# kb

id: history-of-science-and-technology-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology-2.md
category: reference
title: History of science and technology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:20.945172+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-and-technology-20260505-0
summary:
=== United States === Academic study of the history of science as an independent discipline was launched by George Sarton at Harvard with his book Introduction to the History of Science (1927) and the Isis journal (founded in 1912). Sarton exemplified the early 20th century view of the history of science as the history of great men and great ideas. He shared with many of his contemporaries a Whiggish belief in history as a record of the advances and delays in the march of progress. The History of Science was not a recognized subfield of American history in this period, and most of the work was carried out by interested scientists and physicians rather than professional historians. With the work of I. Bernard Cohen at Harvard, the history of Science became an established subdiscipline of history after 1945. Arizona State University's Center for Biology and Society offers several paths for MS or PhD students who are interested in issues surrounding the history and philosophy of the science. California Institute of Technology offers courses in the History and Philosophy of Science to fulfill its core humanities requirements. Case Western Reserve University has an undergraduate interdisciplinary program in the History and Philosophy


id: academic-family-tree-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Family_Tree-0.md
category: reference
title: Academic Family Tree
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Family_Tree
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:22.206692+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-family-tree-20260505-0
summary:
The Academic Family Tree, which began as Neurotree, is an online database for academic genealogy, containing numerous "family trees" of academic disciplines. Neurotree was established in 2005 as a family tree of neuroscientists. Later that year Academic Family Tree incorporated Neurotree and family trees of other scholarly disciplines. Unlike a conventional genealogy or family tree, in which connections among individuals are from kinship (e.g., parents to children), connections in Academic Family Tree are from mentoring relationships, usually among people working in academic settings (e.g., doctoral supervisors to students). Academic Family Tree has been used as sources of information for the history and prospects of academic fields such as psychology, meteorology, organizational communication, and neuroscience. It has been used to address infometrics, to research issues of scientific methodology, and to examine mentor characteristics that predict mentee academic success. == Functioning and scope == The founders of the initial trees, including Neurotree, populated them from published sources, such as ProQuest. Later, they set up discipline-specific family trees of Academic Family Tree to be volunteer-run; accuracy is maintained by a group of volunteer editors. Hierarchical connections between mentors ("parents") and mentees ("children") are defined as any meaningful mentoring relationship (research assistant, graduate student,


id: academic-genealogy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_genealogy-0.md
category: reference
title: Academic genealogy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_genealogy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:23.313463+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-genealogy-20260505-0
summary:
An academic genealogy (or scientific genealogy) organizes a family tree of scientists and scholars according to mentoring relationships, often in the form of dissertation supervision relationships, and not according to genetic relationships as in conventional genealogy. Since the term academic genealogy has now developed this specific meaning, its additional use to describe a more academic approach to conventional genealogy would be ambiguous, so the description scholarly genealogy is now generally used in the latter context. == Overview == The academic lineage or academic ancestry of someone is a chain of professors who have served as academic mentors or thesis advisors of each other, ending with the person in question. Many genealogical terms are often recast in terms of academic lineages, so one may speak of academic descendants, children, siblings, etc. One method of developing an academic genealogy is to organize individuals by prioritizing their degree of relationship to a mentor/advisor as follows: (1). doctoral students, (2). post-doctoral researchers, (3). master's students and (4). current students, including undergraduate researchers. Through the 19th century, particularly for graduates in sciences such as chemistry, it was common to have completed a degree in medicine or pharmacy before continuing with post-graduate or post-doctoral studies. Until


id: aether-classical-element-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element)-0.md
category: reference
title: Aether (classical element)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:24.535536+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: aether-classical-element-20260505-0
summary:
According to ancient and medieval science, aether (, alternative spellings include æther, aither, and ether), also known as the fifth element or quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere. The concept of aether was used in several theories to explain several natural phenomena, such as the propagation of light and gravity. In the late 19th century, physicists postulated that aether permeated space, providing a medium through which light could travel in a vacuum, but evidence for the presence of such a medium was not found in the Michelson–Morley experiment, and this result has been interpreted to mean that no luminiferous aether exists. == Mythological origins == The word αἰθήρ (aithḗr) in Homeric Greek means "pure, fresh air" or "clear sky". In Greek mythology, it was thought to be the pure essence that the gods breathed, filling the space where they lived, analogous to the air breathed by mortals. It is also personified as a deity, Aether, the son of Erebus and Nyx in traditional Greek mythology. Aether is related to αἴθω "to incinerate", and intransitive "to burn, to shine" (related is the name Aithiopes (Ethiopians; see Aethiopia), meaning "people with a burnt


id: aether-classical-element-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element)-1.md
category: reference
title: Aether (classical element)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:24.535536+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: aether-classical-element-20260505-0
summary:
The motion of light was a long-standing investigation in physics for hundreds of years before the 20th century. The use of aether to describe this motion was popular during the 17th and 18th centuries, including a theory proposed by Johann II Bernoulli, who was recognized in 1736 with the prize of the French Academy. In his theory, all space is permeated by aether containing "excessively small whirlpools". These whirlpools allow for aether to have a certain elasticity, transmitting vibrations from the corpuscular packets of light as they travel through. This theory of luminiferous aether would influence the wave theory of light proposed by Christiaan Huygens, in which light traveled in the form of longitudinal waves via an "omnipresent, perfectly elastic medium having zero density, called aether". At the time, it was thought that in order for light to travel through a vacuum, there must have been a medium filling the void through which it could propagate, as sound through air or ripples in a pool. Later, when it was proved that the nature of light wave is transverse instead of longitudinal, Huygens' theory was replaced by subsequent theories proposed by Maxwell, Einstein and de Broglie, which rejected the existence and


