History of science facts for kids
The history of science is the study of the historical development of science and scientific knowledge. The English word scientist is relatively recent – first coined by William Whewell in the 19th century. Previously, people investigating nature called themselves "natural philosophers".
Science is a body of knowledge about the natural world, produced by scientists who observe, explain, and predict real world phenomena. Historiography of science, in contrast, often draws on the historical methods.
Facts about the natural world have been described since classical antiquity. Ancient Greece is perhaps most famous for its contributions to astronomy and mathematics. Aristarchus of Samos came up with the idea of the Sun at the centre of what we now call the Solar system many centuries before Galileo. Others, like Thales and Aristotle were interested in the natural world.
Scientific methods have been used since the Middle Ages (Roger Bacon), but the dawn of modern science is often traced back to the early modern period and in particular to the scientific revolution that took place in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. Important figures in the development of modern science include Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Charles Darwin, Wilhelm Roux and Albert Einstein.
Scientific methods are so fundamental to modern science that some consider earlier inquiries into nature to be pre-scientific. Traditionally, historians of science have defined science sufficiently broadly to include those inquiries.
The natural sciences are these:
There are various applied sciences which depend on one of more of the natural sciences. Medicine is an example.
Related pages
- Innovation
- Scientific method
- History of astronomy
- History of mathematics
- Medical Renaissance
- Four Great Inventions
Images for kids
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The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BC) from ancient Egypt
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Clay models of animal livers dating between the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE, found in the royal palace at Mari in what is now Syria
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Star list with distance information, Uruk (Iraq), 320-150 BC, the list gives each constellation, the number of stars and the distance information to the next constellation in ells
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Ancient India was an early leader in metallurgy, as evidenced by the wrought-iron Pillar of Delhi.
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Lui Hui's Survey of sea island
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A modern replica of Han dynasty polymath scientist Zhang Heng's seismometer of 132 CE
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One of the oldest surviving fragments of Euclid's Elements, found at Oxyrhynchus and dated to c. 100 CE.
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The frontispiece of the Vienna Dioscurides, which shows a set of seven famous physicians
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15th-century manuscript of Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine.
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Statue of Roger Bacon at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
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Galileo Galilei, father of modern science.
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Isaac Newton initiated classical mechanics in physics.
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Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, the first modern work of economics
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Alessandro Volta demonstrates the first electrical cell to Napoleon in 1801.
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In mid-July 1837 Charles Darwin started his "B" notebook on the Transmutation of Species, and on page 36 wrote "I think" above his first evolutionary tree.
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Einstein's official portrait after receiving the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics
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The atomic bomb ushered in "Big Science" in physics.
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Watson and Crick used many aluminium templates like this one, which is the single base Adenine (A), to build a physical model of DNA in 1953.
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Alfred Wegener in Greenland in the winter of 1912–13. He is most remembered as the originator of continental drift hypothesis by suggesting in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth.
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See also
In Spanish: Historia de la ciencia para niños
