From Religion to Science: An extremely brief history of ideas

1. From Religion to Science:An extremely brief history of ideas ESL 82 & 86 Profs. Justicia and Bernardini

2. MOSES (circa 1200-1100 B.C.E.) Hebrew prophet, liberator, and leader, Moses codified monotheism for the Israelites and received the Commandments from God.

3. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) The Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the pioneers of analytic thought. His contributions ranged from rhetoric (the persuasive use of language) to theology to science. Based on his observations, Aristotle postulated a geocentric universe—that is, a universe with the earth at its center. The sun, planets and stars surrounded it in concentric spheres.

4. Ptolemy (90-168 A.D.) The Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy adopted and refined the Aristotelian model of the universe. This universe, with the earth at the center, is generally called after his name: the Ptolemaic universe.

5. In the Ptolemaic model of the universe, the sun and all the planets known at this time orbit around the earth. At the outermost spheres of the universe are the stars, and the primum mobile (first moved).

6. Copernicus (1473-1543) Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer and author of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. The Copernican universe is heliocentric, or centered on the sun. However, the church did not accept his theory. The “Copernican Revolution,” as it is called today, represents the birth of modern astronomy.

7. The Copernican SystemNote the position of the sun at the center, and the earth on the third circle.

8. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) The Italian physicist Galileo improved the telescope, which did not exist in Copernicus’ time. This enabled him to make more precise observations, and to validate Copernicus’ heliocentric theory. As with Copernicus, the church did not accept Galileo’s views, and he was sentenced to house confinement until his death.

9. Galileo and his telescope

10. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Bacon, a philosopher, statesman and scientist, is regarded (together with his contemporary Galileo) as the father of the scientific method. According to this method, ideas about the world are generalizations from observed data, rather than deducations based on in inherited truths.

11. Isaac Newton (1643-1727) Newton, an English mathematician, co-invented calculus with Leibniz. His rigorous, brilliant application of the scientific method made possible far-reaching advances in physics and astronomy . Newton famously proposed the theory of gravity and unified motion: the universe as a whole is governed by the same set of understandable laws.

12. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) German philosopher Kant proposed the mind as the center of the universe. The observer, not the observed, as in Newton’s model, now had primary importance.

13. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) The English naturalist Darwin pioneered the theory of evolution. Religion had long taught that God created the earth and all life upon it. Life did not change. In Darwin’s theory, all life on earth is the result of evolution—a process of change over time. As the Earth’s environment changes, animal and plant life either adapts or disappears. For Darwin, and for modern science, life is constantly evolving, adapting to a changing environment.

14. Darwin famously traveled to the Galapagos Islands, where he found that finches (a species of bird) on different islands had differently-shaped beaks, depending on what the birds ate. Although it was only many years later that Darwin would fully formulate his theory, it was his observation of finches that started Darwin thinking about animals changing over time, adapting to their different environments.

15. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)German philosopher: “God is dead.”

16. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Considered the greatest scientific mind of the 20th century, Einstein proposed the theory of relativity: space and time are relative, rather than the same for everyone.

17. In one of Einstein’s most famous “thought experiments,” a twin who leaves to travel through space at a very fast speed would return younger than his or her brother or sister. Time would have passed at a different rate for each of them.

18. E = mc2 This famously simple formula asserts the equivalence of matter and energy. All matter is energy in another form, and vice-versa.

19. Other brilliant minds working at the same time as Einstein, such as Erwin Schrodinger (left) and Werner Heisenberg, took physics in yet another radically new direction, claiming that physical phenomena are governed by the laws of probability, and that their measurement can only be approximated by scientific observation.