History of science

The history of science tells how humans have tried to understand the world around them, from ancient times to today. It includes the growth of three main kinds of science: natural, social, and formal.

Early ideas about nature, like alchemy and astrology, began thousands of years ago in places like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. These early thinkers made important discoveries about mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.

Later, during the time of ancient Greece, people tried to explain events in the physical world using natural causes. After the fall of the Roman Empire, much of this knowledge was lost in Western Europe, but it survived in the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. Over time, this knowledge returned to Europe, helping to spark new ways of thinking.

The big change came during the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries. This period brought new ideas and discoveries that changed how people saw the world. Since then, many more discoveries have been made, from the chemical revolution in the 18th century to advances in genetics and physics in the 20th century. These developments show how science has grown and changed over time.

Approaches to history of science

Main article: Historiography of science

Further information: Historiography

The history of science is still being talked about, especially about what counts as science. Some think it is a simple story of progress, but others see it as more complicated.

In the 1900s, studying the history of science became a job with many areas to focus on. Science is done by people from many places, and historians now see their work as part of a worldwide story of sharing and working together.

The connection between science and religion has been described in many ways. For example, the situation with a scientist named Galileo in the 1600s led some to think religion and science clash, but most historians today don’t agree with this idea.

Historians note that trust is important for scientists to agree on what is true. The creation of groups like the Royal Society in 1660, where experiments were checked, was an important moment in science history. Many people, especially women and people of color, were left out of main science groups in the past. Recent historians have worked to find and share the stories of these forgotten contributors. They also study everyday science work like collecting samples and using tools.

Prehistory

Further information: Science in the ancient world, Protoscience, and Alchemy

In prehistoric times, people shared knowledge by talking to each other. For example, they started growing maize for food in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago, even before they could write. Evidence shows that people learned about the stars and the sky long ago.

Before writing, people used stories to share what they knew. These stories sometimes changed to fit new situations. They often talked about the sky, the earth, and sometimes an underworld. Special people, like a medicine man or wise woman, helped with healing and explaining why things happened. Writing later helped people keep and share knowledge more accurately, which helped science grow in ancient times.

Ancient Near East and North East Africa

Further information: Science in the ancient world

The roots of science began in the Ancient Near East and North East Africa around 3000–1200 BCE, in places like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Ancient Egypt

Further information: Egyptian astronomy, Ancient Egyptian mathematics, and Ancient Egyptian medicine

Archaeologists found that the Ancient Egyptians made a counting system and used geometry for building and farming. They made a calendar to follow the seasons and floods. Their ideas about health mixed medical care with rituals.

Number system and geometry

Around 3000 BCE, the Egyptians made a decimal numbering system and used geometry for building and farming. They used shapes like the 3-4-5 right triangle in their buildings.

Disease and healing

Egypt was a place where people studied health for many years. Ancient Egyptian medical texts show ways to treat health problems. They thought diseases came from bad forces and used prayers, rituals, and medicines. These texts show early scientific thinking.

Calendar

The Egyptians made a calendar with twelve months of thirty days, plus five extra days at the end. This calendar was simple because it did not change with the seasons.

Ancient Nubia

Medicine

Studies of Nubian mummies from the 1990s found they used an early form of antibiotic. This came from bacteria in jars used for making beer.

Mathematics

The Nubians knew a lot about mathematics and made early sun clocks. They used geometry in building and had methods like trigonometry.

Mesopotamia

Further information: Babylonian astronomy, Babylonian mathematics, and Babylonian medicine

The Mesopotamians knew about materials like clay, metal, and stone. They used these to make pottery, glass, and metals. They studied the stars and planets, keeping records on clay tablets that help us understand the solar year and lunar month.

Mesopotamian medicine

The Mesopotamians did not separate science from magic. When people were sick, doctors used both magical prayers and medical treatments. They had healers who used herbs and simple surgeries.

Astronomy and celestial divination

Babylonian astronomers kept careful records of the stars, planets, and moon on clay tablets. These records helped them predict events like eclipses. Their work started later astronomy in many places.

Mathematics

A Mesopotamian tablet from the 18th century BCE shows knowledge of Pythagorean triplets, suggesting they may have known the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras.

Ancient and medieval South Asia and East Asia

Mathematical ideas from places like Mesopotamia influenced both India and China. Each place developed its own special math and science. Europe learned about these ideas later through others, like the Islamic World. Modern science spread to Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries, mostly through Jesuit missionaries who studied plants and animals there.

