A Layman’s History of Science

Martyn Shuttleworth, in Explorable: Thinking Outside the Box, writes, “At the time when the two great cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Persia were seeking dominance and fighting wars at Thermopylae and Platea, it is easy to forget that these two cultures also had a deep mutual respect, and traded ideas and knowledge.

“Unsurprisingly, and fittingly, our history of the scientific method will start here, although we must point out that knowledge knows no boundaries. Whilst Babylonian, Indian and Egyptian astronomers, physicians and mathematicians developed some empirical ideas, the Greeks were the first to develop what we recognize as the scientific method.” [1]

She continues, “Aristotle, regarded as the father of science, was the first to realize the importance of empirical measurement, believing that knowledge could only be gained by building upon what is already known.

“Measurement and observation, the foundations upon which science is built, were Aristotle’s contribution. He proposed the idea of induction as a tool for gaining knowledge, and understood that abstract thought and reasoning must be supported by real world findings.

“He applied his methods to almost everything, from poetry and politics to astronomy and natural history. His ‘proto-scientific method’ involved making meticulous observations about everything.

“To study the natural world, he scrutinized over 500 species and, in a treatise about politics, he studied the constitutions of 158 Greek city-states, a mammoth undertaking and a direct contrast to Plato, whose idea of a perfect republic was based upon his idea of perfection rather than upon existing systems.

Aristotle’s methods can be summed up as follows.

1. Study what others have written about the subject.
2. Look for the general consensus about the subject.
3. Perform a systematic study of everything even partially related to the topic.

This is the first sign of a scientific method, with literature reviews, consensus and measurement.” [1] Aristotle lived from 384-322 B.C., during which times “Babylonian, Indian and Egyptian astronomers, physicians and mathematicians developed some empirical ideas” [3] which may have been proven science but they were not using all of the three steps that Aristotle articulated. Certainly, Shuttleworth’s summation sounds amazingly like Merriam Webster’s definition of the Scientific Method.

“The word science has been around since the days of ancient Rome. It derives from the Latin word scientia, meaning ‘knowledge’ in the widest sense. But the word scientist is much younger–less than two centuries old,” [2] writes Andrew Robinson in THE BLOG:7 Epic Moments In Science History for Huffington Post. To try and share the entire extraordinary history of use of the scientific method would require more time than I am willing to give. I am going to share a few from the list Robinson shares but in less depth so you won’t have to go read his entire article. These are but the opinion of Robinson, not an all inclusive list by any means.

1 Archimedes – “Archimedes lived during the 3rd century BC . . . To the ancient Greek natural philosophers, such as Archimedes, Aristotle, Democritus, Euclid, and Ptolemy, modern science owes much, for example the principles of displacement and flotation, the invention of geometry, the concept of latitude and longitude and the first estimate of the circumference of the Earth, the idea that light travels in straight lines, the perception that matter is made of atoms, and the earliest systematic classification of animals.” [2]

2. Copernicus – “In 1543, on his deathbed, Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres), his heliocentric picture of the solar system with the Earth and other planets revolving around the Sun . . . the Earth was no longer at the centre of the world, as it had been since the time of the Greeks.” [2]

3. “Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier was the founder of modern chemistry, who swept away alchemy by carrying out quantitative chemical experiments. The French revolution, which broke out in the year of publication, eventually led to Lavoisier’s death at the guillotine. ‘Only a moment was required to cut off that head,’ said the great mathematician Joseph Lagrange, ‘and perhaps a century will not be sufficient to produce another like it.’” [2]

4. Ernest Rutherford – Rutherford was the father of nuclear physics. Although best known for his discovery of the atomic nucleus, which is the kernel of much of modern physics, he won his Nobel prize in chemistry, not physics, for discovering the transmutation of the elements. High-energy particle physics, which studies the nature of matter and its origins in the Big Bang, and modern nuclear technology, are but a few examples of his legacy. The depth and breadth of Rutherford’s discoveries in experimental physics were the equal of Einstein’s in theoretical physics.” [2]

5. Carl Linnaeus – “First published in 1735, Systema naturae by Carl Linnaeus organized the entire natural world according to a system of classes, orders, genera, and species.” [2]

Five standouts just do not do Science History justice. There are hundreds, if not thousands, no maybe hundreds of thousands, of additional amazing moments in science to explore. But I will conclude here.

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[1] Martyn Shuttleworth (Aug 18, 2009). “History of the Scientific Method.” Retrieved Jul 20, 2022 from Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/history-of-the-scientific-method

[2] Andrew Robinson, “7 Epic Moments in Science History”, Oct 2, 2012, Updated Dec 2, 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/science-history-book_b_1930089