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24th February 2012, 05:13 PM | #1 |
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When did science start?
This is something for you philosophers of science out there.
Modern science is typically said to have started in the 16th and 17th centuries during the scientific revolution. However, there was clearly research earlier, in the Middle Ages (both in Europe and the Islamic world) as well as in the ancient world. Not just ancient Greece, but also in places like Babylonia and Egypt (though heavily mixed with superstition). Carl Sagan talked quite a bit about the experiments and theories of the pre-Socratic philosophers in Cosmos (easily found on Youtube). He also referred to Lucretius as the first popularizer of science. Are these ancient thinkers properly referred to as scientists or not? If what they did was not science, what was it? Certainly many of the questions they tried to answer would be considered scientific today. That itself is not enough though, as many of the questions religions try to answer are scientific questions. |
24th February 2012, 05:20 PM | #2 |
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I don't think that this is an answerable question, because no-one is going to agree on what science is.
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24th February 2012, 05:29 PM | #3 |
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The components of observation and replication imply the need for accurate recording of data, and true writing goes back a long time. (Sumeria?)
If they used the scientific method, then why wouldn't they be scientists? |
24th February 2012, 05:34 PM | #4 |
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IIRC, the first scientist known by name was called Imhotep, an ancient Egyptian (obviously), who is recorded as designing one of the pyramids. IMO, an architect is a valid nomination for an early scientist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep
As far as science itself goes, it is highly debatable what constitutes science. My suggestion would be that it started long before any of the early civilizations with what might be called 'Genetic Engineering'. Our very ancient ancestors were selectively breeding animals. I think it is reasonable to believe that they learned how to get the best results by a process of experimentation. Both of these suggestions are open to debate, challenge, discussion etc. As was stated by the previous poster, a lot depends on how you define science. |
24th February 2012, 05:39 PM | #5 |
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24th February 2012, 05:39 PM | #6 |
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I think this question, while at first interesting, is really just one of semantics. Before the scientific revolution people asked scientific questions, and sometimes answered them with reason and experiment, and sometimes not. But the methodology wasn't really developed, and that's why progress was so haphazard, and why mixed in with that progress was so much superstitious thinking.
There's a certain sense in which science is being done when you give a name to an animal species, a constellation in the night sky, or a type of rain. In that same sense recording the motion of the planets is science, and more deeply, so is building a theoretical framework to explain that motion. But once you being that last step, lacking the full tools of the scientific method, it's difficult to separate the true framework that explains observations, from the false. Nevertheless, the ancients certainly had some of those tools, and used them some of the time. Which suggests to me that the best answer is that sometimes they did science, but they didn't know how to tell the difference between science and pseudoscience. |
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24th February 2012, 05:51 PM | #7 |
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Humes Fork - Once again, rather merely asking a question in an OP, do us the courtesy of expressing your own opinion at the outset.
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24th February 2012, 05:52 PM | #8 |
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24th February 2012, 06:04 PM | #9 |
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Science started when I gave my Sim his first chemistry set
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24th February 2012, 06:07 PM | #10 |
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24th February 2012, 06:12 PM | #11 |
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When the first human being said: "I think such and such phenomena is due to such and such cause. What would be a good experiment to find out whether or not this is true?" And then went ahead and did the experiment, and reached an objective, verifiable, repeatable conclusion.
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24th February 2012, 06:13 PM | #12 |
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24th February 2012, 06:46 PM | #13 |
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The same time curiosity started.
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24th February 2012, 07:08 PM | #14 |
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Well one of the science of the discworld books makes the claim. In that case it is based on an assertion that it isn't really science unless you have peers who are also doing science.
There is some validity to this assertion since otherwise the system tends to boil down to noted sage says X and people belive it based on the reputation of the sage rather than the evidence presented. |
24th February 2012, 08:23 PM | #15 |
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Democritus learned it from some strange man down in the creek.
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24th February 2012, 09:26 PM | #16 |
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There's a book called A People's History of Science that kind of addresses this question, pointing out for example that even hunter-gatherer existence requires a great deal of practical knowledge rivaling present-day naturalists.
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24th February 2012, 10:16 PM | #17 |
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I would agree with that... even the simplest weapons required some of the skills of science in terms of observing what worked and rejecting the poorer choices.
Survival in terms of figuring out where food and water was probably depended on oral transmission and processing of data. |
24th February 2012, 11:04 PM | #18 |
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25th February 2012, 05:43 AM | #19 |
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Another reason for the lack of progress was the relative lack of usefulness of the results of science. It all took off in a large way at the time of the industrial revolution when the benefits of scientific knowledge became available to other disciplines such as engineering and architecture. War helped as well
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25th February 2012, 06:03 AM | #20 |
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25th February 2012, 07:18 AM | #21 | ||||
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Originally Posted by azzthom
Originally Posted by azzthom
Originally Posted by Roboramma
Originally Posted by Roboramma
Originally Posted by Lowpro
Originally Posted by MG1962
Originally Posted by Halfcentaur
Originally Posted by Gazpacho
Originally Posted by crimresearch
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25th February 2012, 01:18 PM | #22 |
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Based on what I found on Amazon, the one-star reviewers all criticize the same chapter, and otherwise miss the author's point.
If the mention of homeopathy triggered a reaction on your part, I can tell you that the book has all of two paragraphs about it and those two paragraphs "praise" it only insofar as it gave "real" medicine a reason to purge the quackery in its own ranks. |
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25th February 2012, 02:15 PM | #23 |
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25th February 2012, 02:39 PM | #24 |
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Cooking or earlier.
