Origins of the Scientific Method
09 Sep 2012, 8:21 am
AspieRogue wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
Science begins with banishing the Gods from nature.
ruveyn
ruveyn
The first time this ever happened historically was with the advent of Buddhism. The Buddhist faith is not a true religion as much as it is a philosophy that acknowledges that there are laws of nature which are not caused by any Divine entity. The Buddhist Cosmology views the Universe as being autonomous, and not created simply to satisfy human desires.
The Ionian pre-Socratics did this about 600 b.c.e. When did the Buddhists do this?
ruveyn
09 Sep 2012, 10:49 am
Robdemanc wrote:
You are making a typical assumption that prehistory everyone was stupid.
Consider...
Code:
Year BC: Event:
---------- ----------------------------------------------------------------
4,000,000 (Approximate Year) Earliest evidence of "Homo Erectus" ("Upright Man") -- Humans become bipedal.
2,500,000 (Approximate Year) Stone Age begins; first known use of stone tools.
1,500,000 (Approximate Year) First known use and control of fire.
840,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of rafts for water-borne transportation.
500,000 (Approximate Year) Earliest evidence for the existence of base camps or central campsites (hearths and shelters) among humans only dates back to this time.
400,000 (Approximate Year) First known construction of wooden shelters.
200,000 (Approximate Year) Earliest evidence of religion: bodies are found buried with objects for use in the afterlife.
100,000 (Approximate Year) Earliest fossil evidence of "Homo Neaderthalis" ("Neanderthal Man"). Neanderthal cranial capacity is thought to have been as large as that of modern humans, perhaps larger, indicating their brain size may have been comparable, or larger, as well.
100,000 (Approximate Year) Earliest fossil evidence of "Homo Sapiens" ("Thinking Man").
100,000 (Approximate Year) Archeological evidence strongly suggests that man had domesticated dogs by this time.
88,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of harpoons and spears to catch fish.
68,000 (Approximate Year) Microliths or small stone tools or points are invented, and eventually become essential to the invention of bows and spear throwers.
30,500 (Approximate Year) First known use of musical instruments -- flutes made from bird bone and mammoth ivory. They are found in 2012 A.D. in a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo Sapiens. Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old. A science team dated animal bones in the same ground layers as the flutes at Geissenkloesterle Cave in Germany's Swabian Jura. The results are consistent with a hypothesis that the Danube River was a key corridor for the movement of humans and technological innovations into central Europe between 40,000-45,000 years ago.
30,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of bows and arrows, and the spear thrower (At'latl).
30,000 (Approximate Year) Palaeolithic peoples in central Europe and France record numbers on bones.
29,000 (Approximate Year) Humans create art -- the first ancient animal drawings in Altamira Cave located in northern Spain. First known use of bow and arrows. First known use of oil lamps.
28,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of lunar calendars -- Archeological evidence from the Dordogne region of France demonstrates that members of the European early Upper Paleolithic culture known as the Aurignacian used Lunar calendars.
28,000 (Approximate Year) The earliest known undisputed burial of a shaman (and by extension the earliest undisputed evidence of shamans and shamanic practices) dates back to this time in what is now the Czech Republic.
27,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of bolas and woven nets.
25,000 (Approximate Year) Early geometric designs used.
23,000 (Approximate Year) The Neanderthals disappear from the fossil record. The last traces of Mousterian culture (without human specimens) have been found in Gorham's Cave on the remote south-facing coast of Gibraltar, dated to about this time.
20,000 (Approximate Year) First known ancient animal drawings (in Altamira Cave located in northern Spain). First known use of oil lamps.
20,000 (Approximate Year) Evidence indicates that humans processed and consumed wild cereal grains as far back as this time.
14,000 (Approximate Year) Incipient Jomon period begins. The term "jomon" means "cord-patterned" in Japanese. This refers to the pottery style characteristic of the Jomon culture, and which has markings made using sticks with cords wrapped around them. This period was rich in tools, jewelry, figures and pottery.
12,000 (Approximate Year) Approximate end of Earth's most recent Ice Age; Beginning of the "Flandrian" interglacial period.
12,000 (Approximate Year) First known domestication of animals for food and labor.
10,900 (Approximate Year) A series of strikes by an asteroid or comet causes climatic changes that kill off all the horses, camels, mastodons, short-faced bears, giant beavers, dire wolves, and saber-toothed cats in both Europe and in North America.
