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title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
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Africa has the world's oldest record of human technological achievement: the oldest surviving stone tools in the world have been found in eastern Africa, and later evidence for tool production by humans' hominin ancestors has been found across West, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. The history of science and technology in Africa since then has, however, received relatively little attention compared to other regions of the world, despite notable African developments in mathematics, metallurgy, architecture, and other fields.
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== Early humans ==
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The Great Rift Valley of Africa provides critical evidence for the evolution of early hominins. The earliest tools in the world can be found there as well:
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An unidentified hominin, possibly Australopithecus afarensis or Kenyanthropus platyops, created stone tools dating to 3.3 million years ago at Lomekwi in the Turkana Basin, eastern Africa.
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Homo habilis, residing in eastern Africa, developed another early toolmaking industry, the Oldowan, around 2.3 million years ago.
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Homo erectus developed the Acheulean stone tool industry, specifically hand-axes, at 1.5 million years ago. This tool industry spread to the Middle East and Europe around 800,000 to 600,000 years ago. Homo erectus also begins using fire.
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Homo sapiens, or modern humans, created bone tools and backed blades around 90,000 to 60,000 years ago, in southern and eastern Africa. The use of bone tools and backed blades eventually became characteristic of Later Stone Age tool industries. The first appearance of abstract art is during the Middle Stone Age, however. The oldest abstract art in the world is a shell necklace dated to 82,000 years ago from the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco. The second oldest abstract art and the oldest rock art is found at Blombos Cave in South Africa, dated to 77,000 years ago. There are evidences that Stone Age humans around 100,000 years ago had an elementary knowledge of chemistry in Southern Africa, and that they used a specific recipe to create a liquefied ochre-rich mixture. According to Henshilwood, "This isn't just a chance mixture, it is early chemistry. It suggests conceptual and probably cognitive abilities which are the equivalent of modern humans".
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== Education ==
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=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
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In 295 BCE, the Library of Alexandria was founded by Greeks in Egypt. It was considered the largest library in the classical world.
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Al-Azhar University, founded in 970~972 as a madrasa, is the chief centre of Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning in the world. The oldest degree-granting university in Egypt after the Cairo University, its establishment date may be considered 1961 when non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum.
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=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
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Three madrasas or Islamic schools existed in Mali during the country's "golden age" from the 14th to the 16th centuries: Sankore Madrasah, Sidi Yahya Mosque, and Djinguereber Mosque, all in Timbuktu. The schools consisted of independent scholars who gave instruction to individuals or small groups of students, with special lectures sometimes given in the mosques. There was no overall school administration or prescribed course of study, and libraries consisted of individual private collections of manuscripts. Scholars were drawn from the city's wealthiest families, and instruction was explicitly religious. The main subjects studied by advanced scholars and students were Qur'anic studies, Arabic language, Muhammad, theology, mysticism, and law.
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In the 16th century, Timbuktu also housed as many as 150–180 maktabs (Qur'anic schools), where basic reading and recitation of the Qur'an were taught. These schools had an estimated peak enrollment of 4,000–5,000 pupils, including pupils from the surrounding areas.
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Within West Africa Timbuktu was a major center of book copying, religious groups, the Islamic sciences, and arts. Books were imported from North Africa and paper was imported from Europe. Books/manuscripts were written primarily in Arabic.
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The most famous scholar from Timbuktu was Ahmad Baba (1556–1627), who wrote primarily about Islamic law.
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== Astronomy ==
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Three types of calendars can be found in Africa: lunar, solar, and stellar. Most African calendars are a combination of the three. African calendars include the Akan calendar, Egyptian calendar, Berber calendar, Ethiopian calendar, Igbo calendar, Yoruba calendar, Shona calendar, Somali calendar, Swahili calendar, Xhosa calendar, Borana calendar, and Luba calendar and Ankole calendar.
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=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
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A stone circle located in the Nabta Playa basin may be one of the world's oldest known archeoastronomical devices. Built by the ancient Nubians about 4800 BCE, the device may have approximately marked the summer solstice.
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Since the first modern measurements of the precise cardinal orientations of the Egyptian pyramids were taken by Flinders Petrie, various astronomical methods have been proposed as to how these orientations were originally established. Ancient Egyptians may have observed, for example, the positions of two stars in the Plough / Big Dipper which was known to Egyptians as the thigh. It is thought that a vertical alignment between these two stars checked with a plumb bob was used to ascertain where North lay. The deviations from true North using this model reflect the accepted dates of construction of the pyramids.
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Egyptians were the first to develop a 365-day, 12 month calendar. It was a stellar calendar, created by observing the stars.
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During the 12th century, the astrolabic quadrant was invented in Egypt.
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=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
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Based on the translation of 14 Timbuktu manuscripts, the following points can be made about astronomical knowledge in Timbuktu during the 14th–16th centuries:
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They made use of the Julian Calendar.
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Generally speaking, they had a geocentric view of the Solar System.
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Some manuscripts included diagrams of planets and orbits along with mathematical calculations.
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They were able to accurately orient prayer towards Mecca.
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They recorded astronomical events, including a meteor shower in August 1583.
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At this time, Mali also had a number of astronomers including the emperor and scientist Askia Mohammad I.
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
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=== Eastern Africa ===
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Megalithic "pillar sites", known as "namoratunga", date to as early as 5,000 years ago and can be found surrounding Lake Turkana in Kenya. Although somewhat controversial today, initial interpretations suggested that they were used by Cushitic speaking people as an alignment with star systems tuned to a lunar calendar of 354 days.
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=== Southern Africa ===
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Today, South Africa has cultivated a burgeoning astronomy community. It hosts the Southern African Large Telescope, the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. South Africa is currently building the Karoo Array Telescope as a pathfinder for the $20 billion Square Kilometer Array project. South Africa is a finalist, with Australia, to be the host of the SKA.
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Due to archeological findings it has been speculated that the kingdoms of Zimbabwe such as Great Zimbabwe and mapungubwe used astronomy. Monolith stones with special engravings thought to be used to track Venus were found. They were compared to Mayan calendars and were found to be more accurate than them
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== Mathematics ==
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According to Paulus Gerdes, the development of geometrical thinking started early in African history, as early humans learned to "geometricize" in the context of their labor activities. For example, the hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa learned to track animals, learned to recognize and interpret spoors. They got to know that the shape of the spoor provided information on what animal passed by, how long ago, if it was hungry or not, etc. Such developments propelled Louis Liebenberg to posit that the critical attitude of contemporary Kalahari Desert trackers and the role of critical discussion in tracking suggest that the rationalist tradition of science may well have been practiced by hunter-gatherers long before the advent of the Greek philosophic schools. Rock paintings and engravings from all over Africa have been reported. Some of these artifacts date back to several hundreds of years, and others several thousands. They often have geometric structures. Other archaeological finds that indicate geometrical explorations by African hunters, farmers and artisans are stone and metal tools and ceramics. Particularly exceptional are archaeological finds of perishable materials such as baskets, textiles, and wooden objects. The finds from the Tellem are extremely important, as they provide ideas of earlier geometrical explorations. Clear evidence of the exploration of forms, shapes and symmetries exists in the archaeological finds from caves in the Cliff of Bandiagara in the center of Mali. The earliest buildings in the caves are cylindrical granaries made of mud coils that date from the 3rd to the 2nd century BCE.
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=== Central and Southern Africa ===
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The Lebombo bone from the mountains between Swaziland and South Africa may be the oldest known mathematical artifact. It dates from 35,000 BCE and consists of 29 distinct notches that were deliberately cut into a baboon's fibula.
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The Ishango bone is a bone tool from the Democratic Republic of Congo dated to the Upper Paleolithic era, about 18,000 to 20,000 BCE. It is also a baboon's fibula, with a sharp piece of quartz affixed to one end, perhaps for engraving or writing. It was first thought to be a tally stick, as it has a series of tally marks carved in three columns running the length of the tool, but some scientists have suggested that the groupings of notches indicate a mathematical understanding that goes beyond counting. Various functions for the bone have been proposed: it may have been a tool for multiplication, division, and simple mathematical calculation, a six-month lunar calendar, or it may have been made by a woman keeping track of her menstrual cycle.
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The Bushong people can distinguish graphs that have Eulerian paths and those that do not. They use such graphs for purposes including embroidery or political prestige. According to a European ethnologist in 1905, Bushong children were not only aware of the conditions which determine whether a given graph is traceable, but they also knew the procedure that permitted it to be drawn most expeditiously. There are various textbooks made by mathematicians using such culturally based graphs and designs to teach mathematics, such as those made by Paulus Gerdes. According to ethnomathematician Claudia Zaslavsky;
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Students of all ages and all ethnic backgrounds, as well as their instructors, are fascinated by the Bushoong and Chokwe networks and are impressed by the failure of the European ethnologist Emil Torday to solve the problem set to him by Bushoong children, a problem that presents a challenge to American students and their teachers as well, but was solved easily by African children.
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The "sona" drawing tradition of Angola also exhibit certain mathematical ideas.
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In 1982, Rebecca Walo Omana became the first female mathematics professor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
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By the predynastic Naqada period in Egypt, people had fully developed a numeral system. The importance of mathematics to an educated Egyptian is suggested by a New Kingdom fictional letter in which the writer proposes a scholarly competition between himself and another scribe regarding everyday calculation tasks such as accounting of land, labor and grain. Texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus show that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic mathematical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—use fractions, knew the formula to compute the volume of a frustum, and calculate the surface areas of triangles, circles and even hemispheres. They understood basic concepts of algebra and geometry, and could solve simple sets of simultaneous equations.
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
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=== Northern Africa ===
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Egyptians wore linen from the flax plant, and used looms as early as 4000 BCE. Nubians mainly wore cotton, beaded leather, and linen.
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The Djellaba was made typically of wool and worn in the Maghreb.
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=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
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Valentim Fenandes, writing in the early sixteenth century on the basis of news received in Lisbon from early travellers, praised the high quality of Mandinka cotton cloth that was found all along the west coast of West Africa Such comments were repeated with regard to the cotton cloth of the "Slave Coast" and Benin as well, produced especially in centers in the Yoruba country. John Phillips, an English captain who sailed to the Slave Coast at the end of the seventeenth century, was particularly impressed with local cloth, some of which was purchased by the European traders and fetched high prices in the New World.
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Some of the oldest surviving African textiles were discovered at the archaeological site of Kissi in northern Burkina Faso. They are made of wool or fine animal hair in a weft-faced plain weave pattern. Fragments of textile have also survived from the thirteenth century Benin City in Nigeria.
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In the Sahel, cotton is widely used in making the boubou (for men) and kaftan (for women).
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Bògòlanfini (mudcloth) is cotton textile dyed with fermented mud of tree sap and teas, hand made by the Bambara people of the Beledougou region of central Mali.
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By the 12th century, so-called Moroccan leather, which actually came from the Hausa area of northern Nigeria, was supplied to Mediterranean markets and found their way to the fairs and markets of Europe
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Kente was produced by the Akan people (Ashante, Fante, Enzema) and Ewe people in the countries of Togo, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
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During the 11th Century, the now vanished people of the Tellem (as they are called by the Dogon who inhabit the region from the 16th Century onwards) entered the
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area from the south, probably from the rain forest. From the 11th up to the 15th Century, the Tellem buried their dead in the remaining old granaries and in new buildings they built in the caves. The dead were buried with wooden headrests, bows, quivers, hoes, musical instruments, baskets, gourds, leather sandals, boots, bags, amulets, woolen and cotton blankets, coifs, tunics, and fiber aprons. These perishable objects found in a reasonably good state of preservation in the caves belong to the oldest objects that have been preserved from SubSaharan Africa. Archaeologists and textile experts who have analyzed the Tellem textiles assert found that they were of high quality and that no other region in the world has such a great variety of linear and geometrical patterns in cotton fabrics by means of a single color (the only one available: i.e. indigo). According to Rita Bolland, the Tellem designs have been the object of search for infinite combinations which have persisted to this day. To illustrate this search by Tellem weavers, Gerdes examines some patterns found on preserved fragments of tunics, sleeves, coifs and caps, woven in plain weave: i.e. the weave in which the horizontal and vertical threads cross each other one over, one under. According to Gerdes, the average width of the threads is 1 mm. The weavers alternated groups of natural white cotton threads with groups of blue, indigo-dyed, threads. From left to right, six vertical white threads are followed by four blue threads; from top to bottom, three horizontal white threads are followed by three blue threads. These yield a plane pattern. The basic rectangle has dimensions ten (=6+4) by six (=3+3), or (6+4) X (3+3). Gerdes adds that generally, the dimensions are (m+n) x (p+q), where m, n, p, and q are natural numbers. The Tellem weavers experimented with dimensions and found relationships between the dimensions and the (symmetry) properties of the patterns that resulted. In particular, the variation among the discovered plain weave fragments suggests that the weavers knew the effect on the patterns of the selection of even and odd dimensions, in addition to how these dimensions (m+n) and (p+q) are produced. The Tellem patterns from the 11th and 12th Centuries feature woven rectangles followed by fragments of respective plane patterns, which are two-color patterns in the sense that for each there is a rigid motion of the plane translation, rotation, reflection that reverses the blue and white colors. Furthermore, according to Gerdes, the Tellem weavers employed a variant of the plain weave, whereby in one direction double threads are used instead of single threads. In this way, the weavers were able to weave cloths with decorative and strip patterns. With woven cloth, the tailor could begin his/her work: drawing and cutting pieces; knotting, stitching and sewing them together; and decorating, for example, a tunic with a plaited band along the neck opening. Geometric knowledge is imperative in each of these activities.
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Decorative bands were plaited both with even and odd numbers of strings. Among the plaited bands discovered in the caves, there are on one hand bands made out of 4, 6, 8, and 14 strings, and, on the other hand, out of 5, 7, and 9 strings. The selection of an even or an odd number of strings and the weave, either plain or not, has implications for the visible decorative patterns. In addition, the Tellem weavers also produced blankets made of woolen.
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
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=== Central Africa ===
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Among Kuba people, in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, raffia clothes were woven. They used the fibers of the leaves on the raffia palm tree.
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Weaving with palm leaves was a highly developed art in Central Africa, and European travelers and missionaries compared woven palm-leaf cloth to the finest European-made silks. Filippo Pigafetta praised the "marvelous arte" of "making cloaths of sundry sortes, as Velvets shorne and unshorne, Sattens, Taffata, Damaskes, Sarcenettes and such like" in the eastern provinces and areas adjoining Kongo. Sarcenet was a fine silk, but, unlike that made in Europe, the type made in "this countrey and other places thereabouts" was "not of any silken stuffe" but "of the leaves of Palme trees." Indeed, the finest specimens were too "precious" for any but "the king, and such as it pleaseth him". Cavazzi wrote that the beaten leaves of one type of palm resulted in such fine, soft fibers that the weave of the cloth thus produced brought him to "astonishment". To produce such finely woven luxury cloth, the leaves had to be worked to a greater degree than the tying and laying required for thatching. Pigafetta noted that the process started with keeping the palms "under and lowe to the grounde, euery yeare cutting them, and watering them, to the ende they may grow smal and tender against the new spring". Once those "tender" leaves were "cleansed & purged after their manner," techniques that he did not further specify, "they drawe forth their threedes, which are all very fine and dainty, and all of one evennesses, saving that those which are longest, are best esteemed. For of those they weave their greatest peeces." Italian travellers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century did African cloth the considerable honor of comparing it with the best cloth produced in their own land, itself regarded as being among the best in Europe. Thus, Antonio Gradisca da Zucchelli (an Italian Capuchin priest) thought that the libongos (monetary cloth) he saw produced in Nsoyo, a coastal province of Kongo around 1705, "even though made of vile material like palm leaves", were "well worked and woven ... that it resembled velvet ... and is just as strong and durable."
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John K. Thornton argues, using the reports of contemporary European travellers in Africa and the findings of archaeologists, that African textile manufacturing was far more advanced than has been recognized. Large quantities of textiles were produced. By the standards of the seventeenth or eighteenth century world, he concludes, African textile manufacturers were producing their goods at the same or higher levels of productivity as their European counterparts. For example, Leiden, one of the leading European centres of textile production which had almost the same population as Momboares in the eastern Congo, produced about 100,000 metres of cloth per year in the early seventeenth century, as compared to 400,000 metres in Momboares. Not only were these products traded widely within the continent by African merchants, as European merchants along the West African coast, African textiles were exported to the Caribbean and South America.
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=== East Africa ===
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Barkcloth was used by the Baganda in Uganda from the Mutuba tree (Ficus natalensis). Kanga are Swahili pieces of fabric that come in rectangular shapes, made of pure cotton, and put together to make clothing. It is as long as ones outstretch hand and wide to cover the length of ones neck. Kitenge are similar to kangas and kikoy, but are of a thicker cloth, and have an edging only on a long side. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Sudan are some of the African countries where kitenge are worn. In Malawi, Namibia and Zambia, kitenge are known as Chitenge. Lamba Mpanjaka was cloth made of multicolored silk, worn like a toga on the island of Madagascar.
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Shemma, shama, and kuta are all cotton-based cloths used for making Ethiopian clothing. Three types of looms are used in Africa: the double heddle loom for narrow strips of cloth, the single heddle loom for wider spans of cloth, and the ground or pit loom. The double heddle loom and single heddle loom might be of African origin. The ground or pit loom is used in the Horn of Africa, Madagascar, and North Africa and is of Middle Eastern origins.
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=== Southern Africa ===
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In southern Africa one finds numerous use of animal hide and skins for clothing. The Ndau in central Mozambique and the Shona mixed hide with barkcloth and cotton cloth. Cotton weaving was practiced by the Ndau and Shona. Cotton cloth was referred to as machira. The Venda, Swazi, Basotho, Zulu, Ndebele, and Xhosa also made extensive use of hides. Hides came from cattle, sheep, goat, elephant, and from jangwa( part of the mongoose family). Leopard skins were coveted and was a symbol of kingship in Zulu society. Skins were tanned to form leather, dyed, and embedded with beads.
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== Maritime technology ==
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In 1987, the third oldest canoe in the world and the oldest in Africa, the Dufuna canoe, was discovered in Nigeria by Fulani herdsmen near the Yobe river and the village of Dufuna. It dates to approximately 8000 years ago, and was made from African mahogany.
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=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
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Carthage's fleet included large numbers of quadriremes and quinqueremes, warships with four and five ranks of rowers. Its ships dominated the Mediterranean. The Romans however were masters at copying and adapting the technology of other peoples. According to Polybius, the Romans seized a shipwrecked Carthaginian warship, and used it as a blueprint a massive naval build-up, adding their own refinement – the corvus – which allowed an enemy vessel to be "gripped" and boarded for hand-to-hand fighting. This negated initially superior Carthaginian seamanship and ships.
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Early Egyptians knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull as early as 3000 BC (5000 BCE). The oldest ships yet unearthed, a group of 14 discovered in Abydos, were constructed from wooden planks which were "sewn" together. Woven straps were used to lash the planks together, and reeds or grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams. Because the ships are all buried together and near a mortuary complex belonging to Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, originally the boats were all thought to have belonged to him. One of the 14 ships dates to 3000 BCE, however, and is now thought to perhaps have belonged to an earlier pharaoh, possibly Pharaoh Aha.
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Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with treenails to fasten them together, using pitch for caulking the seams. The "Khufu ship", a 43.6-meter vessel sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza in the Fourth Dynasty around 2500 BCE, is a full-size surviving example which may have fulfilled the symbolic function of a solar barque. Early Egyptians also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with mortise and tenon joints.
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=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
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A Nok sculpture portrays two individuals, along with their goods, in a dugout canoe. Both of the anthropomorphic figures in the watercraft are paddling. The Nok terracotta depiction of a dugout canoe may indicate that Nok people utilized dugout canoes to transport cargo, along tributaries (e.g., Gurara River) of the Niger River, and exchanged them in a regional trade network. The Nok terracotta depiction of a figure with a seashell on its head may indicate that the span of these riverine trade routes may have extended to the Atlantic Coast. In the maritime history of Africa, there is the earlier Dufuna canoe, which was constructed approximately 8000 years ago in the northern region of Nigeria; as the second earliest form of water vessel known in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Nok terracotta depiction of a dugout canoe was created in the central region of Nigeria during the first millennium BCE.
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In the 14th century CE King Abubakari II, the brother of King Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire is thought to have had a great number of boats sitting on the coast of West Africa. The boats would communicate with each other by drums. Malian boats at this time were canoes of different sizes.
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Numerous sources attest that the inland waterways of West Africa saw extensive use of war-canoes and vessels used for war transport where permitted by the environment. Most West African canoes were of single log construction, carved and dug-out from one massive tree trunk. The primary method of propulsion was by paddle and in shallow water, poles. Sails were also used to a lesser extent, particularly on trading vessels. The silk cotton tree provided many of the most table logs for massive canoe building, and launching was via wooden rollers to the water. Boat building specialists were to emerge among certain peoples, particularly in the Niger Delta.
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Some canoes were 80 feet (24 m) in length, carrying 100 men or more. Documents from 1506 for example, refer to war-canoes on the Sierra Leone river, carrying 120 men. Others refer to Guinea coast peoples using canoes of varying sizes – some 70 feet (21 m) in length, 7–8 feet (2.1–2.4 m) broad, with sharp pointed ends, rowing benches on the side, and quarter decks or focastles build of reeds, and miscellaneous facilities such as cooking hearths, and storage spaces for crew sleeping mats.
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The engineering and methodology (e.g., cultural valuations, use of iron tools) used in the construction of West African dugout canoes (e.g., rounded point sterns and pointed bows with 15° - 50° angle above water surface, increased stability via partly rounded or flat base, v-shaped hull, shallow draft for sailing water depths less than one foot, occasionally spanning more than one hundred feet in length) contributed to the capability of the canoes to be able to persist and navigate throughout the interconnected river system that connected the Benue River, Gambia River, Niger River, and Senegal River as well as Lake Chad; this river system connected diverse sources of water (e.g., lakes, rivers, seas, streams) and ecological zones (e.g., Sahara, Sahel, Savanna), and allowed for the transport of people, information, and economic goods along riverine trade networks that connect various locations (e.g., Bamako, Djenne, Gao, Mopti, Segou, Timbuktu) throughout West Africa and North Africa. The knowledge and understanding (e.g., hydrography, marine geography, how canoe navigation is affected by the depth of the water, tides in the ocean, currents, and winds) of West African canoers facilitated the skillful navigation of various channels of the regional river system, while engaging in activities such as trade and fishing. The construction schema for West African dugout canoes were also used among canoes in the Americas constructed by the African diaspora. The sacredness of canoe-making is expressed in a proverb from Senegambia: "The blood of kings and the tears of the canoe-maker are sacred things which must not touch the ground." In addition to possessing economic value, West African dugout canoes also possessed a sociocultural and psychospiritual value.
|
||||
In 1735 CE, John Atkins observed: "Canoos are what used through the whole Coast for transporting Men and Goods." European rowboats, which frequently capsized, were able to be outmaneuvered and outperformed in terms of speed by West African dugout canoes. Barbot stated, regarding West African canoers and West African dugout canoes, the "speed with which these people generally make these boats travel is beyond belief". Alvise da Cadamosto also observed how "effortlessly" Portuguese caravels were outperformed by Gambian dugout canoes. The skill of Kru canoers to be able to navigate the challenging conditions of the sea was also observed by Charles Thomas.
|
||||
Amid the 1590s CE, Komenda and Takoradi in Ghana served as production areas for dugout canoes made by the Ahanta people. By 1679 CE, Barbot observed Takoradi to be "a major canoe-producing center, crafting dugouts capable of carrying up to eight tons". Between the 17th century CE and 18th century CE, a production area and/or marketplace of dugout canoes was in Shama, which later became only a marketplace on Supome Island. Amid the 1660s CE, in addition to other local canoers manufacturing dugout canoes, the Fetu people were observed by Muller as having bought dugout canoes that were made by the Ahanta people.
|
||||
West Africans (e.g., Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Senegal) and western Central Africans (e.g., Cameroon) independently developed the skill of surfing. Amid the 1640s CE, Michael Hemmersam provided an account of surfing in the Gold Coast: "the parents 'tie their children to boards and throw them into the water.'" In 1679 CE, Barbot provided an account of surfing among Elmina children in Ghana: "children at Elmina learned "to swim, on bits of boards, or small bundles of rushes, fasten'd under their stomachs, which is a good diversion to the spectators." James Alexander provided an account of surfing in Accra, Ghana in 1834 CE: "From the beach, meanwhile, might be seen boys swimming into the sea, with light boards under their stomachs. They waited for a surf; and came rolling like a cloud on top of it. But I was told that sharks occasionally dart in behind the rocks and 'yam' them." Thomas Hutchinson provided an account of surfing in southern Cameroon in 1861: "Fishermen rode small dugouts 'no more than six feet in length, fourteen to sixteen inches in width, and from four to six inches in depth.'"
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 15/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
It is known that ancient Axum traded with India, and there is evidence that ships from Northeast Africa may have sailed back and forth between India/Sri Lanka and Nubia trading goods and even to Persia, Himyar and Rome. Aksum was known by the Greeks for having seaports for ships from Greece and Yemen. Elsewhere in Northeast Africa, the 1st century CE Greek travelogue Periplus of the Red Sea reports that Somalis, through their northern ports such as Zeila and Berbera, were trading frankincense and other items with the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula as well as with the then Roman-controlled Egypt.
|
||||
Middle Age Swahili kingdoms are known to have had trade port islands and trade routes with the Islamic world and Asia and were described by Greek historians are "metropolises". Famous African trade ports such as Mombasa, Zanzibar, Mogadishu and Kilwa were known to Chinese sailors such as Zheng He and medieval Islamic historians such as the Berber Islamic voyager Abu Abdullah ibn Battuta. The dhow was the ship of trade used by the Swahili. They could be massive. It was a dhow that transported a giraffe to Chinese Emperor Yong Le's court, in 1414.
|
||||
Few kingdoms south of the Sahara possessed a more developed naval organization than that of Buganda, which dominated Lake Victoria with its navy of up to 20,000 men and war canoes as long as seventy two feet....
|
||||
|
||||
== Architecture ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa ===
|
||||
The Walls of Benin City are collectively the world's largest man-made structure and were semi-destroyed by the British in 1897. Fred Pearce wrote in New Scientist:They extend for some 16,000 kilometres in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They cover 6500 square kilometres and were all dug by the Edo people. In all, they are four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.Sungbo's Eredo is the second largest pre-colonial monument in Africa, larger than the Great Pyramids or Great Zimbabwe. Built by the Yoruba people in honour of one of their titled personages, an aristocratic widow known as the Oloye Bilikisu Sungbo, it is made up of sprawling rammed earth walls and the valleys that surrounded the town of Ijebu-Ode in Ogun state, Nigeria.
|
||||
Tichit is the oldest surviving archaeological settlements in the Sahel and is the oldest all-stone settlement south of the Sahara. It is thought to have been built by Soninke people and is thought to be the precursor of the Ghana empire.
|
||||
The Great Mosque of Djenné is the largest mud brick or adobe building in the world and is considered by many architects to be the greatest achievement of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style, albeit with definite Islamic influences.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
|
||||
Around 1000 CE, cob (tabya) first appears in the Maghreb and al-Andalus.
|
||||
The Egyptian step pyramid built at Saqqara is the oldest major stone building in the world.
|
||||
The Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years.
|
||||
The earliest style of Nubian architecture included the speos, structures carved out of solid rock, an A-Group (3700–3250 BCE) achievement. Egyptians made extensive use of the process at Speos Artemidos and Abu Simbel.
|
||||
Sudan, site of ancient Nubia, has more pyramids than anywhere in the world, even more than Egypt, with 223 pyramids
|
||||
Around 1100, the ventilator is invented in Egypt.
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
Aksumites built in stone. Monolithic stelae on top of the graves of kings like King Ezana's Stele. Later, during the Zagwe dynasty Churches carved out of solid rocks like Church of Saint George at Lalibela.
|
||||
Thimlich Ohinga, a World Heritage Site is a complex of stone-built ruins located in Kenya.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Southern Africa ===
|
||||
In southern Africa one finds ancient and widespread traditions of building in stone. Two broad categories of these traditions have been noted: 1. Zimbabwean style 2. Transvaal Free State style. North of the Zambezi one finds very few stone ruins. Great Zimbabwe, Khami, and Thulamela uses the Zimbabwean style. Tsotho/Tswana architecture represents the Transvaal Free State style. ||Khauxa!nas stone settlement in Namibia represents both traditions. The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (1075–1220) was a pre-colonial Southern African state located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers which marked the center of a pre-Shona kingdom which preceded the culmination of southeast African urban civilization in Great Zimbabwe.
|
||||
The tswana lived in City states with stone walls and complex sociopolitical structures that they built in the 1300s or earlier. These cities had a populations of up to 20,000 people which at the time, rivalled Cape Town in size.
|
||||
|
||||
== Communication systems ==
|
||||
Griots are repositories of African history, especially in African societies with no written language. Griots can recite genealogies going back centuries. They recite epics that reveal historical occurrences and events. Griots can go for hours and even days reciting the histories and genealogies of societies. They have been described as living history books.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 16/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
|
||||
Africa's first writing system and the beginning of the alphabet was Egyptian hieroglyphs. Two scripts have been the direct offspring of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Proto-Sinaitic script and the Meroitic alphabet. Out of Proto-Sinaitic came the South Arabian alphabet and Phoenician alphabet, out of which the Aramaic alphabet, Greek alphabet, the Brāhmī script, Arabic alphabet were directly or indirectly derived.
|
||||
Out of the South Arabian alphabet came the Ge'ez alphabet which is used to write Blin(cushitic), Amharic, Tigre, and Tigrinya in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
|
||||
Out the Phoenician Alphabet came tifinagh, the berber alphabet mainly used by the Tuaregs.
|
||||
The other direct offspring of Egyptian hieroglyphs was the Meroitic alphabet. It began in the Napatan phase of Nubian history, Kush (700–300 BCE). It came into full fruition in the 2nd century, under the successor Nubian kingdom of Meroë. The script can be read but not understood, with the discovery at el-Hassa, Sudan of ram statues bearing meroitic inscriptions might assist in its translation.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Sahel ===
|
||||
With the arrival of Islam came the Arabic alphabet in the Sahel. Arabic writing is widespread in the Sahel. The Arabic script was also used to write native African languages. The script used in this capacity is often called Ajami. The languages that have been or are written in Ajami include Hausa, Mandinka, Fulani, Wolofal, Tamazight, Nubian, Yoruba, Songhai, and Kanuri.
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa ===
|
||||
N'Ko script developed by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa. It is used in Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, and neighboring countries by a number of speakers of Manding languages.
|
||||
Nsibidi is ideographic set of symbols developed by the Ekoi people of Southeastern coastal Nigeria for communication. A complex implementation of Nsibidi is only known to initiates of Ekpe secret society.
|
||||
Adinkra is a set of symbols developed by the Akan people (Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire), used to represent concepts and aphorisms.
|
||||
The Vai syllabary is a syllabic writing system devised for the Vai language by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ in Liberia during the 1830s.
|
||||
Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language developed in the Adamorobe Akan village in Eastern Ghana. The village has a high incident of genetic deafness.
|
||||
Usman dan Fodio accomplished a great feat in raising the literacy rate of the people of the Sokoto Caliphate in only a few decades. Multiple independent historical surveys have estimated the male literacy rate to have stayed at about 96-97% and the female literacy rate remained between 93%-95% by the death of the Shehu. The female literacy rate of Sokoto in 1812 was higher than women in the United Kingdom and the United States. The British traveler Col. Runciman reported in awe that the people of Sokoto "were literate not to a man, but to a woman".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Central Africa ===
|
||||
Across eastern Angola and northwestern Zambia, sona ideographs were used as mnemonic devices to record knowledge and culture. Gerhard Kubik explains the various aspects of sona that indicate space and time concepts as circular, multidirectional, and multidimensional. For instance, in terms of directionality of drawing, the sona is performed from left to right, from bottom to top (on a wall), or from close to the body to far. This mirrors the process of the line, which in the theory of the Eulerian path returns to the beginning. Furthermore, Kubik describes sona as being synaesthetic, with visuality and aurality paired in the dot and line structure of the drawings. He concludes, remarkably, that "[the evidence of inherent patterns] shows that the African discovery, unparalleled in any other culture in the world, of how to make use of the reactions of the human perceptual apparatus by deliberately creating configurations which must decompose' and reconstitute as 'inherent patterns,' encompasses both the aural and the visual m realm." Thus sona is a well-established mediating system, or apparatus, that coded "deterritorialized flows" through writing, speech, voice, sound instruments, and (masquerade) costumes. Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz writes of a broad practice of this type of writing in Central Africa and the Cuban diaspora, especially through the Bakongo people. He argues that writing includes performance, objects, rhythms, gestures, and even food identifiers. Sona demonstrates that even in so-called unmediated practices, language operates as protocol that negotiates power relationships and intimate acts of colonization. That is, sona is a code, based on a binary code much like computerized information processing, that does something in addition to saying something. Simon Battestini details the various ways that the term writing can be analyzed in Africa, what he distills as all "encoded traces of a text". In other definitions, writing is seized thought, which yet preserves its noetic-poetic and heterogeneous modes of communication."Sona has been compared to computing because of its recursive logic of both visual patterning and its framing of
|
||||
social dynamics. It resists any medium that has been designed to decouple information from communication, whether the book or the computer".
|
||||
Lukasa memory boards were also used among the BaLuba.
|
||||
Talking drums exploit the tonal aspect of many African languages to convey very complicated messages. Talking drums can send messages 25 to 40 kilometres (15 to 25 mi). Bulu, a Bantu language, can be drummed as well as spoken. In a Bulu village, each individual had a unique drum signature. A message could be sent to an individual by drumming his drum signature. It has been noted that a message can be sent 160 kilometres (100 mi) from village to village within two hours or less using a talking drum.
