History and etymology
Main articles: History of science Science is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by a global community of researchers making use of scientific methods, which emphasize the observation, explanation, and adequate prediction of real world phenomena by experiment. Given the dual status of science as objective knowledge and as a and Scientific revolution In the history of science, the scientific revolution was a period when new ideas in physics, astronomy, biology, human anatomy, chemistry, and other sciences led to a rejection of doctrines that had prevailed from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages, and laid the foundation of modern science. According to the majority of scholars, theWhile empirical The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. It is usually differentiated from the philosophic investigations of the natural world have been described since antiquity Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history in the Old World until the Early Middle Ages in Europe and the Qin Dynasty in China (for example, by Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most, Theophrastus Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eressos in Lesbos, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. His interests were wide-ranging, extending from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics. His two surviving botanical works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, were an important influence on medieval science. There are and Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian. Spending most of his spare time studying, writing or investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field, he wrote an), and scientific methods Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of have been employed since the Middle Ages The Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christianity in the Reformation, the rise of humanism in the Italian (for example, by Ibn al-Haytham Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (Arabic: ابو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم, Persian: ابن هیثم, Latinized: Alhacen or Alhazen) (965 in Basra - c. 1039 in Cairo), was an Arab or Persian polymath. He made significant contributions to the principles of optics, as well as to anatomy, astronomy,, Abu Rayhan Biruni Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Bīrūnī , often known as Alberuni, Al Beruni or variants, (born 5 September 973 in Kath, Khwarezm (now in Uzbekistan), died 13 December 1048 in Ghazni, today's Afghanistan) was a Persian, polymath scholar of the 11th century and Roger Bacon Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: "wonderful teacher"), was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on empiricism. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by the works of Plato via early Islamic scientists), the dawn of modern science is generally traced back to the early modern period In history, the early modern era of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Historians refer to the period beginning from approximately 1500 AD and lasting to around 1800 AD. The events include the first European colonies, the rise of strong centralized governments, and the beginnings of recognizable nation states that are the direct, during what is known as the Scientific Revolution In the history of science, the scientific revolution was a period when new ideas in physics, astronomy, biology, human anatomy, chemistry, and other sciences led to a rejection of doctrines that had prevailed from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages, and laid the foundation of modern science. According to the majority of scholars, the of the 16th and 17th centuries.[5]
The word "science" comes through the Old French Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 900 to 1300. It was then known as the langue d'oïl to distinguish it from the langue d'oc (Occitan language, also then called Provençal), whose territory bordered that of, and is derived in turn from the Latin Latin is an Italic language historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Italian, French, Catalan, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese are descended from Latin, while many others, especially European languages, including scientia, "knowledge", the nominal form of the verb scire, "to know". The Proto-Indo-European The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic morphemes carrying a lexical meaning. By addition of suffixes, they form stems, and by addition of endings, these form grammatically inflected words (nouns or verbs) (PIE) root that yields scire is *skei-, meaning to "cut, separate, or discern".[6] Similarly, the Greek word for science is 'επιστήμη', deriving from the verb 'επίσταμαι', 'to know'. From the Middle Ages The Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christianity in the Reformation, the rise of humanism in the Italian to the Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority, science or scientia meant any systematic recorded knowledge.[7] Science therefore had the same sort of very broad meaning that philosophy Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument. Philosophy comes from had at that time. In other languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, the word corresponding to science also carries this meaning.
Prior to the 1700s, the preferred term for the study of nature was natural philosophy Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural sciences such as physics, while English speakers most typically referred to other philosophical disciplines (such as logic Logic, from the Greek λογική is the art and science of reasoning. More specifically, it is defined by the Penguin Encyclopedia to be "The formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning". As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its fundamental place in philosophy. It became, metaphysics Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world. Someone who studies metaphysics would be called either a "metaphysician" or a "metaphysicist", epistemology Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions:, ethics Ethics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality, such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of ethics or morality is (meta-ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations (applied ethics), how moral capacity and aesthetics Aesthetics is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature." Aesthetics is a subdiscipline of axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with) as moral philosophy Ethics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality, such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of ethics or morality is (meta-ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations (applied ethics), how moral capacity. Today, "moral philosophy" is more-or-less synonymous with "ethics". Far into the 1700s, science and natural philosophy Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural sciences such as physics were not quite synonymous, but only became so later with the direct use of what would become known formally as the scientific method Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of. By contrast, the word "science" in English was still used in the 17th century (1600s) to refer to the Aristotelian Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. Aristotelianism is understood by its proponents as critically developing Plato’s theories. Most particularly, Aristotelianism brings Plato’s ideals down to Earth as goals and goods internal to natural species that are realized in concept of knowledge which was secure enough to be used as a sure prescription for exactly how to do something. In this differing sense of the two words, the philosopher John Locke John Locke was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, classical republicans, wrote disparagingly in 1690 that "natural philosophy [the study of nature] is not capable of being made a science".[8]
Locke was to be proven wrong, however. By the early 1800s, natural philosophy had begun to separate from philosophy, though it often retained a very broad meaning. In many cases, science continued to stand for reliable knowledge about any topic, in the same way it is still used in the broad sense (see the introduction to this article) in modern terms such as library science Library science is an interdisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation and dissemination of information resources; and the political economy of information. Historically, library science has also, political science Political science is a social science concerned with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. It is often described as the study of politics defined as "who gets what, when and how". Political science has several subfields, including: political theory, public policy,, and computer science Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that describe and transform information. According to Peter J. Denning, the fundamental. In the more narrow sense of science, as natural philosophy became linked to an expanding set of well-defined laws (beginning with Galileo's laws, Kepler's laws, and Newton's laws for motion), it became more popular to refer to natural philosophy as natural science. Over the course of the nineteenth century, moreover, there was an increased tendency to associate science with study of the natural world (that is, the non-human world). This move sometimes left the study of human thought and society (what would come to be called social science The social sciences are the fields of scientific knowledge and academic scholarship that study social groups and, more generally, human society. The social sciences initially were constituted of five fields: Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law; Education; Health; Economy and Trade; Art. The contemporary field of science comprise academic) in a linguistic limbo by the end of the century and into the next.[9]
Through the 1800s, many English speakers were increasingly differentiating science (i.e., the natural sciences) from all other forms of knowledge in a variety of ways. The now-familiar expression “scientific method Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of,” which refers to the prescriptive part of how to make discoveries in natural philosophy, was almost unused until then, but became widespread after the 1870s, though there was rarely total agreement about just what it entailed.[9] The word "scientist," meant to refer to a systematically-working natural philosopher, (as opposed to an intuitive or empirically-minded one) was coined in 1833 by William Whewell.[10] Discussion of scientists A scientist, in the broadest sense, refers to any person that engages in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices and traditions that are linked to schools of thought or philosophy. In a more restricted sense, scientist refers to individuals who use the scientific method. The person may be an as a special group of people who did science, even if their attributes were up for debate, grew in the last half of the 19th century.[9] Whatever people actually meant by these terms at first, they ultimately depicted science, in the narrow sense of the habitual use of the scientific method and the knowledge derived from it, as something deeply distinguished from all other realms of human endeavor.
By the twentieth century (1900s), the modern notion of science as a special kind of knowledge about the world, practiced by a distinct group and pursued through a unique method, was essentially in place. It was used to give legitimacy to a variety of fields through such titles as "scientific" medicine, engineering, advertising, or motherhood.[9] Over the 1900s, links between science and technology Technology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment. Technology is a term with origins in the Greek "technologia", "τεχνολογία" — "techne", "τέχνη also grew increasingly strong.
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