10,900 (Approximate Year) Beginning of the Younger Dryas stadial -- a period of cold climatic conditions and drought, brought on by a sudden event.
10,500 (Approximate Year) Paleo-Indians reach the Tierra del Fuego region of the South American continent.
10,001 End of the Paleolithic Period and Pliestocene Epoch; Beginning of the Holocene Era ("Year Zero H.E."). Pre-Historical period ends; Modern human history begins.
10,000 (Approximate Year) Beginning of the First Agricultural Revolution. People begin to leave their nomadic lifestyles, settle down into permanent locations, and begin to rely on agriculture for sustenance in many regions. The domestication of animals begins. All continents (except Antarctica) inhabited.
9,000 (Approximate Year) Earliest evidence of a walled city, later called 'Jericho'.
8,000 (Approximate Year) Humans are practicing agriculture in preference to living as hunter/gatherers.
7,500 (Approximate Year) Incipient Jomon period ends. Initial Jomon period begins. The term "jomon" means "cord-patterned" in Japanese. This refers to the pottery style characteristic of the Jomon culture, and which has markings made using sticks with cords wrapped around them. This period was rich in tools, jewelry, figures and pottery.
7,000 (Approximate Year) First known manufacture of pottery.
7,000 (Approximate Year) Approximate founding of the actual City of Jericho.
6,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of linen for cloth, rafts for water travel, and sickles for harvesting crops.
6,000 (Approximate Year) Beginning of Copper Age.
5,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of irrigation for crops and scales for measurement.
4,713 (01/01) Julian Day Number 0 (January 01, at 1200 hours UTC).
4,004 (10/23) Day of Creation according to Biblical accounts (Ussher).
4,000 (Approximate Year) First known use of sundials.
4,000 (Approximate Year) First known domestication of horses, likely for food.
4,000 (Approximate Year) Copper metallurgy (smelting and alloying) is invented and copper is used for ornamentation.
4,000 (Approximate Year) Beginning of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, when temperatures reached several degrees Celsius higher than the present, and mean sea level was higher by 5 to 6 metres.
4,000 (Approximate Date) Harps and Flutes played in Egypt.
3,761 (10/07) Day of Creation, according to the Hebrew calendar.
3,600 (Approximate Year) Bronze Age Begins. Humans begin using bronze, thus marking the beginnings of metallurgical science (Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc).
So ... 4,000,000 minus 3,600 is 3,996,400 years that humans wasted on flint tools and copper trinkets.
The electric light bulb is about 110 years old.
The Space Age is about 55 years old.
The IBM-PC is about 30 years old.
The World Wide Web is about 20 years old.
You-Tube is about 7 years old.
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
_________________
09 Sep 2012, 3:13 pm
Fnord wrote:
[
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
Try to imagine what the state of humanity would be like if those early humans hadn't had the intelect or curiosity to control fire, or to make tools in the first place. Everything since is built on that.
09 Sep 2012, 3:23 pm
Robdemanc wrote:
Try to imagine what the state of humanity would be like if those early humans hadn't had the intelect or curiosity to control fire, or to make tools in the first place. Everything since is built on that.
On the principle of building on yesterday's technology, one thought I find entertaining is that the most complex high precision tools in use today were made with older inferior tools that themselves were made with older inferior tools etc ... likely right back to blacksmiths hammers and crude knives.
It would be interesting if someone made a documentary about something like an electron microscope and the tools used to make it and trace this principle historically backwards as far as possible - (tools used to make the tools that made the tools that made the tools...) would they indeed end up with crude tools fashioned in black smiths' forges?
_________________
I've left WP indefinitely.
09 Sep 2012, 4:00 pm
Fnord wrote:
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
Homo sapien was smart from the git-go. But it takes time to develop technology and science.
One of the most import break through events was the creation of writing so humans could transmit their ideas in both time and space.
ruveyn
09 Sep 2012, 4:33 pm
Robdemanc wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
Try to imagine what the state of humanity would be like if those early humans hadn't had the intelect or curiosity to control fire, or to make tools in the first place. Everything since is built on that.Try to imagine instead what the state of humanity would be like if those early humans had not been interested in anything that could not be measured in some way. Imagine how far along humanity would be if the Ionian Awakening had not died out...