id: alchemy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-0.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
Alchemy (from the Arabic word al-kīmīā, الكیمیاء) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD. Greek-speaking alchemists often referred to their craft as "the Art" (τέχνη) or "Knowledge" (ἐπιστήμη), and it was often characterised as mystic (μυστική), sacred (ἱɛρά), or divine (θɛíα). Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble metals" (particularly gold); the creation of an elixir of immortality; and the creation of panaceas able to cure any disease. The perfection of the human body and soul was thought to result from the alchemical magnum opus ("Great Work"). The concept of creating the philosopher's stone was variously connected with all of these projects. Islamic and European alchemists developed a basic set of laboratory techniques, theories, and terms, some of which are still in use today. They did not abandon the Ancient Greek philosophical idea that everything is composed of four elements, and they tended to


id: alchemy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-1.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
The start of Western alchemy may generally be traced to Hellenistic Egypt, where the city of Alexandria was a center of alchemical knowledge, and retained its pre-eminence through most of the Greek and Roman periods. Following the work of André-Jean Festugière, modern scholars see alchemical practice in the Roman Empire as originating from the Egyptian goldsmith's art, Greek philosophy and different religious traditions. Tracing the origins of the alchemical art in Egypt is complicated by the pseudepigraphic nature of texts from the Greek alchemical corpus. The treatises of Zosimos of Panopolis, the earliest historically attested author (fl. c. 300), can help in situating the other authors. Zosimus based his work on that of older alchemical authors, such as Mary the Jewess, Pseudo-Democritus, and Agathodaimon, but very little is known about any of these authors. The most complete of their works, the Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus, were probably written in the first century AD. Recent scholarship tends to emphasize the testimony of Zosimus, who traced the alchemical arts back to Egyptian metallurgical and ceremonial practices. It has also been argued that early alchemical writers borrowed the vocabulary of Greek philosophical schools but did not implement any of its doctrines in a


id: alchemy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-2.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
True alchemy never regarded earth, air, water, and fire as corporeal or chemical substances in the present-day sense of the word. The four elements are simply the primary, and most general, qualities by means of which the amorphous and purely quantitative substance of all bodies first reveals itself in differentiated form." Later alchemists extensively developed the mystical aspects of this concept. Alchemy coexisted alongside emerging Christianity. Lactantius believed Hermes Trismegistus had prophesied its birth. Augustine of Hippo later affirmed this in the 4th and 5th centuries, but also condemned Trismegistus for idolatry. Examples of pagan, Christian, and Jewish alchemists can be found during this period. Most of the Greco-Roman alchemists preceding Zosimos are known only by pseudonyms, such as Moses of Alexandria, Isis, Cleopatra the Alchemist, Pseudo-Democritus, and Ostanes. Other authors such as Komarios and Chymes are known only through surviving fragments of text. After AD 400, Greek alchemical writers occupied themselves solely in commenting on the works of these predecessors. By the middle of the 7th century, alchemy was almost an entirely mystical discipline. It was at that time that Khalid Ibn Yazid sparked its migration from Alexandria to the Islamic world, facilitating the translation and preservation of Greek


id: alchemy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-3.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
To form an idea of the historical place of Jabir's alchemy and to tackle the problem of its sources, it is advisable to compare it with what remains to us of the alchemical literature in the Greek language. One knows in which miserable state this literature reached us. Collected by Byzantine scientists from the tenth century, the corpus of the Greek alchemists is a cluster of incoherent fragments, going back to all the times since the third century until the end of the Middle Ages. The efforts of Berthelot and Ruelle to put a little order in this mass of literature led only to poor results, and the later researchers, among them in particular Mrs. Hammer-Jensen, Tannery, Lagercrantz, von Lippmann, Reitzenstein, Ruska, Bidez, Festugière and others, could make clear only few points of detail .... The study of the Greek alchemists is not very encouraging. An even surface examination of the Greek texts shows that a very small part only was organized according to true experiments of laboratory: even the supposedly technical writings, in the state where we find them today, are unintelligible nonsense which refuses any interpretation. It is different with Jabir's alchemy. The relatively clear description of the


id: alchemy-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-4.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
Whereas European alchemy eventually centered on the transmutation of base metals into noble metals, Chinese alchemy had a more obvious connection to medicine. The philosopher's stone of European alchemists can be compared to the elixir of life sought by Chinese alchemists. In the Hermetic view, these two goals were not unconnected, and the philosopher's stone was often equated with the universal panacea; therefore, the two traditions may have had more in common than initially appears. As early as 317 AD, Ge Hong documented the use of metals, minerals, and elixirs in early Chinese medicine. Hong identified three ancient Chinese documents—titled the Scripture of Great Clarity, the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs, and the Scripture of the Golden Liquor—as texts containing fundamental alchemical information. He also described alchemy, along with meditation, as the sole spiritual practices that could allow one to gain immortality or to transcend to a higher state of being. In his work Inner Chapters of the Book of the Master Who Embraces Spontaneous Nature (317 AD), Hong argued that alchemical solutions such as elixirs were preferable to traditional medicinal treatment due to the spiritual protection they could provide. In the centuries following Ge Hong's death, the emphasis placed


id: alchemy-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-5.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
The introduction of alchemy to Latin Europe may be dated to 11 February 1144, with the completion of Robert of Chester's translation of the Liber de compositione alchemiae (Book on the Composition of Alchemy) from an Arabic work attributed to Khalid ibn Yazid. Although European craftsmen and technicians pre-existed, Robert notes in his preface that alchemy (here still referring to the elixir rather than to the art itself) was unknown in Latin Europe at the time of his writing. The translation of Arabic texts concerning numerous disciplines including alchemy flourished in 12th-century Toledo, Spain, through contributors like Gerard of Cremona and Adelard of Bath. Translations of the time included the Turba Philosophorum, and the works of Avicenna and Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. These brought with them many new words to the European vocabulary for which there was no previous Latin equivalent. Alcohol, carboy, elixir, and athanor are examples. Meanwhile, theologian contemporaries of the translators made strides towards the reconciliation of faith and experimental rationalism, thereby priming Europe for the influx of alchemical thought. The 11th-century theologian Anselm of Canterbury put forth the opinion that faith and rationalism were compatible and encouraged rationalism in a Christian context. In the early 12th