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
On the Swahili coast, the Swahili language was written in Arabic script, as was the Malagasy language in Madagascar.
|
||||
The people of Uganda developed a form of writing based on a floral code and the use of talking drums was widespread as well.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 17/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
It is especially interesting that the form of writing that developed in Bunyoro was based on a floral code, as the absence of both writing and flowers in African culture have been used by Jack Goody as evidence of African culture's separateness from that of "Eurasia." Goody has written that African peoples generally did not make significant use of flowers in worship, gift-giving or decoration. He does "not know of any indigenous use of odours", nor of plants playing a role in stories or myths. This is thought to be because of Africa's "simple" agriculture, "non-complex" societies and absence of a "culture of luxury". This description of African life does not fit well with what we know of precolonial Bunyoro, a large, relatively ancient, and extremely hierarchical kingdom, and the analysis of the role of flowers was quite inaccurate.
|
||||
The ancient court music composers of Buganda discovered how human auditory perception processes a complex sequence of rapid, irregular sound impulses by splitting the total image into perceptible units at different pitch levels. They had made use of their discovery in composition, creating indirectly polyphonies of interweaving melodic lines that would suggest words to a Luganda speaker, as if some spirit were talking to the performers of a xylopnone or to the lone player of a harp (ennanga). The combination of the first two Xylophone parts creates 'illusory' melodic patterns that exist only in the observers mind, not actually played by either of the first two musicians directly. That these 'resultant' or 'inherent' patterns are materialised only in the minds of listeners is a remarkable feature of Bugandan music. It is probably the oldest example of an audio-psychological effect known as auditory streaming (first recognized in western literature as the melodic fission effect) to delliberately occur in music. The music would be produced by regular movement, with the fingers or sticks combining two interlocking tone-rows, but the patterns heard would be irregular, often asymmetric and complex. All the 102 xylophone compositions that were transcribed by Gerhard Kubik In Buganda during the early 1960s reveal an extremely complex structure, and they "fall apart' in perception-generated innerent melodlc-rhythmic patterns. No one, so far, has Succeeded in composing a new piece that would match in quality and complexity those compositions handed down for generations. Some of them can even be dated by correlating the accompanying song texts with the reign of past kings.
|
||||
The Agikuyu of Kenya used a Mnemonic-pictographic device they called Gicandi to record and spread knowledge. This kind of memory device uses a pictorial symbolism which proceeds by simplified pictures, tracing only part of an object or a conventional image. A small number of pictures is sufficient to record a happening, suggest to a medicine-man the formula for magical practices and to a singer the object and verses of his song. A kikuyu was also able to follow the history of his herd by notches on a stick. A certain notch on a stick that identified a specific cow would signify insemination; another notch would record the birth of the calf and by such records the cattle breeder was able to estimate the amount of milk from his herd.
|
||||
It is noteworthy that the word for letters or numerals in Kikuyu is ndemwa, which translates to those that have been cut. Father Cangolo of the consolata fathers who lived among the Kikuyu in the 1930s recorded that:
|
||||
|
||||
Recently an old Kikuyu took to a public meeting a wooden stick on which he was able to read the amount of tax paid by him to government on each year since it began being collected.
|
||||
|
||||
== Transportation technologies ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== North Africa ===
|
||||
Since the 5th Dynasty, awareness of the wheel may have been in ancient Egypt.
|
||||
During the 13th Dynasty, the earliest wheeled transport emerged in ancient Egypt.
|
||||
The potter's wheel was introduced into ancient Nubia by ancient Egypt. The wheelhead of a potter's wheel, which was made of clay and dated to 1850 BCE, was found at Askut.
|
||||
Since the Meroe period, ox-powered water wheels, specifically saqiya, and shaduf were used in Nubia.
|
||||
Between 3200 BP and 1000 BP, various Central Saharan rock art sites from the Horse Period were created depicting charioteers, mostly upon horse-driven chariots and rarely upon cattle-driven chariots; these painted and engraved depictions were distributed in 81 painted and 120 engraved depictions in Algeria, 18 painted and 44 engraved depictions in Libya, 6 engraved depictions in Mali, 125 engraved depictions in Mauritania, 96 engraved depictions in Morocco, 29 engraved depictions in Niger, and 21 engraved depictions in Western Sahara, and were likely created by the Garamantes, whose ancestors were ancient Berbers and Saharan pastoralists. Rock art engravings of ox-drawn wagons and horse-driven chariots can be found in Algeria, Libya, southern Morocco, Mauritania, and Niger.
|
||||
In the 5th century BCE, Herodotus reported use of chariots by Garamantes in the Saharan region of North Africa.
|
||||
By the 4th century BCE, the water wheel, particularly the noria and sakia, was created in ancient Egypt.
|
||||
In the 1st century CE, Strabo reported use of chariots by Nigretes and Pharusii in the Saharan region of North Africa.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 18/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa ===
|
||||
Between 3200 BP and 1000 BP, various Central Saharan rock art sites from the Horse Period were created depicting charioteers, mostly upon horse-driven chariots and rarely upon cattle-driven chariots; these painted and engraved depictions were distributed in 81 painted and 120 engraved depictions in Algeria, 18 painted and 44 engraved depictions in Libya, 6 engraved depictions in Mali, 125 engraved depictions in Mauritania, 96 engraved depictions in Morocco, 29 engraved depictions in Niger, and 21 engraved depictions in Western Sahara, and were likely created by the Garamantes, whose ancestors were ancient Berbers and Saharan pastoralists. Rock art engravings of ox-drawn wagons and horse-driven chariots can be found in Algeria, Libya, southern Morocco, Mauritania, and Niger.
|
||||
At Dhar Tichitt, there is Neolithic rock art that depicts a human figure with a link in their hand, connecting him to yoked oxen that are pulling a cart. At Dhar Walata, there is Neolithic rock art that depicts a human figure in relation to an ox cart.
|
||||
At Bled Initi, which is a hamlet near Akreijit, there are two depictions of ox carts that have been estimated to date between 650 BCE and 380 BCE, and are consistent with the artistic style of other aspects of the Dhar Tichitt Early Iconographic Tradition.
|
||||
At Tondia, in Niger, rock art portrays an ox cart; the use of the ox cart in Saharan West Africa may have begun to decline in use as transport by camel increased between the 4th century CE and the medieval period.
|
||||
In 1670 CE, the king of Allada was gifted a gilded carriage, along with a horse bit and horse harness, by the French West India Company.
|
||||
In 1772 CE, a European account reported the observed use of two coaches in a procession, which were carried by twelve men each as part of a ceremony in the kingdom of Dahomey, at Abomey.
|
||||
Between 1789 CE and 1797 CE, king Agonglo of Dahomey owned a carriage, which was still intact during the 1870s CE.
|
||||
Throughout the 19th century CE, numerous Europeans accounts reported the observed use of many wheeled transports, including carriages, which were part of ceremonial processions in the kingdom of Dahomey.
|
||||
In 1824 CE, the king of Lagos gifted a large-sized carriage to the emperor of Brazil.
|
||||
During the 1840s CE, king Eyamba V of Old Calabar acquired two horse-drawn carriages.
|
||||
In 1841 CE, Asantehene Kwaku Dua I was gifted a carriage by the Methodist Missionary Society.
|
||||
In 1845 CE, the kingdom of Dahomey used a cart against Badagry, resulting in it later being seized.
|
||||
In 1850 CE, a European account in the kingdom of Dahomey detailed: "'a glass-coach, the handiwork of Hoo-ton-gee, a native artist-a square with four large windows, on wheels', and also ' ... [a] wheeled-chair with a huge bird before it, on wheels of Dahomey make ... [a] warrior on wheels, Dahomey make, ... [and a] Dahoman-made chair on wheels, covered with handsome country cloth'."
|
||||
In 1864 CE, a European account detailed Dahomey carriages "'of home, or native manufacture', including 'a blue-green shandridan, with two short flagstaffs attached to the front'."
|
||||
In 1866 CE, a European account reported the observed use of a carriage in a procession, which was part of a ceremony in the kingdom of Borno, at Kukawa.
|
||||
In 1870 CE, a European account reported the observed use of a mule-drawn carriage in a ceremonial procession, which was gifted to the Shehu of Borno by British explorers in 1851 CE, at Kukawa.
|
||||
In 1871 CE, a European account in the kingdom of Dahomey detailed: "'a dark green coach, evidently of native manufacture'."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Southern Africa ===
|
||||
At Tsodilo Hills, in Botswana, white painted rock art may depict a wagon and wagon wheel, which may date after, or even considerably after, the 1st millennium CE.
|
||||
|
||||
== Warfare ==
|
||||
Most of tropical Africa did not have a cavalry. Horses would be wiped out by tse-tse fly and it was not possible to domesticate the zebra. The army of tropical Africa consisted of mainly infantry. Weapons included bows and arrows with low bow strength that compensated with poison-tipped arrows. Throwing knives were made use of in central Africa, spears that could double as thrusting cutting weapons, and swords were also in use. Heavy clubs when thrown could break bones, battle axe, and shields of various sizes were in widespread use. Later guns, muskets such as flintlock, wheelock, and matchlock. Contrary to popular perception, guns were also in widespread use in Africa. They typically were of poor quality, a policy of European nations to provide poor quality merchandise. One reason the slave trade was so successful was the widespread use of guns in Africa.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 19/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa ===
|
||||
Fortification was a major part of defense, integral to warfare. Massive earthworks were built around cities and settlements in West Africa, typically defended by soldiers with bow and poison-tipped arrows. The earthworks are some of the largest man made structures in Africa and the world such as the walls of Benin and Sungbo's Eredo. In Central Africa, the Angola region, one find preference for ditches, which were more successful for defense against wars with Europeans.
|
||||
African infantry did not just include men. The state of Dahomey included all-female units, the so-called Dahomey Amazons, who were personal bodyguards of the king. The Queen Mother of Benin had her own personal army, 'The Queen's Own.'
|
||||
Biologicals were extensively used in many parts of Africa, most of the time in the form of poisoned arrows, but also powder spread on the war front or in the form of the poisoning of horses and water supply of the opponents. In Borgu, there were specific mixtures to kill, for hypnosis, to make the enemy bold, and to act as an antidote against the enemies' poison. A specific class of medicine-men was responsible for the making of the biologicals. In South Sudan, the people of the Koalit Hills kept their country free of Arab invasions by using tsetse flies as a weapon of war. Several accounts can give us an idea of the efficiency of the biologicals. For example, Mockley-Ferryman in 1892 commented on the Dahomean invasion of Borgu, that "their (Borgawa) poisoned arrows enabled them to hold their own with the forces of Dahomey notwithstanding the latter's muskets." The same scenario happened to Portuguese raiders in Senegambia when they were defeated by Mali's Gambian forces, and to John Hawkins in Sierra Leone where he lost a number of his men to poisoned arrows.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Northern Africa, Nile Valley, and the Sahel ===
|
||||
Ancient Egyptian weaponry includes bows and arrow, maces, clubs, scimitars, swords, shields, and knives. Body armor was made of bands of leathers and sometimes laid with scales of copper. Horse-drawn chariots were used to deliver archers into the battle field. Weapons were initially made with stone, wood, and copper, later bronze, and later iron.
|
||||
In 1260, the first portable hand cannons (midfa) loaded with explosive gunpowder, the first example of a handgun and portable firearm, were used by the Egyptians to repel the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut. The cannons had an explosive gunpowder composition almost identical to the ideal compositions for modern explosive gunpowder. They were also the first to use dissolved talc for fire protection, and they wore fireproof clothing, to which Gunpowder cartridges were attached.
|
||||
Aksumite weapons were mainly made of iron: iron spears, iron swords, and iron knives called poniards. Shields were made of buffalo hide. In the latter part of the 19th century, Ethiopia made a concerted effort to modernize its army. She acquired repeating rifles, artillery, and machine guns. This modernization facilitated the Ethiopian victory over the Italians at the Tigray town of Adwa in the 1896 Battle of Adwa. Ethiopia was one of the few African countries to use artillery in colonial wars.
|
||||
There are also a breastplate armor made of the horny back plates of crocodile from Egypt, which was given to the Pitt Rivers Museum as part of the archaeological Founding Collection in 1884.
|
||||
The first use of cannons as siege machine at the siege of Sijilmasa in 1274, according to 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun.
|
||||
The Sahelian military consisted of cavalry and infantry. Cavalry consisted of shielded, mounted soldiers. Body armor was chain mail or heavy quilted cotton. Helmets were made of leather, elephant, or hippo hide. Imported horses were shielded. Horse armor consisted of quilted cotton packed with kapok fiber and copper face plate. The stirrups could be used as weapon to disembowel enemy infantry or mounted soldiers at close range. Weapons included the sword, lance, battle-axe, and broad-bladed spear. The infantry were armed with bow and iron tipped arrows. Iron tips were usually laced with poison, from the West African plant Strophantus hispidus. Quivers of 40–50 arrows would be carried into battle. Later, muskets were introduced.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Southern Africa ===
|
||||
The numerous irregular conflicts in the region during the 1800s saw the emergence of the Afrikaner "kommando" system of mounted mobile light infantry called up from the male population. These would see extensive action during the Xhosa Wars and the First and Second Boer Wars and became the origin of the modern commando elite light infantry type.
|
||||
From the 1960s to the 1980s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Six nuclear weapons were assembled. With the anticipated changeover to a majority-elected government in the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the first nation in the world which voluntarily gave up nuclear arms it had developed itself.
|
||||
|
||||
== Commerce ==
|
||||
Numerous metal objects and other items were used as currency in Africa. They are as follows: cowrie shells, salt, gold (dust or solid), copper, ingots, iron chains, tips of iron spears, iron knives, cloth in various shapes (square, rolled, etc.). Copper was as valuable as gold in Africa. Copper was not as widespread and more difficult to acquire, except in Central Africa, than gold. Other valuable metals included lead and tin. Salt was also as valuable as gold. Because of its scarcity, it was used as currency.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 20/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
|
||||
Carthage imported gold, copper, ivory, and slaves from tropical Africa. Carthage exported salt, cloth, metal goods. Before camels were used in the trans-Saharan trade pack animals, oxen, donkeys, mules, and horses were utilized. Extensive use of camels began in the 1st century CE. Carthage minted gold, silver, bronze, and electrum(mix gold and silver) coins mainly for fighting wars with Greeks and Romans. Most of their fighting force were mercenaries, who had to be paid.
|
||||
Islamic North Africa made use of the Almoravid dinar and Fatimid dinar, gold coins. The Almoravid dinar and the Fatimid dinar were printed on gold from the Sahelian empires. The ducat of Genoa and Venice and the florine of Florence were also printed on gold from the Sahelian empires.
|
||||
Ancient Egypt imported ivory, gold, incense, hardwood, and ostrich feather.
|
||||
Nubia exported gold, cotton/cotton cloth, ostrich feathers, leopard skins, ivory, ebony, and iron/iron weapons.
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
|
||||
Cowries have been used as currency in West Africa since the 11th century when their use was first recorded near Old Ghana. Its use may have been much older. Sijilmasa in present-day Morocco seems to be a major source of cowries in the trans-Saharan trade. In western Africa, shell money was usual tender up until the middle of the 19th century. Before the abolition of the slave trade there were large shipments of cowry shells to some of the English ports for reshipment to the slave coast. It was also common in West Central Africa as the currency of the Kingdom of Kongo called locally nzimbu. As the value of the cowry was much greater in West Africa than in the regions from which the supply was obtained, the trade was extremely lucrative. In some cases the gains are said to have been 500%. The use of the cowry currency gradually spread inland in Africa. By about 1850 Heinrich Barth found it fairly widespread in Kano, Kuka, Gando, and even Timbuktu. Barth relates that in Muniyoma, one of the ancient divisions of Bornu, the king's revenue was estimated at 30,000,000 shells, with every adult male being required to pay annually 1000 shells for himself, 1000 for every pack-ox, and 2000 for every slave in his possession. In the countries on the coast, the shells were fastened together in strings of 40 or 100 each, so that fifty or twenty strings represented a dollar; but in the interior, they were laboriously counted one by one, or, if the trader were expert, five by five. The districts mentioned above received their supply of kurdi, as they were called, from the west coast; but the regions to the north of Unyamwezi, where they were in use under the name of simbi, were dependent on Muslim traders from Zanzibar. The shells were used in the remoter parts of Africa until the early 20th century but gave way to modern currencies. The shell of the land snail, Achatina monetaria, cut into circles with an open center was also used as coin in Benguella, Portuguese West Africa.
|
||||
The Ghana Empire, Mali Empire, and Songhay Empire were major exporters of gold, iron, tin, slaves, spears, javelin, arrows, bows, whips of hippo hide. They imported salt, horses, wheat, raisins, cowries, dates, copper, henna, olives, tanned hides, silk, cloth, brocade, Venetian pearls, mirrors, and tobacco. All these empires massively influenced world economics since they controlled 80% of the worlds gold that Europe and the Islamic world depended on (gold from the Mali Empire was the main source for the manufacture of coins in the Muslim world and Europe). European states even took loans from African states as the gold from west Africa funded the trade imbalance with the east for spices.
|
||||
Some of the currencies used in the Sahel included paper debt or IOU's for long-distance trade, gold coins, and the mitkal (gold dust) currency. Gold dust that weighed 4.6 grams was equivalent to 500 or 3,000 cowries. Square cloth, four spans on each side, called chigguiya was used around the Senegal River.
|
||||
In Kanem cloth was the major currency. A cloth currency called dandi was also in widespread use.
|
||||
The Akan used goldweight that they called "Sika-yôbwê"(stone of gold) as their currency. They used a system of computing weight consisting of 11 units. The value of the weight were also numerically represented using two signs.
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
Aksum exported ivory, glass crystal, brass, copper, myrrh, and frankincense. The Aksumites imported silver, gold, olive oil, and wine. The Aksumites produced coins around 270 CE, under the rule of King Endybis. Aksumite coins were issued in gold, silver, and bronze.
|
||||
The Swahili served as middlemen. They connected African goods to Asian markets and Asian goods to African markets. Their most in demand export was Ivory. They exported ambergris, gold, leopard skins, slaves, and tortoise shell. They imported pottery and glassware from Asia. They also manufactured items such as cotton, glass and shell beads. Imports and locally manufactured goods were used as trade to acquire African goods. Trade links included the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, India, and China. The Swahili also minted silver and copper coins.
|
||||
|
||||
== Glass manufacturing ==
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 3/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Mathematical notation was decimal, and based on hieroglyphic signs for each power of ten up to one million. Each of these could be written as many times as necessary to add up to the desired number; so to write the number eighty or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight times respectively. Because their methods of calculation could not handle most fractions with a numerator greater than one, ancient Egyptian fractions had to be written as the sum of several fractions. For example, the fraction two-fifths was resolved into the sum of one-third + one-fifteenth; this was facilitated by standard tables of values. Some common fractions, however, were written with a special glyph; the equivalent of the modern two-thirds is shown on the right.
|
||||
Ancient Egyptian mathematicians had a grasp of the principles underlying the Pythagorean theorem, knowing, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were in a 3–4–5 ratio. They were able to estimate the area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth from its diameter and squaring the result:
|
||||
|
||||
Area ≈ [(8⁄9)D]2 = (256⁄81)r2 ≈ 3.16r2,
|
||||
a reasonable approximation of the formula πr2.
|
||||
The golden ratio seems to be reflected in many Egyptian constructions, including the pyramids, but its use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient Egyptian practice of combining the use of knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of proportion and harmony.
|
||||
Based on engraved plans of Meroitic King Amanikhabali's pyramids, Nubians had a sophisticated understanding of mathematics and an appreciation of the harmonic ratio. The engraved plans is indicative of much to be revealed about Nubian mathematics.
|
||||
|
||||
== Metallurgy ==
|
||||
|
||||
Most of Africa moved from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The Iron Age and Bronze Age occurred simultaneously. North Africa and the Nile Valley imported its iron technology from the Near East and followed the Near Eastern pattern of development from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
|
||||
Many Africanists accept an independent development of the use of iron south of the Sahara. Among archaeologists, it is a debatable issue. The earliest dating of iron outside of North Africa is 2500 BCE at Egaro, west of Termit, making it contemporary with iron smelting in the Middle East. The Egaro date is debatable with archaeologists, due to the method used to attain it. The Termit date of 1500 BCE is widely accepted. Iron at the site of Lejja, Nigeria, has been radiocarbon dated to approximately 2000 BCE. Iron use, in smelting and forging for tools, appears in West Africa by 1200 BCE, making it one of the first places for the birth of the Iron Age. Before the 19th century, African methods of extracting iron were employed in Brazil, until more advanced European methods were instituted.
|
||||
John K. Thornton concludes that Africans metalworkers were producing their goods at the same or higher levels of productivity as their European counterparts.
|
||||
Archaeometallurgical scientific knowledge and technological development originated in numerous centers of Africa; the centers of origin were located in West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa; consequently, as these origin centers are located within inner Africa, these archaeometallurgical developments are thus native African technologies. Iron metallurgical development occurred 2631 BCE – 2458 BCE at Lejja, in Nigeria, 2136 BCE – 1921 BCE at Obui, in Central Africa Republic, 1895 BCE – 1370 BCE at Tchire Ouma 147, in Niger, and 1297 BCE – 1051 BCE at Dekpassanware, in Togo.
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa ===
|
||||
|
||||
Besides being masters in iron, Africans were masters in brass, copper, and bronze. Ife showed artistic mastery in their striking naturalistic statues of brass and copper, a lost wax tradition beginning in the 11-12th centuries. Ife was also a manufacturer of glass and glass beads. Benin later mastered a mix of brass and bronze during the 16th century, producing portraiture and reliefs in the metals.
|
||||
In West Africa, several centres of iron production using natural draft furnaces emerged from the early second millennium CE. Iron production in Banjeli and Bassar for example in Togo reached up to 80,000 cubic meters(which is more than the production at places such as Meroe), analyses indicate that fifteenth-and sixteenth-century CE slags from this area were just bloomery waste products, while preliminary metallographic analyses of objects indicate them to be made of low-carbon steels. In Burkina Faso, the Korsimoro district reached up to 169,900 cubic meters. In the Dogon region, the sub-region of Fiko has about 300,000 cubic meters of slag produced.
|
||||
Brass barrel blunderbuss are said to have been produced in some states of the Gold Coast in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Various accounts indicate that Asante blacksmiths were not only able to repair firearms, but that barrels, locks and stocks were on occasion remade.
|
||||
In the Aïr Mountains region of Niger, copper smelting was independently developed between 3000 and 2500 BCE. The undeveloped nature of the process indicates that it was not of foreign origin. Smelting in the region became mature around 1500 BCE.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Sahel ===
|
||||
Africa was a major supplier of gold in world trade during the Medieval Age. The Sahelian empires became powerful by controlling the Trans-Saharan trade routes. They provided 2/3 of the gold in Europe and North Africa. The Almoravid dinar and the Fatimid dinar were printed on gold from the Sahelian empires. The ducat of Genoa and Venice and the florine of Florence were also printed on gold from the Sahelian empires. When gold sources were depleted in the Sahel, the empires turned to trade with the Ashanti Empire.
|
||||
The Swahili traders in East Africa were major suppliers of gold to Asia in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade routes. The trading port cities and city-states of the Swahili East African coast were among the first African cities to come into contact with European explorers and sailors during the European Age of Discovery. Many were documented and praised in the recordings of North African explorer Abu Muhammad ibn Battuta.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 21/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa ===
|
||||
Igbo Olokun, also known as Olokun Grove, may be one of the earliest workshops for producing glass in West Africa. Glass production may have begun during, if not before, the 11th century. The 11th–15th century were the peak of glass production. High lime, high alumina (HLHA) and low lime, high alumina (LLHA) glass are distinct compositions that were developed using locally sourced recipes, raw materials, and pyrotechnology. The presence of HLHA glass beads discovered throughout West Africa (e.g., Igbo-Ukwu in southern Nigeria, Gao and Essouk in Mali, and Kissi in Burkina Faso), after the ninth century CE, reveals the broader importance of this glass industry in the region and shows its participation in regional trade networks (e.g., trans-Saharan trade, trans-Atlantic trade). Glass beads served as "the currency for negotiating political power, economic relations, and cultural/spiritual values" for "Yoruba, West Africans, and the African diaspora."
|
||||
|
||||
== Science and traditional worldviews ==
|
||||
Bandama and Babalola (2023) states:
|
||||
|
||||
The view of science as "embedded practice", intimately connected with ritual, for example, is considered "ascientific", "pseudo-science", or "magic" in Western perspective. In Africa, there is a strong connection between the physical and the terrestrial worlds. The deities and gods are the emissaries of the supreme God and the patrons in charge of the workability of the processes involved. In the Ile-Ife pantheon, for example, Olokun—the goddess of wealth—is considered the patron of the glass industry and is therefore consulted. Sacrifices are offered to appease her for a successful run. The same is true for ironworking. Current scholarship has reinforced the contributions of ancient Africa to the global history of science and technology.
|
||||
|
||||
== Recent scientific research ==
|
||||
Ahmed Zewail, won the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in femtochemistry, methods that allow the description of change states in femtoseconds or very short seconds.
|
||||
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a rocketry program called Troposphere.
|
||||
Currently, forty percent of African-born scientists live in OCED countries, predominantly NATO and EU countries. This has been described as an African brain drain.
|
||||
Sub-Saharan African countries spent on average 0.3% of their GDP on S&T (Science and Technology) in 2007. This represents a combined increase from US$1.8bn in 2002 to US$2.8bn in 2007. North African countries spend a comparative 0.4% of GDP on research, an increase from US$2.6bn in 2002 to US$3.3bn in 2007. Exempting South Africa, the continent has augmented its collective science funding by about 50% in the last decade. Notably outstripping its neighbor states, South Africa spends 0.87% of GDP on science and technology research. Although technology parks have a long history in the US and Europe, their presence across Africa is still limited, as the continent currently lags behind other regions of the world in terms of funding technological development and innovation. Only seven countries (Morocco, Botswana, Egypt, Senegal, Madagascar, Tunisia and South Africa) have made technology park construction an integral piece of their development goals.
|
||||
|
||||
== Africa in Science (AiS) ==
|
||||
Africa in Science (AiS) is an online data aggregator site and ThinkTank founded in January 2021 by Aymen Idris, who currently serves as chairman. The focus of AiS ThinkTank is on scientometric analysis of science in Africa, and the main aim of the website is to monitor and display metrics such as AiS Index (AiSi) and AiS Badge that estimate and visualize the research output of research Institutes and universities in a specific country in Africa, and their web site.
|
||||
|
||||
== Science and technology by region ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== North Africa ===
|
||||
Science and technology in Morocco
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa ===
|
||||
Science and technology in Cabo Verde
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
Science and technology in Malawi
|
||||
Science and technology in Tanzania
|
||||
Science and technology in Uganda
|
||||
Science and technology in Zimbabwe
|
||||
|
||||
=== Southern Africa ===
|
||||
Science and technology in Botswana
|
||||
Science and technology in South Africa
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
List of pre-colonial African inventions and innovations
|
||||
Ancient Egyptian technology
|
||||
History of Space in Africa
|
||||
Maritime history of Somalia
|
||||
Timeline of Islamic science and technology
|
||||
Science in medieval Islam
|
||||
Science in Asia
|
||||
Science in Europe
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Timbuktu: Recapturing the Wisdom and History of a Region at Youtube, created and posted by the Ford Foundation
|
||||
Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu at the Library of Congress, US
|
||||
African Fractals: Modern computing and indigenous design by Ron Eglash, at ted.com
|
||||
Brief description of the Yoruba number system at the Prentice Hall website
|
||||
Cambridge Museum: African Textile Collection
|
||||
Profile of William Kamkwamba, TED Fellow, at Wired.com
|
||||
African Influences in Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 4/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
|
||||
Nubia was a major source of gold in the ancient world. Gold was a major source of Kushitic wealth and power. Gold was mined East of the Nile in Wadi Allaqi and Wadi Cabgaba.
|
||||
Around 500 BCE, Nubia, during the Meroitic phase, became a major manufacturer and exporter of iron. This was after being expelled from Egypt by Assyrians, who used iron weapons.
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
The Aksumites produced coins around 270 CE, under the rule of King Endybis. Aksumite coins were issued in gold, silver, and bronze.
|
||||
Since 600 BCE, Bantu peoples in Uganda had been producing high-grade carbon steels using preheated forced draft furnaces, a technique achieved in Europe only with the Siemons process in the mid-19th century. Anthropologist Peter Schmidt discovered through the communication of oral tradition that the Haya in Tanzania have been forging steel for over 2000 years. This discovery was made accidentally while Schmidt was learning about the history of the Haya via their oral tradition. He was led to a tree which was said to rest on the spot of an ancestral furnace used to forge steel. When later tasked with the challenge of recreating the forges, a group of elders who at this time were the only ones to remember the practice, due to the disuse of the practice due in part to the abundance of steel flowing into the country from foreign sources. In spite of their lack of practice, the elders were able to create a furnace using mud and grass which when burnt provided the carbon needed to transform the iron into steel. Later investigation of the area yielded 13 other furnaces similar in design to the recreation set up by the elders. These furnaces were carbon dated and were found to be as old as 2000 years, whereas steel of this caliber did not appear in Europe until several centuries later.
|
||||
|
||||
Two types of iron furnaces were used in most of Africa: the trench dug below ground and circular clay structures built above ground. Iron ores were crushed and placed in furnaces layered with the right proportion of hardwood. A flux such as lime sometimes from seashells was added to aid in smelting. Bellows on the side would be used to add oxygen. Clay pipes on the sides called tuyères would be used to control oxygen flow.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Central Africa ===
|
||||
|
||||
Two examples of European efforts to compete with African iron production highlight the degree of skill possessed by Kongo smiths. The first was a Portuguese effort to establish an iron foundry in Angola in the 1750s. The foundry was unsuccessful in transferring technology to Kongo black smiths; rather, "it concentrated smiths from across the colony in one area under one wage-labor system. Such methods were a tacit recognition of Kongo ironworking skill. The Portuguese foundry at Novas Oerias utilized European techniques was unsuccessful, never becoming competitive with Angolan smiths. The iron produced by Kongo smiths was superior to that of European imports produced under European processes. There was no incentive to replace Kongo iron with European iron unless Kongo iron was unavailable. European iron of the period contained a high amount of sulfur and when compared to the high carbon steel produced by Kongo iron processes, was less durable, a "rotten" metal. European iron was the second choice, whether the purchaser was from Asante, Yoruba or Kongo. The key to the gradual acceptance of European iron was ecological disaster. Gaucher (1981) believes that deforestation led to increased reliance on pre-forged European iron bars that could be carbonized in furnaces using less charcoal than smelting iron from ore. In a similar development elsewhere in the world, English iron production was crippled by the depletion of English forests for charcoal for English forges. In 1750 the Iron Act would force their American colonies to export their iron exclusively to England. This was amongst other well known reasons one of the grievances the colonists had against the English crown and a contributory factor the American Revolution". Another series of wars in Kongo however would ensure that the technical expertise to support English demand was in existence in America, albeit as slave labor. When African techniques could no longer create high quality carbon steel the lower quality European iron became a necessity. Lower quality iron also became more acceptable as the need to supply large numbers of warriors (numbering in the hundreds of thousands) with weapons quickly pushed out considerations of artisan-quality steel versus "rotten iron" imports. War broke out in the Kingdom of Kongo and after 1665; much of the stability and access to iron ore and charcoal necessary for smiths to ply their craft was disrupted. Many Kongo people were sold as slaves and their skills became invaluable in New World settings as blacksmiths, charcoal makers and ironworkers for their colonial masters. Slaves were relied upon to produce vital components for the forges and as their skills in iron working became evident, their importance to colonial economies grew.
|
||||
At Oboui they excavated an undated iron forge yielding eight consistent radiocarbon dates of 2000 BCE. This would make Oboui the oldest iron-working site in the world, and more than a thousand years older than any other dated evidence of iron in Central Africa.
|
||||
|
||||
== Medicine ==
|
||||
|
||||
Traditional African plants such as Ouabain, capsicum, yohimbine, ginger, white squill, African kino, African copaiba, African myrrh, Buchu, physostigmine, and Kola nut have been adopted and continue to be used by Western doctors.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 5/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
|
||||
The knowledge of inoculating oneself against smallpox seems to have been known to West Africans, more specifically the Akan. A slave named Onesimus explained the inoculation procedure to Cotton Mather during the 18th century; he reported to have gotten the knowledge from Africa.
|
||||
Bonesetting is practiced by many groups of West Africa (the Akan, Mano, and Yoruba, to name a few).
|
||||
In Djenné the mosquito was isolated to be the cause of malaria, and the removal of cataracts was a common surgical procedure
|
||||
(as in many other parts of Africa).
|
||||
The dangers of tobacco smoking were known to African Muslim scholars, based on Timbuktu manuscripts.
|
||||
Palm oil was important in health and hygiene. A German visiting in 1603-1604 reported that people washed themselves three times a day, "after which they anoint themselves with tallow or with palm oil, which is an excellent medicine". Palm oil protected the skin and hair, and it had cosmetic value in many cultures. Women (and sometimes men) spread palm oil on their skin to "shine the whole day". Palm oil was also a useful way of applying decorative color and perfumes, like powdered camwood. Many Africans considered palm oil to be a medicine in its own right, and it served as a medium for delivering other curative substances. Historical sources recount healers mixing herbs with palm oil to treat skin conditions or ease headaches. A seventeenth-century Portuguese source describes palm oil as a "popular cure" in Angola, while the "leaves, roots, bark and fruit" of the oil palm were used to treat conditions ranging from arthritis to snake and insect bites. Foreign visitors praised the quality of soap made from palm and palm kernel oils, mixed with ashes from palm fronds. One writer attested that "the Negroes Cloathes are very clean" as a result. The roasting method often used to extract kernel oil produced the characteristic color of the famous "black soap" made by West African artisans. Palm and palm kernel soaps were traded extensively in regional markets.
|
||||
Admiring West African medicinal prowess, Johannes Rask concluded that "Africans are much better suited than we are, as regards their health care".
|
||||
During the Atlantic slave trade, European sailors reported how African slaves would be able to recover from outbreaks of diseases like smallpox within the ships by using their traditional medicine which included palm oil. Europeans would use these themselves to help against dysentery. The bark of yams were used to treat worm infestations.
|
||||
|
||||
The negroes are so innocent to the smallpox, that few ships that carry them escape without it, and sometimes it makes vast havoc and a destruction among them; but though we had 100 at a time sick of it, and that it went through the ship, yet we lost not above a dozen by it. All the assistance we gave the diseased was only as much water as they desired to drink, and some palm oil to anoint their sores, and they would generally recover without any other help but what kind nature gave them.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
|
||||
Ancient Egyptian physicians were renowned in the ancient Near East for their healing skills, and some, like Imhotep, remained famous long after their deaths. Herodotus remarked that there was a high degree of specialization among Egyptian physicians, with some treating only the head or the stomach, while others were eye-doctors and dentists. Training of physicians took place at the Per Ankh or "House of Life" institution, most notably those headquartered in Per-Bastet during the New Kingdom and at Abydos and Saïs in the Late period. Medical papyri show empirical knowledge of anatomy, injuries, and practical treatments. Wounds were treated by bandaging with raw meat, white linen, sutures, nets, pads and swabs soaked with honey to prevent infection, while opium was used to relieve pain. Garlic and onions were used regularly to promote good health and were thought to relieve asthma symptoms. Ancient Egyptian surgeons stitched wounds, set broken bones, and amputated diseased limbs, but they recognized that some injuries were so serious that they could only make the patient comfortable until he died.
|
||||
Around 800, the first psychiatric hospital and insane asylum in Egypt was built by Muslim physicians in Cairo.
|
||||
In 1285, the largest hospital of the Middle Ages and pre-modern era was built in Cairo, Egypt, by Sultan Qalaun al-Mansur. Treatment was given for free to patients of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, ethnicity or income.
|
||||
Tetracycline was being used by Nubians, based on bone remains between 350 CE and 550 CE. The antibiotic was in wide commercial use only in the mid 20th century. The theory is earthen jars containing grain used for making beer contained the bacterium streptomycedes, which produced tetracycline. Although Nubians were not aware of tetracycline, they could have noticed people fared better by drinking beer. According to Charlie Bamforth, a professor of biochemistry and brewing science at the University of California, Davis, said "They must have consumed it because it was rather tastier than the grain from which it was derived. They would have noticed people fared better by consuming this product than they were just consuming the grain itself."
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 6/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
European travelers in the Great Lakes region of Africa during the 19th century reported cases of surgery in the kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara. Medical historians, such as Jack Davies argued in 1959 that Bunyoro's traditional healers were perhaps the most highly skilled in precolonial sub-Saharan Africa, possessing a remarkable level of medical knowledge. One observer noted a "surgical skill which had reached a high standard". Caesarean sections and other abdominal and thoracic operations were performed on a regular basis with the avoidance of haemorrhage and sepsis using antiseptics, anaesthetics and cautery iron. The expectant mother was normally anesthetized with banana wine, and herbal mixtures were used to encourage healing. From the well-developed nature of the procedures employed, European observers concluded that they had been employed for some time. Bunyoro surgeons treated lung inflammations, Pneumonia and pleurisy by punching holes in the chest until the air passed freely. Trephining was carried out and the bones of depressed fractures were elevated. Horrible war wounds, even penetrating abdominal and chest wounds were treated with success, even when this involved quite heroic surgery. Amputations were done by tying a tight ligature just above the line of amputation and neatly cutting off the limb, stretched out on a smooth log, with one stroke of a sharp sword. Banyoro surgeons had a good knowledge of anatomy, in part obtained by carrying out autopsies. Inoculation against smallpox was carried out in Bunyoro and its neighbouring kingdoms. Over 200 plants are used medicinally in eastern Bunyoro alone and recent tests have shown that traditional cures for eczema and post-measles bloody diarrhoea were more effective than western medications. Bunyoro's Medical elite, the "Bafumu", had a system of apprenticeship and even "met at periods for conferences". In Bunyoro, there was a close relationship between the state and traditional healers. Kings gave healers "land spread in the different areas so that their services would reach more people". Moreover, "in the case of a disease hitting a given area", the king would order healers into the affected district. Kabaleega is said to have provided his soldiers were anti-malarial herbs, and even to have organized medical research. A Munyoro healer reported in 1902 that when an outbreak of what he termed sleeping sickness occurred in Bunyoro around 1886–87, causing many deaths, Kabaleega ordered him "to make experiments in the interest of science", which were "eventually successful in procuring a cure". Barkcloth, which was used to bandage wounds, has been proven to be antimicrobial.
|
||||
Brain surgery was also practiced in the Great Lakes region of Africa
|
||||
In the Kingdom of Rwanda, people afflicted with Yaws were put into quarantine and if necessary, kings closed the kingdom's borders to combat the spread of smallpox.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Central Africa ===
|
||||
General and local anesthesia were widely used by traditional doctors in many parts of central Africa. Beer containing an extract of kaffir was orally given to those who sustained deep wounds from animal attacks or from warfare in order to alleviate pain, and alkaloid containing leaves were also applied topically to injuries. Many tribes in central Africa performed cataract surgery under local anesthesia, squeezing juices from alkaloid plants directly into the eyes to desensitize them and then pushing the cataract aside with a sharp stick, with many cases turning out successful. "The surgical skill itself was also astonishing and suggested a long experience of this practice".