Carl Sagan wrote:
This great revolution happened between 600 and 400 B.C. It was accomplished by the same practical and productive people who made the society function. Political power was in the hands of the merchants who promoted the technology on which their prosperity depended. The earliest pioneers of science were merchants and artisans and their children.
The first Ionian scientist was named Thales. He was born over there, in the city of Miletus, across this narrow strait. He had traveled in Egypt and was conversant with the knowledge of Babylon. Like the Babylonians, he believed that the world had once all been water. To explain the dry land, the Babylonians added that their god Marduk had placed a mat on the face of the waters and had piled dirt up on top of it. Thales had a similar view but he left Marduk out. Yes, the world had once been mostly water, but it was a natural process which explained the dry land. Thales thought it was similar to the silting up that he had observed at the delta of the River Nile.
Whether Thales' conclusions were right or wrong is not nearly as important as his approach. The world was not made by the gods, but instead was the result of material forces interacting in nature. Thales brought back from Babylon and Egypt the seeds of new sciences: astronomy and geometry, sciences which would sprout and grow in the fertile soil of Ionia...
... The enduring legacy of the Ionians is the tools and techniques they developed which remain the basis of modern technology. This was the time of Theodorus, the master engineer of the age, a man who is credited with the invention of the key, the ruler, the carpenter's square, the level, the lathe, bronze casting. Why are there no monuments to this man? Those who dreamt and speculated and deduced about the laws of nature talked to the engineers and the technologists. They were often the same people. The practical and the theoretical were one.
The first Ionian scientist was named Thales. He was born over there, in the city of Miletus, across this narrow strait. He had traveled in Egypt and was conversant with the knowledge of Babylon. Like the Babylonians, he believed that the world had once all been water. To explain the dry land, the Babylonians added that their god Marduk had placed a mat on the face of the waters and had piled dirt up on top of it. Thales had a similar view but he left Marduk out. Yes, the world had once been mostly water, but it was a natural process which explained the dry land. Thales thought it was similar to the silting up that he had observed at the delta of the River Nile.
Whether Thales' conclusions were right or wrong is not nearly as important as his approach. The world was not made by the gods, but instead was the result of material forces interacting in nature. Thales brought back from Babylon and Egypt the seeds of new sciences: astronomy and geometry, sciences which would sprout and grow in the fertile soil of Ionia...
... The enduring legacy of the Ionians is the tools and techniques they developed which remain the basis of modern technology. This was the time of Theodorus, the master engineer of the age, a man who is credited with the invention of the key, the ruler, the carpenter's square, the level, the lathe, bronze casting. Why are there no monuments to this man? Those who dreamt and speculated and deduced about the laws of nature talked to the engineers and the technologists. They were often the same people. The practical and the theoretical were one.
(Excerpt from "The Backbone of the Night")
I like to think, as did Dr. Sagan, that by now humanity would be traveling between the worlds of our solar system, and beyond...
Carl Sagan wrote:
If the Ionians had won, we might be now, I think, be going to the stars. We might at this moment have the first survey ships returning with astonishing results from Alpha Centauri and Barnard Star, Sirius and Tau Ceti. There would now be great fleets of interstellar transports being constructed in earth orbit, small unmanned survey ships, liners for immigrants, perhaps, great trading ships to ply the spaces between the stars. On all of these ships there would be symbols and inscriptions on the side. The inscriptions, if we look closely, would be written in Greek. The symbol, perhaps, would be the dodecahedron, and the inscription on the sides to the ships to the stars something like "Starship Theodorus of the Planet Earth".
Instead, we're bogged down in a morass of conflicting religions and their oppressive doctrines.
_________________
09 Sep 2012, 6:29 pm
Fnord wrote:
{snip timeline}
So ... 4,000,000 minus 3,600 is 3,996,400 years that humans wasted on flint tools and copper trinkets.
The electric light bulb is about 110 years old.
The Space Age is about 55 years old.
The IBM-PC is about 30 years old.
The World Wide Web is about 20 years old.
You-Tube is about 7 years old.
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
So ... 4,000,000 minus 3,600 is 3,996,400 years that humans wasted on flint tools and copper trinkets.
The electric light bulb is about 110 years old.
The Space Age is about 55 years old.
The IBM-PC is about 30 years old.
The World Wide Web is about 20 years old.
You-Tube is about 7 years old.
