Science History

This section will deal with a very brief  history of science since Renaissance and Reformation which led to scientific and industrial revolution.

Early Scientific ideas:

                                                         Before 1609,the science was mainly based on the ideas proposed by Greek philosopher Aristotle. By 340 B.C ,he recorded his ideas about the universe,matter and living organisms. In his book "On the heavens" he put forward the arguments that earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. However, he believed that the earth was stationary and that the sun,the moon, the planets, and the stars moved in circular orbits around the earth. He said that the earth was at the center of the universe. This idea was elaborated by Ptolemy in the second century A.D. a complete cosmological model. Aristotle also gave his theory about elements_fire,water,soil and air. He believed in spontaneous generation of life. In 1514, Polish priest, Nicholas Copernicus proposed the idea that the sun was stationary at the center and the earth and the planets moved in circular orbit around the sun.

                       In the year 1609, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei and  the Germans scientist  Johannes Kepler started observing the night sky through a telescope. Galileo developed the telescope. He found that everything was not revolving around the earth. Kepler suggested that the planets moved in circle but in elliptical orbit. 

                                 Galileo is considered to be more than any other single, person for birth of modern science.He was one of the first to argue that man could hope to understand how the world work, and that we could do this by observing the real world. He supported Copernicus theory that planets orbit the sun, by his observation. This annoyed the Aristotelian professors and the Catholic Church. They kept him under house arrest for long time and he also died in the same condition. He did  experiments on falling bodies and proved, that all bodies _ light or heavy _ fall at the same velocity. He wrote two important books_ "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems"and "Two New Sciences". The latter led to the genesis of modern physics.

The explanation of Kepler's theory was provided by Newton through his law of universal gravitation. He published his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" in the year 1687. The book is considered to be the most important single work ever published in the physical sciences. Newton analyzed the motion of bodies in space and time. He postulated the law of universal gravitation according to which the body in the universe attracted toward every other body by a force that was stronger the more massive the  bodies and the closer they were to each other. This force also caused the bodies to fall to the ground. Newton gave three other laws of physics:law of inertia, law of forces and the law of action and reaction. Newton also developed calculus to determine the motion of bodies thought mathematical calculations. Newton is considered to be the most influential person over the modern history of man. Issac Newton was the first scientist ever to be knighted.

                         One the theories which revolutionized the idea of space and time was the theory of relativity , put forward by Albert Einstein a German Jewish scientist_by 1905. The fundamental postulate of the theory of relativity was the laws of science should be the same for all freely moving observers, no matter what their speed. This idea has remarkable consequences. Perhaps the best known are the equivalence of mass and energy, summed up in the Einstein's famous equation E=mc^2 (where E is the energy,m is the mass and c is the speed of light),and the law that nothing may travel faster than speed of light. Einstein is considered to be the greatest scientist of the twentieth century. His theory later led to development of atomic bomb.

                  One of the most important work in the biological sciences was published by Gegor Mendel, an Austrian monk—in 1865. He put forward the theory of hereditary and gave two laws of inheritance. He is called the father of Genetics. The theory which revolutionized the science of biology and influenced all the fields of sciences and society was Charles Darwin's theory of Evolution. His first book"On the Origin of Species" published in 1869 gave the idea of natural selection leading to origin of new kinds of animals. His idea raised a heated controversy but a large number of scientists substantiated the theory through their experiments. Almost all the biologists are impressed by his theory.

         In later half of the twentieth century, James D. Watson and F.H. Crick proposed double stranded model of nucleic DNA in 1953. This theory or model later strongly influenced the development of knowledge in the field of molecular biology. The development started since that led to the the genetic engineering of organisms and cloning of animals.

Double stranded model of nucleic acidic DNA.