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 7/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Southern Africa ===
|
||||
A South African, Max Theiler, developed a vaccine against yellow fever in 1937. Allan McLeod Cormack developed the theoretical underpinnings of CT scanning and co-invented the CT-scanner.
|
||||
The first human-to-human heart transplant was performed by South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in December 1967. See also Hamilton Naki.
|
||||
During the 1960s, South African Aaron Klug developed crystallographic electron microscopy techniques, in which a sequence of two-dimensional images of crystals taken from different angles are combined to produce three-dimensional images of the target.
|
||||
The Zulu king represented the ultimate public health official. As Ndukwana, one of Stuart's respondents, explains, "All people like the land they lived on belonged to the king. If any man got seriously ill, his illness would be notified to the mnumzana[head-man], who would instantly report the fact to the izinduna (chiefs) and they to the king. The king would then most likely give the order to consult diviners so as to discover the nature and cause of his illness. A sick man in Zululand was always an object of great importance.' In theory the Zulu king and his local chiefs took responsibility for the well-being of their people and surrounded themselves with a variety of different doctors to assist them in this function. While not all illness was brought to the attention of the king, kraal heads had to report illness to their local chiefs. Depending on the social status of the ill person or number of persons afflicted, a report would be sent to the king. The Zulu proverb inkosi yinkosi ngabantu-a king is a king by the people, emphasized the reciprocal relationship between a king and his people. In exchange for the labor and loyalty of his subjects, the king provided for the welfare of his people, and his failure to do so could lead people to konza to another ruler. Zulu-speakers who konza'ed white rulers in neighboring Natal thus could not understand why such responsibilities were not also assumed by their new rulers. Another reason sickness and death sometimes gained attention at the highest levels of the state was the link between illness and witchcraft. Illness represented the possibility of persons who sought to destabilize the chiefdom or nation, and consequently chiefs could get in trouble for not reporting illness. Upon learning of an illness, a chief or the king would sometimes provide his own doctors, presumably the best in the area, or send for doctors or medicines from the surrounding regions. In some cases the king provided his own personal medicines. The state of public health thus also represented the metaphorical health of the nation state. During periods of crisis, such as droughts, epidemics, locust infestations, or epizootics, the king would summon his best doctors and mobilize a national response. One notable medical phenomenon led state healers to connect a number of unexplained deaths to the wearing of a whitish metal (perhaps tin or silver). By order of either Tshaka or Dingane, the sources seem unclear on this point, this metal was banned and collected from around the nation
|
||||
and buried. This shows the reach and power of the Zulu state in carrying out public health initiatives. Another example, perhaps more typical, were the
|
||||
bands of soldiers who were marshaled to kill locusts during times of infestation. Likewise periods of drought led the king not only to hire reputed raindoctors for the nation but to mobilize people to look for inkhonkwanes-herbs (over 240 medicinal plants were used by the Zulu) and medicine pegs put on mountaintops by unthakathis seeking to prevent rain and thus cause social disruption. Whereas these examples point to a reactive form of public health, a number of preventative measures and rituals
|
||||
occurred during public festivals such as the yearly Inyatela (First Fruits) and umkhosi (royal) celebrations. At these celebrations, large groups of people from around the nation came to witness and participate in ceremonies that took place within a short span of each other in December and January. At these festivals, the king, as the preeminent healer of the land, accompanied Healing the Body
|
||||
by his doctors and regiments, performed preventative measures aimed at ensuring the well-being of the nation and all who lived in it.
|
||||
Bone-setting was commonly practiced in Southern Africa by the native communities. Even broken fingers were treated. Abdominal wounds with protruding intestines were manipulated successfully by inserting a small calabash to hold the intestines in place and suturing the skin over it.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 8/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Agriculture ==
|
||||
Tropical soils are typically low in organic matter and so present special problems to agriculturalists. Indeed, African soils, (outside alluvial and volcanic areas) are in large part deficient in the characteristics of structure, texture, and chemistry which mainly determine soil fertility. Tropical areas do not have a winter season, so micro-organisms continue to break down organic matter throughout the year. Tropical soils typically have very small percentages of organic matter or humus (sometimes as little as 1%) as a result. Soils in temperate climates may, in contrast, consist of 12 to 14 or (in virgin soils in the Midwestern United States) up to 16% organic materials, because the cold winters slow the processes of decomposition and allow organic material to build up over time. In many tropical regions, farmers practice a semi-sedentary form of agriculture, using fields for two or three years and then abandoning them for a decade or more (up to 25 years after two years of cultivation in the case of savanna woodlands in Africa), until the humus content has been restored by natural processes.
|
||||
Through careful observation, experimentation and selection of desirable traits over the course of 2,000 years, Africans managed to create a rich diversity of Banana and plantain types (120 different types of plantains and 60 different types of bananas). Due to this there emerged a second area of Banana diversification outside of Asia, one with the Highland cooking banana in the African Great Lakes and the Plantain in West and Central Africa. This shows the agricultural skills and innovative practices Africans mastered and continuously developed in the millennia before Europeans arrived into the continent.
|
||||
Like the natives of the Amazon rainforest, Africans also utilized dark earths similar to Terra preta.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
|
||||
Archaeologists have long debated whether or not the independent domestication of cattle occurred in Africa as well as the Near East and Indus Valley. Possible remains of domesticated cattle were identified in the Western Desert of Egypt at the sites of Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba and were dated to c. 9500–8000 BP, but those identifications have been questioned. Genetic evidence suggests that cattle were most likely introduced from Southwest Asia, and that there may have been some later breeding with wild aurochs in northern Africa.
|
||||
Genetic evidence also indicates that donkeys were domesticated from the African wild ass. Archaeologists have found donkey burials in early dynastic contexts dating to ~5000 BP at Abydos, Middle Egypt, and examination of the bones shows that they were used as beasts of burden.
|
||||
Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BCE in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced.
|
||||
|
||||
=== East Africa ===
|
||||
Finger millet is originally native to the highlands of East Africa and was domesticated before the third millennium BCE in Uganda and Ethiopia. Its cultivation had spread to South India by 1800 BCE.
|
||||
Engaruka is an Iron Age archaeological site in northern Tanzania known for the ruins of a complex irrigation system. Stone channels were used to dike, dam, and level surrounding river waters. Some of these channels were several kilometers long, channelling and feeding individual plots of land totaling approximately 5,000 acres (20 km2). Seven stone-terraced villages along the mountainside also comprise the settlement.
|
||||
The Shilluk Kingdom gained control of the west bank of the white Nile as far north as Kosti in Sudan. There they established an economy based on cereal farming and fishing, with permanent settlements located along the length of the river. The Shilluk developed an extremely intensive system of agriculture based on sorghum, millet and other crops. By the 1600s, shillukland had a population density similar or exceeding that of the Egyptian Nile lands.
|
||||
Ethiopians, particularly the Oromo people, were the first to have discovered and recognized the energizing effect of the coffee bean plant.
|
||||
Ox-drawn plows seems to have been used in Ethiopia for two millennia, and possibly much longer. Linguistic evidences suggests that the Ethiopian plow might be the oldest plow in Africa.
|
||||
Teff is believed to have originated in Ethiopia between 4000 and 1000 BCE. Genetic evidence points to E. pilosa as the most likely wild ancestor. Noog (Guizotia abyssinica) and ensete (E. ventricosum) are two other plants domesticated in Ethiopia.
|
||||
Ethiopians used terraced hillside cultivation for erosion prevention and irrigation. A 19th century European described Yeha:
|
||||
|
||||
All the surrounding hills have been terraced for cultivation, and present much the same appearance as the hills in Greece and Asia Minor, which have been neglected for centuries; but nowhere in Greece or Asia Minor have I ever seen such an enormous extent of terraced mountains as in this Abyssinian valley. Hundreds and thousands of acres must here have been under the most careful cultivation, right up almost to the tops of the mountains, and now nothing is left but the regular lines of the sustaining walls, and a few trees dotted about here and there. This valley is most completely shut in, quite such a one as one can imagine Rasselas to have lived in
|
||||
Bantu farmers in East Africa experimented with all available crops and sought to produce as many as possible.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 9/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Since communications and markets were relatively poorly developed, the farmer had to sow a great variety of crops with a great variety of characteristics, in order to survive no matter what the climatic variations, so that he would not be, in effect, wiped out. By taking a single ecological zone, understanding its complexity with a thoroughness incomprehensible to even a Westerner, developing a rich and subtle language with a profusion of terms for the understanding of local ecology, planting dozens of crops to which the environment was peculiarly suited, the farmer sought to defeat famine, to cheat death.
|
||||
within the African Great Lakes advanced agriculture practices were employed such as "hydraulic practices
|
||||
in the mountains, man-made watering places, river diversions, hollowed-out tree-trunk pipes, irrigation on cultivated slopes, mounding in drained marshes, and irrigation of banana and palm tree gardens" as well as extensive use of terraces and the practice of double and triple cropping. The agrarian success of the Great Lakes civilization accounts for its exceptionally high levels of human density. Many foreign experts were impressed by the sophistication of the areas traditional methods of intensive farming. The agriculture of the great lakes was described below:
|
||||
|
||||
The "beautiful irrigated fields", the steep terraced slopes of the thousand hills, where every patch of ground is put to use, the "well-fed cattle with colossal horns" were "wonderful discoveries" to the Europeans. But even greater surprises awaited them.
|
||||
The earliest Europeans to visit Rwanda observed intense pride in cultivating skills. A mother would give a crying baby a toy hoe to play with and a range of techniques often superior to those of eastern European peasants, notably the use of manure, terracing, and artificial irrigation.
|
||||
The Chaga people have long practiced an advanced form of agriculture which allowed them to maintain a high population density involving the control and distribution of water. Europeans wrote of their admirably constructed irrigation works and the care they witnessed in the maintenance of them and their powerfully centralized social organization. Sir Harry Johnston, writing in 1894, echoed this praise of Chagga industry and skill:
|
||||
|
||||
They mostly excel in their husbandry, the skill with which they irrigate their terraced hillsides with tiny runnels of eater shows considerable advancement in agriculture. Their time is constantly spent in tilling the soil, manuring it with ashes, raking it and hoeing it with wooden hoes
|
||||
|
||||
=== West Africa and the Sahel ===
|
||||
The earliest evidence for the domestication of plants for agricultural purposes in Africa occurred in the Sahel region c. 5000 BCE, when sorghum and African rice (Oryza glaberrima) began to be cultivated. Around this time, and in the same region, the small guineafowl was domesticated. Other African domesticated plants were oil palm, raffia palm, African yam, black-eyed peas, Bambara groundnut, Cowpea, Fonio, Pearl millet, and kola nuts.
|
||||
Investigations in the Upper Guinea forest region by found connections between palm oil processing, "sacred agroforests", and anthropogenic soil, or "dark earths". They identified "palm oil production pits" as central loci for the formation of dark earths, where charred palm kernels and other organic materials enriched soils for use in fields of vegetables and trees. Once left fallow those fields gradually morphed into biodiverse groves of palms and other forest species. These anthropogenic landscapes, patches of AfDES (African dark earths) and anthropogenic vegetation are permeated with symbolic significance because they are the ongoing outcome of inhabitation trajectories begun by ancestors, continuing to the present day. They are not simply areas of improved soils and anthropogenic agroforests, but the relics of old towns, villages, kitchens, graveyards, and initiation society areas, many of which were inhabited by direct ancestors of current inhabitants.
|
||||
African oil palms were most abundant as part of the oil palm-yam complex beginning just south and east of the rice belt running from Lower Guinea across the derived savannas of the Dahomey Gap and through the Niger Delta. From there oil palm cultivation extended deep into the Central African rainforests where swidden farmers spared and managed palms within their plots of yams, cocoyams, plantains, legumes, and other crops, and where dense rainforest alternated with emergent oil palm groves. Long disparaged by some Western scientists and environmentalists as "slash-and-burn", ecological research since the mid-twentieth century has demonstrated the efficacy of such ancestral systems, linking traditional swidden-fallow landscapes with enhanced floral and faunal biodiversity, higher returns on labor investment, food security, nutritional balance, and overall resilience and reliability, especially when compared to monocultures. Throughout western Africa, oil palm agroforests helped to nourish human communities by contributing to food security and balanced diets, complementing carbohydrate-rich
|
||||
tubers and grains with fats, provitamin A carotenoids (mainly a-and B-carotenes), and vitamin E. The source of fats is particularly important within the broad swath of sub-Saharan Africa where the voracious tsetse fly and the trypanosomiasis pathogens it carries make livestock husbandry virtually impossible.
|
||||
African methods of cultivating rice, introduced by enslaved Africans, may have been used in North Carolina. This may have been a factor in the prosperity of the North Carolina colony. Portuguese observers between the half of the 15th century and the 16th century witnessed the cultivation of rice in the Upper Guinea Coast, and admired the local rice-growing technology, as it involved intensive agricultural practices such as diking and transplanting.
|
||||
Yams were domesticated 8000 BCE in West Africa. Between 7000 and 5000 BCE, pearl millet, gourds, watermelons, and beans also spread westward across the southern Sahara.
|
||||
Between 6500 and 3500 BCE knowledge of domesticated sorghum, castor beans, and two species of gourd spread from Africa to Asia. Pearl millet, black-eyed peas, watermelon, and okra later spread to the rest of the world.
|
||||
In the lack of more detailed historical and archaeological studies on the chronology of terracing, intensive terrace farming is believed to have been practiced before the early 15th century CE in West Africa. Terraces were used by many groups, notably the Mafa, Ngas, Gwoza, and the Dogon.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
|
||||
chunk: 10/21
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Southern Africa ===
|
||||
In order to prevent erosion, southern Africans built dry-stone terraces on steep hillsides.
|
||||
Randall MacIver describes the irrigation technology used in Nyanga, Zimbabwe:
|
||||
|
||||
The country about Inyanga is well watered, but it would seem that the old inhabitants
|
||||
required a more general distribution of the supply than was afforded by the numerous
|
||||
|
||||
streams running down from the hills. Accordingly, they adopted a practice which has been prevalent under similar conditions in several other countries, Algeria being one instancewhich has come under the waiter's own observation. The stream was tapped at a point near its source, and part of the water deflected by a stone dam. This gave them a high-level conduit, by which the water could be carried along the side of a hill and allowed to descend more gradually than the parent stream. There are very many such conduits in the Inyanga region, and they often run for several miles. The gradients are admirably calculated, with a skill which is not always equalled by modern engineers with their elaborate instruments. The dams are well and strongly built of unworked stones without mortar; the conduits themselves are simple trenches about one metre in depth. The earth taken out of the trench is piled on its lower side and supported by boulders imbedded in ito.Cattle features as a primary source of sustenance and political and economic power in many parts of southern Africa. Sotho, Tswana and Nguni kingdoms rose to prominence on the back of successful cattle keeping, supplemented by cultivation.
|
||||
Cattle (and possibly goats) played a central role in Nguni culture. Nguni-speaking South Africans in KwaZulu-Natal revered the Nguni cattle. By 1824, Shaka Zulu's royal cattle pen contained 7,000 pure white Nguni cattle. Similarly, when the original pioneers arrived in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), they reported that the country was 'teeming with cattle that were, apparently, in good health and were immune to local diseases'.
|
||||
|
||||
Before 1850, there were an estimated four to five million Nguni cattle in what is now KwaZulu-Natal. Indeed it could have been said that, so immense was the number of cattle, idaka liye lahlaba ezulwini (the kraal-mud was splashed up to heaven), but war, disease, political unrest and the introduction by whites of their own cattle, led to a decline in numbers so that a decade ago only about 100,000 pure Ngunis remained. In 1879, at the close of the Anglo-Zulu War, in which the power of the Zulu Kingdom was broken, Sir Garnet Wolseley ensured the end of the Zulu royal herds by slaughtering and confiscating what remained.
|
||||
South Africans were known for being experts in finding lost cattle. A single Zulu was able to locate 10 cattle that were lost during conflict two years ago over a large area.
|
||||
Like many traditional societies, the Himba have astonishingly sharp vision and focus, believed to come from their cattle rearing and need to identify each cow's markings.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Central Africa ===
|
||||
For many years, scientists argued that Africa's first agriculturalists hacked and burned their way through a primeval "Guineo-Congolian rainforest" stretching from Sierra Leone to Congo and beyond. In this telling, oil palms were the survivors of forests destroyed by African farmers, leaving "derived savannah" behind. New research has overturned that interpretation, however. An "aridification event" about 4,000–5,000 years ago wiped out forests and encouraged the spread of grassland across western Africa. Oil palms probably expanded into these gaps ahead of human settlers, the seeds spread by animals. Humans helped the palm along, though, protecting it from grassland fires and voracious elephants. Linguistic evidence shows a close link between oil palm dispersion and the arrival of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists in the Congo basin beginning around 1,000 BCE. Few central and southern African languages use non-Bantu terms for the oil palm, suggesting that the tree came with migrants, either carried by them or sharing the same ecological openings in the forest. As a tradition among Mfumte-speakers of northern Cameroon tells us, oil palms "follow men", growing in the wake of human activity. The interplay of climate and agriculture pushed the oil palm's frontier to the south and east, but progress was slow. Nineteenth century travelers reported only scattered groves around Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika, despite amenable environmental conditions. Tanzanians interviewed in the twentieth century clearly indicated that oil palms were recent arrivals, brought by people rather than by animals. Rather than serving as agents of deforestation-with oil palms the evidence of ecological vandalism-African farmers may in fact be responsible for afforestation in many places. Ethnographic research, coupled with historic aerial photography, showed that forests grew out of the moist, nutrient-rich soils left behind in the shade of abandoned village palm groves. Rejecting earlier classifications like "semi-wild" or "sub-spontaneous", geographer Case Watkins describes these palm groves as "emergent" phenomena. They are not purely human creations, but rather develop out of human interactions with a complex set of natural forces. These emergent groves often give way to other tree species, creating true forest where none had existed. As early as the 1920s, elders in Congo told a missionary that they and their ancestors were not "shifting cultivators" cutting out clearings in a forest: they had built the forest with their farming practices. At the time, few Europeans cared to listen. One colonial forester recalled how blinded he had been by stereotypes: "What I had in my inexperience looked upon as glorious virgin [forest] growth, dating from the Flood, quickly revealed itself to my better experienced and disappointed eye as nothing more than secondary growth of moderately good quality." With the help of local guides, seeing a landscape was "like reading a book", revealing human history in the environment. Across much of western and central Africa, forests have probably been advancing rather than retreating for the past 1,000 years or so, and this despite bouts of low rainfall. Far from marking humanity's destructive impact on forests, oil palms stand across Africa as a testament to the versatility, ingenuity, and sustainability of local farming practices.
|
||||
|
||||
== Textiles ==
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The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, as distinct from the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of one or another approach to establishing scientific knowledge.
|
||||
Rationalist explanations of nature, including atomism, appeared both in ancient Greece in the thought of Leucippus and Democritus, and in ancient India, in the Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Buddhist schools, while Charvaka materialism rejected inference as a source of knowledge in favour of an empiricism that was always subject to doubt. Aristotle pioneered scientific method in ancient Greece alongside his empirical biology and his work on logic, rejecting a purely deductive framework in favour of generalisations made from observations of nature.
|
||||
Some of the most important debates in the history of scientific method center on: rationalism, especially as advocated by René Descartes; inductivism, which rose to particular prominence with Isaac Newton and his followers; and hypothetico-deductivism, which came to the fore in the early 19th century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a debate over realism vs. antirealism was central to discussions of scientific method as powerful scientific theories extended beyond the realm of the observable, while in the mid-20th century some prominent philosophers argued against any universal rules of science at all.
|
||||
|
||||
== Early methodology ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Ancient Egypt and Babylonia ===
|
||||
|
||||
There are few explicit discussions of scientific methodologies in surviving records from early cultures. The most that can be inferred about the approaches to undertaking science in this period stems from descriptions of early investigations into nature, in the surviving records. An Egyptian medical textbook, the Edwin Smith papyrus, (c. 1600 BCE), applies the following components: examination, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, to the treatment of disease, which display strong parallels to the basic empirical method of science and according to G. E. R. Lloyd played a significant role in the development of this methodology. The Ebers papyrus (c. 1550 BCE) also contains evidence of traditional empiricism.
|
||||
By the middle of the 1st millennium BCE in Mesopotamia, Babylonian astronomy had evolved into the earliest example of a scientific astronomy, as it was "the first and highly successful attempt at giving a refined mathematical description of astronomical phenomena." According to the historian Asger Aaboe, "all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in the Islamic world, and in the West – if not indeed all subsequent endeavour in the exact sciences – depend upon Babylonian astronomy in decisive and fundamental ways."
|
||||
The early Babylonians and Egyptians developed much technical knowledge, crafts, and mathematics used in practical tasks of divination, as well as a knowledge of medicine, and made lists of various kinds. While the Babylonians in particular had engaged in the earliest forms of an empirical mathematical science, with their early attempts at mathematically describing natural phenomena, they generally lacked underlying rational theories of nature.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Classical antiquity ===
|
||||
Greek-speaking ancient philosophers engaged in the earliest known forms of what is today recognized as a rational theoretical science, with the move towards a more rational understanding of nature which began at least since the Archaic Period (650 – 480 BCE) with the Presocratic school. Thales was the first known philosopher to use natural explanations, proclaiming that every event had a natural cause, even though he is known for saying "all things are full of gods" and sacrificed an ox when he discovered his theorem. Leucippus, went on to develop the theory of atomism – the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. This was elaborated in great detail by Democritus.
|
||||
Similar atomist ideas emerged independently among ancient Indian philosophers of the Nyaya, Vaisesika and Buddhist schools. In particular, like the Nyaya, Vaisesika, and Buddhist schools, the Cārvāka epistemology was materialist, and skeptical enough to admit perception as the basis for unconditionally true knowledge, while cautioning that if one could only infer a truth, then one must also harbor a doubt about that truth; an inferred truth could not be unconditional.
|
||||
Towards the middle of the 5th century BCE, some of the components of a scientific tradition were already heavily established, even before Plato, who was an important contributor to this emerging tradition, thanks to the development of deductive reasoning, as propounded by his student, Aristotle. In Protagoras (318d–f), Plato mentioned the teaching of arithmetic, astronomy and geometry in schools. The philosophical ideas of this time were mostly freed from the constraints of everyday phenomena and common sense. This denial of reality as we experience it reached an extreme in Parmenides who argued that the world is one and that change and subdivision do not exist.
|
||||
As early as the 4th century BCE, armillary spheres had been invented in China, and in the 3rd century BCE in Greece for use in astronomy; their use was promulgated thereafter, for example by § Ibn al-Haytham, and by § Tycho Brahe.
|
||||
In the 3rd and 4th centuries BCE, the Greek physicians Herophilos (335–280 BCE) and Erasistratus of Chios employed experiments to further their medical research; Erasistratus at one time repeatedly weighed a caged bird, and noted its weight loss between feeding times.
|
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=== Aristotle ===
|
||||
Aristotle's inductive-deductive method used inductions from observations to infer general principles, deductions from those principles to check against further observations, and more cycles of induction and deduction to continue the advance of knowledge.
|
||||
The Organon (Greek: Ὄργανον, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logic. The name Organon was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics.
|
||||
The order of the works is not chronological (the chronology is now difficult to determine) but was deliberately chosen by Theophrastus to constitute a well-structured system. Indeed, parts of them seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. The arrangement of the works was made by Andronicus of Rhodes around 40 BCE.
|
||||
The Organon comprises the following six works:
|
||||
|
||||
The Categories (Greek: Κατηγορίαι, Latin: Categoriae) introduces Aristotle's 10-fold classification of that which exists: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion.
|
||||
On Interpretation (Greek: Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, Latin: De Interpretatione) introduces Aristotle's conception of proposition and judgment, and the various relations between affirmative, negative, universal, and particular propositions. Aristotle discusses the square of opposition or square of Apuleius in Chapter 7 and its appendix Chapter 8. Chapter 9 deals with the problem of future contingents.
|
||||
The Prior Analytics (Greek: Ἀναλυτικὰ Πρότερα, Latin: Analytica Priora) introduces Aristotle's syllogistic method (see term logic), argues for its correctness, and discusses inductive inference.
|
||||
The Posterior Analytics (Greek: Ἀναλυτικὰ Ὕστερα, Latin: Analytica Posteriora) deals with demonstration, definition, and scientific knowledge.
|
||||
The Topics (Greek: Τοπικά, Latin: Topica) treats of issues in constructing valid arguments, and of inference that is probable, rather than certain. It is in this treatise that Aristotle mentions the predicables, later discussed by Porphyry and by the scholastic logicians.
|
||||
The Sophistical Refutations (Greek: Περὶ Σοφιστικῶν Ἐλέγχων, Latin: De Sophisticis Elenchis) gives a treatment of logical fallacies, and provides a key link to Aristotle's work on rhetoric.
|
||||
Aristotle's Metaphysics has some points of overlap with the works making up the Organon but is not traditionally considered part of it; additionally there are works on logic attributed, with varying degrees of plausibility, to Aristotle that were not known to the Peripatetics.
|
||||
Aristotle has been called the founder of modern science by De Lacy O'Leary. His demonstration method is found in Posterior Analytics. He provided another of the ingredients of scientific tradition: empiricism. For Aristotle, universal truths can be known from particular things via induction. To some extent then, Aristotle reconciles abstract thought with observation, although it would be a mistake to imply that Aristotelian science is empirical in form. Indeed, Aristotle did not accept that knowledge acquired by induction could rightly be counted as scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, induction was for him a necessary preliminary to the main business of scientific enquiry, providing the primary premises required for scientific demonstrations.
|
||||
Aristotle largely ignored inductive reasoning in his treatment of scientific enquiry. To make it clear why this is so, consider this statement in the Posterior Analytics:
|
||||
|
||||
We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is.
|
||||
It was therefore the work of the philosopher to demonstrate universal truths and to discover their causes. While induction was sufficient for discovering universals by generalization, it did not succeed in identifying causes. For this task Aristotle used the tool of deductive reasoning in the form of syllogisms. Using the syllogism, scientists could infer new universal truths from those already established.
|
||||
Aristotle developed a complete normative approach to scientific inquiry involving the syllogism, which he discusses at length in his Posterior Analytics. A difficulty with this scheme lay in showing that derived truths have solid primary premises. Aristotle would not allow that demonstrations could be circular (supporting the conclusion by the premises, and the premises by the conclusion). Nor would he allow an infinite number of middle terms between the primary premises and the conclusion. This leads to the question of how the primary premises are found or developed, and as mentioned above, Aristotle allowed that induction would be required for this task.
|
||||
Towards the end of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle discusses knowledge imparted by induction.
|
||||
|
||||
Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premises by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. [...] it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of the primary premises, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be intuition that apprehends the primary premises. [...] If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge.
|
||||
The account leaves room for doubt regarding the nature and extent of Aristotle's empiricism. In particular, it seems that Aristotle considers sense-perception only as a vehicle for knowledge through intuition. He restricted his investigations in natural history to their natural settings, such as at the Pyrrha lagoon, now called Kalloni, at Lesbos. Aristotle and Theophrastus together formulated the new science of biology, inductively, case by case, for two years before Aristotle was called to tutor Alexander. Aristotle performed no modern-style experiments in the form in which they appear in today's physics and chemistry laboratories.
|
||||
Induction is not afforded the status of scientific reasoning, and so it is left to intuition to provide a solid foundation for Aristotle's science. With that said, Aristotle brings us somewhat closer an empirical science than his predecessors.
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Investigation, or the art of inquiring into the nature of causes and their operation, is a leading characteristic of reason [...] Investigation implies three things – Observation, Hypothesis, and Experiment [...] The first step in the process, it will be perceived, is to observe...
|
||||
In 1885, the words "Scientific method" appear together with a description of the method in Francis Ellingwood Abbot's 'Scientific Theism',
|
||||
|
||||
Now all the established truths which are formulated in the multifarious propositions of science have been won by the use of Scientific Method. This method consists in essentially three distinct steps (1) observation and experiment, (2) hypothesis, (3) verification by fresh observation and experiment.
|
||||
The Eleventh Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica did not include an article on scientific method; the Thirteenth Edition listed scientific management, but not method. By the Fifteenth Edition, a 1-inch article in the Micropædia of Britannica was part of the 1975 printing, while a fuller treatment (extending across multiple articles, and accessible mostly via the index volumes of Britannica) was available in later printings.
|
||||
|
||||
== Current issues ==
|
||||
In the past few centuries, some statistical methods have been developed, for reasoning in the face of uncertainty, as an outgrowth of methods for eliminating error. This was an echo of the program of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum of 1620. Bayesian inference acknowledges one's ability to alter one's beliefs in the face of evidence. This has been called belief revision, or defeasible reasoning: the models in play during the phases of scientific method can be reviewed, revisited and revised, in the light of further evidence. This arose from the work of Frank P. Ramsey
|
||||
(1903–1930), of John Maynard Keynes
|
||||
(1883–1946), and earlier, of William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) in economics.
|
||||
|
||||
== Science and pseudoscience ==
|
||||
The question of how science operates and therefore how to distinguish genuine science from pseudoscience has importance well beyond scientific circles or the academic community. In the judicial system and in public policy controversies, for example, a study's deviation from accepted scientific practice is grounds for rejecting it as junk science or pseudoscience. However, the high public perception of science means that pseudoscience is widespread. An advertisement in which an actor wears a white coat and product ingredients are given Greek or Latin sounding names is intended to give the impression of scientific endorsement. Richard Feynman has likened pseudoscience to cargo cults in which many of the external forms are followed, but the underlying basis is missing: that is, fringe or alternative theories often present themselves with a pseudoscientific appearance to gain acceptance.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Timeline of the history of the scientific method
|
||||
|
||||
== Notes and references ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Sources ==
|
||||
Asmis, Elizabeth (January 1984), Epicurus' Scientific method, vol. 42, Cornell University Press, p. 386, ISBN 978-0-8014-6682-3, JSTOR 10.7591/j.cttq45z9
|
||||
Debus, Allen G. (1978), Man and Nature in the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-29328-6
|
||||
Morelon, Régis; Rashed, Roshdi, eds. (1996), Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, vol. 3, Routledge, ISBN 978-0415124102
|
||||
Popkin, Richard H. (1979), The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-03876-2
|
||||
Popkin, Richard H. (2003), The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-510768-3. Third enlarged edition.
|
||||
Sanches, Francisco (1636), Opera medica. His iuncti sunt tratus quidam philosophici non insubtiles, Toulosae tectosagum as cited by Sanches, Limbrick & Thomson 1988
|
||||
Sanches, Francisco (1649), Tractatus philosophici. Quod Nihil Scitur. De divinatione per somnum, ad Aristotlem. In lib. Aristoteles Physionomicon commentarius. De longitudine et brevitate vitae., Roterodami: ex officina Arnoldi Leers as cited by Sanches, Limbrick & Thomson 1988
|
||||
Sanches, Francisco; Limbrick, Elaine. Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography; Thomson, Douglas F.S. Latin text established, annotated, and translated. (1988), That Nothing is Known, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-35077-8{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Critical edition of Sanches' Quod Nihil Scitur Latin: (1581, 1618, 1649, 1665), Portuguese: (1948, 1955, 1957), Spanish: (1944, 1972), French: (1976, 1984), German: (2007)
|
||||
Vives, Ioannes Lodovicus (1531), De Disciplinis libri XX, Antwerpiae: exudebat M. Hillenius English translation: On Discipline.
|
||||
Part 1: De causis corruptarum artium,
|
||||
Part 2: De tradendis disciplinis
|
||||
Part 3: De artibus
|
||||
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=== Epicurus ===
|
||||
In his work Kαvώv ('canon', a straight edge or ruler, thus any type of measure or standard, referred to as 'canonic'), Epicurus laid out his first rule for inquiry in physics: 'that the first concepts be seen, and that they not require demonstration '.
|
||||
His second rule for inquiry was that prior to an investigation, we are to have self-evident concepts, so that we might infer [ἔχωμεν οἷς σημειωσόμεθα] both what is expected [τò προσμένον], and also what is non-apparent [τò ἄδηλον].
|
||||
Epicurus applies his method of inference (the use of observations as signs, Asmis' summary, p. 333: the method of using the phenomena as signs (σημεῖα) of what is unobserved) immediately to the atomic theory of Democritus. In Aristotle's Prior Analytics, Aristotle himself employs the use of signs. But Epicurus presented his 'canonic' as rival to Aristotle's logic. See: Lucretius (c. 99 BCE – c. 55 BCE) De rerum natura (On the nature of things) a didactic poem explaining Epicurus' philosophy and physics.
|
||||
|
||||
== Emergence of inductive experimental method ==
|
||||
During the Middle Ages issues of what is now termed science began to be addressed. There was greater emphasis on combining theory with practice in the Islamic world than there had been in Classical times, and it was common for those studying the sciences to be artisans as well, something that had been "considered an aberration in the ancient world." Islamic experts in the sciences were often expert instrument makers who enhanced their powers of observation and calculation with them. Starting in the early ninth century, early Muslim scientists such as al-Kindi (801–873) and the authors writing under the name of Jābir ibn Hayyān (writings dated to c. 850–950) began to put a greater emphasis on the use of experiment as a source of knowledge. Several scientific methods thus emerged from the medieval Muslim world by the early 11th century, all of which emphasized experimentation as well as quantification to varying degrees.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Ibn al-Haytham ===
|
||||
|
||||
The Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) used experimentation to obtain the results in his Book of Optics (1021). He combined observations, experiments and rational arguments to support his intromission theory of vision, in which rays of light are emitted from objects rather than from the eyes. He used similar arguments to show that the ancient emission theory of vision supported by Ptolemy and Euclid (in which the eyes emit the rays of light used for seeing), and the ancient intromission theory supported by Aristotle (where objects emit physical particles to the eyes), were both wrong.
|
||||
Experimental evidence supported most of the propositions in his Book of Optics and grounded his theories of vision, light and colour, as well as his research in catoptrics and dioptrics. His legacy was elaborated through the 'reforming' of his Optics by Kamal al-Din al-Farisi (d. c. 1320) in the latter's Kitab Tanqih al-Manazir (The Revision of [Ibn al-Haytham's] Optics).
|
||||
Alhazen viewed his scientific studies as a search for truth: "Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough. ...
|
||||
Alhazen's work included the conjecture that "Light travels through transparent bodies in straight lines only", which he was able to corroborate only after years of effort. He stated, "[This] is clearly observed in the lights which enter into dark rooms through holes. ... the entering light will be clearly observable in the dust which fills the air." He also demonstrated the conjecture by placing a straight stick or a taut thread next to the light beam.
|
||||
Ibn al-Haytham also employed scientific skepticism and emphasized the role of empiricism. He also explained the role of induction in syllogism, and criticized Aristotle for his lack of contribution to the method of induction, which Ibn al-Haytham regarded as superior to syllogism, and he considered induction to be the basic requirement for true scientific research.
|
||||
Something like Occam's razor is also present in the Book of Optics. For example, after demonstrating that light is generated by luminous objects and emitted or reflected into the eyes, he states that therefore "the extramission of [visual] rays is superfluous and useless." He may also have been the first scientist to adopt a form of positivism in his approach. He wrote that "we do not go beyond experience, and we cannot be content to use pure concepts in investigating natural phenomena", and that the understanding of these cannot be acquired without mathematics. After assuming that light is a material substance, he does not further discuss its nature but confines his investigations to the diffusion and propagation of light. The only properties of light he takes into account are those treatable by geometry and verifiable by experiment.
|
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=== Al-Biruni ===
|
||||
The Persian scientist Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī introduced early scientific methods for several different fields of inquiry during the 1020s and 1030s. For example, in his treatise on mineralogy, Kitab al-Jawahir (Book of Precious Stones), al-Biruni is "the most exact of experimental scientists", while in the introduction to his study of India, he declares that "to execute our project, it has not been possible to follow the geometric method" and thus became one of the pioneers of comparative sociology in insisting on field experience and information. He also developed an early experimental method for mechanics.
|
||||
Al-Biruni's methods resembled the modern scientific method, particularly in his emphasis on repeated experimentation. Biruni was concerned with how to conceptualize and prevent both systematic errors and observational biases, such as "errors caused by the use of small instruments and errors made by human observers." He argued that if instruments produce errors because of their imperfections or idiosyncratic qualities, then multiple observations must be taken, analyzed qualitatively, and on this basis, arrive at a "common-sense single value for the constant sought", whether an arithmetic mean or a "reliable estimate." In his scientific method, "universals came out of practical, experimental work" and "theories are formulated after discoveries", as with inductivism.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Ibn Sina (Avicenna) ===
|
||||
In the On Demonstration section of The Book of Healing (1027), the Persian philosopher and scientist Avicenna (Ibn Sina) discussed philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry. He discussed Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and significantly diverged from it on several points. Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper procedure for scientific inquiry and the question of "How does one acquire the first principles of a science?" He asked how a scientist might find "the initial axioms or hypotheses of a deductive science without inferring them from some more basic premises?" He explained that the ideal situation is when one grasps that a "relation holds between the terms, which would allow for absolute, universal certainty." Avicenna added two further methods for finding a first principle: the ancient Aristotelian method of induction (istiqra), and the more recent method of examination and experimentation (tajriba). Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction, arguing that "it does not lead to the absolute, universal, and certain premises that it purports to provide." In its place, he advocated "a method of experimentation as a means for scientific inquiry."
|
||||
Earlier, in The Canon of Medicine (1025), Avicenna was also the first to describe what is essentially methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method. However, unlike his contemporary al-Biruni's scientific method, in which "universals came out of practical, experimental work" and "theories are formulated after discoveries", Avicenna developed a scientific procedure in which "general and universal questions came first and led to experimental work." Due to the differences between their methods, al-Biruni referred to himself as a mathematical scientist and to Avicenna as a philosopher, during a debate between the two scholars.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Robert Grosseteste ===
|
||||
During the European Renaissance of the 12th century, ideas on scientific methodology, including Aristotle's empiricism and the experimental approaches of Alhazen and Avicenna, were introduced to medieval Europe via Latin translations of Arabic and Greek texts and commentaries. Robert Grosseteste's commentary on the Posterior Analytics places Grosseteste among the first scholastic thinkers in Europe to understand Aristotle's vision of the dual nature of scientific reasoning. Concluding from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again, from universal laws to prediction of particulars. Grosseteste called this "resolution and composition". Further, Grosseteste said that both paths should be verified through experimentation to verify the principles.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Roger Bacon ===
|
||||
While Roger Bacon was not a scientific man and did not undertake experiments himself, he was an excellent writer whose works encouraged those concepts.
|
||||
About 1256 he joined the Franciscan Order and became subject to the Franciscan statute forbidding Friars from publishing books or pamphlets without specific approval. After the accession of Pope Clement IV in 1265, the Pope granted Bacon a special commission to write to him on scientific matters. In eighteen months he completed three large treatises, the Opus Majus, Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium which he sent to the Pope. William Whewell has called Opus Majus at once the Encyclopaedia and Organon of the 13th century.
|
||||
|
||||
Part I (pp. 1–22) treats of the four causes of error: authority, custom, the opinion of the unskilled many, and the concealment of real ignorance by a pretense of knowledge.
|
||||
Part VI (pp. 445–477) treats of experimental science, domina omnium scientiarum. There are two methods of knowledge: the one by argument, the other by experience. Mere argument is never sufficient; it may decide a question, but gives no satisfaction or certainty to the mind, which can only be convinced by immediate inspection or intuition, which is what experience gives.