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
Prehistoric man not only had to invent tools de novo, he had to pass them down from generation to generation while living at the very edge of life. Back then the average woman started having kids at 15 and kept on popping them out until she died in chidbirth in her 20's or 30's; more than half of her kids would fail to survive to adulthood. The average man died in his 30's or 40's to some violent event like injury that couldn't be treated, or predators. All of this while living in an environment where poverty was such a near neighbor that a gene allowing one to digest milk as an adult swept through Europe like wildfire, even as recently as a few thousand years ago. What time they didn't spend on hunting and gathering was spent on repairing the tools that they did have, curing hides, making trade goods like beads, etc.
It may be that having the leisure time to sit under an apple tree, and contemplate the meaning when one of the apples hits you on the head,* makes one a little more likely to be able to invent calculus. Each time an improvement was made to one tool, it had the compounding effect of not only improving that tool but of making life that little bit easier so that the next improvement was more likely to come sooner rather than later.
*Yes, I know this apocryphal; I'm using the story to make a point.
09 Sep 2012, 10:30 pm
LKL wrote:
Where and When?
Aristotle? Hippocrates? The Indians, the Persians, the Europeans?
Aristotle? Hippocrates? The Indians, the Persians, the Europeans?
The Greeks were the ones who invented science. It was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus who is generally regarded as the first scientist, though his main contribution was to try and come up with explanations for natural events rather than citing supernatural causes such gods, spirits and demons like everyone else before him did. The first step in the development of the scientific method came from Aristotle who was the first to provide an explanation of empiricism and wrote about how to develop theories from observation in a treatise called Organum.
Another ancient Greek philosopher, an anatomist by the name of Herophilos came up with a more advanced scientific method which placed more emphasis on experiment as means to test theories, similar to the one we have today (which was used Archimedes when he discovered the law of buoyancy). Though unfortunately, Herophilos' work on the scientific method got lost during the middle ages, and the method was to be rediscovered by the likes of Al-Hazen, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and later Francis Bacon.
09 Sep 2012, 11:16 pm
Jono wrote:
LKL wrote:
Where and When?
Aristotle? Hippocrates? The Indians, the Persians, the Europeans?
Aristotle? Hippocrates? The Indians, the Persians, the Europeans?
The Greeks were the ones who invented science. It was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus who is generally regarded as the first scientist, though his main contribution was to try and come up with explanations for natural events rather than citing supernatural causes such gods, spirits and demons like everyone else before him did. The first step in the development of the scientific method came from Aristotle who was the first to provide an explanation of empiricism and wrote about how to develop theories from observation in a treatise called Organum.
Another ancient Greek philosopher, an anatomist by the name of Herophilos came up with a more advanced scientific method which placed more emphasis on experiment as means to test theories, similar to the one we have today (which was used Archimedes when he discovered the law of buoyancy). Though unfortunately, Herophilos' work on the scientific method got lost during the middle ages, and the method was to be rediscovered by the likes of Al-Hazen, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and later Francis Bacon.
The ancient Greeks formulated the basic ideas of science. But the formalized scientific method was first invented by Alhazen the persian.
However, what the Greeks did not originate, but are given credit for, is formal logic. Which, along with the concept of infinity, was developed by Hindu mathematicians.
10 Sep 2012, 3:55 am
AspieRogue wrote:
Jono wrote:
LKL wrote:
Where and When?
Aristotle? Hippocrates? The Indians, the Persians, the Europeans?
Aristotle? Hippocrates? The Indians, the Persians, the Europeans?
The Greeks were the ones who invented science. It was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus who is generally regarded as the first scientist, though his main contribution was to try and come up with explanations for natural events rather than citing supernatural causes such gods, spirits and demons like everyone else before him did. The first step in the development of the scientific method came from Aristotle who was the first to provide an explanation of empiricism and wrote about how to develop theories from observation in a treatise called Organum.
Another ancient Greek philosopher, an anatomist by the name of Herophilos came up with a more advanced scientific method which placed more emphasis on experiment as means to test theories, similar to the one we have today (which was used Archimedes when he discovered the law of buoyancy). Though unfortunately, Herophilos' work on the scientific method got lost during the middle ages, and the method was to be rediscovered by the likes of Al-Hazen, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and later Francis Bacon.
The ancient Greeks formulated the basic ideas of science. But the formalized scientific method was first invented by Alhazen the persian.
However, what the Greeks did not originate, but are given credit for, is formal logic. Which, along with the concept of infinity, was developed by Hindu mathematicians.
