history of science

1. History of Science
Kuanyshbay Akerke

2. History of Science…
Studies the change of natural knowledge claims over
time and also the causes of these changes.
A vast field (Plato-NATO) embracing many different
scientific traditions, from Algebra to Zoology.
“Today’s science is tomorrow’s history of science.”
“Science dynamics.”

3. It all starts with the Greeks
The Ancient Greeks are seen, in the west, as our
intellectual forefathers. From Greece was born
philosophy, drama, western artistic aesthetics,
geometry, etc., etc., etc.
Theology was never an important aspect of Greek
thought and Orthodoxy was practically anathema.

4. Ancient Greek society did not have a permanent
priestly class that imposed dogma.
Greek Gods & Goddesses were NOT omnipotent
nor omniscient.

5. Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Tutor to Alex the Great
Scala Natura
His philosophy later adopted by
the Christian West
Founded the Lyceum, (peripatetic
school) which emphasized natural
philosophy.

6. Aristotelian natural philosophy

7. Aristotelian Cosmology
Sublunar realm:
Natural place and natural motion
Generation and corruption
Four elements: earth, water, air, and fire
Cold, hot, most, dry, affinity and opposition
Heavens:
Uniform circular motion
Perfect and incorruptable
Quintessence or aether

9. The sub-lunar realm

10. Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places
Emphasized the effects of climate and other geographical
factors on human health.
Climate is a primary influence, but human institutions could
have a moderating effect.
Overall, however, the relationship between health and
lifestyle is under the direct influence, if not the control, of
airs, waters, and places.

11. Hippocratic medicine

12. Scientific Revolutions

13. Scientific Revolution(s)
The Scientific Revolution is a term commonly referring to
the transformation of thought about nature through which
the Aristotelian tradition was replaced by so-called
"modern" science.
Most see it as a series of events focused in the period 16th
and 17th century or, more precisely, from 1543 (De
Revolutionibus of Copernicus) to 1687 (Principia of
Newton). Others grant it some status from 1300 to 1800.
Still others, see revolutions all around, Glorious, American,
French, Industrial, Chemical, Darwininan, Freudian,
Russian, Quantum, and Plate Tectonics.
Revolution, revolutions, or evolution of ideas, it depends on
who you read.

14. Nicholas Copernicus
(1473 – 1543)

15. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
De humani corporis fabrica…, 1543
On the fabric of the human body

16. William Harvey (1578 –1657)
and the circulation of the blood
De Motu Cordis
1628

17. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Natural Philosopher
Government Official
Lord Chancellor
Novum Organon
Great Instauration
New Atlantis
Compass, Gunpowder,
Printing
The ant, the spider, the
bee

18. William Gilbert
De Magnete (1600)

19. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Kinematics and Astronomy
Telescope
Sunspots, Phases of Venus, Lunar craters, Moons
of Jupiter, Milky way made of stars
Support of Heliocentrism
Experiments with falling bodies
Mathematics of motion

20. Galileo explains his discovery to the Pope

21. René Descartes (1596-1650)
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy
Analytic geometry
Le monde (1633)
L’Homme (1637)
Discours de la Méthode (1637)
Principia philosophia (1644)
Les Passions de l’âme (1649)
Dynamics

22. Evangelista Torricelli’s Experiment (1644)
Nature does not “abhor a vacuum” and the air has weight.


23. Blaise Pascal and Florin Périer
On September 19, 1648, Florin Périer and some friends perform the
Torricelli experiment on top of Puy de Dôme in central France. The
height of the mercury column is 85 mm less than in Clermont-Ferrand
at the base of the mountain, about 1000 meters below.

24. Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
Experimental Method, Natural Philosophy
Air Pump
Skeptical Chymist (1661)
Boyle’s Law
Royal Society of London
Public Verification of Science

25. An experiment on a bird in the air pump, by
Joseph Wright

26. Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Theory of Light
Theory of Motion
Theory of Gravity
Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica
(1667)
Dynamics
Alchemy
Theology
Master of the Mint
Newtonian World System

27. Mechanical Philosophy
Natural law
Reductionistic
Mathematical
Materialistic
Anti-teleological
Inductive
Observation
Experimental method
Clockwork universe

28. Herbert Butterfield (1949)
Since the Scientific Revolution overturned the authority in
science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient
world
Since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic
philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics
It outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and
reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the realm
of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within
the system of medieval Christendom.
Historian Alexandre Koyre had first used the term
Scientific Revolution in 1943 when he called it, “the
most profound revolution achieved or suffered by the
human mind.”

29. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature.
The removal of animistic, organic assumptions about the
cosmos constituted the death of nature—the most far-
reaching effect of the Scientific Revolution.
Because nature was now viewed as a system of dead, inert
particles moved by external, rather than inherent forces,
the mechanical framework itself could legitimate the
manipulation of nature.
Moreover, as a conceptual framework, the mechanical order
had associated with it a framework of values based on
(masculine) power, fully compatible with the directions
taken by commercial capitalism.

30. Thomas Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
What are scientific revolutions all about?
1. The community's rejection of a time-honored scientific
theory in favor of another incompatible (or
incommensurable) with it.
2. A shift in the problems available for scientific scrutiny
and the standards of legitimate problem solving.
3. Each involved a transformation of the scientific
imagination and worldview.
4. Each involved heated controversy.
5. Each was followed by a period of “normal science”
6. Examples: Copernicus, Newton, Lavosier, Einstein.

31. Is there a “Post-normal” science?
'Post-Normal Science', a mode of scientific problem-solving
appropriate to policy issues where facts are uncertain, values
are in dispute, stakes are high and decisions are urgent.
Today’s blogs are becoming the equivalent of printing which
empowered the Protestant revolution against the Church.
Scientific elites vs. the extended “peer-to-peer” community with
its new technological base,” the internet.
Wikipedia, post-normal science
Opens more of science to the democratic process.
Problems: Critics are not usually researchers.
Junk science.
Conspiracy theorists.
Needed: ethics in science, open data, and reform of peer review.