India

Mathematics

The earliest signs of math in India come from the Indus Valley Civilisation, around 3300 to 1300 BCE. They used bricks in special sizes and tried to make measurements exact. One ruler they used was about 1.32 inches long and split into ten parts. Bricks often matched this size.

Later, Indian mathematicians solved many types of equations, including ones with square and square-root answers. They also worked with numbers like zero and created early versions of the number system we use today. In the 14th to 16th centuries, Indian scholars made big steps in math, especially in areas like trigonometry.

Astronomy

Ancient Indian texts, like the Vedas, talked about the universe and how it began. Later books, such as the Siddhanta Shiromani, covered topics like the movement of planets and eclipses. Observatories built later in places like Delhi and Jaipur helped scientists study the stars.

Grammar

Early Indian scholars studied Sanskrit, the language of their religious texts, to understand it better. One famous scholar, Panini, wrote rules about how Sanskrit words are formed.

Medicine

Ancient Indian doctors performed surgeries, like fixing noses and ears, and treated many diseases. They wrote books about the human body, what makes people sick, and how to stay healthy.

Politics and state

An old book called the Arthashastra gave advice to kings about running a country, making decisions, and dealing with enemies.

Logic

Indian thinkers developed ways to think logically and solve problems. They created rules for reasoning and debating, which influenced other cultures too.

China

Chinese mathematics

The Chinese used special boards to do math and could work with numbers like zero and fractions. They solved hard math problems, including ones about shapes and equations. One famous math rule they found was 355 divided by 113, which is very close to the value of pi.

Astronomical observations

Chinese astronomers kept records of important space events, like sunspots and eclipses, for thousands of years. They made tools to track the stars and predict when eclipses would happen.

Inventions

Chinese inventors created many useful things, like a tool to detect earthquakes, a compass for direction, and a clock tower that moved on its own. They also made important discoveries in areas like medicine and engineering.

Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Further information: Ancient American engineering, Mesoamerican calendars, Maya astronomy, Maya numerals, Maya calendar, Maya architecture, Maya medicine, Aztec medicine, Aztec calendar, and Aztec architecture

During the Middle Formative Period (around 900 BCE to 300 BCE) in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Zapotec civilization created the first known writing system. They also made the first calendar in Mesoamerica. Later, during the Classic period (around 250 CE to 900 CE), the Maya civilization built on this. They developed writing, astronomy, calendrical science, and mathematics. The Maya used a special number system based on 20, including the idea of zero, to make their calendars. Their writing included symbols for numbers and dates.

Classical antiquity and Greco-Roman natural philosophy

The ideas of ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians about stars, numbers, and healing shaped the Greek way of thinking about nature during classical times. Greeks tried to explain why things happen using reasons we can see and understand, instead of just saying "the gods did it." They wanted to know how to keep time correctly and how to help people feel better when they were sick.

Early Greek thinkers, called the pre-Socratics, asked big questions like "How did the world we live in get started?" One of these thinkers, Thales, said that land floats on water and that earthquakes happen when the water moves. Another, Pythagoras, discovered that the Earth is round. Leucippus and Democritus came up with the idea that everything is made of tiny pieces called atoms.

Plato and Aristotle were two important Greek thinkers. Plato started a school where students had to know math. Aristotle watched animals and plants closely and wrote down what he saw. He thought that everything is made of earth, water, air, fire, and a special air-like stuff called Aether that makes up stars and planets.

Greek scientists also studied the stars. Aristarchus thought the Sun went around the Earth, and Eratosthenes measured how big the Earth is. Hipparchus made a list of all the stars. The Antikythera mechanism was a very old machine that could tell when planets would appear in the sky.

In medicine, Hippocrates created the first rules for doctors. Herophilos studied the human body by looking inside, and Galen did operations on the brain and eyes.

Greek math was very strong too. Euclid wrote a book about shapes and numbers that people still use today. Archimedes figured out how to measure curved shapes and helped us understand how levers work.

Other Greek scientists wrote about plants, animals, and rocks. Pliny the Elder wrote a big book about nature. Herodotus was one of the first people to study history by looking at old things and talking to people.

When Rome ruled Greece, Roman leaders learned a lot from Greek books and teachers. They wrote about history, politics, and many other subjects. But after Rome began to fall apart, learning became harder to find. The Byzantine Empire kept some Greek learning alive, while in Western Europe, schools slowly shut down as new groups took over.