id: alchemy-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-6.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
In the 14th century, alchemy became more accessible to Europeans outside the confines of Latin-speaking churchmen and scholars. Alchemical discourse shifted from scholarly philosophical debate to an exposed social commentary on the alchemists themselves. Dante, Piers Plowman, and Chaucer all painted unflattering pictures of alchemists as thieves and liars. Pope John XXII's 1317 edict Spondent quas non-exhibent forbade the false promises of transmutation made by pseudo-alchemists. Roman Catholic Inquisitor General Nicholas Eymerich's Directorium Inquisitorum, written in 1376, associated alchemy with the performance of demonic rituals, which Eymerich differentiated from magic performed in accordance with Christian scripture. This did not, however, lead to any change in the Inquisition's monitoring or prosecution of alchemists. In 1404, Henry IV of England banned the practice of multiplying metals by the passing of the Gold and Silver Act 1403 (5 Hen. 4. c. 4) (although it was possible to buy a licence to attempt to make gold alchemically, and a number were granted by Henry VI and Edward IV). These critiques and regulations centered more around pseudo-alchemical charlatanism than the actual study of alchemy, which continued with an increasingly Christian tone. The 14th century saw the Christian imagery of death and resurrection employed in the


id: alchemy-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-7.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
Although most of these appointments were legitimate, the trend of pseudo-alchemical fraud continued through the Renaissance. Betrüger would use sleight of hand, or claims of secret knowledge to make money or secure patronage. Legitimate mystical and medical alchemists such as Michael Maier and Heinrich Khunrath wrote about fraudulent transmutations, distinguishing themselves from the con artists. False alchemists were sometimes prosecuted for fraud. The terms "chemia" and "alchemia" were used as synonyms in the early modern period, and the differences between alchemy, chemistry and small-scale assaying and metallurgy were not as neat as in the present day. There were important overlaps between practitioners, and trying to classify them into alchemists, chemists and craftsmen is anachronistic. For example, Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), an alchemist better known for his astronomical and astrological investigations, had a laboratory built at his Uraniborg observatory/research institute. Michael Sendivogius (Michał Sędziwój, 1566–1636), a Polish alchemist, philosopher, medical doctor and pioneer of chemistry wrote mystical works but is also credited with distilling oxygen in a lab sometime around 1600. Sendivogious taught his technique to Cornelius Drebbel who, in 1621, applied this in a submarine. Isaac Newton devoted considerably more of his writing to the study of alchemy (see Isaac Newton's


id: alchemy-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-8.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Women === Several women appear in the earliest history of alchemy. Michael Maier names four women who were able to make the philosophers' stone: Mary the Jewess, Cleopatra the Alchemist, Medera, and Taphnutia. Zosimos's sister Theosebia (later known as Euthica the Arab) and Isis the Prophetess also played roles in early alchemical texts. The first alchemist whose name we know was Mary the Jewess (c. 200 A.D.). Early sources claim that Mary (or Maria) devised a number of improvements to alchemical equipment and tools as well as novel techniques in chemistry. Her best known advances were in heating and distillation processes. The laboratory water-bath, known eponymously (especially in France) as the bain-marie, is said to have been invented or at least improved by her. Essentially a double-boiler, it was (and is) used in chemistry for processes that required gentle heating. The tribikos (a modified distillation apparatus) and the kerotakis (a more intricate apparatus used especially for sublimations) are two other advancements in the process of distillation that are credited to her. Although we have no writing from Mary herself, she is known from the early-fourth-century writings of Zosimos of Panopolis. After the Greco-Roman period, women's names appear less frequently


id: alchemy-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-9.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
Western alchemical theory corresponds to the worldview of late antiquity in which it was born. Concepts were imported from Neoplatonism and earlier Greek cosmology. As such, the classical elements appear in alchemical writings, as do the seven classical planets and the corresponding seven metals of antiquity. Similarly, the gods of the Roman pantheon who are associated with these luminaries are discussed in alchemical literature. The concepts of prima materia and anima mundi are central to the theory of the philosopher's stone. === Magnum opus === The Great Work of Alchemy is often described as a series of four stages represented by colours. nigredo, a blackening or melanosis albedo, a whitening or leucosis citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosis == Modernity == Due to the complexity and obscurity of alchemical literature, and the 18th-century diffusion of remaining alchemical practitioners into the area of chemistry, the general understanding of alchemy in the 19th and 20th centuries was influenced by several distinct and radically different interpretations. Those focusing on the exoteric, such as historians of science Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, have interpreted the Decknamen ('code words') of alchemy as physical substances. These scholars have reconstructed


id: alchemy-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-10.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
Alchemy has had a long-standing relationship with art, evident in both alchemical texts and mainstream entertainment. Literary alchemy appears throughout the history of English literature from William Shakespeare to J. K. Rowling, and also the popular Japanese manga Fullmetal Alchemist. Here, characters or plot structure follow an alchemical magnum opus. In the 14th century, Chaucer began a trend of alchemical satire that can still be seen in recent fantasy works, such as those of the late Sir Terry Pratchett. Another literary work inspired by the alchemical tradition is the 1988 novel The Alchemist by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. Visual artists have had a similar relationship with alchemy. While some used it as a source of satire, others worked with the alchemists themselves or integrated alchemical thought or symbols in their work. Music was also present in the works of alchemists and continues to influence popular performers. In the last hundred years, alchemists have been portrayed in a magical and spagyric role in fantasy fiction, film, television, novels, comics, and video games. === Science === One goal of alchemy, the transmutation of base substances into gold, is now known to be impossible by means of traditional chemistry, but possible by other


