GEC 007

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY and SOCIETY

ALDE, ANNIESKA M. READING ASSIGNMENT #1

BS PSYCHOLOGY 1-A AUGUST 22, 2019

WHEN DID SCIENCE BEGIN?

Everybody knows when science began. In modern times, since the Renaissance, theory plus
experiment and observation have been crucial to science. Since science is in earliest records from
history indicate that 3,000 years before Christ, ancient Egyptians already had reasonably sophisticated
medical practices but it was trial and error. Egyptian doctors would try one remedy, and if it worked,
they would continue to use it. If a remedy they tried didn’t work, the patient might die. Egyptian
doctors knew nothing about germs. Egyptian doctors would feed the patient seeds from a flowering
plant called the poppy to relieve the patient’s pain. Poppy seeds contain both morphine and codeine,
which are excellent pain-relieving drugs still used today.

As far as historians can tell, the first true scientists were the ancient Greeks. Aristotle told us that
Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were the first to investigate natural phenomenas. The Greeks
made plenty of inferences from observations, step-by-step descriptions of how they happen. This shows
that the Greeks understood the conceptual framework for scientific experiment. They were concerned
with eclipses, lightning and earthquakes, but you cannot set up easily without danger experiments. Even
in just the composition of material objects and hypotheses, there is no direct connection between
theory and observation has been demonstrated. What DO ancient Milesians have in common with
modern scientists? "It was a way of THINKING, not a way of DOING".

Ancient Greece gave us many more notable scientists. The first one is Aristotle, often called the
father of the life sciences. The last Greek scientist named Ptolemy, studied heavens and a complete
description of planets and stars. Many scientists proposed many ideas trying to explain the natural
world, those were debated. Scientific progress depends not only on scientists, but it also depends on
government and culture. MONKS created large volumes of scientific observations and speculations,
which came to be known as encyclopedias. Science is based on the notion that the world works
according to rational laws that do not change.

I personally think that science enjoyed its greatest advancement during the time of Sir Isaac Newton,
specifically as a means of the best way to learn about God was by thorough Bible study. Robert Boyle,
the founder of modern chemistry, was a contemporary of Newton. He did experiments with gases,
formulating laws that still used today in chemistry. Louis Pasteur, study of rocks became known as
geology. Michael Faraday’s experiments and ideas about electricity. Maxwell is known as the founder of
modern physics. Electricity and magnetism are both different aspects of the same phenomenon, now
called electromagnetism. Some thought that there was not much new to be learned.
 The three Important Figures in Quantum Mechanics; Max Planck, father of quantum mechanics was
the first to propose that energy came in small “packets.”. Albert Einstein used Plancks idea to develop
an explanation for one of the most puzzling effects in physics, known as the photoelectric effect. Niels
Bohr used Plancks idea to develop a mathematical description of the atom, allowed scientists to
understand experiments they were previously unable to understand. Einstein developed a new way of
looking at light, matter, and gravity. Quantum mechanics have become the guiding principles of science
today. Science is constantly uncovering new ideas and new ways of looking at things.

Scientists make theories, as do all kinds of people. But their theories are abstract that assumed the
world is not the way it appears, related to our perceptions of the world. Pictures and songs seem wired
into our brains, making us human. But science may not be wired in, and if not, may be a Greek artifact.
The Greeks may have invented truth. Medicine is a point of difference: ours is based on science, but
ancient medicine was based more on philosophy. Greek science unlike medicine was interested less in
describing process, more in producing a theory which would explain everything. They were good at
measuring and at biology, but they often leaped from a few facts to an all-encompassing theory. Well,
self-awareness and self-conscious analysis of our own way of thinking is WHEN DID SCIENCE BEGIN.