|
||||
Experimental science, which in the Opus Tertium (p. 46) is distinguished from the speculative sciences and the operative arts, is said to have three great prerogatives over all sciences:
|
||||
It verifies their conclusions by direct experiment;
|
||||
It discovers truths which they could never reach;
|
||||
It investigates the secrets of nature, and opens to us a knowledge of past and future.
|
||||
Roger Bacon illustrated his method by an investigation into the nature and cause of the rainbow, as a specimen of inductive research.
|
||||
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=== Renaissance humanism and medicine ===
|
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Aristotle's ideas became a framework for critical debate beginning with absorption of the Aristotelian texts into the university curriculum in the first half of the 13th century. Contributing to this was the success of medieval theologians in reconciling Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. Within the sciences, medieval philosophers were not afraid of disagreeing with Aristotle on many specific issues, although their disagreements were stated within the language of Aristotelian philosophy. All medieval natural philosophers were Aristotelians, but "Aristotelianism" had become a somewhat broad and flexible concept. With the end of Middle Ages, the Renaissance rejection of medieval traditions coupled with an extreme reverence for classical sources led to a recovery of other ancient philosophical traditions, especially the teachings of Plato. By the 17th century, those who clung dogmatically to Aristotle's teachings were faced with several competing approaches to nature.
|
||||
|
||||
The discovery of the Americas at the close of the 15th century showed the scholars of Europe that new discoveries could be found outside of the authoritative works of Aristotle, Pliny, Galen, and other ancient writers.
|
||||
Galen of Pergamon (129 – c. 200 AD) had studied with four schools in antiquity — Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, and Epicureans, and at Alexandria, the center of medicine at the time. In his Methodus Medendi, Galen had synthesized the empirical and dogmatic schools of medicine into his own method, which was preserved by Arab scholars. After the translations from Arabic were critically scrutinized, a backlash occurred and demand arose in Europe for translations of Galen's medical text from the original Greek. Galen's method became very popular in Europe. Thomas Linacre, the teacher of Erasmus, thereupon translated Methodus Medendi from Greek into Latin for a larger audience in 1519. Limbrick 1988 notes that 630 editions, translations, and commentaries on Galen were produced in Europe in the 16th century, eventually eclipsing Arabic medicine there, and peaking in 1560, at the time of the Scientific Revolution.
|
||||
By the late 15th century, the physician-scholar Niccolò Leoniceno was finding errors in Pliny's Natural History. As a physician, Leoniceno was concerned about these botanical errors propagating to the materia medica on which medicines were based. To counter this, a botanical garden was established at Orto botanico di Padova, University of Padua (in use for teaching by 1546), in order that medical students might have empirical access to the plants of a pharmacopia. Other Renaissance teaching gardens were established, notably by the physician Leonhart Fuchs, one of the founders of botany.
|
||||
|
||||
The first printed work devoted to the concept of method is Jodocus Willichius, De methodo omnium artium et disciplinarum informanda opusculum (1550). An Informative Essay on the Method of All Arts and Disciplines (1550)
|
||||
|
||||
=== Skepticism as a basis for understanding ===
|
||||
In 1562 Outlines of Pyrrhonism by the ancient Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus (c. 160–210 AD) was published in a Latin translation (from Greek), quickly placing the arguments of classical skepticism in the European mainstream. These arguments establish seemingly insurmountable challenges for the possibility of certain knowledge.
|
||||
The skeptic philosopher and physician Francisco Sanches, was led by his medical training at Rome, 1571–73, to search for a true method of knowing (modus sciendi), as nothing clear can be known by the methods of Aristotle and his followers — for example, 1) syllogism fails upon circular reasoning; 2) Aristotle's modal logic was not stated clearly enough for use in medieval times, and remains a research problem to this day. Following the physician Galen's method of medicine, Sanches lists the methods of judgement and experience, which are faulty in the wrong hands, and we are left with the bleak statement That Nothing is Known (1581, in Latin Quod Nihil Scitur). This challenge was taken up by René Descartes in the next generation (1637), but at the least, Sanches warns us that we ought to refrain from the methods, summaries, and commentaries on Aristotle, if we seek scientific knowledge. In this, he is echoed by Francis Bacon who was influenced by another prominent exponent of skepticism, Montaigne; Sanches cites the humanist Juan Luis Vives who sought a better educational system, as well as a statement of human rights as a pathway for improvement of the lot of the poor.
|
||||
"Sanches develops his scepticism by means of an intellectual critique of Aristotelianism, rather than by an appeal to the history of human stupidity and the variety and contrariety of previous theories." —Popkin 1979, p. 37, as cited by Sanches, Limbrick & Thomson 1988, pp. 24–25
|
||||
|
||||
"To work, then; and if you know something, then teach me; I shall be extremely grateful to you. In the meantime, as I prepare to examine Things, I shall raise the question anything is known, and if so, how, in the introductory passages of another book, a book in which I will expound, as far as human frailty allows, the method of knowing. Farewell.
|
||||
WHAT IS TAUGHT HAS NO MORE STRENGTH THAN IT DERIVES FROM HIM WHO IS TAUGHT.
|
||||
|
||||
WHAT?" —Francisco Sanches (1581) Quod Nihil Scitur p. 100
|
||||
Descartes' famous "Cogito" argument is an attempt to overcome skepticism and reestablish a foundation for certainty but other thinkers responded by revising what the search for knowledge, particularly physical knowledge, might be.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Tycho Brahe ===
|
||||
|
||||
See History of astronomy § Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, and History of optics § Renaissance and Early Modern
|
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The first modern science, in which practitioners were prepared to revise or reject long-held beliefs in the light of new evidence, was astronomy, and Tycho Brahe was the first modern astronomer. See Sextant, right. Note the explicit reduction of geometrical diagrams to practice (real objects with actual lengths and angles).
|
||||
In 1572, Tycho noticed a completely new star that was brighter than any star or planet. Astonished by the existence of a star that ought not to have been there and gaining the patronage of King Frederick II of Denmark, Tycho built the Uraniborg observatory at enormous cost. Over a period of fifteen years (1576–1591), Tycho and upwards of thirty assistants charted the positions of stars, planets, and other celestial bodies at Uraniborg with unprecedented accuracy. In 1600, Tycho hired Johannes Kepler to assist him in analyzing and publishing his observations. Kepler later used Tycho's observations of the motion of Mars to deduce the laws of planetary motion, which were later explained in terms of Newton's law of universal gravitation.
|
||||
Besides Tycho's specific role in advancing astronomical knowledge, Tycho's single-minded pursuit of ever-more-accurate measurement was enormously influential in creating a modern scientific culture in which theory and evidence were understood to be inseparably linked. See Sextant, right.
|
||||
By 1723, standard units of measure had spread to § terrestrial mass and length.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Francis Bacon's eliminative induction ===
|
||||
|
||||
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." —Francis Bacon (1605) The Advancement of Learning, Book 1, v, 8
|
||||
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) entered Trinity College, Cambridge in April 1573, where he applied himself diligently to the several sciences as then taught, and came to the conclusion that the methods employed and the results attained were alike erroneous; he learned to despise the current Aristotelian philosophy. He believed philosophy must be taught its true purpose, and for this purpose a new method must be devised. With this conception in his mind, Bacon left the university.
|
||||
Bacon attempted to describe a rational procedure for establishing causation between phenomena based on induction. Bacon's induction was, however, radically different than that employed by the Aristotelians. As Bacon put it,
|
||||
|
||||
[A]nother form of induction must be devised than has hitherto been employed, and it must be used for proving and discovering not first principles (as they are called) only, but also the lesser axioms, and the middle, and indeed all. For the induction which proceeds by simple enumeration is childish. —Novum Organum section CV
|
||||
Bacon's method relied on experimental histories to eliminate alternative theories. Bacon explains how his method is applied in his Novum Organum (published 1620). In an example he gives on the examination of the nature of heat, Bacon creates two tables, the first of which he names "Table of Essence and Presence", enumerating the many various circumstances under which we find heat. In the other table, labelled "Table of Deviation, or of Absence in Proximity", he lists circumstances which bear resemblance to those of the first table except for the absence of heat. From an analysis of what he calls the natures (light emitting, heavy, colored, etc.) of the items in these lists we are brought to conclusions about the form nature, or cause, of heat. Those natures which are always present in the first table, but never in the second are deemed to be the cause of heat.
|
||||
The role experimentation played in this process was twofold. The most laborious job of the scientist would be to gather the facts, or 'histories', required to create the tables of presence and absence. Such histories would document a mixture of common knowledge and experimental results. Secondly, experiments of light, or, as we might say, crucial experiments would be needed to resolve any remaining ambiguities over causes.
|
||||
Bacon showed an uncompromising commitment to experimentation. Despite this, he did not make any great scientific discoveries during his lifetime. This may be because he was not the most able experimenter. It may also be because hypothesising plays only a small role in Bacon's method compared to modern science. Hypotheses, in Bacon's method, are supposed to emerge during the process of investigation, with the help of mathematics and logic. Bacon gave a substantial but secondary role to mathematics "which ought only to give definiteness to natural philosophy, not to generate or give it birth" (Novum Organum XCVI). An over-emphasis on axiomatic reasoning had rendered previous non-empirical philosophy impotent, in Bacon's view, which was expressed in his Novum Organum:
|
||||
|
||||
XIX. There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immoveable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
|
||||
|
||||
In Bacon's utopian novel, The New Atlantis, the ultimate role is given for inductive reasoning:
|
||||
|
||||
Lastly, we have three that raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms. These we call interpreters of nature.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Descartes ===
|
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In 1619, René Descartes began writing his first major treatise on proper scientific and philosophical thinking, the unfinished Rules for the Direction of the Mind. His aim was to create a complete science that he hoped would overthrow the Aristotelian system and establish himself as the sole architect of a new system of guiding principles for scientific research.
|
||||
This work was continued and clarified in his 1637 treatise, Discourse on Method, and in his 1641 Meditations. Descartes describes the intriguing and disciplined thought experiments he used to arrive at the idea we instantly associate with him: I think therefore I am.
|
||||
From this foundational thought, Descartes finds proof of the existence of a God who, possessing all possible perfections, will not deceive him provided he resolves "[...] never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of methodic doubt."
|
||||
This rule allowed Descartes to progress beyond his own thoughts and judge that there exist extended bodies outside of his own thoughts. Descartes published seven sets of objections to the Meditations from various sources along with his replies to them. Despite his apparent departure from the Aristotelian system, a number of his critics felt that Descartes had done little more than replace the primary premises of Aristotle with those of his own. Descartes says as much himself in a letter written in 1647 to the translator of Principles of Philosophy,
|
||||
|
||||
a perfect knowledge [...] must necessarily be deduced from first causes [...] we must try to deduce from these principles knowledge of the things which depend on them, that there be nothing in the whole chain of deductions deriving from them that is not perfectly manifest.
|
||||
And again, some years earlier, speaking of Galileo's physics in a letter to his friend and critic Mersenne from 1638,
|
||||
|
||||
without having considered the first causes of nature, [Galileo] has merely looked for the explanations of a few particular effects, and he has thereby built without foundations.
|
||||
Whereas Aristotle purported to arrive at his first principles by induction, Descartes believed he could obtain them using reason only. In this sense, he was a Platonist, as he believed in the innate ideas, as opposed to Aristotle's blank slate (tabula rasa), and stated that the seeds of science are inside us.
|
||||
Unlike Bacon, Descartes successfully applied his own ideas in practice. He made significant contributions to science, in particular in aberration-corrected optics. His work in analytic geometry was a necessary precedent to differential calculus and instrumental in bringing mathematical analysis to bear on scientific matters.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Galileo Galilei ===
|
||||
|
||||
During the period of religious conservatism brought about by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Galileo Galilei unveiled his new science of motion. Neither the contents of Galileo's science, nor the methods of study he selected were in keeping with Aristotelian teachings. Whereas Aristotle thought that a science should be demonstrated from first principles, Galileo had used experiments as a research tool. Galileo nevertheless presented his treatise in the form of mathematical demonstrations without reference to experimental results. It is important to understand that this in itself was a bold and innovative step in terms of scientific method. The usefulness of mathematics in obtaining scientific results was far from obvious. This is because mathematics did not lend itself to the primary pursuit of Aristotelian science: the discovery of causes.
|
||||
Whether it is because Galileo was realistic about the acceptability of presenting experimental results as evidence or because he himself had doubts about the epistemological status of experimental findings is not known. Nevertheless, it is not in his Latin treatise on motion that we find reference to experiments, but in his supplementary dialogues written in the Italian vernacular. In these dialogues experimental results are given, although Galileo may have found them inadequate for persuading his audience. Thought experiments showing logical contradictions in Aristotelian thinking, presented in the skilled rhetoric of Galileo's dialogue were further enticements for the reader.
|
||||
|
||||
As an example, in the dramatic dialogue titled Third Day from his Two New Sciences, Galileo has the characters of the dialogue discuss an experiment involving two free falling objects of differing weight. An outline of the Aristotelian view is offered by the character Simplicio. For this experiment he expects that "a body which is ten times as heavy as another will move ten times as rapidly as the other". The character Salviati, representing Galileo's persona in the dialogue, replies by voicing his doubt that Aristotle ever attempted the experiment. Salviati then asks the two other characters of the dialogue to consider a thought experiment whereby two stones of differing weights are tied together before being released. Following Aristotle, Salviati reasons that "the more rapid one will be partly retarded by the slower, and the slower will be somewhat hastened by the swifter". But this leads to a contradiction, since the two stones together make a heavier object than either stone apart, the heavier object should in fact fall with a speed greater than that of either stone. From this contradiction, Salviati concludes that Aristotle must, in fact, be wrong and the objects will fall at the same speed regardless of their weight, a conclusion that is borne out by experiment.
|
||||
In his 1991 survey of developments in the modern accumulation of knowledge such as this, Charles Van Doren considers that the Copernican Revolution really is the Galilean Cartesian (René Descartes) or simply the Galilean revolution on account of the courage and depth of change brought about by the work of Galileo.
|
||||
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||||
=== Isaac Newton ===
|
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Both Bacon and Descartes wanted to provide a firm foundation for scientific thought that avoided the deceptions of the mind and senses. Bacon envisaged that foundation as essentially empirical, whereas Descartes provides a metaphysical foundation for knowledge. If there were any doubts about the direction in which scientific method would develop, they were set to rest by the success of Isaac Newton. Implicitly rejecting Descartes' emphasis on rationalism in favor of Bacon's empirical approach, he outlines his four "rules of reasoning" in the Principia,
|
||||
|
||||
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
|
||||
Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
|
||||
The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
|
||||
In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phænomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, until such time as other phænomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
|
||||
|
||||
But Newton also left an admonition about a theory of everything:
|
||||
|
||||
To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things.
|
||||
Newton's work became a model that other sciences sought to emulate, and his inductive approach formed the basis for much of natural philosophy through the 18th and early 19th centuries. Some methods of reasoning were later systematized by Mill's Methods (or Mill's canon), which are five explicit statements of what can be discarded and what can be kept while building a hypothesis. George Boole and William Stanley Jevons also wrote on the principles of reasoning.
|
||||
|
||||
== Integrating deductive and inductive method ==
|
||||
Attempts to systematize a scientific method were confronted in the mid-18th century by the problem of induction, a positivist logic formulation which, in short, asserts that nothing can be known with certainty except what is actually observed. David Hume took empiricism to the skeptical extreme; among his positions was that there is no logical necessity that the future should resemble the past, thus we are unable to justify inductive reasoning itself by appealing to its past success. Hume's arguments, of course, came on the heels of many, many centuries of excessive speculation upon excessive speculation not grounded in empirical observation and testing. Many of Hume's radically skeptical arguments were argued against, but not resolutely refuted, by Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in the late 18th century. Hume's arguments continue to hold a strong lingering influence and certainly on the consciousness of the educated classes for the better part of the 19th century when the argument at the time became the focus on whether or not the inductive method was valid.
|
||||
Hans Christian Ørsted, (Ørsted is the Danish spelling; Oersted in other languages) (1777–1851) was heavily influenced by Kant, in particular, Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science). The following sections on Ørsted encapsulate our current, common view of scientific method. His work appeared in Danish, most accessibly in public lectures, which he translated into German, French, English, and occasionally Latin. But some of his views go beyond Kant:
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"In order to achieve completeness in our knowledge of nature, we must start from two extremes, from experience and from the intellect itself. ... The former method must conclude with natural laws, which it has abstracted from experience, while the latter must begin with principles, and gradually, as it develops more and more, it becomes ever more detailed. Of course, I speak here about the method as manifested in the process of the human intellect itself, not as found in textbooks, where the laws of nature which have been abstracted from the consequent experiences are placed first because they are required to explain the experiences. When the empiricist in his regression towards general laws of nature meets the metaphysician in his progression, science will reach its perfection."
|
||||
Ørsted's "First Introduction to General Physics" (1811) exemplified the steps of observation, hypothesis, deduction and experiment. In 1805, based on his researches on electromagnetism Ørsted came to believe that electricity is propagated by undulatory action (i.e., fluctuation). By 1820, he felt confident enough in his beliefs that he resolved to demonstrate them in a public lecture, and in fact observed a small magnetic effect from a galvanic circuit (i.e., voltaic circuit), without rehearsal;
|
||||
In 1831 John Herschel (1792–1871) published A Preliminary Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy, setting out the principles of science. Measuring and comparing observations was to be used to find generalisations in "empirical laws", which described regularities in phenomena, then natural philosophers were to work towards the higher aim of finding a universal "law of nature" which explained the causes and effects producing such regularities. An explanatory hypothesis was to be found by evaluating true causes (Newton's "vera causae") derived from experience, for example evidence of past climate change could be due to changes in the shape of continents, or to changes in Earth's orbit. Possible causes could be inferred by analogy to known causes of similar phenomena. It was essential to evaluate the importance of a hypothesis; "our next step in the verification of an induction must, therefore, consist in extending its application to cases not originally contemplated; in studiously varying the circumstances under which our causes act, with a view to ascertain whether their effect is general; and in pushing the application of our laws to extreme cases."
|
||||
William Whewell (1794–1866) regarded his History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time (1837) to be an introduction to the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840) which analyzes the method exemplified in the formation of ideas. Whewell attempts to follow Bacon's plan for discovery of an effectual art of discovery. He named the hypothetico-deductive method (which Encyclopædia Britannica credits to Newton); Whewell also coined the term scientist. Whewell examines ideas and attempts to construct science by uniting ideas to facts. He analyses induction into three steps:
|
||||
|
||||
the selection of the fundamental idea, such as space, number, cause, or likeness
|
||||
a more special modification of those ideas, such as a circle, a uniform force, etc.
|
||||
the determination of magnitudes
|
||||
Upon these follow special techniques applicable for quantity, such as the method of least squares, curves, means, and special methods depending on resemblance (such as pattern matching, the method of gradation, and the method of natural classification (such as cladistics).
|
||||
But no art of discovery, such as Bacon anticipated, follows, for "invention, sagacity, genius" are needed at every step. Whewell's sophisticated concept of science had similarities to that shown by Herschel, and he considered that a good hypothesis should connect fields that had previously been thought unrelated, a process he called consilience. However, where Herschel held that the origin of new biological species would be found in a natural rather than a miraculous process, Whewell opposed this and considered that no natural cause had been shown for adaptation so an unknown divine cause was appropriate.
|
||||
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was stimulated to publish A System of Logic (1843) upon reading Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. Mill may be regarded as the final exponent of the empirical school of philosophy begun by John Locke, whose fundamental characteristic is the duty incumbent upon all thinkers to investigate for themselves rather than to accept the authority of others. Knowledge must be based on experience.
|
||||
In the mid-19th century Claude Bernard was also influential, especially in bringing the scientific method to medicine. In his discourse on scientific method, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), he described what makes a scientific theory good and what makes a scientist a true discoverer. Unlike many scientific writers of his time, Bernard wrote about his own experiments and thoughts, and used the first person.
|
||||
William Stanley Jevons' The Principles of Science: a treatise on logic and scientific method (1873, 1877) Chapter XII "The Inductive or Inverse Method", Summary of the Theory of Inductive Inference, states "Thus there are but three steps in the process of induction :-
|
||||
|
||||
Framing some hypothesis as to the character of the general law.
|
||||
Deducing some consequences of that law.
|
||||
Observing whether the consequences agree with the particular tasks under consideration."
|
||||
Jevons then frames those steps in terms of probability, which he then applied to economic laws. Ernest Nagel notes that Jevons and Whewell were not the first writers to argue for the centrality of the hypothetico-deductive method in the logic of science.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Charles Sanders Peirce ===
|
||||
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In the late 19th century, Charles Sanders Peirce proposed a schema that would turn out to have considerable influence in the further development of scientific method generally. Peirce's work quickly accelerated the progress on several fronts. Firstly, speaking in broader context in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878), Peirce outlined an objectively verifiable method to test the truth of putative knowledge on a way that goes beyond mere foundational alternatives, focusing upon both Deduction and Induction. He thus placed induction and deduction in a complementary rather than competitive context (the latter of which had been the primary trend at least since David Hume a century before). Secondly, and of more direct importance to scientific method, Peirce put forth the basic schema for hypothesis-testing that continues to prevail today. Extracting the theory of inquiry from its raw materials in classical logic, he refined it in parallel with the early development of symbolic logic to address the then-current problems in scientific reasoning. Peirce examined and articulated the three fundamental modes of reasoning that play a role in scientific inquiry today, the processes that are currently known as abductive, deductive, and inductive inference. Thirdly, he played a major role in the progress of symbolic logic itself – indeed this was his primary specialty.
|
||||
Charles S. Peirce was also a pioneer in statistics. Peirce held that science achieves statistical probabilities, not certainties, and that chance, a veering from law, is very real. He assigned probability to an argument's conclusion rather than to a proposition, event, etc., as such. Most of his statistical writings promote the frequency interpretation of probability (objective ratios of cases), and many of his writings express skepticism about (and criticize the use of) probability when such models are not based on objective randomization. Though Peirce was largely a frequentist, his possible world semantics introduced the "propensity" theory of probability. Peirce (sometimes with Jastrow) investigated the probability judgments of experimental subjects, pioneering decision analysis.
|
||||
Peirce was one of the founders of statistics. He formulated modern statistics in "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (1877–1878) and "A Theory of Probable Inference" (1883). With a repeated measures design, he introduced blinded, controlled randomized experiments (before Fisher). He invented an optimal design for experiments on gravity, in which he "corrected the means". He used logistic regression, correlation, and smoothing, and improved the treatment of outliers. He introduced terms "confidence" and "likelihood" (before Neyman and Fisher). (See the historical books of Stephen Stigler.) Many of Peirce's ideas were later popularized and developed by Ronald A. Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, Frank P. Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti, and Karl Popper.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Modern perspectives ===
|
||||
Karl Popper (1902–1994) is generally credited with providing major improvements in the understanding of the scientific method in the mid-to-late 20th century. In 1934 Popper published The Logic of Scientific Discovery, which repudiated the by then traditional observationalist-inductivist account of the scientific method. He advocated empirical falsifiability as the criterion for distinguishing scientific work from non-science. According to Popper, scientific theory should make predictions (preferably predictions not made by a competing theory) which can be tested and the theory rejected if these predictions are shown not to be correct. Following Peirce and others, he argued that science would best progress using deductive reasoning as its primary emphasis, known as critical rationalism. His astute formulations of logical procedure helped to rein in the excessive use of inductive speculation upon inductive speculation, and also helped to strengthen the conceptual foundations for today's peer review procedures.
|
||||
Ludwik Fleck, a Polish epidemiologist who was contemporary with Karl Popper but who influenced Kuhn and others with his Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (in German 1935, English 1979). Before Fleck, scientific fact was thought to spring fully formed (in the view of Max Jammer, for example), when a gestation period is now recognized to be essential before acceptance of a phenomenon as fact.
|
||||
Critics of Popper, chiefly Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos, rejected the idea that there exists a single method that applies to all science and could account for its progress. In 1962 Kuhn published the influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which suggested that scientists worked within a series of paradigms, and argued there was little evidence of scientists actually following a falsificationist methodology. Kuhn quoted Max Planck who had said in his autobiography, "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
|
||||
A well quoted source on the subject of the scientific method and statistical models, George E. P. Box (1919–2013) wrote "Since all models are wrong the scientist cannot obtain a correct one by excessive elaboration. On the contrary following William of Occam he should seek an economical description of natural phenomena. Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist, so over-elaboration and over-parameterization is often the mark of mediocrity" and "Since all models are wrong the scientist must be alert to what is importantly wrong. It is inappropriate to be concerned about mice when there are tigers abroad."
|
||||
These debates clearly show that there is no universal agreement as to what constitutes the "scientific method". There remain, nonetheless, certain core principles that are the foundation of scientific inquiry today.
|
||||
|
||||
== Mention of the topic ==
|
||||
In Quod Nihil Scitur (1581), Francisco Sanches refers to another book title, De modo sciendi (on the method of knowing). This work appeared in Spanish as Método universal de las ciencias.
|
||||
In 1833 Robert and William Chambers published their 'Chambers's information for the people'. Under the rubric 'Logic' we find a description of investigation that is familiar as scientific method,
|
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|
||||
|
||||
The role of chance, or "luck", in science comprises all ways in which unexpected discoveries are made.
|
||||
Many domains, especially psychology, are concerned with the way science interacts with chance –particularly "serendipity" (accidents that, through sagacity, are transformed into opportunity). Psychologist Kevin Dunbar and colleagues estimate that between 30% and 50% of all scientific discoveries are accidental in some sense (see examples below). Scientists themselves in the 19th and 20th century acknowledged the role of fortunate luck or serendipity in discoveries.
|
||||
Psychologist Alan A. Baumeister says a scientist must be "sagacious" (attentive and clever) to benefit from an accident. Dunbar quotes Louis Pasteur's saying that "Chance favors only the prepared mind". The prepared mind, Dunbar suggests, is one trained for observational rigor. Dunbar adds that there is a great deal of writing about the role that serendipity ("happy accidents") plays in the scientific method.
|
||||
Research suggests that scientists are taught various heuristics and practices that allow their investigations to benefit, and not suffer, from accidents. First, careful control conditions allow scientists to properly identify something as "unexpected". Once a finding is recognized as legitimately unexpected and in need of explaining, researchers can attempt to explain it: They work across various disciplines, with various colleagues, trying various analogies in order to understand the first curious finding.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Preparing to make discoveries ==
|
||||
|
||||
Accidental discoveries have been a topic of discussion especially from the 20th century onwards. Kevin Dunbar and Jonathan Fugelsang say that somewhere between 33% and 50% of all scientific discoveries are unexpected. This helps explain why scientists often call their discoveries "lucky", and yet scientists themselves may not be able to detail exactly what role luck played (see also introspection illusion). Dunbar and Fugelsang believe scientific discoveries are the result of carefully prepared experiments, but also "prepared minds".
|
||||
The author Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls science "anti-fragile". That is, science can actually use—and benefit from—the chaos of the real world. While some methods of investigation are fragile in the face of human error and randomness, the scientific method relies on randomness in many ways. Taleb believes that the more anti-fragile the system, the more it will flourish in the real world. According to M. K. Stoskopf, it is in this way that serendipity is often the "foundation for important intellectual leaps of understanding" in science.
|
||||
The word "Serendipity" is frequently understood as simply "a happy accident", but Horace Walpole used the word 'serendipity' to refer to a certain kind of happy accident: the kind that can only be exploited by a "sagacious" or clever person. Thus Dunbar and Fugelsang talk about, not just luck or chance in science, but specifically "serendipity" in science.
|
||||
Dunbar and Fugelsang suggest that the process of discovery often starts when a researcher finds bugs in their experiment. These unexpected results lead a researcher to self-doubt, and to try and fix what they think is an error in their own methodology. The first recourse is to explain the error using local hypotheses (e.g. analogies typical of the discipline). This process is also local in the sense that the scientist is relatively independent or else working with one partner. Eventually, the researcher decides that the error is too persistent and systematic to be a coincidence. Self-doubt is complete, and so the methods shift to become more broad: The researcher begins to think of theoretical explanations for the error, sometimes seeking the help of colleagues across different domains of expertise. The highly controlled, cautious, curious and even social aspects of the scientific method are what make it well suited for identifying persistent systematic errors (anomalies).
|
||||
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD's psychedelic properties when he tried ingesting it at his lab, wrote
|
||||
|
||||
It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity. Dunbar and colleagues cite the discoveries of Hofmann and others as having involved serendipity. In contrast, the mind can be "prepared" in ways that obstruct serendipity — making new knowledge difficult or impossible to take in. Psychologist Alan A. Baumeister describes at least one such instance: Researcher Robert Heath failed to recognize evidence of "pleasure brain circuits" (in the septal nuclei). When Heath stimulated the brains of his schizophrenic patients, some of them reported feeling pleasure — a finding that Heath could have explored. Heath, however, was "prepared" (based on prior beliefs) for patients to report alertness, and when other patients did, it was on the reports of alertness that Heath focused his investigations. Heath failed to realize he had seen something unexpected and unexplained.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== The brain ===
|
||||
Fugelsang and Dunbar observe scientists while they work together in labs or analyze data, but they also use experimental settings and even neuroimaging. fMRI investigation found that unexpected findings were associated with particular brain activity. Unexpected findings were found to activate the prefrontal cortex as well as the left hemisphere in general. This suggests that unexpected findings provoke more attention, and the brain applies more linguistic, conscious systems to help explain those findings. This supports the idea that scientists are using particular abilities that exist to some extent in all humans.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
On the other hand, Dunbar and Fugelsang say that an ingenious experimental design (and control conditions) may not be enough for the researcher to properly appreciate when a finding is "unexpected". Serendipitous discoveries often requires certain mental conditions in the investigator beyond rigor. For example, a scientist must know all about what is expected before they can be surprised, and this requires experience in the field. Researchers also require the sagacity to know to invest in the most curious findings.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Serendipitous discoveries ==
|
||||
|
||||
Royston Roberts says that various discoveries required a degree of genius, but also some lucky element for that genius to act on. Richard Gaughan writes that accidental discoveries result from the convergence of preparation, opportunity, and desire.
|
||||
An example of luck in science is when drugs under investigation become known for different, unexpected uses. This was the case for minoxidil (an antihypertensive vasodilator that was subsequently found to also slow hair loss and promote hair regrowth in some people) and for sildenafil (a medicine for pulmonary arterial hypertension, now familiar as "Viagra", used to treat erectile dysfunction).
|
||||
The hallucinogenic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) were discovered by Albert Hofmann, who was originally working with the substance to try and treat migraines and bleeding after childbirth. Hofmann experienced mental distortions and suspected it may have been the effects of LSD. He decided to test this hypothesis on himself by taking what he thought was "an extremely small quantity": 250 micrograms. For comparison, a typical dose of LSD for recreational use in the modern day is 50 micrograms. Hofmann's description of what he experienced as a result of taking so much LSD is regarded by Royston Roberts as "one of the most frightening accounts in recorded medical history".
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
|
||||
Belief in luck
|
||||
Discovery (observation)
|
||||
List of multiple discoveries
|
||||
Multiple discovery
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
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19th-century science was greatly influenced by Romanticism (or the Age of Reflection, c. 1800–1840), an intellectual movement that originated in Western Europe as a counter-movement to the late-18th-century Enlightenment. Romanticism incorporated many fields of study, including politics, the arts, and the humanities.
|
||||
|
||||
In contrast to the Enlightenment's mechanistic natural philosophy, European scientists of the Romantic period held that observing nature implied understanding the self and that knowledge of nature "should not be obtained by force". They felt that the Enlightenment had encouraged the abuse of the sciences, and they sought to advance a new way to increase scientific knowledge, one that they felt would be more beneficial not only to mankind but to nature as well.
|
||||
Romanticism advanced a number of themes: it promoted anti-reductionism (that the whole is more valuable than the parts alone) and epistemological optimism (man was connected to nature), and encouraged creativity, experience, and genius. It also emphasized the scientist's role in scientific discovery, holding that acquiring knowledge of nature meant understanding man as well; therefore, these scientists placed a high importance on respect for nature.
|
||||
Romanticism declined beginning around 1840 as a new movement, positivism, took hold of intellectuals, and lasted until about 1880. As with the intellectuals who earlier had become disenchanted with the Enlightenment and had sought a new approach to science, people now lost interest in Romanticism and sought to study science using a stricter process.
|
||||
|
||||
== Romantic science vs. Enlightenment science ==
|
||||
As the Enlightenment had a firm hold in France during the last decades of the 18th century, the Romantic view on science was a movement that flourished in Great Britain and especially Germany in the first half of the 19th century. Both sought to increase individual and cultural self-understanding by recognizing the limits in human knowledge through the study of nature and the intellectual capacities of man. The Romantic movement, however, resulted as an increasing dislike by many intellectuals for the tenets promoted by the Enlightenment; it was felt by some that Enlightened thinkers' emphasis on rational thought through deductive reasoning and the mathematization of natural philosophy had created an approach to science that was too cold and that attempted to control nature, rather than to peacefully co-exist with nature.
|
||||
According to the philosophes of the Enlightenment, the path to complete knowledge required dissection of information on any given subject and a division of knowledge into subcategories of subcategories, known as reductionism. This was considered necessary in order to build upon the knowledge of the ancients, such as Ptolemy, and Renaissance thinkers, such as Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. It was widely believed that man's sheer intellectual power alone was sufficient to understanding every aspect of nature. Examples of prominent Enlightenment scholars include Sir Isaac Newton (physics and mathematics), Gottfried Leibniz (philosophy and mathematics), and Carl Linnaeus (botanist and physician).
|
||||
|
||||
== Principles of Romanticism ==
|
||||
|
||||
Romanticism had four basic principles: "the original unity of man and nature in a Golden Age; the subsequent separation of man from nature and the fragmentation of human faculties; the interpretability of the history of the universe in human, spiritual terms; and the possibility of salvation through the contemplation of nature."
|
||||
The above-mentioned Golden Age is a reference from Greek mythology and legend to the Ages of Man. Romantic thinkers sought to reunite man with nature and therefore his natural state.
|
||||
To Romantics, "science must not bring about any split between nature and man." Romantics believed in the intrinsic ability of mankind to understand nature and its phenomena, much like the Enlightened philosophes, but they preferred not to dissect information as some insatiable thirst for knowledge and did not advocate what they viewed as the manipulation of nature. They saw the Enlightenment as the "cold-hearted attempt to extort knowledge from nature" that placed man above nature rather than as a harmonious part of it; conversely, they wanted to "improvise on nature as a great instrument." The philosophy of nature was devoted to the observation of facts and careful experimentation, which was much more of a "hands-off" approach to understanding science than the Enlightenment view, as it was considered too controlling.
|
||||
Natural science, according to the Romantics, involved rejecting mechanical metaphors in favor of organic ones; in other words, they chose to view the world as composed of living beings with sentiments, rather than objects that merely function. Sir Humphry Davy, a prominent Romantic thinker, said that understanding nature required "an attitude of admiration, love and worship, ... a personal response." He believed that knowledge was only attainable by those who truly appreciated and respected nature. Self-understanding was an important aspect of Romanticism. It had less to do with proving that man was capable of understanding nature (through his budding intellect) and therefore controlling it, and more to do with the emotional appeal of connecting himself with nature and understanding it through a harmonious co-existence.
|
||||
|
||||
== Important works in Romantic science ==
|
||||
When categorizing the many disciplines of science that developed during this period, Romantics believed that explanations of various phenomena should be based upon vera causa, which meant that already known causes would produce similar effects elsewhere. It was also in this way that Romanticism was very anti-reductionist: they did not believe that inorganic sciences were at the top of the hierarchy but at the bottom, with life sciences next and psychology placed even higher. This hierarchy reflected Romantic ideals of science because the whole organism takes more precedence over inorganic matter, and the intricacies of the human mind take even more precedence since the human intellect was sacred and necessary to understanding nature around it and reuniting with it.
|
||||
Various disciplines on the study of nature that were cultivated by Romanticism included: Naturphilosophie; cosmology and cosmogony; developmental history of the Earth and its creatures; the new science of biology; investigations of mental states, conscious and unconscious, normal and abnormal; experimental disciplines to uncover the hidden forces of nature – electricity, magnetism, galvanism and other life-forces; physiognomy, phrenology, meteorology, mineralogy, "philosophical" anatomy, among others.