id: alchemy-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy-11.md
category: reference
title: Alchemy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:25.858667+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alchemy-20260505-0
summary:
==== Studies ==== Dylan M. Burns, " μίξεώς τινι τέχνῃ κρείττονι : Alchemical Metaphor in the Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII,1) ", Aries 15 (2015), p. 79–106. Alberto Camplani, " Procedimenti magico-alchemici e discorso filosofico ermetico " in Giuliana Lanata (ed.), Il Tardoantico alle soglie del Duemila, ETS, 2000, p. 73–98. Alberto Camplani and Marco Zambon, " Il sacrificio come problema in alcune correnti filosofice di età imperiale ", Annali di storia dell'esegesi 19 (2002), p. 59–99. Régine Charron and Louis Painchaud, " 'God is a Dyer,' The Background and Significance of a Puzzling Motif in the Coptic Gospel According to Philip (CG II, 3), Le Muséon 114 (2001), p. 41-50. Régine Charron, " The Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1) and the Greco-Egyptian Alchemical Literature ", Vigiliae Christinae 59 (2005), p. 438-456. Philippe Derchain, "L'Atelier des Orfèvres à Dendara et les origines de l'alchimie," Chronique d'Égypte, vol. 65, no 130, 1990, p. 219–242. Korshi Dosoo, " A History of the Theban Magical Library ", Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 53 (2016), p. 251–274. Olivier Dufault, Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity, California Classical Studies, 2019, Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity. Sergio


id: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry-0.md
category: reference
title: History of anthropometry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:27.146887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-0
summary:
The history of anthropometry includes its use as an early tool of anthropology, use for identification, use for the purposes of understanding human physical variation in paleoanthropology and in various attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits. At various points in history, certain anthropometrics have been cited by advocates of discrimination and eugenics often as a part of some social movement or through pseudoscientific claims. == Craniometry and paleoanthropology == In 1716 Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, who wrote many essays on comparative anatomy for the Académie française, published his Memoir on the Different Positions of the Occipital Foramen in Man and Animals (Mémoire sur les différences de la situation du grand trou occipital dans l'homme et dans les animaux). Six years later Pieter Camper (1722–1789), distinguished both as an artist and as an anatomist, published some lectures that laid the foundation of much work. Camper invented the "facial angle," a measure meant to determine intelligence among various species. According to this technique, a "facial angle" was formed by drawing two lines: one horizontally from the nostril to the ear; and the other perpendicularly from the advancing part of the upper jawbone to the most prominent part of the forehead. Camper's


id: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry-1.md
category: reference
title: History of anthropometry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:27.146887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-0
summary:
In 1883, Frenchman Alphonse Bertillon introduced a system of identification that was named after him. The "Bertillonage" system was based on the finding that several measures of physical features, such as the dimensions of bony structures in the body, remain fairly constant throughout adult life. Bertillon concluded that when these measurements were made and recorded systematically, every individual would be distinguishable. Bertillon's goal was a way of identifying recidivists ("repeat offenders"). Previously police could only record general descriptions. Photography of criminals had become commonplace, but there was no easy way to sort the many thousands of photographs except by name. Bertillon's hope was that, through the use of measurements, a set of identifying numbers could be entered into a filing system installed in a single cabinet. The system involved 10 measurements; height, stretch (distance from left shoulder to middle finger of raised right arm), bust (torso from head to seat when seated), head length (crown to forehead) and head width temple to temple) width of cheeks, and "lengths" of the right ear, the left foot, middle finger, and cubit (elbow to tip of middle finger). It was possible, by exhaustion, to sort the cards on which these details were recorded


id: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry-2.md
category: reference
title: History of anthropometry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:27.146887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-0
summary:
Phylogeography is the science of identifying and tracking major human migrations, especially in prehistoric times. Linguistics can follow the movement of languages and archaeology can follow the movement of artefact styles but neither can tell whether a culture's spread was due to a source population's physically migrating or to a destination population's simply copying the technology and learning the language. Anthropometry was used extensively by anthropologists studying human and racial origins: some attempted racial differentiation and classification, often seeking ways in which certain races were inferior to others. Nott translated Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–1855), a founding work of racial segregationism that made three main divisions between races, based not on colour but on climatic conditions and geographic location, and privileged the "Aryan" race. Science has tested many theories aligning race and personality, which have been current since Boulainvilliers (1658–1722) contrasted the Français (French people), alleged descendants of the Nordic Franks, and members of the aristocracy, to the Third Estate, considered to be indigenous Gallo-Roman people subordinated by right of conquest. François Bernier, Carl Linnaeus and Blumenbach had examined multiple observable human characteristics in search of a typology. Bernier based his racial


id: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry-3.md
category: reference
title: History of anthropometry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:27.146887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-0
summary:
In Crania Americana Morton claimed that Caucasians had the biggest brains, averaging 87 cubic inches, Indians were in the middle with an average of 82 cubic inches and Negroes had the smallest brains with an average of 78 cubic inches. In 1873 Paul Broca (1824–1880) found the same pattern described by Samuel Morton's Crania Americana by weighing brains at autopsy. Other historical studies alleging a Black–White difference in brain size include Bean (1906), Mall, (1909), Pearl, (1934) and Vint (1934). But in Germany Rudolf Virchow's study led him to denounce "Nordic mysticism" in the 1885 Anthropology Congress in Karlsruhe. Josef Kollmann, a collaborator of Virchow, stated in the same congress that the people of Europe, be them German, Italian, English or French, belonged to a "mixture of various races," furthermore declaring that the "results of craniology" led to "struggle against any theory concerning the superiority of this or that European race". Virchow later rejected measure of skulls as legitimate means of taxonomy. Paul Kretschmer quoted an 1892 discussion with him concerning these criticisms, also citing Aurel von Törok's 1895 work, who basically proclaimed the failure of craniometry. Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) claimed Samuel Morton had fudged data and "overpacked" the


id: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry-4.md
category: reference
title: History of anthropometry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anthropometry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:27.146887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-anthropometry-20260505-0
summary:
Caucasoid characterized by a tall dolichocephalic skull, receded zygomas, large brow ridge and projecting-narrow nasal apertures. Negroid characterized by a short dolichocephalic skull, receded zygomas and wide nasal apertures. Mongoloid characterized by a medium brachycephalic skull, projecting zygomas, small brow ridge and small nasal apertures. Ripley's The Races of Europe was rewritten in 1939 by Harvard physical anthropologist Carleton S. Coon. Coon, a 20th-century craniofacial anthropometrist, used the technique for his The Origin of Races (New York: Knopf, 1962). Because of the inconsistencies in the old three-part system (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid), Coon adopted a five-part scheme. He defined "Caucasoid" as a pattern of skull measurements and other phenotypical characteristics typical of populations in Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, West Asia, North Africa, and Northeast Africa (Ethiopia, and Somalia). He discarded the term "Negroid" as misleading since it implies skin tone, which is found at low latitudes around the globe and is a product of adaptation, and defined skulls typical of sub-Saharan Africa as "Congoid" and those of Southern Africa as "Capoid". Finally, he split "Australoid" from "Mongoloid" along a line roughly similar to the modern distinction between sinodonts in the north and sundadonts in the south. He argued that these


