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The History of Science Portal

An 18th century astrolabe

The content of science, as well as the meaning of the very idea of science, has continually evolved since the rise of modern science and before. The history of science is concerned with the intellectual paths that led to our present knowledge as well as those that were abandoned (and thus overlaps with the history of ideas, history of philosophy and intellectual history), and seeks to explain past beliefs—even those now considered erroneous—in their historical, cultural and intellectual contexts. It also forms the foundation of the philosophy of science and the sociology of science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and society, and is closely related to the history of technology.

Periodization in the historiography of science is usually oriented around the Scientific Revolution that culminated in the work of Isaac Newton. In this scheme, science (or more precisely, natural philosophy) before Copernicus was pre-modern science. European and Islamic science from antiquity to the 16th century was primarily derived from the work of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers (though historians now recognize the significant influence of Chinese knowledge as well); it included alchemy, astrology, and other subjects no longer considered scientific, as well as the precursors of the modern sciences. Science (still in the form of natural philosophy) from roughly the late 16th century until the early- to mid-19th century was early-modern science; the birth of the experimental method in the 17th and 18th centuries is often considered a central event in the history of science. The 19th century saw the professionalization and secularization of science and the creation of independent scientific disciplines; modern science can denote science since this period (in distinction to early-modern), all science since Newton (in distinction to pre-modern), or simply science as practiced now.

1579 drawing of the great chain of being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana

The Great Chain of Being is a classical and western medieval conception of the order of the universe, whose chief characteristic is a strict hierarchal system.

It is a conception of the world's structure that was accepted, and unquestioned, by most educated men from the time of Lucretius until the Copernican revolution and the ultimate flowering of the Renaissance. The Chain of Being is composed of a great number of hierarchal links, from the most base and foundational elements up to the very highest perfection - in other words, God, or the Prime Mover.

Moving on up the chain, each succeeding link contains the positive attributes of the previous link, and adds (at least) one other. Rocks possess only existence; the next link up, plants, possess life and existence. Beasts add not only motion, but appetite as well. Man is a special instance in this conception. He is both mortal flesh, as those below him, and also spirit, like the angels and God above.

The Great Chain of Being was central to work in natural history before the time of Linnaeus and Buffon.

Selected picture

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby which depicts a recreation of one of Robert Boyle's air pump experiments. It shows the reactions of a group of onlookers to an experiment performed by a natural philosopher in which a bird is deprived of oxygen. Scientific curiosity overcomes concern for the bird. The central figure looks out of the picture as if inviting the viewers participation in the outcome.

Selected inventor

Vannevar Bush (March 11, 1890 – June 30, 1974) was an American engineer and science administrator, known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb, and the idea of the memex—seen as a pioneering concept for the World Wide Web. A leading figure in the development of the military-industrial complex and the military funding of science in the United States, Bush was a prominent policymaker and public intellectual ("the patron saint of American science") during World War II and the ensuing Cold War. Through his public career, Bush was a proponent of democratic technocracy and of the centrality of technological innovation and entrepreneurship for both economic and geopolitical security.

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