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, people kept learning from old times in three big places: the Byzantine Empire (Greek-speaking), the Islamic world (Arabic-speaking), and Western Europe (Latin-speaking).

The Byzantine Empire saved many ideas from ancient Greece. Scholars there kept important books safe and even came up with new thoughts. For example, one scholar asked questions about how things move that helped famous scientists later.

The Islamic world had a golden age full of new ideas. People learned from old Greek thoughts and added their own. They made better numbers, studied the stars, and wrote many books about medicine and science. Schools called madrasas taught both religion and science. Women could also study and teach there, which was unusual at the time.

In Western Europe, universities started to appear. These were places where people could learn and share ideas freely. Students studied many subjects, beginning with language and logic, then moving to math, stars, and music. Later, they could also study law, medicine, or religion. These universities helped keep old ideas alive and create new ones.

Renaissance

Further information: Science in the Renaissance, Continuity thesis, Decline of Western alchemy, and Natural magic

Printing and discovery

The movable type printing press was invented in the 1400s. This changed how people shared information. Before this, books were written by hand, so facts were hard to find. With printing, books could be made faster, and reliable facts became available to everyone. This helped science grow.

When Constantinople fell in 1453, many scholars moved to Europe. They brought new ideas with them. Around the same time, glassmakers in Venice made very clear glass. This later helped make telescopes. Explorations of the Americas also changed how people thought about the world.

Vesalius studied human bodies and found mistakes in older ideas about anatomy. The Northern Renaissance focused more on chemistry and biology.

Copernican heliocentrism

Main article: Copernican heliocentrism

Copernican heliocentrism was an idea by Nicolaus Copernicus from 1543. He suggested that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the solar system. In his model, Earth and the planets moved around the Sun. This was different from the older idea that Earth was the center. Although Copernicus's idea was important, it took more discoveries for people to fully accept it.

Scientific Revolution and birth of New Science

The Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe changed how people thought. The new science used more math and collected facts. This time is seen as the start of modern science.

Tycho Brahe’s careful astronomical observations and Galileo Galilei’s early telescope observations helped make astronomy a modern science. Johannes Kepler used Brahe’s data to show that planets have elliptical orbits and follow certain laws of planetary motion.

In 1687, Isaac Newton wrote the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which explained Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation.

William Harvey discovered how the heart, arteries, and veins work together to move blood.

New scientific groups and journals, like the Royal Society in London, helped share ideas faster. This led to big steps in mathematics, physics, and technology.

Romanticism and Post-Scientific Revolution

See also: Romanticism in science

Bioelectricity

In the late 1700s, scientists like Hugh Williamson and John Walsh studied how electricity affects our bodies. Later, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta showed that electricity is linked to a process called galvanism.

Electricity became an important idea during the time of Romanticism. It stood for big changes and the power of nature. It helped people imagine new links between living things and machines, and between logic and feelings. This made it a vital idea for many thinkers.

Developments in geology

Modern geology grew in the 1700s and early 1800s. Some thinkers, like Benoît de Maillet and the Comte de Buffon, believed Earth was much older than some teachings said. Jean-Étienne Guettard and Nicolas Desmarest walked through France and made early maps. Scientists from Scotland, Sweden, and Germany used experiments to sort out rocks and minerals. They used fossils found in rock layers to figure out the age of Earth.

Birth of modern economics

The ideas behind classical economics started with Adam Smith’s book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. Smith talked about letting people trade freely. He believed an “invisible hand” guides economies when people mostly look out for themselves.

Social science

The study of people, called anthropology, grew from ideas during the Age of Enlightenment. At this time, Europeans began to study human behavior in an organized way. Fields like law, history, language, and society all helped shape the social sciences, with anthropology being one part of this group.

19th century

Further information: 19th century in science

The 1800s were an important time for science. People started to think of science as something a person could do as a job. In 1833, William Whewell created the word “scientist” to replace the old word “natural philosopher.”

Developments in physics

Scientists studied electricity and magnetism. They learned how these two things were connected and made a new theory about them. They also learned more about heat and energy.

Discovery of Neptune

Astronomers discovered the planet Neptune. They also found the first asteroid, which they named Ceres.

Developments in mathematics

Mathematicians studied numbers in new ways. They also made progress in geometry, logic, and ideas about electricity and magnets.