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25th February 2012, 02:43 PM | #25 |
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25th February 2012, 02:57 PM | #26 |
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Only the ones that signal that your perception of the book have nothing to do with its content.
Asserting that something is a straw man doesn't make it so. The fact that the book addresses the socio-historical aspects of science doesn't make it a "crackpot book". Where did Gazpacho claim that hunter-gathers were stupid? Where was this suggested? |
25th February 2012, 03:17 PM | #27 |
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25th February 2012, 03:59 PM | #28 |
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I'm certain that we all know that for most of mankind's existence, the world around us was explained by invoking gods, spirits and similar fictitious entities. Nevertheless, I think it's likely that many individuals in prehistoric times sought natural explanations for the things they saw and experienced and they probably came up with a few good ideas. Of course such musings died with the individual and are not documented.
Within recorded history, gods and spirits dominated the thinking of the ancient world and only occasional references to natural explanations can be found. The first systematic and persistent efforts for natural explanations are documented to have been made by the Ionian Greeks, sometimes called the Ionian Enlightenment. Was this the first real science or were the musings of those earlier individuals real science? Or does it necessitate experimentation (e.g. Archimedes) to call it science? I guess that brings us back to how we define science, as someone has already said. |
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25th February 2012, 04:20 PM | #29 |
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25th February 2012, 04:33 PM | #30 |
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Perhaps it happened earlier:-
When the race moved from hunter gatherers to farming, observation, hypothesis, prediction and experiment will have been used. This must have happened in various areas such as heredity, fertilisation and stock keeping. Similar scientific processes must have occurred with architecture, rafting and finally sailing. |
25th February 2012, 04:39 PM | #31 |
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In Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson, in a fictional setting with (mostly) real characters, explores early development of science as it started with people who called themselves Natural Philosophers in the mid 1600s.
Of course, it's like saying, "What was the first Rock and Roll song?" Still, he is correct that this was a very important time as important issues were worked out. Prior to then there was little, if any experimentation, and it was all just trying to reason with geometric analysis how the world worked. Oh, one of the major things in the book is the development of calculus to handle things geometry couldn't. So, yes, it is reasonable that he says, "Modern science is typically said to have started in the 16th and 17th centuries during the scientific revolution." Some of you knee-jerk way too quickly. |
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25th February 2012, 05:26 PM | #32 |
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I don't think that's an unreasonable way to look at it.
On the other hand, when they planted their seeds they probably invoked the fertility god and the wind god for their sails, etc. When asked how they accomplished something, their explanation likely would have included the intervention of that god. So the question is: Is it science only when natural explanations are believed or is the mere use of experience (regardless of beliefs) that makes it science? Mankind has been aware of how some things work for a very long time. I'm not sure that constitutes science. |
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25th February 2012, 06:23 PM | #33 |
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25th February 2012, 07:28 PM | #34 |
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Ha! Good question. It seems to me that they were so overwhelmed with everything they perceived, that they used gods and spirits to deal with and explain everything around them including their own being. They probably even attributed their own thoughts to gods/spirits talking to them.
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25th February 2012, 08:19 PM | #35 |
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We have so little data from that time period and I wince every time I see some artifact being displayed and given a religious slant.
I've recently been drawn to the Lascaux cave paintings site by the excellent blog of Dan Chure. To me, they are beautiful depictions of animal life but I fail to see any representation of religion. Another reason I doubt religion was so oppressive then was that they were too busy just staying alive. The economy wouldn't support a useless religious section. I am not saying they didn't ascribe certain aspects of life to gods, just that the god belief wouldn't have got in the way of some sort of scientific process. Of course, if my hypothesis is correct, then religion was caused by the scientific method. As soon as there was a surplus to the economy from farming, the hucksters and shamans could move in. Much as we see today. |
25th February 2012, 09:07 PM | #36 |
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We have stone age people around us today. To my knowledge, they all have rather rich and complex religious beliefs. It does not seem that these religions are necessarily oppressive; they are simply universally accepted. For Example. It seems to me that this is how our ancestors dealt with the mysteries around them. In my view we have little basis for religion today and it's persistence is perverse -- but that's for another thread.
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25th February 2012, 09:20 PM | #37 |
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25th February 2012, 11:09 PM | #38 |
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I agree. That's something I recall hearing repeatedly, in school and other places. It's true that science (the attempt to answer questions about the physical universe) goes back much further. But that kind of science included such things as alchemy and astrology. The statement in the OP doesn't refer to the origins of science. It refers to the origins of modern science. And what I was taught when I was growing up is that modern science began around the 1600s. So the statement in the OP, that modern science is typically said to have started in the 16th and 17th centuries, seems quite reasonable to me. That is what was typically said by my science teachers. |
26th February 2012, 05:22 AM | #39 |
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That was basically my point: until the development of modern science what we would currently consider scientific thinking and well developed and well supported scientific ideas were mixed up with what we would currently consider to be pseudoscience, and in general the people who developed them couldn't tell the difference.
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26th February 2012, 06:55 AM | #40 |
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Of course that's very narrow, but not for the reason you pointed out, but because there were existing theories that used that criteria before the 20th century. This is like saying primates only began to exist when humans started making taxonomic classifications.
And why Darwin doesn't pass the falsification critaria? Is there anything in his theory that isn't falsifiable? |
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