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-0.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
The Antikythera mechanism ( AN-tik-ih-THEER-ə, US also AN-ty-kih-) is an ancient Greek hand-powered orrery (model of the Solar System). It is the oldest known example of an analogue computer. It could be used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance. It could also be used to track the four-year cycle of athletic games similar to an olympiad, the cycle of the ancient Olympic Games. The artefact was among wreckage retrieved from a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera in 1901. In 1902, during a visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, it was noticed by Greek politician Spyridon Stais as containing a gear, prompting the first study of the fragment by his cousin, Valerios Stais, the museum director. The device, housed in the remains of a wooden-framed case of (uncertain) overall size 34 cm × 18 cm × 9 cm (13.4 in × 7.1 in × 3.5 in), was found as one lump, later separated into three main fragments which are now divided into 82 separate fragments after conservation efforts. Four of these fragments contain gears, while inscriptions are found on many others. The largest gear is about 13 cm (5 in) in diameter


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-1.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Origin === The Antikythera mechanism is generally referred to as the first known analogue computer. The quality and complexity of the mechanism's manufacture suggests it must have had undiscovered predecessors during the Hellenistic period. Its construction relied on theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers during the second century BC, and it is estimated to have been built in the late second century BC or the early first century BC. In 2008, research by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project suggested the concept for the mechanism may have originated in the colonies of Corinth, since they identified the calendar on the Metonic Spiral as coming from Corinth, or one of its colonies in northwest Greece or Sicily. Syracuse was a colony of Corinth and the home of Archimedes, and the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project argued in 2008 that it might imply a connection with the school of Archimedes. It was demonstrated in 2017 that the calendar on the Metonic Spiral is of the Corinthian type, but cannot be that of Syracuse. Another theory suggests that coins found by Jacques Cousteau at the wreck site in the 1970s date to the time of the device's construction, and posits that


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-2.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Operation === On the front face of the mechanism, there is a fixed ring dial representing the ecliptic, the twelve zodiacal signs marked off with equal 30-degree sectors. This matched with the Babylonian custom of assigning one twelfth of the ecliptic to each zodiac sign equally, even though the constellation boundaries were variable. Outside that dial is another ring which is rotatable, marked off with the months and days of the Sothic Egyptian calendar, twelve months of 30 days plus five intercalary days. The months are marked with the Egyptian names for the months transcribed into the Greek alphabet. The first task is to rotate the Egyptian calendar ring to match the current zodiac points. The Egyptian calendar ignored leap days, so it advanced through a full zodiac sign in about 120 years. The mechanism was operated by turning a small hand crank (now lost) which was linked via a crown gear to the largest gear, the four-spoked gear visible on the front of fragment A, gear b1. This moved the date pointer on the front dial, which would be set to the correct Egyptian calendar day. The year is not selectable, so it is necessary to know the


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-3.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
ΠΑΧΩΝ (Pashons) ΠΑΥΝΙ (Payni) ΕΠΙΦΙ (Epiphi) The other months have been reconstructed; some reconstructions of the mechanism omit the five days of the Egyptian intercalary month. The Zodiac dial contains Greek inscriptions of the members of the zodiac, which is believed to be adapted to the tropical month version rather than the sidereal: ΚΡΙΟΣ (Krios [Ram], Aries) ΤΑΥΡΟΣ (Tauros [Bull], Taurus) ΔΙΔΥΜΟΙ (Didymoi [Twins], Gemini) ΚΑΡΚΙΝΟΣ (Karkinos [Crab], Cancer) ΛΕΩΝ (Leon [Lion], Leo) ΠΑΡΘΕΝΟΣ (Parthenos [Maiden], Virgo) ΧΗΛΑΙ (Chelai [Scorpio's Claw or Zygos], Libra) ΣΚΟΡΠΙΟΣ (Skorpios [Scorpion], Scorpio) ΤΟΞΟΤΗΣ (Toxotes [Archer], Sagittarius) ΑΙΓΟΚΕΡΩΣ (Aigokeros [Goat-horned], Capricorn) ΥΔΡΟΧΟΟΣ (Hydrokhoos [Water carrier], Aquarius) ΙΧΘΥΕΣ (Ichthyes [Fish], Pisces) Also on the zodiac dial are single characters at specific points (see reconstruction at ref). They are keyed to a parapegma, a precursor of the modern day almanac inscribed on the front face above and beneath the dials. They mark the locations of longitudes on the ecliptic for specific stars. The parapegma above the dials reads (square brackets indicate inferred text): The parapegma beneath the dials reads: At least two pointers indicated positions of bodies upon the ecliptic. A lunar pointer indicated the position of the Moon, and a mean Sun pointer was shown, perhaps