|
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|
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== Naturphilosophie ==
|
||||
|
||||
In Friedrich Schelling's Naturphilosophie, he explained his thesis regarding the necessity of reuniting man with nature; it was this German work that first defined the Romantic conception of science and vision of natural philosophy. He called nature "a history of the path to freedom" and encouraged a reunion of man's spirit with nature.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Biology ===
|
||||
The "new science of biology" was first termed biologie by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1801, and was "an independent scientific discipline born at the end of a long process of erosion of 'mechanical philosophy,' consisting in a spreading awareness that the phenomena of living nature cannot be understood in the light of the laws of physics but require an ad hoc explanation." The mechanical philosophy of the 17th century sought to explain life as a system of parts that operate or interact like those of a machine. Lamarck stated that the life sciences must detach from the physical sciences and strove to create a field of research that was different from the concepts, laws, and principles of physics. In rejecting mechanism without entirely abandoning the research of material phenomena that do occur in nature, he was able to point out that "living beings have specific characteristics which cannot be reduced to those possessed by physical bodies" and that living nature was un ensemble d'objets métaphisiques ("an assemblage of metaphysical objects"). He did not 'discover' biology; he drew previous works together and organized them into a new science.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Goethe ===
|
||||
|
||||
Johann Goethe's experiments with optics were the direct result of his application of Romantic ideals of observation and disregard for Newton's own work with optics. He believed that color was not an outward physical phenomenon but internal to the human; Newton concluded that white light was a mixture of the other colors, but Goethe believed he had disproved this claim by his observational experiments. He thus placed emphasis on the human ability to see the color, the human ability to gain knowledge through "flashes of insight", and not a mathematical equation that could analytically describe it.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Humboldt ===
|
||||
|
||||
Alexander von Humboldt was a staunch advocate of empirical data collection and the necessity of the natural scientist in using experience and quantification to understand nature. He sought to find the unity of nature, and his books Aspects of Nature and Kosmos lauded the aesthetic qualities of the natural world by describing natural science in religious tones. He believed science and beauty could complement one another.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Natural history ===
|
||||
|
||||
Romanticism also played a large role in Natural history, particularly in biological evolutionary theory. Nichols (2005) examines the connections between science and poetry in the English-speaking world during the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on the works of American natural historian William Bartram and British naturalist Charles Darwin. Bartram's Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791) described the flora, fauna, and landscapes of the American South with a cadence and energy that lent itself to mimicry and became a source of inspiration to such Romantic poets of the era as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Blake. Darwin's work, including On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), marked an end to the Romantic era, when using nature as a source of creative inspiration was commonplace, and led to the rise of realism and the use of analogy in the arts.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mathematics ===
|
||||
Alexander (2006) argues that the nature of mathematics changed in the 19th century from an intuitive, hierarchical, and narrative practice used to solve real-world problems to a theoretical one in which logic, rigor, and internal consistency rather than application were important. Unexpected new fields emerged, such as non-Euclidean geometry and statistics, as well as group theory, set theory, and symbolic logic. As the discipline changed, so did the nature of the men involved, and the image of the tragic Romantic genius often found in art, literature, and music may also be applied to such mathematicians as Évariste Galois (1811–1832), Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829), and János Bolyai (1802–1860). The greatest of the Romantic mathematicians was Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), who made major contributions in many branches of mathematics.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Physics ===
|
||||
Christensen (2005) shows that the work of Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851) was based in Romanticism. Ørsted's discovery of electromagnetism in 1820 was directed against the mathematically based Newtonian physics of the Enlightenment; Ørsted considered technology and practical applications of science to be unconnected with true scientific research. Strongly influenced by Kant's critique of corpuscular theory and by his friendship and collaboration with Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1809), Ørsted subscribed to a Romantic natural philosophy that rejected the idea of the universal extension of mechanical principles understandable through mathematics. For him the aim of natural philosophy was to detach itself from utility and become an autonomous enterprise, and he shared the Romantic belief that man himself and his interaction with nature was at the focal point of natural philosophy.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Astronomy ===
|
||||
|
||||
Astronomer William Herschel (1738–1822) and his sister Caroline Herschel (1750–1848) were dedicated to the study of the stars; they changed the public conception of the Solar System, the Milky Way, and the meaning of the universe.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Chemistry ===
|
||||
Sir Humphry Davy was "the most important man of science in Britain who can be described as a Romantic." His new take on what he called "chemical philosophy" was an example of Romantic principles in use that influenced the field of chemistry; he stressed a discovery of "the primitive, simple and limited in number causes of the phenomena and changes observed" in the physical world and the chemical elements already known, those having been discovered by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, an Enlightenment philosophe. True to Romantic anti-reductionism, Davy claimed that it was not the individual components, but "the powers associated with them, which gave character to substances"; in other words, not what the elements were individually, but how they combined to create chemical reactions and therefore complete the science of chemistry.
|
||||
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==== Organic chemistry ====
|
||||
The development of organic chemistry in the 19th century necessitated the acceptance by chemists of ideas deriving from Naturphilosophie, modifying the Enlightenment concepts of organic composition put forward by Lavoisier. Of central importance was the work on the constitution and synthesis of organic substances by contemporary chemists.
|
||||
|
||||
== Popular image of science ==
|
||||
Science was a subject of great interest to important romantic writers and artists. The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, was a passionate student of chemistry as well as optics, medicine, and the now-discredited field of animal magnetism. William Wordsworth was one of several writers whose poetry about the natural world is associated with the rise of ecology, even though ecology would not be formalized as a discipline until the second half of the nineteenth century.
|
||||
Another British Romantic writer interested in science was Mary Shelley. Her famous book Frankenstein also conveyed important aspects of Romanticism in science as she included elements of anti-reductionism and manipulation of nature, both key themes that concerned Romantics, as well as the scientific fields of chemistry, anatomy, and natural philosophy. She stressed the role and responsibility of society regarding science, and through the moral of her story supported the Romantic stance that science could easily go wrong unless man took more care to appreciate nature rather than control it.
|
||||
John Keats' portrayal of "cold philosophy" in the poem "Lamia" influenced Edgar Allan Poe's 1829 sonnet "To Science" and Richard Dawkins' 1998 book, Unweaving the Rainbow.
|
||||
German Romantic writers and philosophers were similarly interested in contemporary science. Johann von Goethe, who published his own treatise on optics called Theory of Colors, was an important poet and novelist. His novel Elective Affinities repeatedly uses to concepts from chemistry to explore romantic attraction and passion. Like other German Romantic writers, Goethe was very interested in theories about the nature, origin, and essence of life. The poet and novelist Novalis referenced in his writing several ideas he learned in his studies electricity, medicine, chemistry, physics, mathematics, mineralogy and natural philosophy.
|
||||
French, British, German, and American artists likewise referenced contemporary sciences in their works. Caspar David Friedrich, a German Romantic landscape painter, referenced the ideas of the geologist and mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner in several paintings. Friedrich's paintings also engaged with the geological concept of deep time. French Romantic artist Anne-Louis Girodet and his Anglo-American contemporary Benjamin West both represented eclectic experiments in major paintings.
|
||||
|
||||
== Decline of Romanticism ==
|
||||
The rise of Auguste Comte's positivism in 1840 contributed to the decline of the Romantic approach to science.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Coleridge's theory of life
|
||||
History of science
|
||||
Romantic epistemology
|
||||
Romantic linguistics
|
||||
Romantic medicine
|
||||
Romantic psychology
|
||||
Vitalism
|
||||
|
||||
== Notes ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
Alexander, Amir R (2006). "Tragic Mathematics: Romantic Narratives and the Refounding of Mathematics in the Early Nineteenth Century". Isis. 97 (4): 714–726. doi:10.1086/509952. PMID 17367007. S2CID 38520228.
|
||||
Bossi, M., and Poggi, S., ed. Romanticism in Science: Science in Europe, 1790–1840. Kluwer: Boston, 1994.
|
||||
Cunningham, A., and Jardine, N., ed. Romanticism and the Sciences. (1990). excerpt and text search
|
||||
Fulford, Tim, Debbie Lee, and Peter J. Kitson, eds. Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era: Bodies of Knowledge (2007) excerpt and text search
|
||||
Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science (2009) ISBN 978-1-4000-3187-0, focus on William Herschel the astronomer and Humphry Davy the chemist
|
||||
Holland, Jocelyn. German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter (2009) excerpt and text search
|
||||
McLane, Maureen N. Romanticism and the Human Sciences: Poetry, Population, and the Discourse of the Species (2006) excerpt and text search
|
||||
Murray, Christopher, ed. Encyclopedia of the romantic era, 1760–1850 (2 vol 2004); 850 articles by experts; 1600pp
|
||||
O'Rourke, Stephanie. Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
|
||||
Richardson, Alan. British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind (2005) excerpt and text search
|
||||
Snelders, H. A. M. (1970). "Romanticism and Naturphilosophie and the Inorganic Natural Sciences, 1797–1840: An Introductory Survey". Studies in Romanticism. 9 (3): 193–215. doi:10.2307/25599763. JSTOR 25599763.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 1/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism involved two entirely separate and independent French Royal Commissions, each appointed by Louis XVI in 1784, that were conducted simultaneously by a committee composed of four physicians from the Paris Faculty of Medicine (Faculté de médecine de Paris) and five scientists from the Royal Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences) (the "Franklin Commission", named for Benjamin Franklin), and a second committee composed of five physicians from the Royal Society of Medicine (Société Royale de Médecine) (the "Society Commission").
|
||||
Each Commission took five months to complete its investigations. The "Franklin" Report was presented to the King on 11 August 1784 – and was immediately published and very widely circulated throughout France and neighbouring countries – and the "Society" Report was presented to the King five days later on 16 August 1784.
|
||||
The "Franklin Commission's" investigations are notable as a very early "classic" example of a systematic controlled trial, which not only applied "sham" and "genuine" procedures to patients with "sham" and "genuine" disorders, but, significantly, was the first to use the "blindfolding" of both the investigators and their subjects.
|
||||
|
||||
The report of the ["Franklin"] Royal Commission of 1784 ... is a masterpiece of its genre, and enduring testimony to the power and beauty of reason. ... Never in history has such an extraordinary and luminous group [as the "Franklin Commission"] been gathered together in the service of rational inquiry by the methods of experimental science. For this reason alone the [Report of the "Franklin Commission"] ... is a key document in the history of human reason. It should be rescued from obscurity, translated into all languages, and reprinted by organizations dedicated to the unmasking of quackery and the defense of rational thought.
|
||||
Both sets of Commissioners were specifically charged with investigating the claims made by Charles-Nicolas d’Eslon (1750–1786) for the existence of a substantial (rather than metaphorical) "animal magnetism", le magnétisme animal, and of a similarly (non-metaphorical) physical "magnetic fluid", le fluide magnétique. Further, having completed their investigations into the claims of d'Eslon – that is, they did not examine Franz Mesmer, Mesmer's theories, Mesmer's principles, Mesmer's practices, Mesmer's techniques, Mesmer's apparatus, Mesmer's claims, Mesmer's "cures" or, even, "mesmerism" itself – they were each required to make "a separate and distinct report".
|
||||
|
||||
Before the ["Franklin" Commission's] investigations began, [Antoine Lavoisier] had studied the writings of d'Eslon and [had] drawn up a plan for the conduct of the inquiry. He decided that the commissioners should not study any of the alleged cures, but [that] they should determine whether animal magnetism existed by trying to magnetize a person without his knowledge or making him think that he had been magnetized when in fact he had not. This plan was adopted by the commissioners, and the results came out as Lavoisier had predicted.
|
||||
From their investigations both Commissions concluded (a) that there was no evidence of any kind to support d'Eslon's claim for the substantial physical existence of either his supposed "animal magnetism" or his supposed "magnetic fluid", and (b) that all of the effects that they had observed could be attributed to a physiological (rather than metaphysical) agency. Whilst each Commission implicitly accepted that there was no collusion, pretence, or extensive subject training involved on the part of d'Eslon, they both (independently) concluded that all of the phenomena they had observed during each of their investigations could be directly attributed to "contact", "imagination", and/or "imitation".
|
||||
|
||||
For clearness of reasoning and strict impartiality [the "Franklin" Commissioners' report] has never been surpassed. After detailing the various experiments made, and their results, they came to the conclusion that the only proof advanced in support of Animal Magnetism was the effects it produced on the human body – that those effects could be produced without passes or other magnetic manipulations – that all these manipulations, and passes, and ceremonies never produce any effect at all if employed without the patient's knowledge; and that therefore imagination did, and animal magnetism did not, account for the phenomena.
|
||||
|
||||
== Reasons for the investigation ==
|
||||
|
||||
The rise of mesmerism [was] symptomatic of several philosophical and psychological conflicts: spirit/mind vs. body; science and philosophy vs. psychology and the imagination; rationalism and empiricism vs. the irrational and unknown; [and] consciousness vs. the unconscious.
|
||||
According to Armando & Belhoste (2018, pp. 6–8), the true history of Mesmer, of Mesmer's version of 'animal magnetism', and of the rationale, conduct, investigations, experimentation, and findings of the 1784 Royal Commissions has been seriously distorted by the modern ("cherry picking") concentration upon "the transformations of animal magnetism after 1820 [in relation to] hypnotism", and, especially, upon "the elements of continuity and analogy between mesmerism [sic] the various versions of psychoanalysis".
|
||||
Consequently, to accurately understand the contemporary significance of the Commissions' work, and the matters that they severally and collectively examined (and, as well, those which they did not) it is important to identify the wide range of significant tensions, disputes, and circumstances prevailing at the time, which prompted the need for an official investigation of the particular nature and type that was undertaken, and the sort of (implicit) issues – in addition to the more specific questions of medicine and of science – that their inquiries would, hopefully, address.
|
||||
Moreover, in order to gain a balanced understanding of the contemporary significance of the Commissions – as stand-alone historical events – appointed at a specific time, in specific circumstances, with specific goals and, further, in order to apprehend the nature of their investigations, their findings, and the immediate consequences of their reports, a complex of different factors need to be examined (as has been suggested by Craver & Darnden, 2013):
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 2/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
From the perspective of a given phenomenon, one can look down to the entities and activities composing it. One can look up to the higher-level mechanisms of which it is a component. One can look back to the mechanisms that come before it or by which it developed. One can look forward to what comes after it. [And, finally] one can look around to see the wider context with which it operates.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Tensions within the royal family ===
|
||||
Prior to his arrival in Paris in 1777 – with a letter of recommendation from Chancellor von Kaunitz of the Habsburg monarchy to the Austrian Ambassador to France, the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau (who, in turn, introduced Mesmer to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (1720–1800), the Director of the Academy of Sciences) – Mesmer was already known to Marie Antoinette.
|
||||
At the urging of her two closest friends, Marie-Paule Angélique d’Albert de Luynes (1744–1781), "the Duchesse de Chaulnes" and Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan (1749–1792), "the Princess of Lamballe", both of whom "had benefited from Mesmer's treatment", Marie Antoinette had been able to arrange for both Mesmer and d'Eslon to be officially "interviewed" by (an otherwise unidentified) representative of the King on 14 March 1781 (Walmsley, 1967, p. 267). At the conclusion of the interview, Mesmer reluctantly agreed to the proposed conditions: that a number of his (previous and current) patients be examined by a team of "commissioners" – it was also stipulated that, as a "requirement" of the King, Mesmer was to "remain in France", until his "doctrines" and his "principles" had been thereby "established", and that he was "not [to] leave except by permission of the King" – and that, if the commissioners' reports were "favourable", the government would issue "a ministerial letter" to that effect (Pattie, 1994, p. 110).
|
||||
Within two weeks Mesmer had rescinded his agreement, on the grounds that it had been made under duress, and a new "interview" was conducted, involving Mesmer, d'Eslon, the unidentified bureaucrat, and the Minister of State, Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux de Maurepas.
|
||||
|
||||
The Minister ... began by saying that the King, informed of Mesmer's dislike of being investigated by commissioners, wished to excuse him from that formality and would grant him a life annuity of 20,000 French livres and pay 10,000 livres a year for the instruction of students, of whom three were to be selected by the government. "The rest of the benefits would be granted when the government's students recognize the utility of the discovery".
|
||||
Once again, Mesmer rejected the offer made on behalf of the King; and, having been told that the King's decision was final, and given that the impetus for the first interview had come from the Queen, Mesmer wrote an extraordinary letter (translated at Pattie, 1994, pp. 112–115), the nature of which would have meant imprisonment in the Bastille, if it had been written 20 years earlier.
|
||||
|
||||
Meditating [on the Minister's use of the word "final",] Mesmer returned to his clinic and put his name to what would surely be one of the most extraordinary letters ever written to a queen of France [who also shared his "native land"] even if he had sent it privately. Instead, he had it printed, [be]rating her in public about the offer [that had been] made in her name and giving her an ultimatum.
|
||||
So, there were many reasons for the 1784 Commission to satisfy the (French) interests of the King, rather than the (Austrian) interests of his queen.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Social impact ===
|
||||
It is already more than six years since Animal Magnetism was announced to Europe, particularly in France and in this Capital. But it is only over about the last two years that it has been of particular interested to a considerable number of citizens and that it has become the object of public discussion. Never had a more extraordinary question divided the opinions of an enlightened nation.
|
||||
Mesmer's overall stress on the quest for "harmony" as a therapeutic outcome and, especially, given the demonstrated fact that the effects of his 'animal magnetism' – predicated upon the presence of a force analogous to gravity – were equally demonstrated by all, regardless of age, gender, class, race, intellect, etc., was an important influence on many of the moves (and 'movers') within French society towards democracy and greater equality.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Festering political issues ===
|
||||
The increasingly unpopular ancien régime was under considerable pressure from many quarters; and, within five years of the Commissions' Reports, the French Revolution had broken out. The storming of the Bastille took place on 14 July 1789; and four years later, King Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793, and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, and the sister of Emperor Joseph II, was executed on 16 October 1793.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Professional tensions ===
|
||||
Apart from the wider issue of having to evaluate and decide how to deal with those within the medical profession "who saw animal magnetism as an interesting therapeutic resource" (Armando & Belmonte, 2018, p. 13) – namely, the boundary disputes between the conventional therapeutic practices of the sorts that Brockliss and Jones (1997) usefully identify as lying within the established "medical penumbra" (pp. 230–283) and the novel and innovative practices at the "frontier" that were (potentially) responsible for the "expansion of the medicable" (pp. 441–459) – there were also significant tensions, differences, and boundary disputes between the more theory- and principle-centred Paris Faculty of Medicine (formed some five centuries earlier), and the more practitioner-centred Royal Society of Medicine (formed just 5 years earlier), the "primary function" of which was "to evaluate patent medicines and, by extension, new forms of therapy" (Forrest, 1999, pp. 18–19).
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 11/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
They saw in the centre of a large apartment a circular box, made of oak, and about a foot or a foot and an [sic] half deep, which is called the bucket [baquet]; the lid of this box is pierced with a number of holes, in which are inserted branches of iron, elbowed and moveable. The patients are arranged in ranks about this [baquet], and each has his branch of iron, which by means of the elbow may be applied immediately to the part affected; a cord passed round their bodies connects them one with the other: sometimes a second means of communication is introduced, by the insertion of the thumb of each patient between the forefinger and thumb of the patient next him; the thumb thus inserted is pressed by the person holding it; the impression received by the left hand of the patient, communicates through his right, and thus passes through the whole circle.A piano forté is placed in one corner of the apartment, and different airs are played with various degrees of rapidity; vocal music is sometimes added to the instrumental.The persons who superintend the process, have each of them an iron rod in his hand, from ten to twelve inches in length.
|
||||
And, moreover, given that the overarching metaphorical "principle" of Mesmer had been (inappropriately) reified ("substantified") by d'Eslon – and, also, given that "the existence of [d'Eslon's] alleged magnetic fluid was only based on the effects on the patients: in other words, the existence of a [substantial] physical entity [was being] inferred not from instrumental measurements and/or quantitative considerations, but by the psychophysical reaction of a living body" (Bersani, 2011, p. 61) – it is significant that
|
||||
|
||||
the commissioners in the progress of their examination discovered, by means of an electrometer and a needle of iron not touched with the loadstone, that the [baquet] contained no substance either electric or magnetical; and from the detail that M. Deslon [sic] has made to them respecting the interior construction of the [baquet], they cannot infer any physical agent, capable of contributing to the imputed effects of the magnetism.
|
||||
The conduct and rationale of the commission's investigations is described in considerable detail in its Report.
|
||||
In the process of their investigations they discovered that many non-"magnetised" subjects – wrongly believing themselves to have been "magnetised" – displayed a wide range of "magnetic" phenomena; and, by contrast, supposedly "magnetised" subjects, believing themselves to be non-"magnetised", displayed no "magnetic" phenomena at all. For instance, during the investigations conducted at Franklin's residence, d'Eslon "magnetized" one of five trees in Franklin's garden and, when a "sensitive" subject was brought to the trees, he fainted at the foot of one of the other four; and, on another occasion, during the investigations undertaken at Lavoisier's house, a normal cup of water swallowed by a subject (who believed the water to be "magnetized") immediately produced "magnetic" phenomena.
|
||||
|
||||
The commission's procedures were, obviously, "[specifically designed] to give unequivocal answers to clearly defined hypotheses" (Donaldson, 2017, p. 166):
|
||||
|
||||
"they tested subjects from all classes of society in both group and one-to-one treatment settings";
|
||||
"(given claims that "animal magnetism" affected 'the infirm' differently from 'the healthy'), they tested d’Eslon's procedures on genuine 'healthy', genuine 'infirm', and sham 'infirm' subjects";
|
||||
"they observed and compared the responses of subjects when blindfolded and when not" – and, as Jensen, et al. (2016, pp. 13) observe, the Commissioner's use of blindfolding very strongly suggests that, rather than "[being] interested in proving [something that] they believed to be true", their investigations concentrated on "disproving, rather than proving, the efficacy of [d'Eslon's] treatments"; and
|
||||
"they observed the responses of all varieties of subject to genuine and sham 'magnetisation'; and, as well, their responses to genuine and sham 'magnetised' locations, objects, apparatus, and equipment".
|
||||
|
||||
== The report(s) of the "Franklin Commission" ==
|
||||
L'imagination fait tout, le Magnétisme est nul. ('Imagination is everything, magnetism nothing.')
|
||||
Rather than introducing a problem – the Franklin report ... provided a language for addressing one that already existed, forcefully articulating the suspicion that mechanical imagination could plague natural philosophers and religious "fanatics" alike.
|
||||
The "Franklin Commission's" investigations produced three separate reports.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The issue of d'Eslon vs. Mesmer ===
|
||||
At the head of their principal report, the Commissioners directly summarize Mesmer's 27 Propositions, as expounded in Mesmer's 1779 Mémoire (1779, pp. 74–83). They also quote Mesmer's own "characterization" of his principle – namely, that "In the influence of the magnetism, Nature holds out to us a sovereign instrument for securing the health and lengthening the existence of mankind".
|
||||
|
||||
They clearly state (p. 3) that, on the basis of a presentation given to the Commissioners, by d'Eslon (at his residence), on 9 May 1784 – at which d'Eslon had not only described his version of the "theories" of "animal magnetism", but also described and demonstrated his therapeutic procedures – the Commissioners were more than satisfied that d'Eslon's theories, principles, methods, and practices were consistent with those that Mesmer had made known through his publications; and, moreover, having acquired this thorough understanding of the "theory and practice of animal magnetism", the Commissioners then concentrated their efforts on determining the effects of its application – and, in order to do so, they visited d'Eslon's establishment on several occasions.
|
||||
In an extended footnote to the last paragraph of their principal report, the Commissioners justified their investigative approach, and the appropriateness of their conclusions, in some detail.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Commission's report ===
|
||||
|
||||
The first (66 page) report was presented to the King on 11 August 1784.
|
||||
|
||||
Knowing that their report would be published and that the task of convincing the public lay wholly in their hands, the authors produced an account that was both scientifically sound and accessible, making for compelling reading. Chronology was unimportant; few dates were specified. The rationale for every decision and the details of every experiment, however, were explained in terms that anyone could understand.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 12/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
==== Immediate publication and dissemination ====
|
||||
The report was immediately published by the government printer; and at least 20,000 copies were rapidly and very widely circulated throughout France and neighbouring countries. Within four months (16 December 1784), the London publishing house of Joseph Johnson was announcing the publication of a complete English version, translated by William Godwin (i.e., Godwin, 1785), and, in between February and July 1785, four different "periodical abridgements of the Franklin report, each printed multiple times in the Atlantic coast publications" were published in the United States (Ogden, 2012, p. 167); and, in 1837, Godwin's complete translation was published, in Philadelphia, as part of a collected work.
|
||||
|
||||
==== Touch, imagination, and imitation ====
|
||||
Clearly "recogniz[ing] that publicly endorsing the curative effects of a technique that had no demonstrable basis in the science of the late 18th century could lead to a proliferation of medical quackery" (McConkey & Perry, 2002, p. 328) and, based on their own "experiments" and "observations", the Commissioners concluded that "the true causes of the effects attributed to this new agent known by the name of animal magnetism, [and] to this fluid which is said to circulate in the body and to communicate itself from one individual to another" were "touch, imagination, [and] imitation":
|
||||
|
||||
... having demonstrated by decisive experiments, that the imagination without the magnetism produces convulsions, and that the magnetism, without the imagination produces nothing; [the Commissioners] concluded with an [sic] unanimous voice respecting the existence and the utility of the magnetism, that the existence of the fluid is absolutely destitude of proof, that the fluid having no existence can consequently have no use, that the violent symptoms observed in the public process are to be ascribed to the compression, to the imagination called into action, and to that propensity to mechanical imitation, which leads us in spite of ourselves to the repetition of what strikes our senses.
|
||||
|
||||
==== No evidence to support d'Eslon's claims ====
|
||||
The Commission found no evidence of any kind to support d'Eslon's claim for the existence of a "magnetic fluid":
|
||||
|
||||
The most reliable way to ascertain the existence of animal-magnetism fluid [l'existence du fluide magnétique animal] would be to make its presence tangible; but it did not take long for the Commissioners to recognize that this fluid escapes detection by all the senses. Unlike electricity, it is neither luminescent nor visible. Its action does not manifest itself visibly as does the attraction of a magnet; it is without taste or smell; it spreads noiselessly & envelops or penetrates you without your sense of touch warning you of its presence. Therefore, if it exists in us & around us, it does so in an absolutely undetectable manner.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Commission's secret report ("for the King's eyes only") ===
|
||||
A second (brief) report – which had been presented privately to the King on 11 August 1784, but not made public until 1800 (i.e., in the time of The Consulate period of French First Republic) – specifically addressed the perceived moral dangers occasioned by the physical practices of the animal magnetists:
|
||||
|
||||
The uniformly critical tone of this private document was in stark contrast to the scrupulously evenhanded voice of the official report; ... [and its] message was blunt: the practice of animal magnetism was a threat not only to health ... but also to morality, especially in the case of weak, virtuous women. ... [It] provided an explicit description of a certain kind of prolonged "convulsion" that resulted not from the alleged healing power of animal magnetism but rather from the close physical contact and mutual arousal of male magnetizers and female patients who did not fully understand what was being done to them. Deslon [sic] himself had admitted, under interrogation by [the Chief of Paris Police] Lenoir [who was present at a number of the Commission's investigations], how easy it would be to abuse a woman in such a state. Many women had been in treatment for years without being cured. Most of them were not ill to begin with, but had been drawn to the clinic for the amusement it provided, attending regularly as a relief from boredom. Around the tub, the ease with which symptoms spread from person to person was striking. The commissioners reiterated the health risks of inducing full-blown crises, a dangerous practice that any responsible physician would shun. They [also] implied [in this secret report] the possibility that magnetic seances were a deliberate fraud.
|
||||
In concluding their report, they stress that they had not observed any "real cures" (guérisons réelles) from d'Eslon's treatments – which were, they noted, both "very long" and "unfruitful" – and, also, stress that, among d'Eslon's patients, those who had been under his treatment for 18 months to 2 years, without any benefit, ceased to present for any further treatment, having exhausted their patience (p. 152).
|
||||
Finally, they noted (pp. 153–155) that, although charged with investigating d'Eslon's claims and d'Eslon's methods alone, they were satisfied that – offering essentially the same explanation as that in their for-public-consumption report (see "The Report's final footnote" in the Gallery above) – although they had not examined any of Mesmer's methods, etc., their findings applied equally to Mesmer and his methods, especially in relation to the attribution of all observed phenomena to "contact", "imagination", and/or "imitation" (p. 154).
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Commission's brief "courtesy report" to the Royal Academy of Sciences ===
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 13/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
On 4 September 1784, Bailly presented a third, brief (15 page) courtesy report to the Royal Academy of Sciences (Bailly, 1784b) on behalf of himself, Franklin, Le Roy, de Bory, and Lavoisier (i.e., those Commissioners who were also Academy members), which provided their Academy colleagues with a brief account of the commission's proceedings, the rationale behind its investigations, and the results. Noting that all of their investigations were jointly conducted with the four members of the Paris Faculty, and that all nine shared the same "interest in [discovering] the truth", they stressed that all the findings of their combined efforts were unanimous (p. 2).
|
||||
|
||||
==== The importance of "the Sciences" ====
|
||||
Further (p. 4), given that the understanding of the Sciences – "which [collectively] are increased by [establishing] the truth" (qui s'accroissent par les vérités) – is increased by "the suppression of error": i.e., given that "error" is always "a bad leaven that ferments and, in the long run, corrupts the mass into which it has been introduced". By contrast, however, in those cases wherein the "error" has been generated by "The Empire of Science", and has spread to "the multitude" – not only to divide and agitate minds, but also, in deceptively presenting a means of curing the sick, prevent them from seeking their cures elsewhere – "good Government has an interest in destroying it".
|
||||
Moreover, anticipating the later remarks of Louis Brandeis ("Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the best policeman": Brandeis, 1913, p. 10), the Commissioners (p. 4) remarked that, in terms of the "good Government" of an "Enlightened nation", "the distribution of light is a fine use of authority!" (C'est un bel emploi de l'autorité, que celui de distribuer la lumière!).
|
||||
Not only did they endorse the Administration's decision to conduct an inquiry, but they also "embraced the honour [implicit in] its choice" of their own appointment as Commissioners.
|
||||
|
||||
==== Physics ====
|
||||
Noting that the "greater" and "more extraordinary" a discovery, the more difficult it was to settle on suitable proof, they reported that, as physicists, they were unable to detect the presence of d'Eslon's supposed (substantial) "fluid" (p. 6). From this absence of "physical evidence", they were forced, instead, to "examine the affections of the spirit and the ideas of those who had been exposed to the action of 'Magnetism'"; and, from this, ceased to be "physicists", and became nothing more than "philosophers" (p. 8).
|
||||
|
||||
==== Chemistry ====
|
||||
However, having been unable to operate as physicists, they had decided to follow the standard procedures of "chemists" – who, having "decomposed substances" and thereby discovered their "principles", assured themselves of the "exactness" of their findings by "recomposing" the same substances from their "reunited" constituents (p. 9).
|
||||
|
||||
==== Imagination ====
|
||||
Given their inability to detect any (substantial) 'magnetism' – and, from their observations that the "effects" (that were attributed by d'Eslon to the supposed 'magnetism' and the supposed 'fluid') were only manifested when the subjects believed they were 'magnetised' (and were not manifested when they were unaware that they had been 'magnetised') – the Commissioners concluded that the "principle" involved was the subject's "imagination"; and, therefore, as a consequence of their investigations, they were well satisfied that they had been "fully successful" in experimentally proving that the observed "effects" had been produced "by the power of the imagination alone" (p. 9).
|
||||
More than a century later, and entirely consistent with the Commissioners' findings, both Jean-Martin Charcot (of the "Hysteria School" of hypnosis at the Salpêtrière hospital), and his rival, Hippolyte Bernheim (of the "Suggestion School" of hypnosis at Nancy in Alsace-Lorraine), were united in their views that all of the supposed "miracle cures" at Lourdes were due to "auto-suggestion".
|
||||
|
||||
== The reports of the "Society Commission" ==
|
||||
|
||||
The "Society Commission's" investigations produced two separate reports.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The report of four of the five Commissioners ===
|
||||
The first of the two reports, made by four of the five Commissioners (of 39 pages) – namely, Charles-Louis-François Andry, Claude-Antoine Caille, Pierre Jean Claude Mauduyt de La Varenne, and Pierre-Isaac Poissonnier – was presented to the King on 16 August 1784.
|
||||
Given that the "Society Commissioners'" investigations were far less complex than those conducted by the "Franklin Commission" – and, also, given that the (smaller number of) experiments that they described "duplicate[d] similar ones in the ["Franklin Commission's"] Report" (Pattie, (1956), p. 156) – the report itself is briefer (39 pages), far less complex, and, therefore, far less influential. The Report was divided into two sections:
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 14/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Part One (pp. 2–21), discussing the theories of the practices known as "Animal Magnetism". It commences with d'Eslon's definition of "animal magnetism"; namely that it is "the action which one man exercises on another, either through immediate contact or at a certain distance by the mere pointing of a finger or any kind of conduct", and that "this action", according to d'Eslon, "is the effect of a fluid that is distributed throughout the universe"
|
||||
Part Two (pp. 22–37), discussing the procedures and practices of "Animal Magnetism", as well as addressing the issues of their therapeutic efficacy (or not), and those of whether (or not) the procedures/practices should be admitted to conventional medical practice ("doivent-ils être admis en Médecine!": p. 22).
|
||||
The conclusions drawn (pp. 37–39) were, in brief, that they had found no evidence of d'Eslon's "magnetic fluid", that there were "no grounds for any belief in animal magnetism", that "the effects attributed to it are due to known causes", including not only the influence of "contact", "imagination", and/or "imitation", but also the influence of "the environment of the treatment room with its closed windows, fetid air, dim light, and the sight of other patients [and their responses to their treatments]" – and, as Laurence notes, that "the [observed] results ... were not due to animal magnetism but to the patients‘ rest, exercise, abstinence from medication, and hopes for a cure!" (2002, p,316) – and that, from this, there was no reason for "the procedures to which the name 'animal magnetism' has been given [to be] introduced into the practice of medicine" (Pattie, 1994, p. 157).
|
||||
|
||||
==== The later representations of Burdin and Dubois ====
|
||||
|
||||
Although the "Society Commission" did not directly investigate the clinical efficacy of d'Eslon's therapeutic interventions, and did not examine the circumstances of any earlier (i.e., pre-Commission) "cures" claimed by d"Eslon, two members of the Royal Academy of Medicine, Charles Burdin Jeune (1778–1856) and Frédéric Dubois d'Amiens (1797–1873), writing in 1841, drew attention to the fact that, in the process of their (1784) investigations, the "Society Commissioners" identified three categories of patient treated by d'Eslon – (a) those with an "obvious ailment" with "a known cause", (b) those with "mild" and "vague" ailments with no known cause, and, finally, (c) the melancholics (les mélancoliques) – and, significantly, having followed the collective progress of d'Eslon's patients over a period of four months, the Commissioners found no evidence of any kind that any members of the '(a) group' (many of whom had been receiving d'Eslon's treatment "for more than a year") had been "cured" (guéris), or, even, "noticeably relieved" (notablement soulagés) of their ailment.
|
||||
|
||||
=== De Jussieu's "dissenting" report ===
|
||||
|
||||
The second of the two reports, made by de Jussieu alone (of 51 pages) was independently published on 17 September 1784.
|
||||
In de Jussieu's dissenting view, "[and] despite d'Eslon's 'magnetic fluid' claims having been debunked [he felt that] there were sufficient 'effects' (such as, for instance, 'post-magnetic amnesia') unattributable to 'imagination' that still required further investigation into their exact nature; and, therefore, he argued, the continued use of animal magnetism was justified" (Yeates, 2018, p. 50).
|
||||
Noting that, in his view, "a longer use of this agent will make its real action and degree of usefulness to be better understood", de Jussieu concluded:
|
||||
|
||||
The theory of magnetism cannot be admitted so long as it will not be developed and supported by solid facts. The experiments instituted to ascertain the existence of the magnetic fluid prove only that man produces on his like a sensible action by friction, by contact, and more rarely by simple approximation at some distance. This action, attributed to a universal fluid not demonstrated, certainly appertains to animal heat [la chaleur animale] existing in bodies, which constantly emanates from them, is carried to a considerable distance, and is capable of passing from one body into another. Animal heat is developed, increased, or diminished in a body by moral as well as by physical causes. Judged by its effects, it participates in the property of tonic remedies, and like them produces salutary or injurious effects according to the quantity communicated, and according to the circumstances in which it is employed.
|
||||
|
||||
== Responses to the Commissions' conclusions ==
|
||||
|
||||
A measure of the influence of ... the claims investigated, the methods employed, and the conclusions reached ... [by] the Franklin Report is seen in the changing fortunes of Mesmer during the months of 1784. Prior to the submission of the Report, Mesmer had been the toast of Paris, dealing with many wealthy patrons ... Following publication of the Report, Mesmer was a focus of public scorn and ridicule ...
|
||||
The release of the reports generated a proliferation of publications, many of which were simply addressing issues relating to either "mesmerism" or "animal magnetism" in general – such as, for instance, those of Jean-Jacques Paulet (1784), and Michel-Augustin Thouret (1784) – while others, such as those of Charles Joseph Devillers, himself a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences – who (at Devillers, 1784, pp. 165–166) compared the "cures" of Mesmer, with those supposed to have been effected at the tomb of François de Pâris in Saint-Médard, some forty years earlier – and Jacques Cambry (1784) – who provided details of beliefs similar to those of Mesmer previously held by the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Romans – strongly supported the findings of the Commissions.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 15/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Response of the Paris Faculty of Medicine ===
|
||||
Immediately following the release of the reports of the two Commissions, the Paris Faculty of Medicine "pressure[d] its own members to renounce animal magnetism" (Crabtree, 1993, p. 32).
|
||||
The Faculty identified some thirty of its docteurs-régent, including François Louis Thomas d'Onglée and Charles-Louis Varnier, who "openly favored animal magnetism or were suspected of so doing". According to the contemporary account of Thomas d'Onglée (1785, passim), the thirty "magnetic physicians" were subjected to "abuse" and were presented with a declaration, of which it was demanded that they sign. Both Thomas d'Onglée and Varnier, among others, refused to sign the declaration (and were, thereby, immediately expelled). The declaration in question read:
|
||||
|
||||
No Doctor may declare himself a partisan of animal magnetism, through writings or through practice, under penalty of being removed from the role of docteurs-régents.