Developments in chemistry

Chemists made the first table that shows all the elements, the basic building blocks of everything. They also learned how to create new compounds from living things.

Age of the Earth

Geologists studied rocks and mountains. They learned how the Earth’s surface changed over time. They discovered that parts of the Earth were covered by ice for long periods.

Evolution and inheritance

Charles Darwin published a book in 1859 called The Origin of Species. In it, he explained how living things change over time through a process called natural selection. Another scientist, Gregor Mendel, discovered how traits are passed from parents to children.

Germ theory

Doctors learned that tiny germs could make people sick. They began washing their hands and making vaccines to help stop diseases.

Schools of economics

Different ideas about money and work grew during this time. Some thought workers should be paid fairly, while others focused on how choices affect the economy.

Founding of psychology

Psychology became its own science in 1879 when a lab was created just for studying the mind. Scientists began to learn about memory and how habits are formed.

Modern sociology

Sociology grew as a way to understand how societies change. Scientists studied how groups of people stay together and work as a whole.

Romanticism

New ideas about art and science changed how people thought. Later, a movement called Positivism began, focusing on facts and logic.

20th century

Further information: 20th century in science

Science made big advances in the 20th century. There were important new ideas in physics and life sciences, building on what was learned in the 19th century.

Theory of relativity and quantum mechanics

The start of the 20th century brought big changes in physics. Old ideas from Newton were shown to be incomplete. From 1900, scientists like Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and others developed new theories called quantum mechanics to explain things that didn’t make sense before. Einstein’s theory of general relativity in 1915 showed that space and time behave in new ways. By 1925, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger created a full theory of quantum mechanics. Today, scientists are still trying to bring together general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Big Bang

In 1929, Edwin Hubble noticed that galaxies are moving away from us, which led to the idea that the universe is expanding. This helped form the Big Bang theory by Georges Lemaître. Later, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson found evidence for the Big Bang in the background temperature of the universe.

Big science

In 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission. During World War II, this led to the development of radar and the atomic bomb. After the war, big projects and expensive machines became common in physics, supported by governments.

Advances in genetics

In the early 1900s, scientists rediscovered rules about heredity from Gregor Mendel. Later, Linus Pauling used quantum mechanics to understand chemicals. By 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick explained the structure of DNA, the material that carries life’s instructions. This led to genetic engineering and projects like mapping the human genome.

Space exploration

In 1925, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin found that stars are mostly made of hydrogen and helium. In 1987, astronomers observed a supernova and studied particles called neutrinos.

Neuroscience as a distinct discipline

Scientists learned more about how nerves work and send signals. Models like the Hodgkin–Huxley model helped explain these processes. Neuroscience became its own field of study.

Plate tectonics

Geologists began studying Earth as a whole planet, looking at its inside and comparing it to other planets.

Applications

Many new technologies were developed, such as electricity, light bulbs, cars, and airplanes. Radio, television, and computers changed how we share information. Advances in biology helped grow more food and stop diseases like polio. New ways to study genes made projects like mapping the human genome possible. Computers helped store and study scientific data.

Developments in political science and economics

Political science grew to include many areas like voting, international relations, and peace studies. In economics, John Maynard Keynes helped split the study into microeconomics and macroeconomics. Later ideas included monetarism and supply-side economics.

Developments in psychology, sociology, and anthropology

Psychology moved away from old ideas to focus on behavior, thanks to John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner. Later, cognitive science brought back the study of the mind. Sociology developed new ways to understand society, like conflict theory and symbolic interactionism. Anthropology also changed, looking more closely at research methods and ethics.

21st century

In the early 21st century, scientists made many exciting discoveries. On July 4, 2012, researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider found a new tiny particle that acts like the Higgs boson. In 2015, astronomers detected gravitational waves for the first time using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. In 2019, they shared the first clear picture of a black hole taken by the Event Horizon Telescope.

In 2003, scientists finished mapping all the genes in human DNA. In 2012, they created a new way to change genes called the CRISPR gene editing technique, which helps doctors treat diseases. With computers, they also made simple life forms, like JCVI-syn3.0 in 2016 and tiny robots called xenobots in 2020.

A new area of study called positive psychology began in 1998, focusing on happiness and good mental health. Around 2011, some studies in social science couldn’t be repeated exactly, causing what is called a replication crisis.