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-4.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
The Saros dial is the main lower spiral dial on the rear of the mechanism. The Saros cycle is 18 years and 11+1⁄3 days long (6585.333... days), which is very close to 223 synodic months (6585.3211 days). It is defined as the cycle of repetition of the positions required to cause solar and lunar eclipses, and therefore, it could be used to predict them—not only the month, but the day and time of day. The cycle is approximately 8 hours longer than an integer number of days. Translated into global spin, that means an eclipse occurs not only eight hours later, but one-third of a rotation farther to the west. Glyphs in 51 of the 223 synodic month cells of the dial specify the occurrence of 38 lunar and 27 solar eclipses. Some of the abbreviations in the glyphs read: Σ = ΣΕΛΗΝΗ ("Selene", Moon) Η = ΗΛΙΟΣ ("Helios", Sun) H\M = ΗΜΕΡΑΣ ("Hemeras", of the day) ω\ρ = ωρα ("hora", hour) N\Y = ΝΥΚΤΟΣ ("Nuktos", of the night) The glyphs show whether the designated eclipse is solar or lunar, and give the day of the month and hour. Solar eclipses may not be visible at any given point, and


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-5.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Gearing === The mechanism is remarkable for the level of miniaturisation and the complexity of its parts, which is comparable to that of 14th-century astronomical clocks. It has at least 30 gears, although mechanism expert Michael Wright has suggested the Greeks of this period were capable of implementing a system with many more gears. There is debate as to whether the mechanism had indicators for all five of the planets known to the ancient Greeks. No gearing for such a planetary display survives and all gears are accounted for—with the exception of one 63-toothed gear (r1) otherwise unaccounted for in fragment D. Fragment D is a small quasi-circular constriction that, according to Xenophon Moussas, has a gear inside a somewhat larger hollow gear. The inner gear moves inside the outer gear reproducing an epicyclical motion that, with a pointer, gives the position of planet Jupiter. The inner gear is numbered 45, "ME" in Greek, and the same number is written on two surfaces of this small cylindrical box. The purpose of the front face was to position astronomical bodies with respect to the celestial sphere along the ecliptic, in reference to the observer's position on the Earth. That is


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-6.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
It is very probable there were planetary dials, as the complicated motions and periodicities of all planets are mentioned in the manual of the mechanism. The exact position and mechanisms for the gears of the planets is unknown. There is no coaxial system except for the Moon. Fragment D that is an epicycloidal system, is considered as a planetary gear for Jupiter (Moussas, 2011, 2012, 2014) or a gear for the motion of the Sun (University of Thessaloniki group). The Sun gear is operated from the hand-operated crank (connected to gear a1, driving the large four-spoked mean Sun gear, b1) and in turn drives the rest of the gear sets. The Sun gear is b1/b2 and b2 has 64 teeth. It directly drives the date/mean sun pointer (there may have been a second, "true sun" pointer that displayed the Sun's elliptical anomaly; it is discussed below in the Freeth reconstruction). In this discussion, reference is to modelled rotational period of various pointers and indicators; they all assume the input rotation of the b1 gear of 360 degrees, corresponding with one tropical year, and are computed solely on the basis of the gear ratios of the gears named. The Moon train


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-7.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Proposed gear schemes === Because of the large space between the mean Sun gear and the front of the case and the size of and mechanical features on the mean Sun gear, it is very likely that the mechanism contained further gearing that either has been lost in or subsequent to the shipwreck, or was removed before being loaded onto the ship. This lack of evidence and nature of the front part of the mechanism has led to attempts to emulate what the Ancient Greeks would have done and because of the lack of evidence, many solutions have been put forward over the years. But as progress has been made on analyzing the internal structures and deciphering the inscriptions, earlier models have been ruled out and better models developed. Derek J. de Solla Price built a simple model in the 1970s. In 2002 Michael Wright designed and built the first workable model with the known mechanism and his emulation of a potential planetarium system. He suggested that along with the lunar anomaly, adjustments would have been made for the deeper, more basic solar anomaly (known as the "first anomaly"). He included pointers for this "true sun", Mercury, Venus, Mars,


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-8.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
The system to synthesise the solar anomaly is very similar to that used in Wright's proposal: three gears, one fixed in the centre of the b1 gear and attached to the Sun spindle, the second fixed on one of the spokes (in their proposal the one on the bottom left) acting as an idle gear, and the final positioned next to that one; the final gear is fitted with an offset pin and, over said pin, an arm with a slot that in turn, is attached to the sun spindle, inducing anomaly as the mean Sun wheel turns. The inferior planet mechanism includes the Sun (treated as a planet in this context), Mercury, and Venus. For each of the three systems, there is an epicyclic gear whose axis is mounted on b1, thus the basic frequency is the Earth year (as it is, in truth, for epicyclic motion in the Sun and all the planets—excepting only the Moon). Each meshes with a gear grounded to the mechanism frame. Each has a pin mounted, potentially on an extension of one side of the gear that enlarges the gear, but doesn't interfere with the teeth; in some cases, the needed distance between


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-9.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
In short, the Antikythera Mechanism was a machine designed to predict celestial phenomena according to the sophisticated astronomical theories current in its day, the sole witness to a lost history of brilliant engineering, a conception of pure genius, one of the great wonders of the ancient world—but it didn't really work very well! In addition to theoretical accuracy, there is the issue of mechanical accuracy. Freeth and Jones note that the inevitable "looseness" in the mechanism due to the hand-built gears, with their triangular teeth and the frictions between gears, and in bearing surfaces, probably would have swamped the finer solar and lunar correction mechanisms built into it: Though the engineering was remarkable for its era, recent research indicates that its design conception exceeded the engineering precision of its manufacture by a wide margin—with considerable cumulative inaccuracies in the gear trains, which would have cancelled out many of the subtle anomalies built into its design. While the device may have struggled with inaccuracies, due to the triangular teeth being hand-made, the calculations used and technology implemented to create the elliptical paths of the planets and retrograde motion of the Moon and Mars, by using a clockwork-type gear train with the