|
||||
|
||||
=== D'Eslon's response ===
|
||||
D'Eslon immediately published an attack on the commission's reports, in which he criticized their failure to investigate the longer-term effects of his treatments, and their refusal to accept his (alleged) "cures" as proof of the existence of "animal magnetism", as well as noting that, "the commissioners' recommendation that the practice of magnetism should be prohibited ... would hardly be possible [to implement]", because, apart from those within the medical profession who had been trained by himself and by Mesmer, "a large number of other people had, as a result of their own study, begun to practice it" (Pattie, 1994, p. 171).
|
||||
In addition to his specific criticisms of the reports of the two Royal Commissions – and to emphasize the significance of the Royal Commissions' refusal to investigate either the alleged efficacy of his treatment procedures (i.e., investigate d'Eslon's actual practices, rather than just the veracity (or not) of his theoretical claims, and that alone), and the alleged curative effects of his standard, extended regimens of "magnetic" treatment – d'Eslon published an 80-page supplementary volume (i.e., d'Eslon, 1784c), that provided the case histories of 115 individuals (the majority of whom were identified by name), that had been successfully treated by d'Eslon's procedures for a very wide range of diseases.
|
||||
On 10 December 1784, and in support of d'Eslon, one of his associates (and a former student), Louis Caullet de Veaumorel, published a set of Mesmer's class notes that de Veaumorel had acquired from one of Mesmer's "disloyal" students.
|
||||
Caullet de Veaumorel's work, which made no mention of d'Eslon's theories, teachings, or clinical procedures, went into three editions. Caullet de Veaumorel stressed that although, as a "disciple of d'Eslon", he was bound by his "word of honour" not to reveal any of d'Eslon's teachings, he was entirely free to publish Mesmer's material – and, in doing so, he had not altered one word of Mesmer's "maxims" – and, moreover, he was certain that, given Mesmer's dissemination of his ideas through his already published works, Mesmer would not be "offended" by the publication of his aphorisms.
|
||||
Although Mesmer protested to the Journal de Paris that Caullet de Veaumore's Aphorismes "were a distorted account of his lectures", according to Pattie (1994, p. 213), "they [were] accurate" and, moreover, "they agree[d] with later writings of Mesmer".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mesmer's response ===
|
||||
|
||||
In his own responses to the Commissions' Reports, Mesmer stressed that – simply because he had not been involved in any of their investigations – the Commissioners' conclusions had nothing whatsoever to do with his (metaphorical) "animal magnetism"; and, because their conclusions only applied to d'Eslon's theories and practices, any responses to those conclusions were entirely the concern of d'Eslon alone.
|
||||
Further, and immediately following the publication of the Reports of the two Commissions, both Nicolas Bergasse (1750–1832) (Bergasse, 1784) and Antoine Esmonin, Marquis de Dampierre (Esmonin, 1784) wrote strong criticisms of the Commissions' orientation, investigations, and findings; and, separately, a number of Mesmer's followers published a composite volume (i.e., Mesmer, et al., 1784) of 478 pages, which included a number of previously published items written by Mesmer, as well as a number of shorter and up-to-date contributions from a range of various authors describing their continued success with animal magnetism.
|
||||
|
||||
== The "Franklin Commission's" investigations considered to be a "classic" example of a controlled trial ==
|
||||
[T]his is the first scientific investigation that we know of into what would today be considered a paranormal or pseudoscientific claim. ... [And it is clear that] the control of intervening variables and the testing of specific claims, without resort to unnecessary hypothesizing about what is behind the "power", is the lesson modern skeptics should take from this historical masterpiece.
|
||||
The detailed studies of Stephen Jay Gould (in 1989) and John Kihlstrom (in 2002) drew disciplinary attention to nature and the form of the commission's extended examination as a "watershed moment" in the history of science – subsequent to which things were never the same.
|
||||
If the commission was not the first, it was, at least, one of the very earliest examples of a controlled trial; and, in particular, one that included the use of physical (rather than metaphorical) blindfolds – which were used from time to time on both the experimenters and their experimental subjects – as well as testing both "sham" and "real" procedures on both "sham" and "real" patients.
|
||||
Inspired by Gould and Kihlstrom's studies, a number of other scholars in other scientific domains – such as, for example, Shermer (1996), Kaptchuk (1998), Green (2002), Best, Neuhauser, and Slavin (2003), Herr (2005), Lanska & Lanska (2007), Kaptchuk, Kerr & Zanger (2009), Davies Wilson (2014), Jensen, Janik & Waclawik (2016), Zabell (2016), Donaldson (2017), and Rosen et al. (2019) – have also identified the commission's examination as a previously unrecognized "classic" example of a controlled trial.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The "Franklin Commission's" legacy ===
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 16/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The "classic" structure of the investigations undertaken by the "Franklin" Commission inspired – among many others over the ensuing years – the (1799) investigations of Chester physician John Haygarth (1740–1827) into the efficacy of Perkins' "tractors".
|
||||
In the process of discussing the experiments he had conducted (with medical colleagues as witnesses) with (dummy) "wooden tractors" on 7 January 1799, and with Perkins' "true metallick tractors" on 8 January 1799, Haygarth emphasized his considerable debt to the (earlier) "Franklin Commission" enterprise:
|
||||
|
||||
It need not be remarked, how completely the trial illustrates the nature of this popular illusion, which has so wonderfully prevailed, and spread so rapidly; it resembles, in a striking manner, that of Animal Magnetism, which merited the attention of Dr. Franklin, when ambassador from America, and of other philosophers at Paris. If any person would repeat these experiments, they should be performed with due solemnity. During the process, the wonderful cures which this remedy is said to have performed ought to be particularly related. Without these indispensable aids, other trials will not prove as successful as those which are above reported. The whole effect undoubtedly depends upon the impression which can be made upon the patient's Imagination.
|
||||
|
||||
This method of discovering the truth, distinctly proves to what a surprising degree mere fancy deceives the patient himself; and if the experiment had been tried with the metallick Tractors only, they might and most probably would have deceived even medical observers. Yet this test of truth was perfectly candid. A fair opportunity was offered to discover whether the metallick Tractors possessed any efficacy superior to the ligneous Tractors, or wooden pegs.
|
||||
|
||||
== Four vestiges of the magnetization-by-contact practice ==
|
||||
In relation to the findings of both Commissions – that there was no evidence for d'Eslon's claims, and that d'Eslon's magnetization-by-contact practices had no place within the "medical penumbra" – and despite the consequent, and widespread demedicalization of both d'Eslon's magnetization-by-contact and of animal magnetism in general, there remained a small number of historically significant vestigial remnants of d'Eslon's magnetization-by-contact, the boundary-work of which, for a short while, operated at the frontier of the "medical penumbra" (Brockliss and Jones, 1997) in the (vain) hope of producing an "expansion of the medicable" (such that they would be admitted to conventional medical practice), which were (later) abandoned by their original advocates.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Phreno-magnetism ===
|
||||
In 1843, Robert Hanham Collyer (1814–1891), an American physician and former pupil of John Elliotson, announced that he had discovered the existence of phreno-magnetism in November 1839; and, prior to Collyer's later retraction, two others claimed to have independently confirmed the veracity of Collyer's "discovery": the architect, Henry George Atkinson (1812–1890), at London, in November 1841, and the chemist, Charles Blandford Mansfield (1819–1849), at Cambridge, in December 1841.
|
||||
Phreno-magnetism, as a practice, involved the physical activation (termed "excitation") of specific "phrenological organs", via the operator's 'magnetisation', directly through the particular cranial area supposedly corresponding to that specific phrenological "organ". It was claimed that, in a suitable subject, whenever an operator "excited" a particular phrenological "organ" the subject would manifest whatever sentiments were considered appropriate to that "organ".
|
||||
|
||||
Four years later, by mid-1843, further experiments that had been conducted by Collyer himself had conclusively proved to his own satisfaction that he was mistaken, and Collyer concluded that there was no such thing as phreno-magnetism at all.
|
||||
Unaware, at the time, of Collyer's retraction, James Braid made a careful examination of "phreno-hypnotism" in December 1842; and continued his comprehensive experimentation until August 1844 – when he concluded, along with John Campbell Colquhoun (Colquhoun, 1843), that there was no foundation for phrenology, in general, and for phreno-magnetism, in particular.
|
||||
As a consequence of the debunking by Colquhoun, Braid, and others, phreno-magnetism – which, in yet another case of "prima facie plausibility", had (initially) seemed to promise such a wide range of valuable therapeutic and moral applications – "soon morphed into theatrical performances demonstrating the 'reality' of phrenology to credulous audiences, with lecturers pressing specific locations on the cranium of their [magnetised] subjects, and their subjects immediately displaying responses appropriate to the characteristics of each phrenological zone" (Yeates, 2018, p. 56) (see, for example, the figure above).
|
||||
|
||||
=== The "zones" of Albert Pitres ===
|
||||
|
||||
Around 1885, the neurologist Albert Pitres – the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bordeaux, and an associate of Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital – claimed that he had discovered a system of "zones" on the surface of the body, the stimulation of which induced (or terminated) the hypnotic state; namely:
|
||||
|
||||
zones hypnogènes, or "hypnogenetic zones" which, he said, when stimulated, threw people into the hypnotic state, and
|
||||
zones hypno-frénatrices, or "hypno-arresting zones", which, he said, when stimulated, abruptly threw people out of that same hypnotic state.
|
||||
Pitres further claimed that, despite the location of the specific "zones" differing from individual to individual, the location of the relevant "zones" remained constant for each individual: that is, they had a "habitual position" ("position habituelle" (Pitres (1891), p. 497).
|
||||
There is no evidence that there was ever any independent verification of Pitres' claims.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The psychoanalytic couch of Sigmund Freud ===
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 17/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The noted neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud not only studied and wrote about "hypnosis" (e.g., Freud, 1891, and 1966), but he also actively used "hypnosis" in his clinical practice for some time.
|
||||
However the (à la Salpêtrière) "hypnosis" that Freud employed – quite unlike the conventional "hypnotism" of James Braid (that was induced by Braid's standard "upwards and inwards squint") – relied upon an induction process that often involved rubbing the top of a patient's head. This requirement, of course, demanded that Freud sat at the end of the therapeutic couch – in order to gain easy access to his subject's head – a practice that Freud continued to follow for his entire (post-"hypnosis") professional career.
|
||||
Another vestige of phreno-magnetism that demanded that Freud position himself at the patient's head was Freud's application of the "head pressure" technique that he had, in person, observed Hippolyte Bernheim use, on one of his visits to Bernheim's clinic at Nancy in 1899.
|
||||
Freud had discontinued this "head pressure" practice by, at least, 1904 – and, possibly, by 1900.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mistaken identification of Esdaile's Jhar-Phoonk with d’Eslon's magnetization-by-contact ===
|
||||
|
||||
Due, to a large extent, to the (mistaken) enthusiastic promotion of Esdaile's (otherwise) valuable work in India as "mesmerism" by John Elliotson (1791–1868), and William Collins Engledue (1813–1858) – especially by Elliotson – in their influential journal, The Zoist, over its fifteen years of existence (March 1843 to January 1856), the entirely mistaken, generally held, and (at the time) widely published view that (the otherwise highly significant) James Esdaile used "mesmerism" to produce the condition under which he conducted completely pain-free surgery is still being repeated in many of the modern accounts of the history of mesmerism, anaesthesia, and hypnotism.
|
||||
It is clear, however, that – having noticed a vague, and superficial similarity between Esdaile's (Islamic/exorcism derived) Jhar-Phoonk procedures and the (secular/healing derived) "magnetization-by-contact" procedures of d’Eslon – in Esdaile's Jhar-Phoonk, Elliotson and his associates had, to use a biological analogy, (mis)identified in "mesmerism à la d'Eslon" what was a clear case of "homoplasy" (i.e., similar entities descended from an entirely separate lineage) as if it were, instead, a case of "homology" (i.e., similar entities descended from a common ancestor).
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
|
||||
Animal magnetism – Pseudoscientific theory about force in living things
|
||||
Blinded experiment – Experiment in which information about the test is masked to reduce bias
|
||||
Causality – How one process influences another
|
||||
Clinical study design – Plan for research in clinical medicine
|
||||
Concept – Fundamental unit of cognition
|
||||
Construct (philosophy) – Object whose existence depends upon a subject's mind
|
||||
Controlled trial – Form of scientific experiment
|
||||
Correlation does not imply causation – A refutation of one logical fallacy
|
||||
Design of experiments – Design of tasks
|
||||
Élan vital – Hypothetical explanation for evolution and development of organisms
|
||||
Emotional contagion – Spontaneous spread of emotions among a group
|
||||
Exorcism – Evicting spiritual entities from a person or area
|
||||
Experimentum crucis – Critical experiment
|
||||
Glass harmonica – Type of musical instrument
|
||||
Iatrophysics – Medical application of physics
|
||||
Medicus curat, natura sanat – Medical aphorism ("the physician treats, nature heals")
|
||||
Mill's Methods – Methods of induction by John Stuart MillPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
|
||||
Natural history of disease – Progression of a person's medical condition
|
||||
Necessity and sufficiency – Terms to describe a conditional relationship between two statements
|
||||
Positioning (marketing) – Mental perception of product or brand
|
||||
Primum non nocere – Principal precept of bioethics meaning "first, do no harm"
|
||||
Protocol (science) – Procedural method for the design and implementation of an experimentPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
|
||||
Protoscience – Research field that may become a science
|
||||
Reification (fallacy) – Fallacy of treating an abstraction as if it were a real thing
|
||||
Scientific control – Methods employed to reduce error in science tests
|
||||
Sham surgery – Faked surgical intervention
|
||||
Signs and symptoms – Indications of a specific illness, including psychiatric
|
||||
Spurious relationship – Apparent, but false, correlation between causally-independent variables
|
||||
Therapeutic effect – Beneficial change in medical condition, often caused by a drug
|
||||
Vis medicatrix naturae – Latin phrase affirming the body's self-healing nature
|
||||
Vitalism – Belief about living organisms
|
||||
|
||||
== Footnotes ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
Note that "many pamphlets on magnetism bear false imprints; they purport to have been printed in London, The Hague, Philadelphia, Peking, etc. In this way they evaded French censorship" (Pattie, 1994, p. 179).
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
Museum of the History of Medicine and Pharmacy, at Lyon
|
||||
Museum of the History of Medicine and Pharmacy, at Lyon: Mesmer's Baquet
|
||||
Glass Armonica by Benjamin Franklin, The Bakken Museum Artifact Collection, (catalog no. 81.064): The Bakken. "Glass Armonica". Archived from the original on 5 April 2007. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 3/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Scientific issues ===
|
||||
In a prevailing atmosphere of "[an overall] redefinition of frontiers in the legitimacy of knowledge" – and, in relation to Mesmer's claims, a redefinition "which did not necessarily match the public popularity that they attracted" (Zanetti, 2018), p. 59) – the issue of the existence (or not) of a substantial "magnetic fluid" and/or "animal magnetism" required resolution.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Medical issues ===
|
||||
At a time when, in relation to "healers and healing", the conglomerate of "physicians, empirics, surgeons, apothecaries, folk healers, and religious personalities all vied with each other (as well as worked together) for medical legitimacy and patients" (Broomhall, 2004, p. 5), Mesmer was not only a "foreign national", but also one that had no affiliation of any kind with any known professional medical association within France (or elsewhere in Europe); and, as a consequence, his professional conduct, his medical practice, his medico-commercial enterprises, and his therapeutic endeavours were not regulated in any way.
|
||||
Moreover, the efficacy of Mesmer's interventions had never been objectively tested, neither the agency nor the (pre- and post-intervention) veracity of his supposed "cures" had ever been objectively verified, and, finally, in relation to the presenting conditions of those with (supposedly) 'real' ailments, the question of whether the pre-intervention conditions of each case were of "organic" or "psychogenic" origins had never been objectively determined.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Religious issues ===
|
||||
As discussed at considerable length by Spanos and Gottlieb (1979) there were not only a wide range of controversial secular and religious issues relating to the similarities and differences between the induction, manifestations, and immediate and long-term consequences of the "crises" that were (sporadically) produced by the 'magnetic' interventions, and the exorcisms of the Roman Catholic Church, but, also, of greater significance, to the occasional (apparently veridical) reports of post-magnetic "clairvoyance" – a condition that was one of the classic indications for an exorcism whenever it was considered to be "demonically inspired" (as distinct from those cases in which it was considered to be "divinely inspired" (Spanos and Gottlieb, 1979, p. 538)).
|
||||
|
||||
== The two Commissions ==
|
||||
|
||||
The Commissions were appointed in early 1784 by the Baron de Breteuil, Secretary of State for the King's Household and Minister of the Department of Paris at the command of King Louis XVI.
|
||||
|
||||
At length [the matter of Animal Magnetism] was thought to deserve the attention of government, and a committee, partly physicians, and partly members of the royal academy of Sciences, with doctor Benjamin Franklin at their head, were appointed to examine it. M. Mesmer refused to have any communication with these gentlemen; but M. Deslon, the most considerable of his pupils, consented to disclose to them his principles, and assist them in their enquiries.
|
||||
|
||||
=== "Franklin Commission" ===
|
||||
|
||||
The first of the two Royal Commissions, usually referred to as the "Franklin Commission", was appointed on 12 March 1784. It was composed of four physicians from the Paris Faculty of Medicine – the physician and chemist Jean d'Arcet, the physician and close friend of Franklin, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), the Hôtel-Dieu physician, Michel-Joseph Majault (1714–1790), and the Professor (of physiology and pathology) Charles Louis Sallin – and, at the request of those four physicians, five scientists from the Royal Academy of Sciences – the astronomer (and first mayor of Paris) Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736–1793), the geographer, cartographer, and former governor of St. Domingue, Gabriel de Bory de Saint-Vincent (1720–1801), Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), the chemist and biologist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794), and the physicist (and expert on things electrical), Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, the Director of the Academy of Sciences.
|
||||
|
||||
If the effects of magnetism ... can be as well explained by the effects of an excited or exalted imagination, all the efforts of the Commissioners must be directed to distinguishing in "magnetism" ... [per medium of] a single conclusive experiment [une seule expérience concluante] ... those things that are related to physical causes [causes physiques] from those that are related to [psychological] causes [causes morales], [that is,] the effects of a real agent [les effets d'un agent réel] from those due to the imagination ...By magnetising people without their knowledge and by persuading them that they are being magnetised when they are not ... one will obtain separately the effects of magnetism and those of the imagination and, from this, one will be able to conclude what should be attributed to the one and what to the other.
|
||||
It is important to note that, despite the contemporary and modern salience given to Benjamin Franklin – who, as the most eminent of the commission's eleven members, was recognized as its titular head – it is a matter of record that Franklin, then aged 78, and otherwise engaged in his duties as the U.S. Ambassador to France, had little involvement in any of the commission's investigations. In particular, this was because his own ill-health prevented him from leaving his residence in Passy and participating in the Paris-centred investigations – although the commission's Report does note that several experiments were conducted at Franklin's Passy residence in Franklin's presence.
|
||||
In addition to his general scientific interests in electricity and (terrestrial) magnetism, "Franklin had known Mesmer for some years prior to the investigation and was familiar with the practice of animal magnetism", and, on occasion, he and Mesmer had even "dined together" – and, also there was "no doubt [that] Franklin's curiosity was aroused by the mere connotation of the term animal magnetism, for it implied something in connexion with electricity, and [Franklin] himself had already made [25 years earlier] a number of experiments on the effect of electric discharges on paralytics, epileptics, etc." (Duveen & Klickstein, 1955, p. 287).
|
||||
|
||||
=== "Society Commission" ===
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 4/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The second of the two Royal Commissions, usually referred to as the "Society Commission", was appointed on 5 April 1784. It was composed of five eminent physicians from the Royal Society of Medicine – the physician and one of the first members of the Royal Society, Charles-Louis-François Andry (1741–1829), the physician Claude-Antoine Caille (b. 1743), the botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836), the physician, Collège de France professor, one of the original directors of the Royal Society, and committed advocate of the therapeutic applications of electricity, Pierre Jean Claude Mauduyt de La Varenne (1732–1792), and the physician and Professor of chemistry in the Collège de France, Pierre-Isaac Poissonnier (1720–1798) – and, as Pattie remarks (1994, p. 156), "the impression given by [their] report is that the commissioners were busy practitioners who wanted to devote no more time to the project than was necessary".
|
||||
Although the investigations of the "Society Commission" were less thorough and less detailed than those of the "Franklin Commission" they were essentially of the same nature, and it is a matter of fact that neither Commission examined Mesmer's practices – they only examined the practices of d'Eslon.
|
||||
|
||||
== Franz Mesmer ==
|
||||
|
||||
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), born in Swabia, having first studied law at Dillingen and Ingolstadt universities, transferred to the University of Vienna and began a study of medicine, graduating Medicinae Doctor (M.D.) at the age of 32, in 1766: his doctoral dissertation (Mesmer, 1766) had the official title A Physico-Medical Dissertation on the Influence of the Planets.
|
||||
Although he was made a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1775, and, despite his M.D. qualification, there is no record of Mesmer ever having been accepted as a member of any medical "learned society" anywhere in Europe at any time.
|
||||
Mesmer left Austria in 1777, in controversial circumstances, following his treatment of the young Austrian pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis for her blindness, and established himself, in Paris, in February 1778. He spent several years in Paris itself – during which time he published his Précis historique' (i.e., Mesmer, 1781) – interspersed with time spent in various parts of France, a complete absence from France (1792–1798), a return to France in 1798, and his final departure from France in 1802.
|
||||
While in France it was his habit to travel to the town of Spa in Belgium to "take the waters"; and he was enjoying an extended stay at Spa when the reports of the two Royal Commissions were released. Mesmer lived for another 31 years after the Royal Commissions. He died at the age of 80, in Meersburg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on 5 March 1815.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Positioner of a concept ===
|
||||
Rather than being the "inventor" of "a technique", as some (mis)represent the circumstances, it is clear that Mesmer's significance was in his "positioning" of an overarching "concept" (or "construct") through his creation and development – using analogies with gravity, terrestrial magnetism, and hydraulics (as they were understood at the time) – of "an explanatory model to represent the way that healers had been healing people for thousands of years" (Yeates, 2018, p. 48).
|
||||
The (oft-forgotten) value and long-term significance of Mesmer's "positioning", according to Rosen (1959, pp. 7–8), is that "Mesmer's theory [in] itself ... diverted attention from the phenomena produced by animal magnetism to the agent alleged to produce them"; yet, both 1784 Commissions side-stepped this issue, and "simply ascribed the magnetic cures to imagination, but never bothered to ask how imagination can produce a cure".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mesmer's "protoscience", rather than "pseudoscience" ===
|
||||
According to Tatar (1990, p. 49), rather than Mesmer's proposal being some sort of "occult theory", "[Mesmer] actually remained well within the bounds of eighteenth-century thought when he formulated his theories" and "the theories [that Mesmer] invoked to explain [the agency of "animal magnetism"] fit squarely into the frame of eighteenth-century cosmology": and, moreover, "to consider animal magnetism independently of the tradition out of which it emerged is to magnify its distinctively occult characteristics and to diminish in importance those features that mirror the scientific and philosophical temper of the age in which it flourished."
|
||||
Rosen (1959, pp. 4–5) noted that, it was clear that
|
||||
|
||||
Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism ... [within which] he employed the term magnetism to characterize a reciprocal relationship between the forces of nature and the human body, and [which] conceived of nature as the harmony of these relations in action ... contains a number of themes and theoretical concepts common to the medical world of the eighteenth century ... [which] is evident, for example, in his interpretation of disease as a disharmony attributable to a functional disturbance of the nervous fluid ... [which is a] concept ... derived from the ancient humoral pathology with its doctrines of dyscrasia and critical days, from the irritability theory of Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777), and from the excitation theory of John Brown (1735–1788).
|
||||
In other words, as a product of its time, Mesmer's enterprise was one of protoscience, rather than being one of pseudoscience – or, even, one of fringe science.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 5/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== A concept that must not be reified ===
|
||||
It is clear from his Mémoire (1799) that Mesmer was very aware of the human propensity – in the normal, conventional use of language (la langue de convention) – to speak of "properties" or "qualities" (i.e., these "metaphysical abstractions", illusions de la méthaphysique), as if they were "substances": in Mesmer's words, "substantivise the properties", substantisia les propriétés (Mesmer 1799, pp. 15–17). – in other words, "reification", in the manner of Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness".
|
||||
Mesmer was also well aware of the extent to which, through the "distortion" caused by these "substantive words" (mot substantif) – which inappropriately "personified" (personnifia) these metaphysical abstractions (p. 16) – one is induced to believe in the actual physical existence of the "substance" itself. Given these observations, Mesmer was most emphatic in his continuous warnings that his abstract "principles" should not be "substantivised".
|
||||
It is significant that Mesmer (1799) describes how, once he had formulated the abstract, overarching (metaphorical) construct/concept of "animal magnetism" as the therapeutic agent (a quarter of a century earlier) – and with his hope that this newly described "principle of action" (principe de action), when considered as an agent, "could become a means of healing and, even, one of preserving/defending oneself against disease" (p. 7, Mesmer's emphasis). – the primary focus of his enterprise had become the threefold quest for the acquisition of an understanding of:
|
||||
|
||||
=== Based on natural principles ===
|
||||
|
||||
Mesmer held the materialist position – that his therapies, which involved easily understood, systematic natural principles, were "physiological", rather than "psychological" interventions – in contrast to the supernatural positions of, say, the exorcist Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779),
|
||||
|
||||
By contrast with many "faith healers", [Gassner] had a quasi-scientific method of diagnosis, according to which he separated diseases that should be treated by a physician from those that he should treat. He first admonished the patient that faith in the name of Jesus was essential. He then obtained consent to use the method of "trial" exorcism. He entreated the Devil to defy Jesus by producing the patient's symptoms. If the convulsions or other symptoms appeared, Gassner believed they were the work of the Devil; he proceeded to exorcise the responsible demon. If symptoms failed to appear, he could not attribute them to a demon and sent the patient to a physician.
|
||||
the mystic José Custódio de Faria, a.k.a. "Abbé Faria" (1756–1819), and the magnetists, such as d'Eslon, and, later, Charles Lafontaine (1803–1892), whose demonstrations of "animal magnetism" were attended by James Braid in November 1841,
|
||||
|
||||
Mesmer's approach to healing and his healing theory were physically oriented. His explanation of the phenomena of animal magnetism was consistently formulated in terms of matter and motion, and he believed that every aspect of animal magnetism could sooner or later be verified through physical experimentation and research.
|
||||
When Mesmer took a patient, his first concern was to determine whether the ailment was organic or functional. If it was organic, the result of physical damage to the tissue, he considered it, following [his] Proposition 23, beyond the aid of animal magnetism. If it was functional, a physiological disorder affected by the nerves, it fell within the class of diseases he felt uniquely qualified to handle with his therapeutic technique.
|
||||
|
||||
== Charles d'Eslon ==
|
||||
Charles d'Eslon (1750–1786), "a disciple of the [eminent French] surgeon J.L. Petit", was a docteur-régent of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and the one-time personal physician to the King's brother, Charles Philippe, Count of Artois – who, later (following the Bourbon Restoration in France) became King Charles X.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Association with Mesmer ===
|
||||
|
||||
D'Eslon, a one-time patient, pupil, and associate of Mesmer, published a work on Mesmer's version of animal magnetism (while still associated with Mesmer), Observations sur le Magnétisme Animal (1780), which presented details of 18 cases (10 male, 8 female) treated by Mesmer.
|
||||
In stressing the efficacy of Mesmer's "animal magnetism" interventions, d'Eslon defended (at p. 124) the absence of clear explanations (from Mesmer) of the mechanism through which "animal magnetism" effects its "cures" with an observation that, although the purgative actions of rhubarb and "Shir-Khesht manna" (or "purgative manna") are well known to the medical profession, the mechanisms involved are not; and, so, in these cases, "facts" and "experience" are "our only guides" – and, in a similar fashion, asserts d'Eslon, "in relation to Animal Magnetism, it is the same, I don't know how it works, but I do know that it does work". D'Eslon also directly addressed the charge that Mesmer had "discovered" nothing, and that the "extraordinary things" (des choses extraordinaires) that Mesmer had demonstrably effected were due to his "captivation of the imagination" (en séduisant l'imagination), with the comment that
|
||||
|
||||
If [it were to be true that] Mesmer had no other secret than that he has been able to make the imagination exert an influence upon health, would he not still be a wonderful doctor? If treatment by the use of the imagination is the best treatment, why do we not make use of it?
|
||||
|
||||
=== Ostracism ===
|
||||
On 7 October 1780 – still associated with Mesmer and still a member of the Paris Faculty of Medicine – d'Eslon made an official request "that an investigation of the authenticity and efficacy of Mesmer's claims and cures be made. The Faculté rejected his plea, and in refusing accused [d'Eslon] personally of misdemeanour".
|
||||
|
||||
On 15 May 1782, d'Eslon presented the Faculty with his arguments in the form of a 144-page pamphlet; and then, "on 26 October 1782, [d'Eslon] was finally struck from the [Faculty's] roster and forbidden to attend any meeting for a period of two years" (Duveen & Klickstein, 1955, p. 286).
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 6/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Post-Mesmer ===
|
||||
In late 1782, and eighteen months before the Royal Commission, d'Eslon had (acrimoniously) parted ways with Mesmer; and, despite a brief reconciliation, the relationship was terminated in late 1783. On 28 December 1783, d'Eslon wrote a letter to the Journal de Paris, which not only described the difficulties he had experienced with Mesmer, but also announced that he was opening his own (entirely independent) clinic.
|
||||
Following his break with Mesmer, d'Eslon not only launched his own clinical operation on his break with Mesmer, d'Eslon took all of the patients he had brought to Mesmer with him – but also began teaching his own theories and practices (i.e., rather than those of Mesmer). According to d'Eslon's own account (d'Eslon, 1784b, pp. 25–26), Mesmer had taught 300 students, 160 of whom were medical men (médecins), and d'Eslon himself had taught 160 medical men (this group included 21 members of the Paris Faculty of Medicine).
|
||||
Given that many of those who had privately paid Mesmer for the details of "the secret" were greatly dissatisfied, and had "[justifiably] accused [Mesmer] of having enunciated a theory which was merely a collection of obscure principles" (Binet & Féré, 1888, p. 13), it seems that d'Eslon's version was little better. Greatly confused by d'Eslon's version of "the secret", d'Eslon's student and associate, François Amédée Doppet, is said to have remarked that those to whom d'Eslon had revealed "the secret" doubted it even more than those to whom it had not been revealed.
|
||||
It was under these circumstances that a decision was made to investigate the work of d'Eslon – although he was already ostracized from the Paris Faculty of Medicine – when "d'Eslon, through influential friends, and tact, and other favourable circumstances, procured [the commissions'] establishment [specifically] to investigate animal magnetism as practised in his own clinic" (Gauld, 1992, p. 7, emphasis added).
|
||||
|
||||
=== Last days ===
|
||||
Once d'Eslon had been expelled from the rank of docteur-régent, his membership of the Faculty of Medicine was never reinstated; and unlike Mesmer, he remained in Paris following the publication of the reports of the two Commissions. Although apparently in good health in the preceding months, he died somewhat suddenly in Paris, on 21 August 1786, at the age of 47, from a complex of disorders including pneumonia, a malignant fever (une fièvre maligne), and renal colic.
|
||||
|
||||
== Aspects of Mesmer's evolving practices ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mesmer's early experiments with magnets ===
|
||||
|
||||
It is significant that Mesmer, initially impressed by the therapeutic enterprises of the Jesuit astronomer, explorer, and healer Maximilian Hell (1720–1792) – which involved the application of steel magnets that had been specifically shaped either to fit particular body contours, or to match the actual dimensions of a specific organ (e.g., the liver) – and, immediately recognizing the prima facie plausibility of Hell's approach, purchased a number of steel magnets from Hell in 1774 and began applying them to his patients; however, as Pattie reports (1994, p. 2), Mesmer "had [entirely] abandoned the use of magnets" by 1776, because his own clinical experimentation had proved them to be utterly useless.
|
||||
By 1779, Mesmer (1779, pp. 34–35) was expressing his concern that many had "confused" – such as the "Berlin Academy" in 1775 – and were continuing to "confuse" the "properties" of his (abstract/theoretical) magnétisme animal with those of an actual physical magnet (l'aimant): objects of which, he stressed, he had only ever spoken of as possible "conductors" of "animal magnetism".
|
||||
|
||||
He argued that from this "confusion" of his "animal magnetism" with "mineral magnetism", his use of magnets – which, although "useful", were always "imperfect', unless they had been applied according to la théorie du Magnétisme animal – was being consistently misrepresented and misunderstood.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The glass armonica ===
|
||||
Mesmer developed particular theatrical therapeutic rituals, often accompanied by the sounds of the Glass Armonica – an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin himself – that were associated with a wide range of (figurative) magnetic connotations, such as the use of "magnetic wands", and the treatment tub known as "the baquet", which, in the view of Yeates (2018, p. 48), were "obviously, designed to amplify each subject's 'response expectancy' (Kirsch, 1997, etc.) via impressive 'metonymical acts' (Topley, 1976, p. 254)".
|
||||
|
||||
=== The "baquet" ===
|
||||
|
||||
The baquet (lit. 'tub') was a device of Mesmer's design, that he had constructed by analogy with the newly invented "Leyden bottle" – i.e., "the first electric condenser [i.e. capacitor] in history" (Morabito, 2019, p. 90) – which was "supposed by analogy to 'store' animal magnetism" (Forrest, 1999, p. 20).
|
||||
In its initial conception, Mesmer's "baquet" was "a vat containing bottles of magnetized water from which steel bars escaped through which the 'magnetization' took place in the [subjects or patients], who were arranged around the tub holding their hands" (Morabito, 2019, p. 90). According to Mesmer's own description, in the (undated) Catechism that he had delivered exclusively to his followers,
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 7/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
[The baquet] is a vat about six to seven feet, more or less, in diameter by eighteen inches in height. There is a double bottom in the interior of this vat, in which fragments of broken bottles, gravel, stones, and sticks of pounded sulfur and iron filings are placed. All of this is filled with water and covered up with a floor nailed into the vat. On the surface of the lid, six inches in from the rim, one makes various holes in order to allow the passage of iron rods which are arranged so that one end penetrates the bottom of the vat and the other is directed, by means of a curve, over the pit of the stomach of the patient or other affected parts of the body.
|
||||
Mesmer specifically stressed the primary importance of the patients' hand-holding as a factor in the "augmentation" of the force/quality of the power of the "animal magnetism".
|
||||
Moreover, and significantly, Mesmer (separately) acknowledged that, if it was ever to come to pass that he had a suitable "establishment" – i.e., one with sufficient space available for all the assembled patients to hold hands – he would "abolish the use of baquets" (je supprimerois les baquets) and, as well, also significantly remarking that, "In general, I only use these little devices [baquets] when I am forced to do so" (En general, je n'use des petits moyens que lorsque j'y suis forcé).
|
||||
|
||||
== The "magnetic crisis" ==
|
||||
One feature of Mesmer's methods ... was the "mesmeric crisis". Some patients, especially those suffering from more serious symptoms, experienced nervous trembling, nausea, occasionally delirium or convulsions. Mesmer regarded these as an inevitable accompaniment of the process of normalization of the flow of animal magnetism, and had special padded "crisis rooms" [salle de crises] in which patients could throw themselves about without hurting themselves, while Mesmer or his assistants gave them individual attention. The depth of the crisis naturally varied from case to case, but Mesmer insisted that some degree of crisis, no matter how slight or transient, would always be found if it was looked for carefully enough.
|
||||
Given Mesmer's regular (analogical) references throughout his works to the efficient grinding activities of smoothly functioning mills – speaking of how the windmills are driven by the wind, and watermills by the flow of water. – he usefully extended those analogies to explain the circumstances in which "crises" occur, especially in relation to the magnitude of the "crises": i.e., the dramatic circumstances of the sudden restoration of the lost function of a watermill installation – a direct consequence of the magnitude of the force of the flow of water that has been applied (through the currently stationary waterwheel) to the milling mechanism, which is, in and of itself, directly related to the extent to which the (now-operative) milling mechanism was formerly stationary, out of order, or, even, jammed:
|
||||
|
||||
Mesmer states that magnetism is to the bodily organs as the wind is to the windmill ... If the wind ceases to blow, the milling process comes to a halt, and should the cessation continue for long enough, the windmill may fall into disrepair or even ruin. The salvation of the miller comes when the wind begins to blow again, making the machinery of the windmill work again. ... [A] greater effort is required to start a windmill after it has stopped than to keep it going, especially if disrepair has set in. ... [In a similar fashion,] when animal magnetism ceases to course freely through the nervous system, the organs begin to malfunction and the whole physiology slows down. Fluids become stagnant and viscous and begin to block the blood vessels and other canals of the body. ... The symptoms become worse because the organs grow weaker as the obstructions grow larger and larger and vice versa. Mesmer thought the organs then must be galvanized into a greater effort than ever before to push the fluids through the natural channels, and it is animal magnetism that galvinizes them.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Commissions' observations and description of d'Eslon's "magnetic crises" ===
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Commissions' remarks on d'Eslon's "magnetic crises" ===
|
||||
Noting that some of those who were "magnetized" by d'Eslon over an extended time "fell into the convulsive movements that have been called Crises" – and noting that these "convulsive movements" (mouvemens convulsifs) were "viewed [by d'Eslon] as evidence of the particular agent to whom they are attributed" – the "Society" Commissioners' Report, in its discussion of the "Crises", identified a number of common characteristics among the majority of those who displayed these "convulsive movements":
|
||||
|
||||
=== The Commissions' remarks on the perceived dangers of the "magnetic crises" ===
|
||||
In the last section of its Report, the "Franklin" Commission, in addition to its remarks on the impact of the phenomena associated with a "crisis", made a number of significant observations on the perceived dangers of experiencing, or simply observing, a "crisis" in a number of domains, including:
|
||||
|
||||
a. the immediate and long-term physiological and psychological consequences of experiencing a "crisis" upon the "animal economy" of an already seriously ill person,b.the immediate and long-term physiological and psychological consequences of experiencing a "crisis" upon the "animal economy" of an otherwise completely healthy person,c.(given the considerable impact of the onlooker-consequences of issues such as behavioral contagion, Vicarious trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder. etc.), the immediate and long-term physiological and psychological consequences of observing another individual manifest a "crisis" upon the "animal economy" of an individual observer (regardless of whether the observer in question was healthy or not), and, on, a larger scale,d.the detrimental effects of the "crises" on society as a whole.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Observations of the frequency of "crises" ===
|
||||
One interesting aspect of a number of the pro-d'Eslon and pro-Mesmer responses to the Commissions' Reports, collectively, was that they provided figures on the level to which the author in question had observed individual patients manifest full-blown "magnetic crises" as a consequence of their exposure to an extended sequence of standard "magnetic" treatments.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 8/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
In his response to the Reports (d'Eslon, 1784b, pp. 21–22), d'Eslon complained that the Commissioners' emphasis on "convulsions" was not justified: among those who received group treatment during the commission's investigations (i.e., involving "50 to 60 individuals"), he wrote, there were never more than six or seven who displayed "convulsions" to any degree – and, further, of the more than 500 patients he had treated over the preceding three years, only 20 of those had manifested "convulsions" (and almost all of those had been suffering from "convulsions" before presenting for any treatment from d'Eslon). He also rejected the suggestions of any connection between the "convulsions" of epilepsy and those of the "crises", citing the cases of two of his patients, who were epileptic and "frequently had seizures at home", who never had a single "attack" during their treatment at his clinic (p. 23).
