from Science in the ancient world) -
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The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666. (from Scientific Revolution) -
The physical exercise chart; a painting on silk depicting calisthenics; unearthed in 1973 in Hunan, China, from the 2nd-century BC Western Han burial site of Mawangdui, Tomb Number 3 (from Science in the ancient world) -
Scholar Nersi with Anahita in Persia (from Science in the ancient world) -
Diagram of the Antikythera mechanism, an analog astronomical calculator (from Science in classical antiquity)
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