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-10.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
Pappus of Alexandria (290 – c. 350 AD) stated that Archimedes had written a now lost manuscript on the construction of these devices titled On Sphere-Making. The surviving texts from ancient times describe many of his creations, some even containing simple drawings. One such device is his odometer, the exact model later used by the Romans to place their mile markers (described by Vitruvius, Heron of Alexandria and in the time of Emperor Commodus). The drawings in the text appeared functional, but attempts to build them as pictured had failed. When the gears pictured, which had square teeth, were replaced with gears of the type in the Antikythera mechanism, which were angled, the device was perfectly functional. If Cicero's account is correct, then this technology existed as early as the third century BC. Archimedes' device is also mentioned by later Roman era writers such as Lactantius (Divinarum Institutionum Libri VII), Claudian (In sphaeram Archimedes), and Proclus (Commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements of Geometry) in the fourth and fifth centuries. Cicero also said that another such device was built "recently" by his friend Posidonius, "... each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in


id: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism-11.md
category: reference
title: Antikythera mechanism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:28.502947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antikythera-mechanism-20260505-0
summary:
Several exhibitions have been staged worldwide, leading to the main "Antikythera shipwreck" exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. As of 2012, the Antikythera mechanism was displayed as part of a temporary exhibition about the Antikythera shipwreck, accompanied by reconstructions made by Ioannis Theofanidis, Derek de Solla Price, Michael Wright, the Thessaloniki University and Dionysios Kriaris. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana, at the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York, at Astronomisch-Physikalisches Kabinett in Kassel, Germany, at the Archimedes Museum in Olympia, Greece, at the Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology in Athens, at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and at the Western Australian Museum. The National Geographic documentary series Naked Science dedicated an episode to the Antikythera Mechanism entitled "Star Clock BC" that aired on 20 January 2011. A documentary, The World's First Computer, was produced in 2012 by the Antikythera mechanism researcher and film-maker Tony Freeth. In 2012, BBC Four aired The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Computer; it was also aired on 3 April 2013 in the United States on NOVA, the PBS science series, under the name Ancient Computer. It documents the discovery and 2005 investigation of the


id: antiquarian-science-books-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquarian_science_books-0.md
category: reference
title: Antiquarian science books
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquarian_science_books
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:33.355953+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antiquarian-science-books-20260505-0
summary:
Antiquarian science books are original historical works (e.g., books or technical papers) concerning science, mathematics and sometimes engineering. These books are important primary references for the study of the history of science and technology, they can provide valuable insights into the historical development of the various fields of scientific inquiry (History of science, History of mathematics, etc.) The landmark are significant first (or early) editions typically worth hundreds or thousands of dollars (prices may vary widely based on condition, etc.). Reprints of these books are often available, for example from Great Books of the Western World, Dover Publications or Google Books. Incunabula are extremely rare and valuable, but as the Scientific Revolution is only taken to have started around the 1540s, such works of Renaissance literature (including alchemy, Renaissance magic, etc.) are not usually included under the notion of "scientific" literature. Printed originals of the beginning Scientific Revolution thus date to the 1540s or later, notably beginning with the original publication of Copernican heliocentrism. Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium of 1543 sold for more than US$2 million at auctions. == List of notable books == === 16th century === Tartaglia, Niccolò. Nova Scientia (A New Science). Venice, 1537. Ballistics.


id: antiquarian-science-books-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquarian_science_books-1.md
category: reference
title: Antiquarian science books
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquarian_science_books
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:33.355953+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antiquarian-science-books-20260505-0
summary:
=== 19th century === Gauss, Carl Friedrich (Germany). Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. Leipzig, 1801. Number theory Young, Thomas (England). Experiments and Calculations Relative to Physical Optics, 1803. Light Argand, Jean-Robert (Switzerland). Essai sur une maniere de representer les quantities imaginaries dans les constructions geometriques, 1806. Imaginary numbers. Dalton, John (England). A New System of Chemical Philosophy. London, 1808. Atomic theory Berzelius, Jöns Jacob (Sweden). Läroboken i kemien, 1808. Chemistry Cayley, George (England). On Aerial Navigation. Brompton, 3 Vol, 1809. Aeronautics. Ørsted, Hans Christian (Denmark). Experimenta circa effectum conflictus electrici in acum magneticam. Copenhagen, 1820. Electromagnetism. Fourier, Joseph (France). Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur. Paris, 1822. Fourier series. Fresnel, Augustin-Jean (France). Mémoire Sur Un Nouveau Système D'Éclairage Des Phares Lu À L'Académie Des Sciences. Paris, 1822. Wave optics Babbage, Charles (England). Mr. Babbage's invention: Application of machinery to the purpose of calculating and printing mathematical tables. London, 1823. Computing Lobachevsky, Nikolai (Russia). Geometriya. 1823. Non-Euclidean geometry Cauchy, Augustin-Louis (France). Le calcul infinitesimal. Paris, 1823. Mathematical analysis Carnot, Sadi (France). Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu et sur les machines propres à déveloper cette puissance. Paris, 1824. Thermodynamics Ampère, André-Marie (France). Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques, 1827. Electromagnetism Laplace, Pierre-Simon


id: antiquarian-science-books-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquarian_science_books-2.md
category: reference
title: Antiquarian science books
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquarian_science_books
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:33.355953+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: antiquarian-science-books-20260505-0
summary:
=== 20th century (pre-Cold War) === Planck, Max (Germany). Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum. Leipzig, 1900. Quantum mechanics Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich (Russia). The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices. Kaluga, 1903. Rockets Rutherford, Ernest (New Zealand). Radio-activity. Cambridge, 1904. Nuclear physics Lorentz, Hendrik (Netherlands). Electromagnetic phenomena in a system moving with any velocity smaller than that of light. Amsterdam, 1904. Special relativity Einstein, Albert (Germany). Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") Leipzig, 1905. Special relativity Einstein, Albert (Germany). Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content? Leipzig, 1905. Physics Richardson, Lewis (England). The Approximate Arithmetical Solution by Finite Differences of Physical Problems Involving Differential Equations, with an Application to the Stresses in a Masonry Dam. London, 1910. Computational mechanics Boas, Franz (Germany/America). The Mind of Primitive Man. New York, 1911. Anthropology Bohr, Niels (Denmark). On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules. London, 1913. Quantum mechanics Einstein, Albert (Germany). Die Grundlage Der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie (Foundations of the General Theory of Relativity). Leipzig, 1916. Physics. Goddard, Robert Hutchings (America). A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. Washington, D.C, 1919. Rockets de Broglie, Louis (France). Recherches sur la théorie des quanta