I've heard it mentioned quite often that Alhazen was the first to introduce experiment to the scientific method but as I said, it was actually Herophilos who was the first to introduce the experimental method. It was not well accepted by everyone at the time, either in ancient Greece or during the Roman period, sure (for example Galen criticised the experimental method because he felt it ran counter to rationalism), but that does not change the fact that the Greeks knew that an experimental method existed. Alhazen was a brilliant man and he made some great advances to science, however let's not forget that he was also a well educated man and probably knew about the work of many Greek philosophers and probably built on that work. And yes, it is factually true that Archimedes was quite an experimenter for his time too. If you don't believe me that Herophilos pioneered the scientific method, it's actually mentioned right here on the wikipedia article on him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herophilos
Also yes, you are correct in saying that formal logic was invented in India. However, it was also invented independently by the Greeks. So, the people who credit the invention of formal logic to the Hindus and the people who credit it to the Greeks are actually both correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
10 Sep 2012, 4:28 am
Fnord wrote:
Robdemanc wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
Try to imagine what the state of humanity would be like if those early humans hadn't had the intelect or curiosity to control fire, or to make tools in the first place. Everything since is built on that.Try to imagine instead what the state of humanity would be like if those early humans had not been interested in anything that could not be measured in some way. Imagine how far along humanity would be if the Ionian Awakening had not died out...
You are suggesting early humans were interested in things that could not be measured. Why?
Did the Ionian awakening die out?
I think primitive humans, living fully in the natural world, would have had a very clear awareness of natural selection, seeing it in action day in day out. It is unjustified to assume they were oblivious to the notion of interpreting what they see in hard materialistic way.
10 Sep 2012, 4:31 am
TallyMan wrote:
Robdemanc wrote:
Try to imagine what the state of humanity would be like if those early humans hadn't had the intelect or curiosity to control fire, or to make tools in the first place. Everything since is built on that.
On the principle of building on yesterday's technology, one thought I find entertaining is that the most complex high precision tools in use today were made with older inferior tools that themselves were made with older inferior tools etc ... likely right back to blacksmiths hammers and crude knives.
It would be interesting if someone made a documentary about something like an electron microscope and the tools used to make it and trace this principle historically backwards as far as possible - (tools used to make the tools that made the tools that made the tools...) would they indeed end up with crude tools fashioned in black smiths' forges?
Yes that would be interesting.
10 Sep 2012, 5:08 am
Robdemanc wrote:
Did the Ionian awakening die out?
It kind of did. The tradition of scientific investigation that was started by the Ionian Greeks continued somewhat in the Roman Empire until the third century when crisis in the Empire apparently ended it. Unfortunately, the early Christians did not value science and thus did not try to revive when they took control of the Roman Empire and that's also why there was virtually no scientific advancement during the middle ages for about 1000 years. The modern age of science started because of a renewed interest in the 13th century combined with the re-introduction of ancient knowledge in western Europe.
10 Sep 2012, 5:25 am
Robdemanc wrote:
Did the Ionian awakening die out?
.
Yes, in a way. It was overwhelmed by Plato who believed in the primacy of ideas over fact and matter and Aristotle who misled physical science for 1500 years. But it was Socrates who stopped the Ionian movement. He believed that the main concern of philosophy was beauty and justice rather than the material nature of the world. Plato was a faithful student of Socrates and Aristotle was more of a Platonist than many think he is. Plato and Aristotle were a priorists rather than empiricists.
In any case the Athenian line of philosophy overwhelmed the Ionian good start for many centuries.
But truth will out. In the long run Aristarchus made a comeback with Copernicus, in our era and the fact based astronomy of Keply and Tycho Brahe won the day and paved the way for Newton. Galileo restored Ionian empiricism. So genuine Ionian type science won out in the long run.
ruveyn
ruveyn
Oodain
Veteran
Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,
10 Sep 2012, 6:41 am
ruveyn wrote:
Fnord wrote:
Maybe Prehistoric Man wasn't stupid, but he was certainly no rocket scientist, either!
Homo sapien was smart from the git-go. But it takes time to develop technology and science.
One of the most import break through events was the creation of writing so humans could transmit their ideas in both time and space.
ruveyn
yes and no,
even today there is a 5 to 7% increase in average intelligence every 2nd generation,
though that effect oes have a limit.
_________________
//through chaos comes complexity//
the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.
