History of Science and Technology Midterm

Science

The history of science is really the history of ideas — how people explained nature.

Scholar-Craftsman Debate

Scholars = knowledge for its own sake; Craftsmen = use knowledge for practical things.

Early Civilizations

First science ideas came from river civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China).

Early Mathematics and Astronomy

They measured land, counted crops, and made calendars to predict floods.

Thales

All things come from water.

Anaximander

Added fire; believed life started in water.

Pythagoreans

Believed numbers and geometry rule nature.

Heraclitus

Everything changes.

Zeno

Paradoxes (motion impossible).

Plato

Truth comes from thinking, not senses (Cave Allegory).

Aristotle

Studied nature logically; 4 Causes (material, formal, efficient, final) and 4 Qualities (hot, cold, wet, dry).

Euclid

Created geometry rules.

Archimedes

Studied levers, water, and math (pi).

Ptolemy

Wrote Almagest (astronomy) & Geographia (maps).

Galen

Discovered arteries carry blood, not air.

Al-Khwarizmi

Created algebra, introduced zero.

Charlemagne + Alcuin

Made schools → 7 Liberal Arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, math, geometry, astronomy, music).

Thomas Aquinas

Mixed Aristotle's ideas with religion (faith + reason).

Roger Bacon

Believed in experiments.

William of Ockham

Simplest explanation is best → Ockham's Razor.

Alchemy

Early chemistry, but mixed with magic.

Humanism

People studied old Greek/Roman books; used reason to improve life.

Printing Press

Gutenberg, 1448 → spread books & knowledge fast; literacy ↑.

Copernicus

On the Revolutions (1543); said Earth orbits the Sun (heliocentric).

Tycho Brahe

Mixed model (Earth center, Sun orbits Earth, planets orbit Sun).

Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion

1. Planets move in ellipses. 2. Move faster near the Sun. 3. Time² = Distance³ (mathematical rule).

Galileo

Telescope; saw Jupiter's moons, sunspots, Venus phases → heavens not perfect; supported Copernicus → trouble with Church.

Paracelsus

Used chemistry in medicine (3 elements: salt, mercury, sulfur).

Vesalius

Dissected bodies → corrected Galen's mistakes (Fabric of the Human Body).

Scientific Method

Led to the question: How do we know what's true?

Francis Bacon

Observation & experimentation (induction).

René Descartes

Logic & reason (deduction); "I think, therefore I am."

Isaac Newton

Principia Mathematica (1687): 3 Laws of Motion: 1. Inertia (objects stay still/moving unless acted on). 2. F = ma (force = mass × acceleration). 3. Every action has an equal opposite reaction.

Universal Gravitation

Same laws work in space + Earth.

William Harvey

Blood circulation.

Robert Boyle

Sceptical Chemist (1661); Boyle's Law (pressure ↓ = volume ↑).

Mechanical Philosophy

Universe = machine; atoms in motion (Descartes, Gassendi).

Microscope

Hooke & Leeuwenhoek discovered cells & microbes.

Diderot

Encyclopédie (spread all knowledge).

Adam Smith

Economy works by natural laws ("invisible hand").

James Hutton

Theory of the Earth → Earth changes slowly over time (uniformitarianism).

Joseph Black

Discovered carbon dioxide.

Cavendish

Discovered hydrogen.

Priestley

Discovered oxygen ("dephlogisticated air").

Lavoisier

Named oxygen, disproved phlogiston, Elements of Chemistry (1789) → modern chemistry.