|
||||
Joseph Michel Antoine Servan, the one time Advocate-General to the Parlement of Grenoble, who reported (at Servan, 1784, p. 3) that, in "the Provinces" – where the various social classes were not kept apart around "the baquet", as they were in Paris – that, in relation to the concerns that the Commissioners expressed in relation to the "seizures" they had observed (and identified as one of the principal "dangers of magnetism"), he (Servan) had only observed "barely a few convulsions" ("not at all annoying in themselves") in only five or six individuals out of the fifty whose sequential treatments (and responses) he had observed in person.
|
||||
Jean-Baptiste Bonnefoy (1756–1789), a member of the Royal College of Surgeons at Lyon, and an associate of Mesmer, rejected the notion that Animal Magnetism was "the art of arousing convulsions" (l'art d'exciter des convulsions) (Bonnefoy, 1784, pp. 87–88); and, although he chose not to comment on d'Eslon's treatments, he stated that, from his own direct observation of Mesmer's treatment of more than 200 patients, he had only seen eight of them display "crises" – and, further, that only six of the more than 120 patients treated in his own clinic had displayed a "crisis".
|
||||
|
||||
== "Mesmerism" vs. "animal magnetism" ==
|
||||
In order to understand the significance of the two Commissions' concentration on their examination of d'Eslons' claims for the existence of "animal magnetism" (rather than, that is, conducting an examination of the clinical efficacy of Mesmer's actual therapeutic practices) – and, in order to clarify certain ambiguities, and correct particular errors that persist in the literature – a number of basic facts need to be addressed (see, for example, Yeates, 2018, pp. 48–52), it is useful to isolate what later, subsequent to the publication of Wolfart's Mesmerismus (1814), became known as "Mesmerism" from other "animal magnetism" practices in general.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Similarities and differences ===
|
||||
The materialist "mesmerists" and the metaphysical "animal magnetists" each held that all animate beings ("living" beings: humans, animals, plants, etc.), in virtue of being alive, possessed an invisible, natural "magnetic" or "gravitational force" – thus magnetismus animalis, "animal magnetism", or gravitas animalis, "animal gravity" – and the therapeutic interventions of each were directed at manipulating the ebb and flow of their subject's "energy field".
|
||||
|
||||
That constant flux and reflux of the vital principles and corporeal humours in man (without which both motion and life are stopped) produce those effects of sympathy and antipathy which become more natural and less miraculous; the atmospherical particle to each individual receives from the general fluid the proper attraction and repulsion. In the divers crossings of those individual atmospheres, some emanations are more attractive between two beings, and others more repulsive; so again, when one body possesses more fluid than another, it will repel; and that body which is less will make an effort to restore itself into equilibrium or sympathy with the other body.
|
||||
Despite these fundamental similarities, there were many (even more fundamental) differences between the two.
|
||||
|
||||
==== The "mesmerists" ====
|
||||
In order to foster and promote orthopraxia, the materialist "mesmerists" used qualitative (rather than quantitative) constructs – centred on Mesmer's abstract and metaphorical overarching analogies with gravity, terrestrial magnetism, and hydraulics –– to explain the application of their techniques and to describe their therapeutic rationale.
|
||||
|
||||
When we call this principle magnetic fluid, vital fluid, we are using a figurative expression. We know that something emanates from the magnetizer: this something is not a solid, and we call it a fluid.
|
||||
|
||||
==== The "animal magnetists" ====
|
||||
In contrast to the mesmerists, the metaphysical "magnetists" – who (mistakenly) reified (i.e., "substantivised") the magnetic/fluidic metaphors of Mesmer – firmly believed that they were channeling a substantial "fluidium" and were manipulating a particular, substantial "force".
|
||||
|
||||
What Thomas Brown(e), writing in the seventeenth century, deemed a vulgar error was the belief in sympathy as a unifying force working outside the human state, in this instance between two magnetically charged needles that of themselves are clearly incapable of having feelings, sensibilities, and affections. This alternative use of sympathy experienced a resurgence in the early 1780s, particularly in the field of animal magnetism, a practice that drew on the study of magnetism and electricity and fused these with the language of magic and the occult, blurring the boundaries between superstition and rational experimental philosophy.
|
||||
|
||||
==== The "higher" and "lower" phenomena of the magnetists ====
|
||||
By the time of James Braid's (1841) Manchester encounter with the "magnetic demonstrator" Charles Lafontaine, those who were still committed to the existence of a substantial 'magnetic fluid", etc., maintained that the phenomena produced by their acts of "magnetization" were of two general classes – lower phenomena, and higher phenomena – the distinction being "that, while there might be natural explanations for 'lower' phenomena, 'higher' phenomena could only be explained in terms of a paranormal or metaphysical agency" (Yeates, 2018, p. 52).
|
||||
|
||||
== The investigations ==
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 9/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== The substantial existence of "animal magnetism" and "magnetic fluid" were investigated ===
|
||||
Rather than being concerned with the applications, utility, and clinical efficacy of d'Eslon's "animal magnetism", the primary concern of each Commission was the significant, crucial, and exclusive question of whether or not d'Eslon's (supposed) "animal magnetic fluid" actually existed in some substantial physical way – for the simple reason that, as the two sets of Commissioners each noted in their independent reports, "Animal magnetism may well exist without being useful but it cannot be useful if it does not exist."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mesmer's earlier refusal to have his "magnetic" interventions scrutinized ===
|
||||
|
||||
Already, in his earlier (18 September 1780) interaction with the Paris Faculty of Medicine, Mesmer had refused to have his therapeutic interventions on a set of entirely "new" patients directly scrutinized, claiming that his already-achieved "cures" were an objective matter of record. Mesmer justified his refusal as follows:
|
||||
|
||||
Here is what I said to M. de Lassonne; however bizarre [it may seem] at first sight it is nevertheless entirely serious and very much applicable to the question. When a thief is convicted of theft he is hanged: when a murderer is convicted of murder he is executed on the wheel. But to exact these terrible penalties the thief is not required to thieve again to prove that he is a thief, and the murderer is not required to murder a second time to prove that he is a murderer. One is content to establish by testimony and by material evidence that the theft or the murder was committed and then one hangs or executes on the wheel in good conscience.
|
||||
|
||||
Very well! It is the same with me. I ask, kindly, to be treated like a man to be executed on the wheel or hanged and that an effort should be made to establish that I have cured [patients] without asking me to perform new cures to prove that I am to be regarded as someone who cures.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mesmer's "cures" were never investigated ===
|
||||
In relation to the question of the agency/cause of Mesmer's supposed "cures" – and in the process of constructing the protocols for their investigations into d'Eslon's "animal magnetism" – both Commissions were well aware that "an effect's objective reality does not substantiate [any of the] proffered explanations [for its existence]" (Yeates, 2018, p. 61).
|
||||
Notwithstanding Mesmer's earlier refusal to co-operate, and aside from the fact that the two Commissions were specifically charged with investigating d’Eslon's claims for the existence of "animal magnetism", there were two additional, significant reasons for not investigating the veracity of the "cures" attributed to Mesmer.
|
||||
|
||||
They had no persuasive evidence to suggest that the reports of Mesmer's "cured patients" were false.
|
||||
The Commissioner's took the entirely reasonable and non-controversial step of accepting the existence of Mesmer's "cured patients" as a given.
|
||||
In support of this decision, and noting that "observations over the centuries prove & Physicians themselves recognize, that Nature alone & without the help of medical treatment cures a great number of patients", the Commissioners agreed with the previously expressed observations of Mesmer – namely, that, even if significant improvements in his patients' presenting conditions had been objectively verified, the existence of those "cures", in and of themselves, would not have provided conclusive evidence of (metaphorical) "animal magnetism" – and, in support of their decision, the Commissioners cited Mesmer's own statements: that "nothing conclusively proves that the Physician or Medicine heals the sick", and because of that, it was (in Mesmer's own words), "a mistake to believe that this kind of proof is irrefutable".
|
||||
Further, as Kihlstrom (2002) observed, even though the "Franklin Commission" had accepted that "Mesmer's cures were genuine", and that "he was able to succeed where conventional approaches had failed",
|
||||
|
||||
evidence of efficacy was not sufficient for academic approval. The scientific revolution had made physicians increasingly dissatisfied with purely empirical treatments, which were known to be effective but whose underlying mechanisms were unknown. In the emerging profession of scientific medicine, theories of treatment, like theories of disease, had to conform to what was known about anatomy and physiology. Then, as now, this scientific basis distinguished medicine from quackery and so was an important source of the physician's professional authority. While Mesmer wanted approval for his technique, the academy wanted verification of his theory.
|
||||
|
||||
=== The efficacy of "magnetic" treatments and the agency of (supposed) "magnetic" cures were not investigated ===
|
||||
The two Reports also (separately, and in some detail) explained why the nature of the "effects" of (supposedly efficacious) treatments were not being examined, and why the agency of the (supposed verified) "cures" were not being investigated.
|
||||
In noting that there were two different ways that "the action of magnetism on animate bodies" (l'action du Magnétisme sur les corps animés) could be observed:
|
||||
|
||||
and, despite d'Eslon's insistence that its investigations principally (and, almost, exclusively) concentrate on the "prolonged" effects of his (d'Eslon's) treatments on disease, the "Franklin Commission" firmly stated that its investigations would exclusively concentrate on the "momentary" effects of d'Eslon's procedures on the "animal economy".
|
||||
|
||||
=== Problems with objectively determining the precise agency of any supposed "cure" ===
|
||||
The Commissioners (Bailly, 1784, p. 15) stressed that, because they had been specifically charged with determining whether (or not) d'Eslon's "magnetic fluid" actually existed in some substantial form, and because it was obvious that, in order to unequivocally settle the "uncertain" and "misleading" issue of whether there were real "cures" of "real" diseases from d'Eslon's therapeutic interventions, and whether any such "cures" were entirely the "effects" of d'Eslon's treatment, and nothing else – and even if the Commissioners were able "to strip from these therapeutic effects all of the illusions which might be involved with them" – any such determination would require an "infinity of cures", supported by the "experience of several centuries". And, further, given the specified goal of the commission, the significance of whatever its findings might be, and the obligation to produce its Report "promptly", the Commissioners considered that,
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism"
|
||||
chunk: 10/17
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_Animal_Magnetism"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:38.329419+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
it was [their] duty ... to confine themselves to arguments purely physical, that is, to the momentaneous [sic] effects of the fluid upon the animal frame, excluding from these effects all the illusions which might mix with them, and assuring themselves that they could proceed from no other cause than the animal magnetism."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Problems with objectively determining the precise therapeutic action of any supposed "efficacious remedy" ===
|
||||
In support of its decision, the "Franklin Commission" produced a cogent, extended argument, consistent with the medical knowledge of the day, that is equally relevant to similar investigations in the present day:
|
||||
|
||||
The majority of diseases have their seat in the interior part of our frame. The collective experience of a great number of centuries has made us acquainted with the symptoms, which indicate and discriminate them; the same experience has taught the method in which they are to be treated. What is the object of the efforts of the physician in this method? It is not to oppose and to subdue nature, it is to assist her in her operations. Nature, says the father of the medical science [viz., Hippocrates], cures the diseased; but sometimes she encounters obstacles, which constrain her in her course, and uselessly consume her strength. The physician is the minister of nature; an attentive observer, he studies the method in which she proceeds. If that method be firm, strong, regular and well directed, the physician looks on in silence, and [is careful of not] disturbing it by remedies which would at least be useless; if the method be [hindered], he facilitates it; if it be too slow or too rapid, he accelerates or retards it. Sometimes, to accomplish his object, he confines himself to the regulation of the diet: sometimes he employs medicines. The action of a medicine, introduced into the human body, is a new force, combined with the principal force by which our life is maintained: if the remedy follow the same route, which this force has already opened for the expulsion of diseases, it is useful, it is salutary [viz., conducive to health]; if it tend to open different routes, and to turn aside this interior action, it is pernicious. In the mean time it must be confessed that this salutary or pernicious influence, real as it is, may frequently escape common observation. The natural history of man presents us in this respect with very singular phenomena. It may be there seen that regimens the most opposite, have not prevented the attainment of an advanced old age. We may there see men, attacked according to all appearance with the same disease, recovering in the pursuit of opposite regimens, and in the use of remedies totally different from each other; nature is in these instances sufficiently powerful to maintain the vital principle le fluide magnétique in spite of the improper regimen, and to triumph at once over [both] the distemper and the remedy. If it ["the vital principle"] have this power of resisting the action of medicine, by a still stronger reason it must have the power of operating without medicine. The experience of the efficacy of remedies is always therefore attended with some uncertainty; in the case of the magnetism the uncertainty has this addition, the uncertainty of its existence. How then can we decide upon the action of an agent, whose existence is contested, from the treatment of diseases; when the effect of medicines is doubtful, whose existence is not at all problematical?
|
||||
|
||||
=== Other highly significant but unassociated "causative" factors ===
|
||||
In addition to reflecting the position of the "Franklin Commission" in these matters, the "Society Commission" also noted that there were other equally significant causative factors, concomitant with, but unassociated with, the treatment delivered, in relation to the circumstances of the patients themselves; namely,
|
||||
|
||||
the hope [of being cured] that they conceived, the exercise that they took every day, [and especially, whilst under the "magnetic" treatment] the suspension of the remedies they were previously using – the quantity of which is often so harmful in such cases – these are, in themselves, multiple and sufficient causes for the results that have been said to have been observed in similar circumstances
|
||||
|
||||
=== Common misrepresentation of fact ===
|
||||
The preceding facts expose the error – a classic example of equivocation due to lexical ambiguity – in the commonly expressed (in modern literature) and extremely misleading misrepresentation of affairs; namely, the (historically incorrect, and mistaken) implication that, rather than simply having, for convenience, accepted Mesmer's assertions at face value (and left it at that), both Commissions had objectively verified that:
|
||||
|
||||
Consequently,
|
||||
|
||||
Although it is entirely correct to assert that both sets of Commissioners accepted [in a manner of speaking] that Mesmer's "cures" were, indeed, "cures", it is completely wrong to suggest that any of the Commissioners accepted that any of those "cured" individuals had been "cured" by Mesmer.
|
||||
|
||||
== Procedures ==
|
||||
|
||||
The "Franklin Commission's" investigations were conducted at a number of different locations, including d'Eslon's clinic (which they visited once a week), Lavoisier's home, and the gardens of Franklin's Passy residence. The intricate structure and detailed procedures of the investigations were designed by Lavoisier; and great care was taken to eliminate what James Braid would later identify as "sources of fallacy".
|
||||
In the process of examining d'Eslon's claims, the "Franklin Commissioners" not only tested the influence of a wide range of situations, circumstances, variables, but also, from time to time, individually presented themselves as experimental subjects, because, they reported, "they were very curious to experience through their own senses the reported effects of this agent".
|
||||
When they visited d'Eslon's establishment, the Commissioners discovered that not only did d'Eslon's standard therapeutics involve (his version of) Mesmer's baquet, but also a musical (and, from time to time, vocal) accompaniment as a standard part of his treatment:
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,107 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "S.I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology RAS"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.I._Vavilov_Institute_for_the_History_of_Science_and_Technology_RAS"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:39.492842+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Sergey Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (or Institute for the History of Science and Technology named after S. I. Vavilov RAS (IHIT or IIET RAS)) is the only research institute in Russia for the study of the history of science and technology. It managed by the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== History ==
|
||||
In 1921, the Russian Academy of Sciences established the "Commission for the Study of the History, Philosophy and Technology" under the chairmanship of Vladimir Vernadsky (later renamed the Commission on the History of Knowledge).
|
||||
From 1930, the commission was chaired by N. I. Bukharin.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Institute of the History of Science and Technology ===
|
||||
On February 28, 1932, the Institute of the History of Science and Technology was established on the basis of the CHK, with Bukharin appointed as its first director. Later, the institution was headed by A. A. Maximov, B. G. Kuznetsov, and V. V. Osinsky-Obolensky (1935–1937). The institute was dissolved on February 5, 1938, after being declared a "center of anti-Soviet conspiracy".
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
=== Modern Institute ===
|
||||
On November 22, 1944, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR issued a decree on the establishment of the Institute for the History of Science. In February 1945, the institute began operating as part of the Department of History and Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
|
||||
On September 5, 1953, after incorporating the Commission on the History of Technology, it was renamed the Institute for the History of Science and Technology (Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences No. 541), and a Leningrad branch was established.
|
||||
In the 1970s, the Leningrad branch of IHST faced the threat of closure and transfer to the Institute of Social Sciences under the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU. Thanks to the intervention of scientists (including V. D. Esakov, head of the Sector on the History of Soviet Culture at the Institute of the History of the USSR), the branch was preserved.
|
||||
Since 1991, the institute has borne the name of academician Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov.
|
||||
Directors by year of appointment:
|
||||
|
||||
1930 — Nikolai Bukharin, Boris Kuznetsov, Valerian Obolensky, until 1938.
|
||||
1944 — Vladimir Komarov
|
||||
1946 — Khachatur Koshtoyants
|
||||
1953 — Alexander Samarin
|
||||
1955 — Ivan Kuznetsov
|
||||
1956 — Nikolai Figurovsky
|
||||
1962 — Bonifaty Kedrov
|
||||
1974 — Semyon Mikulinsky
|
||||
1987 — Vyacheslav Stepin
|
||||
1988 — Nikolai Ustinov
|
||||
1992 — Boris Kozlov
|
||||
1993 — Vladimir Orel
|
||||
2004 — Alexey Postnikov
|
||||
2009 — Vasily Borisov
|
||||
2010 — Yuri Baturin
|
||||
2015 — Dmitry Shcherbinin
|
||||
2021 — Roman Fando
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Structure ==
|
||||
St. Petersburg Branch (SPbF IHST RAS; heads: Boris Fedorenko (1953–1955), D.Biol.Sc. P. P. Perfiliev (1956–1962), D.Hist.Sc. A. V. Koltcov (1963–1966, 1972–1973), D.Phil.Sc. Yu. S. Meleshchenko (1967–1972), D.Med.Sc. N. A. Tolokontsev (1973–1975), D.Phil.Sc. B. I. Ivanov (1975–1978), Cand.Eng.Sc. E. P. Karpeev (1978–1987), D.Phil.Sc A. I. Melua (1987–1995), D.Phil.Sc. E. I. Kolchinsky (1995–2015), since 2015 — Cand.Soc.Sc. N. A. Ashcheulova).
|
||||
Since 2010, the Exhibition Center of the RAS has been a branch. The center organizes exhibitions of completed works by RAS institutions and the results of the most interesting fundamental research at Russian and international exhibitions in Russia, as well as exhibitions of works by the Russian Academy of Sciences at foreign exhibitions organized by Russian ministries and agencies, foreign companies, and organizations.
|
||||
Journals:
|
||||
|
||||
Studies in the History of Science and Technology (VIET)
|
||||
Studies in the History of Biology (since 2009, quarterly)
|
||||
Yearbooks:
|
||||
|
||||
Historico-Mathematical Research (since 1948)
|
||||
Research on the History of Physics and Mechanics (since 1986)
|
||||
Historico-Astronomical Research (since 1955).
|
||||
Councils
|
||||
The institute has several dissertation councils in the specialty "history of science and technology".
|
||||
IHST holds annual conferences on the history of science and technology in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The institute hosts several regular Moscow-wide seminars—on the history of astronomy, the history of physics and mechanics, and the history of the Soviet atomic project.
|
||||
In 2004, the Academic Council and the Council of Young Scientists of IHST RAS established the "Alexey Karimov Memorial Prize", awarded to young scientists of the institute for significant contributions to the study of the history of science and technology.
|
||||
|
||||
Structure
|
||||
Department of the History of Technology and Technical Sciences
|
||||
Department of the History of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
|
||||
Center for the History of the Organization of Science and Science Studies (CHONS)
|
||||
Ecological Center
|
||||
Center for the History of Socio-Cultural Problems of Science and Technology
|
||||
Department of Historiography and Source Studies of the History of Science and Technology
|
||||
Department of Methodological and Social Problems of the Development of Science
|
||||
Department of the History of Chemical and Biological Sciences
|
||||
Department of the History of Earth Sciences
|
||||
Chair of the History of Science and Technology
|
||||
Editorial Board of the journal "Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki" (Studies in the History of Science and Technology)
|
||||
Laboratory of Scientific and Applied Photography and Cinematography
|
||||
Center for Virtual History of Science and Technology (CVHST)
|
||||
Problem Group for the Study of Central Asia — P. K. Kozlov Museum
|
||||
Sociological and Science Studies Center
|
||||
Sector on the History of the Academy of Sciences and Scientific Institutions
|
||||
Sector on the History of Evolutionary Theory and Ecology
|
||||
Sector on the History of Technical Sciences and Engineering Activities.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Scientific Events ==
|
||||
Annual International Conferences on the history of science.
|
||||
History of Science: Sources, Monuments, Heritage Conferences
|
||||
International Scientific Conference "Engineering Technologies and Informatics"
|
||||
International Scientific-Practical Conference "History of Science and Technology. Museum Studies"
|
||||
All-Russian Scientific-Practical Conference with International Participation "Sustainable Development of Mountain Territories: History and Prerequisites for Optimizing Nature Management".
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Literature ==
|
||||
Loren R. Graham (1993) Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History. P. 140.
|
||||
Naomi Oreskes, John Krige (2014) Science and Technology in the Global Cold War. P. 412.
|
||||
Vaganov A. (2012) Continuity and Legal Succession. Who Needs the History of Science and Technology Today and Why Archived 2012-10-19 at the Wayback Machine // Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 22, 2012
|
||||
The Historical-Scientific Community in Leningrad — St. Petersburg in 1950–2010: On the 60th Anniversary of the St. Petersburg Branch of the S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology, RAS. St. Petersburg: Nestor-History, 2013. — 448 pp., ill.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
About IHST RAS
|
||||
ihst.nw.ru — Website of the SPb Branch of Institute.
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
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|
||||
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|
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
Science and technology in Germany has a long and illustrious history, and research and development efforts form an integral part of the country's economy. Germany has been the home of some of the most prominent researchers in various scientific disciplines, notably physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering. Before World War II, Germany had produced more Nobel laureates in scientific fields than any other nation, and was the preeminent country in the natural sciences. Germany is currently the nation with the 3rd most Nobel Prize winners, 115.
|
||||
The German language, along with English and French, was one of the leading languages of science from the late 19th century until the end of World War II. After the war, because so many scientific researchers' and teachers' careers had been ended either by Nazi Germany which started a brain drain, the denazification process, the American Operation Paperclip and Soviet Operation Osoaviakhim which exacerbated the brain drain in post-war Germany, or simply losing the war, "Germany, German science, and German as the language of science had all lost their leading position in the scientific community."
|
||||
Today, scientific research in the country is supported by industry, the network of German universities and scientific state-institutions such as the Max Planck Society and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The raw output of scientific research from Germany consistently ranks among the world's highest. Germany was declared the most innovative country in the world in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index and was ranked 11th in the Global Innovation Index in 2025.
|
||||
|
||||
== Institutions ==
|
||||
|
||||
The Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities (abbreviated Academies Union) is an association of the eight largest academies of sciences in Germany.
|
||||
The Deutsches Museum, 'German Museum' of Masterpieces of Science and Technology in Munich is one of the largest science and technology museums in the world in terms of exhibition space, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology.
|
||||
The Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, 'Federal Ministry of Education and Research' (BMBF) is a supreme authority of the Federal Republic of Germany for science and technology. The headquarter of the Federal Ministry is located in Bonn, the second office in Berlin. It was founded in 1972 as Federal Ministry of Research and Technology (BMFT) to promote basic research, applied research and technological development.
|
||||
Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (German: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (BMWK, previous BMWi)
|
||||
|
||||
=== Foundations ===
|
||||
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
|
||||
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research association)
|
||||
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), promoting international exchange of scientists and students)
|
||||
The Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, 'Fritz Thyssen Foundation' supports young scientists and research projects. It was founded in 1959 and is located in Cologne. The purpose of the foundation, with an endowment capital of €542.4 million, is to promote science at scientific universities and research institutes, primarily in Germany, under particular consideration on young scientists.
|
||||
|
||||
=== National science libraries ===
|
||||
|
||||
German National Library of Economics (ZWB), Kiel & Hamburg
|
||||
German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED), Cologne & Bonn
|
||||
German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), Hanover
|
||||
|
||||
=== Research organizations ===
|
||||
|
||||
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (complex systems und large-scale research), Bonn & Berlin
|
||||
Fraunhofer Society (applied research and mission oriented research, Munich)
|
||||
Leibniz Association (fundamental and applied research), Berlin
|
||||
Max Planck Society (fundamental research), Munich
|
||||
Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik ("Society of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics"), Dresden
|
||||
The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), officially: Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH, is a privately financed IT institute and, together with the University of Potsdam, forms the Digital Engineering Faculty. It is located in Potsdam-Babelsberg and researches practical and applied topics in digital technologies. Its founder and namesake is SAP founder Hasso Plattner.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Prize committees ===
|
||||
The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize is granted to ten scientists and academics every year. With a maximum of €2.5 million per award it is one of highest endowed research prizes in the world. The prize and the mentioned organization above is named after the German polymath and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who was a contemporary and competitor of Isaac Newton (1642–1727).
|
||||
The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award is a prize for "outstanding achievements" in the field of analytical spectroscopy. The prize is named in honor of chemist Robert Bunsen and physicist Gustav Kirchhoff (→ Physics).
|
||||
The Helmholtz Prize is awarded with €20,000 every two to three years to European scientists for scientific and technological research in metrology.
|
||||
|
||||
== Scientific fields ==
|
||||
|
||||
The global spread of the printing press with movable types and an oil-based ink was a process that began around 1440 with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–1468) in the Free City of Mainz and continued until the introduction of printing based on this procedure in all parts of the world in the 19th century, thus creating the conditions for the dissemination of generally accessible scientific publications emerging to the revolution of science.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Scientific Revolution ===
|
||||
|
||||
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) was one of the originators of the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries as an astronomer, physicist, mathematician and natural philosopher. He advocated the idea of a heliocentric model of the Solar System, which can be traced back to the theories of the ancient Greek astronomers Aristarchus of Samos and Seleucus of Seleucia, as well as to the 16th-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), whose main work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres' about the heliocentric model was first published by Johannes Petreius (c. 1497–1550) and likely the polymath Johannes Schöner (1477–1547) in the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg in 1543. In March 1600, Kepler became assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) at the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia. After Brahe's death in October of the next year, Kepler succeeded him as imperial mathematician and court astronomer (until 1627).
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
|
||||
Johannes Kepler discovered the laws according to which planets are moving around the Sun, who were called Kepler's laws after him. With his introduction to calculating with logarithms, Kepler contributed to the spread of this type of calculation. In mathematics, a numerical method for calculating the volume of wine barrels with integrals was named former Kepler's barrel rule. He made optics to a subject of scientific investigation and confirmed the discoveries made with the telescope by his Italian contemporary Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). He worked on the theory of the telescope and invented the refracting astronomical or Keplerian telescope, which involved a considerable improvement over the Galilean telescope. Kepler also made the invention of the valveless gear pump, because a mine owner needed a device to pump water out of his mine.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Physics ===
|
||||
|
||||
Otto von Guericke (1602–1686) was a scientist, inventor, mathematician and physicist from Magdeburg. He is best known for his experiments on air pressure using the Magdeburg hemispheres. With the invention of the vacuum pump he laid the foundation of vacuum technology.
|
||||
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736) was a physicist and inventor of measuring instruments from Danzig. The temperature unit degrees Fahrenheit (°F) was named after him.
|
||||
Gustav Kirchhoff (1824–1887) was a physicist from Königsberg who made a particular contribution to the study of electricity. Today, Kirchhoff is best known for Kirchhoff's circuit laws, and for introducing the concept of a black body, which contributed to the emergence of quantum mechanics. However, Kirchhoff's circuit laws were discovered as early as 1833 by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) during his experiments on electricity. With Robert Bunsen (1811–1899) he developed flame spectroscopy in 1859, which can be used to detect chemical elements with high specificity. Bunsen was a chemist from Göttingen, and together with Kirchhoff discovered the elements caesium and rubidium in 1861. He perfected the Bunsen burner, which is named after him, and invented the Bunsen cell and a grease-spot photometer.
|
||||
The work of Albert Einstein (1879–1955), best known for developing the theory of relativity, and Max Planck (1858–1947), he is known for the Planck constant, was crucial to the foundation of modern physics, which Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) and Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) developed further. They were preceded by such key physicists as Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826), who discovered the Fraunhofer lines in spectroscopy, and Hermann von Helmholtz (1857–1894), among others. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845–1923) discovered X-rays in 1895, an accomplishment that made him the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 and eventually earned him an element name, roentgenium. Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's (1857–1894) work in the domain of electromagnetic radiation were pivotal to the development of modern telecommunication; the unit of frequency was named in his honor "Hertz". Mathematical aerodynamics was developed in Germany, especially by Ludwig Prandtl.
|
||||
Karl Schwarzschild (1873–1916) was an astrophysicist from Frankfurt am Main. He was professor and director of the Göttingen Observatory from 1901 to 1909. There he was able to work together with scientists like David Hilbert (1862–1943) and Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909). Schwarzschild works on relativity provided the first exact solutions to the field equations of Albert Einstein's general relativity – one for an uncharged, non-rotating spherically symmetric body and one for a static isotropic void around a solid body. Schwarzschild did some fundamental works on classical black holes. This is why some properties of black holes got their name, namely the Schwarzschild metric and the Schwarzschild radius. The center of a non-rotating, uncharged black hole is called the Schwarzschild singularity.
|
||||
Paul Forman in 1971 argued the remarkable scientific achievements in quantum physics were the cross-product of the hostile intellectual atmosphere whereby many scientists rejected Weimar Germany and Jewish scientists, revolts against causality, determinism and materialism, and the creation of the revolutionary new theory of quantum mechanics. The scientists adjusted to the intellectual environment by dropping Newtonian causality from quantum mechanics, thereby opening up an entirely new and highly successful approach to physics. The "Forman Thesis" has generated an intense debate among historians of science.
|
||||
|
||||
==== Deutsche Physik ====
|
||||
|
||||
The so-called Deutsche Physik, 'German physics' was a movement that some German physicists hold during the Nazi period, which mixed physics with racist views. They rejected new discoveries in physics as being too theoretical and advocated a stronger emphasis on empirical evidence. This physics was influenced by anti-Semitic ideas that were widespread in the polarized political climate of the Weimar Republic. In addition, some leading theoretical physicists at that time were of Jewish descent. Leading representatives of this ideology were the Bavarian physicist Johannes Stark (1874–1957, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919) and the German-Hungarian physicist Philipp Lenard (1862–1947, Nobel Prize winner of 1905). Notably, the latter labeled Albert Einstein's contributions to science as Jewish physics.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Chemistry ===
|
||||
|
||||
Georgius Agricola gave chemistry its modern name. He is generally referred to as the father of mineralogy and as the founder of geology as a scientific discipline.
|
||||
Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and is one of the principal founders of organic chemistry.
|
||||
At the start of the 20th century, Germany garnered fourteen of the first thirty-one Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, starting with Hermann Emil Fischer (1852–1919) in 1902 and until Carl Bosch (1874–1940) and Friedrich Bergius (1884–1949) in 1931.
|
||||
Otto Hahn (1879–1968) was a pioneer of radioactivity and radiochemistry with the discovery of nuclear fission together with the Austrian scientist Lise Meitner (1878–1968) and Fritz Strassmann (1902–1980) in 1938, the scientific and technological basis for the utilization of atomic energy.
|
||||
The bio-chemist Adolf Butenandt (1903–1995) independently worked out the molecular structure of the primary male sex hormone of testosterone and was the first to successfully synthesize it from cholesterol in 1935.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Engineering ===
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
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|
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
Germany has been the home of many famous inventors and engineers, such as Johannes Gutenberg, who is credited with the invention of movable type printing press in Europe; Hans Geiger, the creator of the Geiger counter; and Konrad Zuse, who built the first electronic computer. German inventors, engineers and industrialists such as Zeppelin, Siemens, Daimler, Otto, Wankel, Von Braun and Benz helped shape modern automotive and air transportation technology including the beginnings of space travel. The engineer Otto Lilienthal laid some of the fundamentals for the science of aviation.
|
||||
|
||||
The physicist and optician Ernst Abbe (1840–1905) founded in the 19th century together with the entrepreneurs Carl Zeiss (1840–1905) and Otto Schott (1851–1935) the basics of modern Optical engineering and developed many optical instruments like microscopes and telescopes. Since 1899 he was the sole owner of the Carl Zeiss AG and played a decisive role of setting up the enterprise Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Gen (today Schott AG). These enterprises are very successful worldwide up to present time (21st century).
|
||||
The engineer Rudolf Diesel (1858–1913) was the inventor of an internal combustion engine, the Diesel engine. He first published his idea of an engine with a particularly high level of efficiency in 1893 in his work Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors, 'Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Motor'. After 1893, he succeeded in building such an engine in a laboratory at the Augsburg Machine Factory (now MAN). Through his patents registered in many countries and his public relations work, he gave his name to the engine and the associated Diesel fuel.
|
||||
In the 1930s the electrical engineers Ernst Ruska (1906–1988) and Max Knoll (1897–1969) developed at the "Technische Hochschule zu Berlin" the first electron microscope.
|
||||
Manfred von Ardenne (1907–1997) was a scientist, engineer and active as a researcher primarily in applied physics and is the originator of around 600 inventions and patents in radio and television technology, electron microscopy, nuclear, plasma and medical technology.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Biological and earth sciences ===
|
||||
|
||||
Martin Waldseemüller (c. 1472/1475–1520) and Matthias Ringmann (1482–1511) were cartographers of the Renaissance. In 1507 they created the first world map on which the land masses in the west of the Atlantic Ocean were named "America" after Amerigo Vespucci. The Waldseemüller map of 1507 has been part of the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage since 2005.
|
||||
Emil Behring, Ferdinand Cohn, Paul Ehrlich, Robert Koch, Friedrich Loeffler and Rudolph Virchow, six key figures in microbiology, were from Germany. Alexander von Humboldt's (1769–1859) work as a natural scientist and explorer was foundational to biogeography, he was one of the outstanding scientists of his time and a shining example for Charles Darwin. Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) was an eclectic Russian-born botanist and climatologist who synthesized global relationships between climate, vegetation and soil types into a classification system that is used, with some modifications, to this day. The Frankfurt surgeon, botanist, microbiologist, and mycologist Anton de Bary (1831–1888) laid one of the fundamentals of the plant pathology and was one of the discoverer of the symbiosis of organisms.
|
||||
Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919) discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a tree of life relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, for example ecology and phylum. His published artwork of different lifeforms includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures, collected in his Kunstformen der Natur, 'Art Forms of Nature', an international bestseller and a book that would go on to influence the Art Nouveau (Jugendstil, 'youth style'). But Haeckel was also a promoter of scientific racism and embraced the idea of Social Darwinism.
|
||||
Alfred Wegener (1880–1930), a similarly interdisciplinary scientist, was one of the first people to hypothesize the theory of continental drift that was later developed into the overarching geological theory of plate tectonics.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Psychology ===
|
||||
Wilhelm Wundt is credited with the establishment of psychology as an independent empirical science through his construction of the first laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879.
|
||||
In the beginning of the 20th century, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute founded by Oskar and Cécile Vogt was among the world's leading institutions in the field of brain research. They collaborated with Korbinian Brodmann to map areas of the cerebral cortex.
|
||||
After the National Socialistic laws banning Jewish doctors in 1933, the fields of neurology and psychiatry faced a decline of 65% of its professors and teachers. The research shifted to a 'Nazi neurology', with subjects such as eugenics or euthanasia.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Humanities ===
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
Besides natural sciences, German researchers have added much to the development of humanities.
|
||||
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280) was a polymath, philosopher, lawyer, natural scientist, theologian, Dominican and Bishop of Regensburg. His great, diverse knowledge earned him the name Magnus ("the Great"), the title of Doctor of the Church and the honorary title of doctor universalis.
|
||||
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist, "the prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology". Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890) was a wealthy businessman and a devotee of the historicity of places mentioned in the works of Homer and an archaeological excavator of Hisarlik (since 1871), now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) is widely counted as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th century; his work regarding Roman history is still of fundamental importance for contemporary research. Max Weber (1864–1920) was together with Karl Marx (1818–1883) among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society and is regarded as one of the founder of the Sociology.
|
||||
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was a philosopher of the Enlightenment and professor of logic and metaphysics in Königsberg. Kant is one of the most important representatives of Western philosophy. His work Critique of Pure Reason marks a turning point in the history of philosophy and the beginning of modern philosophy. Kant is best known for the categorical imperative, the fundamental principle of moral action from his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
|
||||
While Kant was one of the first philosopher of German idealism, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) is one of the most influential and last representative of it. His philosophy seeks to interprete the whole of reality in its variety of manifestations, including historical development, in a coherent, systematic and definitive manner. It is divided into "logic", "natural philosophy" and "Phenomenology of Geist", which also includes a philosophy of history. His thinking also became the starting point for numerous other movements in the theory of science, sociology, history, theology, politics, jurisprudence and art theory, and it also influenced other areas of culture and intellectual life.
|
||||
Contemporary examples are the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, the historian Reinhart Koselleck and the legal historian Michael Stolleis. In order to promote the international visibility of research in these fields a new prize, Geisteswissenschaften International, 'Humanities international', was established in 2008; it serves the translation of studies of humanities into English.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Warfare ===
|
||||
|
||||
Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) was a Prussian Generalmajor, army reformer, military scientist and ethicist. Clausewitz became known through his unfinished major work Vom Kriege, which deals with the problem of the theory of war. His theories on strategy, tactics and philosophy had a major influence on the military theory in all Western countries and are still taught at military academies until today. They are also used in business management and marketing. The most used quotation is the statement from his masterpiece: "War is the continuation of policy with other means."
|
||||
Oswald Boelcke was the progenitor of air-to-air combat tactics, fighter squadron organization, early-warning systems, and the German air force; he has been dubbed "the father of air combat". From his first victories, the news of his success instructed and motivated both his fellow fliers and the German public. It was at his instigation that the Imperial German Air Service founded its Jastaschule (Fighter School) to teach his aerial tactics. The promulgation of his Dicta Boelcke set tactics for the German fighter force. The concentration of fighter airplanes into squadrons gained Germany air supremacy on the Western Front, and was the basis for their wartime successes.
|
||||
|
||||
== Personalities ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Nobel Prizes ==
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
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|
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|
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|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:43.618760+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
Benjamin List, Chemistry, 2021
|
||||
Klaus Hasselmann, Physics, 2021
|
||||
Reinhard Genzel, Physics, 2020
|
||||
Joachim Frank, Chemistry, 2017
|
||||
Thomas C. Südhof, Physiology or Medicine, 2013
|
||||
Harald zur Hausen, Physiology or Medicine, 2008
|
||||
Gerhard Ertl, Chemistry, 2007
|
||||
Peter Grünberg, Physics, 2007
|
||||
Theodor W. Hänsch, Physics, 2005
|
||||
Wolfgang Ketterle, Physics, 2001
|
||||
Herbert Kroemer, Physics, 2000
|
||||
Günter Blobel, Physiology or Medicine, 1999
|
||||
Horst L. Störmer, Physics, 1998
|
||||
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Physiology or Medicine, 1995
|
||||
Reinhard Selten, Economics, 1994
|
||||
Bert Sakmann, Physiology or Medicine, 1991
|
||||
Erwin Neher, Physiology or Medicine, 1991
|
||||
Hans G. Dehmelt, Physics, 1989
|
||||
Wolfgang Paul, Physics, 1989
|
||||
Johann Deisenhofer, Chemistry, 1988
|
||||
Robert Huber, Chemistry, 1988
|
||||
Hartmut Michel, Chemistry, 1988
|
||||
J. Georg Bednorz, Physics, 1987
|
||||
Ernst Ruska, Physics, 1986
|
||||
Gerd Binnig, Physics, 1986
|
||||
Klaus von Klitzing, Physics, 1985
|
||||
Georges J.F. Köhler, Physiology or Medicine, 1984
|
||||
Georg Wittig, Chemistry, 1979
|
||||
Ernst Otto Fischer, Chemistry, 1973
|
||||
Karl von Frisch, Physiology or Medicine, 1973
|
||||
Max Delbrück, Physiology or Medicine, 1969
|
||||
Manfred Eigen, Chemistry, 1967
|
||||
Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen, Physiology or Medicine, 1964
|
||||
Karl Ziegler, Chemistry, 1963
|
||||
Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Physics, 1963
|
||||
J. Hans D. Jensen, Physics, 1963
|
||||
Rudolf Mössbauer, Physics, 1961
|
||||
Werner Forssmann, Physiology or Medicine, 1956
|
||||
Polykarp Kusch, Physics, 1955
|
||||
Max Born, Physics, 1954
|
||||
Walther Bothe, Physics, 1954
|
||||
Hermann Staudinger, Chemistry, 1953
|
||||
Fritz Albert Lipmann, Physiology or Medicine, 1953
|
||||
Hans Adolf Krebs, Physiology or Medicine, 1953
|
||||
Albert Schweitzer, Peace, 1952
|
||||
Otto Diels, Chemistry, 1950
|
||||
Kurt Alder, Chemistry, 1950
|
||||
Otto Hahn, Chemistry, 1944
|
||||
Adolf Butenandt, Chemistry, 1939
|
||||
Gerhard Domagk, Physiology or Medicine, 1939
|
||||
Richard Kuhn, Chemistry, 1938
|
||||
Hans Spemann, Physiology or Medicine, 1935
|
||||
Werner Karl Heisenberg, Physics, 1932
|
||||
Otto Heinrich Warburg, Physiology or Medicine, 1931
|
||||
Carl Bosch, Chemistry, 1931
|
||||
Friedrich Bergius, Chemistry, 1931
|
||||
Hans Fischer, Chemistry, 1930
|
||||
Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, Chemistry, 1928
|
||||
Heinrich Otto Wieland, Chemistry, 1927
|
||||
Gustav Ludwig Hertz, Physics, 1925
|
||||
Otto Fritz Meyerhof, Physiology or Medicine, 1922
|
||||
Walther Nernst, Chemistry, 1920
|
||||
Johannes Stark, Physics, 1919
|
||||
Fritz Haber, Chemistry, 1918
|
||||
Max Planck, Physics, 1918
|
||||
Richard Willstätter, Chemistry, 1915
|
||||
Max von Laue, Physics, 1914
|
||||
Wilhelm Wien, Physics, 1911
|
||||
Otto Wallach, Chemistry, 1910
|
||||
Albrecht Kossel, Physiology or Medicine, 1910
|
||||
Karl Ferdinand Braun, Physics, 1909
|
||||
Wilhelm Ostwald, Chemistry, 1909
|
||||
Paul Ehrlich, Physiology or Medicine, 1908
|
||||
Eduard Buchner, Chemistry, 1907
|
||||
Robert Koch, Physiology or Medicine, 1905
|
||||
Philipp Lenard, Physics, 1905
|
||||
Adolf von Baeyer, Chemistry, 1905
|
||||
Hermann Emil Fischer, Chemistry, 1902
|
||||
Theodor Mommsen, Literature, 1902
|
||||
Emil Adolf von Behring, Physiology or Medicine, 1901
|
||||
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Physics, 1901
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
|
||||
Körber European Science Prize
|
||||
List of German inventions and discoveries
|
||||
List of German inventors and discoverers
|
||||
List of German mathematicians
|
||||
List of German scientists by century
|
||||
Operation Paperclip
|
||||
Technology during World War II
|
||||
|
||||
== Notes ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
Franks, Norman; Bailey, Frank; Guest, Russell (1993). Above the Lines: A Complete Record of the Aces and Fighter Units of the German Air Service, Naval Air Service and Flanders Marine Corps 1914–1918. London: Grub Street. ISBN 978-0-948817-73-1.
|
||||
Head, R. G. (2016). Oswald Boelcke: Germany's First Fighter Ace and Father of Air Combat. London: Grub Street. ISBN 978-1-910690-23-9.
|
||||
Competing Modernities: Science and Education, Kathryn Olesko and Christoph Strupp. (A comparative analysis of the history of science and education in Germany and the United States)
|
||||
English section of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research's website
|
||||
Germany's science and research landscape
|
||||
Articles and dossiers about Research and Technology in Germany, Goethe-Institut
|
||||
Audretsch, D. B., Lehmann, E. E., & Schenkenhofer, J. (2018). Internationalization strategies of hidden champions: lessons from Germany. Multinational Business Review.
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
|
||||
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
|
||||
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
|
||||
Research-in-germany.org
|
||||
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The history of science during the Enlightenment traces developments in science and technology as Enlightenment ideas and ideals were being disseminated across Europe and North America. Generally, the period spans from the final days of the 16th- and 17th-century Scientific Revolution until roughly the 19th century, after the French Revolution (1789) and the Napoleonic era (1799–1815). The scientific revolution saw the creation of the first scientific societies, the rise of Copernicanism, and the displacement of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galen's ancient medical doctrine. By the 18th century, scientific authority began to displace religious authority, and the disciplines of alchemy and astrology lost scientific credibility.
|
||||
While the Enlightenment cannot be pigeonholed into a specific doctrine or set of dogmas, science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favour of the development of free speech and thought. Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought, and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress. As with most Enlightenment views, the benefits of science were not seen universally; Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized the sciences for distancing man from nature and not operating to make people happier.
|
||||
Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centres of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were also the backbone of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population. Philosophes introduced the public to many scientific theories, most notably through the Encyclopédie and the popularization of Newtonianism by Voltaire as well as by Émilie du Châtelet, the French translator of Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Some historians have marked the 18th century as a drab period in the history of science; however, the century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine, mathematics, and physics; the development of biological taxonomy; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline, which established the foundations of modern chemistry.
|
||||
|
||||
== Universities ==
|
||||
|
||||
The number of universities in Paris remained relatively constant throughout the 18th century. Europe had about 105 universities and colleges by 1700. North America had 44, including the newly founded Harvard and Yale. The number of university students remained roughly the same throughout the Enlightenment in most Western nations, excluding Britain, where the number of institutions and students increased. University students were generally males from affluent families, seeking a career in either medicine, law, or the Church. The universities themselves existed primarily to educate future physicians, lawyers and members of the clergy.
|
||||
The study of science under the heading of natural philosophy was divided into physics and a conglomerate grouping of chemistry and natural history, which included anatomy, biology, geology, mineralogy, and zoology. Most European universities taught a Cartesian form of mechanical philosophy in the early 18th century, and only slowly adopted Newtonianism in the mid-18th century. A notable exception were universities in Spain, which under the influence of Catholicism focused almost entirely on Aristotelian natural philosophy until the mid-18th century; they were among the last universities to do so. Another exception occurred in the universities of Germany and Scandinavia, where University of Halle professor Christian Wolff taught a form of Cartesianism modified by Leibnizian physics.
|
||||
|
||||
Before the 18th century, science courses were taught almost exclusively through formal lectures. The structure of courses began to change in the first decades of the 18th century, when physical demonstrations were added to lectures. Pierre Polinière and Jacques Rohault were among the first individuals to provide demonstrations of physical principles in the classroom. Experiments ranged from swinging a bucket of water at the end of a rope, demonstrating that centrifugal force would hold the water in the bucket, to more impressive experiments involving the use of an air-pump. One particularly dramatic air-pump demonstration involved placing an apple inside the glass receiver of the air-pump, and removing air until the resulting vacuum caused the apple to explode. Polinière's demonstrations were so impressive that he was granted an invitation to present his course to Louis XV in 1722.
|
||||
Some attempts at reforming the structure of the science curriculum were made during the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century. Beginning around 1745, the Hats party in Sweden made propositions to reform the university system by separating natural philosophy into two separate faculties of physics and mathematics. The propositions were never put into action, but they represent the growing calls for institutional reform in the later part of the 18th century. In 1777, the study of arts at Kraków and Vilna in Poland was divided into the two new faculties of moral philosophy and physics. However, the reform did not survive beyond 1795 and the Third Partition. During the French Revolution, all colleges and universities in France were abolished and reformed in 1808 under the single institution of the Université imperiale. The Université divided the arts and sciences into separate faculties, something that had never before been done before in Europe. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands employed the same system in 1815. However, the other countries of Europe did not adopt a similar division of the faculties until the mid-19th century.
|
||||
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Universities in France tended to serve a downplayed role in the development of science during the Enlightenment; that role was dominated by the scientific academies, such as the French Academy of Sciences. The contributions of universities in Britain were mixed. On the one hand, the University of Cambridge began teaching Newtonianism early in the Enlightenment, but failed to become a central force behind the advancement of science. On the other end of the spectrum were Scottish universities, which had strong medical faculties and became centres of scientific development. Under Frederick II, German universities began to promote the sciences. Christian Wolff's unique blend of Cartesian-Leibnizian physics began to be adopted in universities outside of Halle. The University of Göttingen, founded in 1734, was far more liberal than its counterparts, allowing professors to plan their own courses and select their own textbooks. Göttingen also emphasized research and publication. A further influential development in German universities was the abandonment of Latin in favour of the German vernacular.
|
||||
In the 17th century, the Netherlands had played a significant role in the advancement of the sciences, including Isaac Beeckman's mechanical philosophy and Christiaan Huygens' work on the calculus and in astronomy. Professors at universities in the Dutch Republic were among the first to adopt Newtonianism. From the University of Leiden, Willem 's Gravesande's students went on to spread Newtonianism to Harderwijk and Franeker, among other Dutch universities, and also to the University of Amsterdam.
|
||||
While the number of universities did not dramatically increase during the Enlightenment, new private and public institutions added to the provision of education. Most of the new institutions emphasized mathematics as a discipline, making them popular with professions that required some working knowledge of mathematics, such as merchants, military and naval officers, and engineers. Universities, on the other hand, maintained their emphasis on the classics, Greek, and Latin, encouraging the popularity of the new institutions with individuals who had not been formally educated.
|
||||
|
||||
== Societies and Academies ==
|
||||
|
||||
Scientific academies and societies grew out of the Scientific Revolution as the creators of scientific knowledge in contrast to the scholasticism of the university. During the Enlightenment, some societies created or retained links to universities. However, contemporary sources distinguished universities from scientific societies by claiming that the university's utility was in the transmission of knowledge, while societies functioned to create knowledge. As the role of universities in institutionalized science began to diminish, learned societies became the cornerstone of organized science. After 1700 a tremendous number of official academies and societies were founded in Europe and by 1789 there were over seventy official scientific societies . In reference to this growth, Bernard de Fontenelle coined the term "the Age of Academies" to describe the 18th century.
|
||||
National scientific societies were founded throughout the Enlightenment era in the urban hotbeds of scientific development across Europe. In the 17th century the Royal Society of London (1662), the Paris Académie Royale des Sciences (1666), and the Berlin Akademie der Wissenschaften (1700) were founded. Around the start of the 18th century, the Academia Scientiarum Imperialis (1724) in St. Petersburg, and the Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) (1739) were created. Regional and provincial societies emerged from the 18th century in Bologna, Bordeaux, Copenhagen, Dijon, Lyons, Montpellier and Uppsala. Following this initial period of growth, societies were founded between 1752 and 1785 in Barcelona, Brussels, Dublin, Edinburgh, Göttingen, Mannheim, Munich, Padua and Turin. The development of unchartered societies, such as the private the Naturforschende Gesellschaft of Danzig (1743) and Lunar Society of Birmingham (1766–1791), occurred alongside the growth of national, regional and provincial societies.
|
||||
|
||||
Official scientific societies were chartered by the state in order to provide technical expertise. This advisory capacity offered scientific societies the most direct contact between the scientific community and government bodies available during the Enlightenment. State sponsorship was beneficial to the societies as it brought finance and recognition, along with a measure of freedom in management. Most societies were granted permission to oversee their own publications, control the election of new members, and the administration of the society. Membership in academies and societies was therefore highly selective. In some societies, members were required to pay an annual fee to participate. For example, the Royal Society depended on contributions from its members, which excluded a wide range of artisans and mathematicians on account of the expense. Society activities included research, experimentation, sponsoring essay prize contests, and collaborative projects between societies. A dialogue of formal communication also developed between societies and society in general through the publication of scientific journals. Periodicals offered society members the opportunity to publish, and for their ideas to be consumed by other scientific societies and the literate public. Scientific journals, readily accessible to members of learned societies, became the most important form of publication for scientists during the Enlightenment.
|
||||
|
||||
== Periodicals ==
|
||||
|
||||
Academies and societies served to disseminate Enlightenment science by publishing the scientific works of their members, as well as their proceedings. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, published by the Royal Society of London, was the only scientific periodical being published on a regular, quarterly basis. The Paris Academy of Sciences, formed in 1666, began publishing in volumes of memoirs rather than a quarterly journal, with periods between volumes sometimes lasting years. While some official periodicals may have published more frequently, there was still a long delay from a paper's submission for review to its actual publication. Smaller periodicals, such as Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, were only published when enough content was available to complete a volume. At the Paris Academy, there was an average delay of three years for publication. At one point the period extended to seven years. The Paris Academy processed submitted articles through the Comité de Librarie, which had the final word on what would or would not be published. In 1703, the mathematician Antoine Parent began a periodical, Researches in Physics and Mathematics, specifically to publish papers that had been rejected by the Comité.
|
||||
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The limitations of such academic journals left considerable space for the rise of independent periodicals. Some eminent examples include Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch's Der Naturforscher (The Natural Investigator) (1725–1778), Journal des sçavans (1665–1792), the Jesuit Mémoires de Trévoux (1701–1779), and Leibniz's Acta Eruditorum (Reports/Acts of the Scholars) (1682–1782). Independent periodicals were published throughout the Enlightenment and excited scientific interest in the general public. While the journals of the academies primarily published scientific papers, independent periodicals were a mix of reviews, abstracts, translations of foreign texts, and sometimes derivative, reprinted materials. Most of these texts were published in the local vernacular, so their continental spread depended on the language of the readers. For example, in 1761 Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov correctly attributed the ring of light around Venus, visible during the planet's transit, as the planet's atmosphere; however, because few scientists understood Russian outside of Russia, his discovery was not widely credited until 1910.
|
||||
Some changes in periodicals occurred during the course of the Enlightenment. First, they increased in number and size. There was also a move away from publishing in Latin in favour of publishing in the vernacular. Experimental descriptions became more detailed and began to be accompanied by reviews. In the late 18th century, a second change occurred when a new breed of periodical began to publish monthly about new developments and experiments in the scientific community. The first of this kind of journal was François Rozier's Observations sur la physiques, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts, commonly referred to as "Rozier's journal", which was first published in 1772. The journal allowed new scientific developments to be published relatively quickly compared to annuals and quarterlies. A third important change was the specialization seen in the new development of disciplinary journals. With a wider audience and ever increasing publication material, specialized journals such as Curtis' Botanical Magazine (1787) and the Annals de Chimie (1789) reflect the growing division between scientific disciplines in the Enlightenment era.
|
||||
|
||||
== Encyclopedias and dictionaries ==
|
||||
|
||||
Although the existence of dictionaries and encyclopedia spanned into ancient times, and would be nothing new to Enlightenment readers, the texts changed from simply defining words in a long running list to far more detailed discussions of those words in 18th-century encyclopedic dictionaries. The works were part of an Enlightenment movement to systematize knowledge and provide education to a wider audience than the educated elite. As the 18th century progressed, the content of encyclopedias also changed according to readers' tastes. Volumes tended to focus more strongly on secular affairs, particularly science and technology, rather than matters of theology.
|
||||
Along with secular matters, readers also favoured an alphabetical ordering scheme over cumbersome works arranged along thematic lines. The historian Charles Porset, commenting on alphabetization, has said that "as the zero degree of taxonomy, alphabetical order authorizes all reading strategies; in this respect it could be considered an emblem of the Enlightenment." For Porset, the avoidance of thematic and hierarchical systems thus allows free interpretation of the works and becomes an example of egalitarianism. Encyclopedias and dictionaries also became more popular during the Age of Reason as the number of educated consumers who could afford such texts began to multiply. In the later half of the 18th century, the number of dictionaries and encyclopedias published by decade increased from 63 between 1760 and 1769 to approximately 148 in the decade proceeding the French Revolution (1780–1789). Along with growth in numbers, dictionaries and encyclopedias also grew in length, often having multiple print runs that sometimes included in supplemented editions.
|
||||
|
||||
The first technical dictionary was drafted by John Harris and entitled Lexicon Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. Harris' book avoided theological and biographical entries; instead it concentrated on science and technology. Published in 1704, the Lexicon technicum was the first book to be written in English that took a methodical approach to describing mathematics and commercial arithmetic along with the physical sciences and navigation. Other technical dictionaries followed Harris' model, including Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1728), which included five editions, and was a substantially larger work than Harris'. The folio edition of the work even included foldout engravings. The Cyclopaedia emphasized Newtonian theories, Lockean philosophy, and contained thorough examinations of technologies, such as engraving, brewing, and dyeing. In Germany, practical reference works intended for the uneducated majority became popular in the 18th century. The Marperger Curieuses Natur-, Kunst-, Berg-, Gewerkund Handlungs-Lexicon (1712) explained terms that usefully described the trades and scientific and commercial education. Jablonksi Allgemeines Lexicon (1721) was better known than the Handlungs-Lexicon, and underscored technical subjects rather than scientific theory. For example, over five columns of text were dedicated to wine, while geometry and logic were allocated only twenty-two and seventeen lines, respectively. The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1771) was modelled along the same lines as the German lexicons.
|
||||
However, the prime example of reference works that systematized scientific knowledge in the age of Enlightenment were universal encyclopedias rather than technical dictionaries. It was the goal of universal encyclopedias to record all human knowledge in a comprehensive reference work. The most well-known of these works is Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. The work, which began publication in 1751, was composed of thirty-five volumes and over 71 000 separate entries. A great number of the entries were dedicated to describing the sciences and crafts in detail. In d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, the work's massive goal to record the extent of human knowledge in the arts and sciences is outlined:
|
||||
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As an Encyclopédie, it is to set forth as well as possible the order and connection of the parts of human knowledge. As a Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, it is to contain the general principles that form the basis of each science and each art, liberal or mechanical, and the most essential facts that make up the body and substance of each.
|
||||
The massive work was arranged according to a "tree of knowledge". The tree reflected the marked division between the arts and sciences, which was largely a result of the rise of empiricism. Both areas of knowledge were united by philosophy, or the trunk of the tree of knowledge. The Enlightenment's desacrilization of religion was pronounced in the tree's design, particularly where theology accounted for a peripheral branch, with black magic as a close neighbour. As the Encyclopédie gained popularity, it was published in quarto and octavo editions after 1777. The quarto and octavo editions were much less expensive than previous editions, making the Encyclopédie more accessible to the non-elite. Robert Darnton estimates that there were approximately 25 000 copies of the Encyclopédie in circulation throughout France and Europe before the French Revolution. The extensive, yet affordable encyclopedia came to represent the transmission of Enlightenment and scientific education to an expanding audience.
|
||||
|
||||
== Popularization of science ==
|
||||
One of the most important developments that the Enlightenment era brought to the discipline of science was its popularization. An increasingly literate population seeking knowledge and education in both the arts and the sciences drove the expansion of print culture and the dissemination of scientific learning. The new literate population was due to a high rise in the availability of food. This enabled many people to rise out of poverty, and instead of paying more for food, they had money for education. Popularization was generally part of an overarching Enlightenment ideal that endeavoured "to make information available to the greatest number of people." As public interest in natural philosophy grew during the 18th century, public lecture courses and the publication of popular texts opened up new roads to money and fame for amateurs and scientists who remained on the periphery of universities and academies.
|
||||
|
||||
=== British coffeehouses ===
|
||||
|
||||
An early example of science emanating from the official institutions into the public realm was the British coffeehouse. With the establishment of coffeehouses, a new public forum for political, philosophical and scientific discourse was created. In the mid-16th century, coffeehouses popped up around Oxford, where the academic community began to capitalize on the unregulated conversation that the coffeehouse allowed. The new social space began to be used by some scholars as a place to discuss science and experiments outside of the laboratory of the official institution. Coffeehouse patrons were only required to purchase a dish of coffee to participate, leaving the opportunity for many, regardless of financial means, to benefit from the conversation. Education was a central theme and some patrons began offering lessons and lectures to others. The chemist Peter Staehl provided chemistry lessons at Tilliard's coffeehouse in the early 1660s. As coffeehouses developed in London, customers heard lectures on scientific subjects, such as astronomy and mathematics, for an exceedingly low price. Notable Coffeehouse enthusiasts included John Aubrey, Robert Hooke, James Brydges, and Samuel Pepys.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Public lectures ===
|
||||
Public lecture courses offered some scientists who were unaffiliated with official organizations a forum to transmit scientific knowledge, at times even their own ideas, and the opportunity to carve out a reputation and, in some instances, a living. The public, on the other hand, gained both knowledge and entertainment from demonstration lectures. Between 1735 and 1793, there were over seventy individuals offering courses and demonstrations for public viewers in experimental physics. Class sizes ranged from one hundred to four or five hundred attendees. Courses varied in duration from one to four weeks, to a few months, or even the entire academic year. Courses were offered at virtually any time of day; the latest occurred at 8:00 or 9:00 at night. One of the most popular start times was 6:00 pm, allowing the working population to participate and signifying the attendance of the nonelite. Barred from the universities and other institutions, women were often in attendance at demonstration lectures and constituted a significant number of auditors.
|
||||
The importance of the lectures was not in teaching complex mathematics or physics, but rather in demonstrating to the wider public the principles of physics and encouraging discussion and debate. Generally, individuals presenting the lectures did not adhere to any particular brand of physics, but rather demonstrated a combination of different theories. New advancements in the study of electricity offered viewers demonstrations that drew far more inspiration among the laity than scientific papers could hold. An example of a popular demonstration used by Jean-Antoine Nollet and other lecturers was the 'electrified boy'. In the demonstration, a young boy would be suspended from the ceiling, horizontal to the floor, with silk chords. An electrical machine would then be used to electrify the boy. Essentially becoming a magnet, he would then attract a collection of items scattered about him by the lecturer. Sometimes a young girl would be called from the auditors to touch or kiss the boy on the cheek, causing sparks to shoot between the two children in what was dubbed the 'electric kiss'. Such marvels would certainly have entertained the audience, but the demonstration of physical principles also served an educational purpose. One 18th-century lecturer insisted on the utility of his demonstrations, stating that they were "useful for the good of society."
|
||||
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=== Popular science in print ===
|
||||
Increasing literacy rates in Europe during the course of the Enlightenment enabled science to enter popular culture through print. More formal works included explanations of scientific theories for individuals lacking the educational background to comprehend the original scientific text. Sir Isaac Newton's celebrated Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published in Latin and remained inaccessible to readers without education in the classics until Enlightenment writers began to translate and analyze the text in the vernacular. The first French introduction to Newtonianism and the Principia was Eléments de la philosophie de Newton, published by Voltaire in 1738. Émilie du Châtelet's translation of the Principia, published after her death in 1756, also helped to spread Newton's theories beyond scientific academies and the university.
|
||||
|
||||
However, science took an ever greater step towards popular culture before Voltaire's introduction and Châtelet's translation. The publication of Bernard de Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686) marked the first significant work that expressed scientific theory and knowledge expressly for the laity, in the vernacular, and with the entertainment of readers in mind. The book was produced specifically for women with an interest in scientific writing and inspired a variety of similar works. These popular works were written in a discursive style, which was laid out much more clearly for the reader than the complicated articles, treatises, and books published by the academies and scientists. Charles Leadbetter's Astronomy (1727) was advertised as "a Work entirely New" that would include "short and easie [sic] Rules and Astronomical Tables." Francesco Algarotti, writing for a growing female audience, published Il Newtonianism per le dame, which was a tremendously popular work and was translated from Italian into English by Elizabeth Carter. A similar introduction to Newtonianism for women was produced by Henry Pembarton. His A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy was published by subscription. Extant records of subscribers show that women from a wide range of social standings purchased the book, indicating the growing number of scientifically inclined female readers among the middling class. During the Enlightenment, women also began producing popular scientific works themselves. Sarah Trimmer wrote a successful natural history textbook for children entitled The Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature (1782), which was published for many years after in eleven editions.
|
||||
The influence of science also began appearing more commonly in poetry and literature during the Enlightenment. Some poetry became infused with scientific metaphor and imagery, while other poems were written directly about scientific topics. Sir Richard Blackmore committed the Newtonian system to verse in Creation, a Philosophical Poem in Seven Books (1712). After Newton's death in 1727, poems were composed in his honour for decades. James Thomson (1700–1748) penned his "Poem to the Memory of Newton," which mourned the loss of Newton, but also praised his science and legacy:
|
||||
|
||||
While references to the sciences were often positive, there were some Enlightenment writers who criticized scientists for what they viewed as their obsessive, frivolous careers. Other antiscience writers, including William Blake, chastised scientists for attempting to use physics, mechanics and mathematics to simplify the complexities of the universe, particularly in relation to God. The character of the evil scientist was invoked during this period in the romantic tradition. For example, the characterization of the scientist as a nefarious manipulator in the work of Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann.
|
||||
|
||||
== Women in science ==
|
||||
|
||||
During the Enlightenment era, women were excluded from scientific societies, universities and learned professions. Women were educated, if at all, through self-study, tutors, and by the teachings of more open-minded fathers. With the exception of daughters of craftsmen, who sometimes learned their father's profession by assisting in the workshop, learned women were primarily part of elite society. A consequence of the exclusion of women from societies and universities that prevented much independent research was their inability to access scientific instruments, such as the microscope. In fact, restrictions were so severe in the 18th century that women, including midwives, were forbidden to use forceps. That particular restriction exemplified the increasingly constrictive, male-dominated medical community. Over the course of the 18th century, male surgeons began to assume the role of midwives in gynaecology. Some male satirists also ridiculed scientifically minded women, describing them as neglectful of their domestic role. The negative view of women in the sciences reflected the sentiment apparent in some Enlightenment texts that women need not, nor ought to be educated; the opinion is exemplified by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Émile:
|
||||
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A woman’s education must... be planned in relation to man. To be pleasing in his sight, to win his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to tend him in manhood, to counsel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy, these are the duties of woman for all time, and this is what she should be taught while she is young.
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title: "Science in the Enlightenment"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Enlightenment"
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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Despite these limitations, there was support for women in the sciences among some men, and many made valuable contributions to science during the 18th century. Two notable women who managed to participate in formal institutions were Laura Bassi and the Russian Princess Yekaterina Dashkova. Bassi was an Italian physicist who received a PhD from the University of Bologna and began teaching there in 1732. Dashkova became the director of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg in 1783. Her personal relationship with Empress Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) allowed her to obtain the position, which marked in history the first appointment of a woman to the directorship of a scientific academy. Eva Ekeblad became the first woman inducted into the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (1748).
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More commonly, women participated in the sciences through an association with a male relative or spouse. Caroline Herschel began her astronomical career, although somewhat reluctantly at first, by assisting her brother William Herschel. Caroline Herschel is most remembered for her discovery of eight comets and her Index to Flamsteed's Observations of the Fixed Stars (1798). On August 1, 1786, Herschel discovered her first comet, much to the excitement of scientifically minded women. Fanny Burney commented on the discovery, stating that "the comet was very small, and had nothing grand or striking in its appearance; but it is the first lady's comet, and I was very desirous to see it." Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze worked collaboratively with her husband, Antoine Lavoisier. Aside from assisting in Lavoisier's laboratory research, she was responsible for translating a number of English texts into French for her husband's work on the new chemistry. Paulze also illustrated many of her husband's publications, such as his Treatise on Chemistry (1789).
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Many other women became illustrators or translators of scientific texts. In France, Madeleine Françoise Basseporte was employed by the Royal Botanical Garden as an illustrator. Englishwoman Mary Delany developed a unique method of illustration. Her technique involved using hundreds of pieces of coloured-paper to recreate lifelike renditions of living plants. German born Maria Sibylla Merian along with her daughters including Dorothea Maria Graff were involved in the careful scientific study of insects and the natural world. Using mostly watercolor, gauche on vellum, She became one of the leading entomologists of the 18th century. Maria Sibylla and her daughter Dorothea traveled to Suriname to study the different life stages of insects there and the plants on which they lived. On their return, Merian published in 1705 the lavishly illustrated Metamorphosis Surinamensis.
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Noblewomen sometimes cultivated their own botanical gardens, including Mary Somerset and Margaret Harley. Scientific translation sometimes required more than a grasp on multiple languages. Besides translating Newton's Principia into French, Émilie du Châtelet expanded Newton's work to include recent progress made in mathematical physics after his death.
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== Disciplines ==
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=== Astronomy ===
|
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Building on the body of work forwarded by Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, 18th-century astronomers refined telescopes, produced star catalogues, and worked towards explaining the motions of heavenly bodies and the consequences of universal gravitation. Among the prominent astronomers of the age was Edmund Halley. In 1705, Halley correctly linked historical descriptions of particularly bright comets to the reappearance of just one, which would later be named Halley's Comet, based on his computation of the orbits of comets. Halley also changed the theory of the Newtonian universe, which described the fixed stars. When he compared the ancient positions of stars to their contemporary positions, he found that they had shifted. James Bradley, while attempting to document stellar parallax, realized that the unexplained motion of stars he had early observed with Samuel Molyneux was caused by the aberration of light. The discovery was proof of a heliocentric model of the universe, since it is the revolution of the earth around the sun that causes an apparent motion in the observed position of a star. The discovery also led Bradley to a fairly close estimate to the speed of light.
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Observations of Venus in the 18th century became an important step in describing atmospheres. During the 1761 transit of Venus, the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov observed a ring of light around the planet. Lomonosov attributed the ring to the refraction of sunlight, which he correctly hypothesized was caused by the atmosphere of Venus. Further evidence of Venus' atmosphere was gathered in observations by Johann Hieronymus Schröter in 1779. The planet also offered Alexis Claude de Clairaut an opportunity to work his considerable mathematical skills when he computed the mass of Venus through complex mathematical calculations.
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However, much astronomical work of the period becomes shadowed by one of the most dramatic scientific discoveries of the 18th century. On 13 March 1781, amateur astronomer William Herschel spotted a new planet with his powerful reflecting telescope. Initially identified as a comet, the celestial body later came to be accepted as a planet. Soon after, the planet was named Georgium Sidus by Herschel and was called Herschelium in France. The name Uranus, as proposed by Johann Bode, came into widespread usage after Herschel's death. On the theoretical side of astronomy, the English natural philosopher John Michell first proposed the existence of dark stars in 1783. Michell postulated that if the density of a stellar object became great enough, its attractive force would become so large that even light could not escape. He also surmised that the location of a dark star could be determined by the strong gravitational force it would exert on surrounding stars. While differing somewhat from a black hole, the dark star can be understood as a predecessor to the black holes resulting from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.
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=== Chemistry ===
|
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The chemical revolution was a period in the 18th century marked by significant advancements in the theory and practice of chemistry. Despite the maturity of most of the sciences during the scientific revolution, by the mid-18th century chemistry had yet to outline a systematic framework or theoretical doctrine. Elements of alchemy still permeated the study of chemistry, and the belief that the natural world was composed of the classical elements of earth, water, air and fire remained prevalent. The key achievement of the chemical revolution has traditionally been viewed as the abandonment of phlogiston theory in favour of Antoine Lavoisier's oxygen theory of combustion; however, more recent studies attribute a wider range of factors as contributing forces behind the chemical revolution.
|
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Developed under Johann Joachim Becher and Georg Ernst Stahl, phlogiston theory was an attempt to account for products of combustion. According to the theory, a substance called phlogiston was released from flammable materials through burning. The resulting product was termed calx, which was considered a 'dephlogisticated' substance in its 'true' form. The first strong evidence against phlogiston theory came from pneumatic chemists in Britain during the later half of the 18th century. Joseph Black, Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish all identified different gases that composed air; however, it was not until Antoine Lavoisier discovered in the fall of 1772 that, when burned, sulphur and phosphorus "gain[ed] in weight" that the phlogiston theory began to unravel.
|
||||
Lavoisier subsequently discovered and named oxygen, described its role in animal respiration and the calcination of metals exposed to air (1774–1778). In 1783, Lavoisier found that water was a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. Lavoisier's years of experimentation formed a body of work that contested phlogiston theory. After reading his "Reflections on Phlogiston" to the Academy in 1785, chemists began dividing into camps based on the old phlogiston theory and the new oxygen theory. A new form of chemical nomenclature, developed by Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, with assistance from Lavoisier, classified elements binomially into a genus and a species. For example, burned lead was of the genus oxide and species lead. Transition to and acceptance of Lavoisier's new chemistry varied in pace across Europe. The new chemistry was established in Glasgow and Edinburgh early in the 1790s, but was slow to become established in Germany. Eventually the oxygen-based theory of combustion drowned out the phlogiston theory and in the process created the basis of modern chemistry.
|
||||
|
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== See also ==
|
||||
Scientific method
|
||||
Rationalism
|
||||
|
||||
== Notes ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
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