id: astrology-and-astronomy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomy-0.md
category: reference
title: Astrology and astronomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:34.543710+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: astrology-and-astronomy-20260505-0
summary:
Astrology and astronomy were archaically treated together (Latin: astrologia), but gradually distinguished through the Late Middle Ages into the Age of Reason. Developments in 17th century philosophy resulted in astrology and astronomy operating as independent pursuits by the 18th century. Whereas the academic discipline of astronomy studies observable phenomena beyond the Earth's atmosphere, astrology uses the apparent positions of celestial objects as the basis for divination. == Overview == In pre-modern times, most cultures did not make a clear distinction between the two disciplines, putting them both together as one. In ancient Babylonia, famed for its astrology, there were not separate roles for the astronomer as predictor of celestial phenomena, and the astrologer as their interpreter; both functions were performed by the same person. In ancient Greece, pre-Socratic thinkers such as Anaximander, Xenophanes, Anaximenes, and Heraclides speculated about the nature and substance of the stars and planets. Astronomers such as Eudoxus (contemporary with Plato) observed planetary motions and cycles, and created a geocentric cosmological model that would be accepted by Aristotle. This model generally lasted until Ptolemy, who added epicycles to explain the retrograde motion of Mars. (Around 250 BC, Aristarchus of Samos postulated a proto-heliocentric theory, which would not


id: astrology-and-astronomy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomy-1.md
category: reference
title: Astrology and astronomy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_astronomy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:34.543710+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: astrology-and-astronomy-20260505-0
summary:
For a long time the funding from astrology supported some astronomical research, which was in turn used to make more accurate ephemerides for use in astrology. In Medieval Europe the word Astronomia was often used to encompass both disciplines as this included the study of astronomy and astrology jointly and without a real distinction; this was one of the original Seven Liberal Arts. Kings and other rulers generally employed court astrologers to aid them in the decision making in their kingdoms, thereby funding astronomical research. University medical students were taught astrology as it was generally used in medical practice. Astronomy and astrology diverged over the course of the 17th through 19th centuries. It is unclear if Copernicus practiced astrology,), but the most important astronomers before Isaac Newton were astrologers by profession—Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Also relevant here was the development of better timekeeping instruments, initially for aid in navigation; improved timekeeping made it possible to make more exact astrological predictions—predictions which could be tested, and which consistently proved to be false. By the end of the 18th century, astronomy was one of the major sciences of the Enlightenment model, using the recently codified scientific method, and was


id: barlow-s-law-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlow's_law-0.md
category: reference
title: Barlow's law
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlow's_law
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:35.824552+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: barlow-s-law-20260505-0
summary:
Barlow's law is an incorrect physical law proposed by Peter Barlow in 1825 to describe the ability of wires to conduct electricity. It says that the strength of the effect of electricity passing through a wire varies inversely with the square root of its length and directly with the square root of its cross-sectional area, or, in modern terminology: I ∝ A L , {\displaystyle I\propto {\sqrt {\frac {A}{L}}},} where I is electric current, A is the cross-sectional area of the wire, and L is the length of the wire. Barlow formulated his law in terms of the diameter d of a cylindrical wire. Since A is proportional to the square of d the law becomes I ∝ d / L {\displaystyle I\propto d/{\sqrt {L}}} for cylindrical wires. Barlow undertook his experiments with the aim of determining whether long-distance telegraphy was feasible and believed that he proved that it was not. The publication of Barlow's law delayed research into telegraphy for several years, until 1831 when Joseph Henry and Philip Ten Eyck constructed a circuit 1,060 feet long, which used a large battery to activate an electromagnet. Barlow did not investigate the dependence of the current strength on electric tension


id: bharat-ki-chhap-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Ki_Chhap-0.md
category: reference
title: Bharat Ki Chhap
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Ki_Chhap
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:37.133106+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bharat-ki-chhap-20260505-0
summary:
Bharat Ki Chhap (Identity of India) is a 13-episode Indian TV science documentary series chronicling the history of science and technology in India from pre-historic times until the present. It was directed by filmmaker Chandita Mukherjee and funded by the Department of Science and Technology's National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) in 1987. It was telecasted on Doordarshan every Sunday Morning. It was introduced by Professor Yash Pal. It projected in a pragmatic way alternative viewpoints on the subject of science as pioneered in India, in contrast with western scientific endeavours. It drew support from People's Science Movement. A companion book was later published by Comet Project titled Bhārat Ki Chhāp: A Companion Book to the Film Series by Chayanika Shah, Suhas Paranjape, Swatija Manorama. == Episodes == A total of 13 episodes were released. == References ==


id: big-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Big science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:38.290489+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: big-science-20260505-0
summary:
Big science is a term used by scientists and historians of science to describe a series of changes in science which occurred in industrial nations during and after World War II, as scientific progress increasingly came to rely on large-scale projects usually funded by national governments or groups of governments. Individual or small group efforts, or small science, are still relevant today as theoretical results by individual authors may have a significant impact, but very often the empirical verification requires experiments using constructions, such as the Large Hadron Collider, costing between $5 and $10 billion. == Development == While science and technology have always been important to and driven by warfare, the increase in military funding of science following the second World War was on a scale wholly unprecedented. James Conant, in a 1941 letter to Chemical Engineering News, said that World War II "is a physicist's war rather than a chemist's," a phrase that was cemented in the vernacular in post-war discussion of the role that those scientists played in the development of new weapons and tools, notably the proximity fuse, radar, and the atomic bomb. The bulk of these last two activities took place in a new form


id: big-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science-1.md
category: reference
title: Big science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:38.290489+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: big-science-20260505-0
summary:
When history looks at the 20th century, she will see science and technology as its theme; she will find in the monuments of Big Science—the huge rockets, the high-energy accelerators, the high-flux research reactors—symbols of our time just as surely as she finds in Notre Dame a symbol of the Middle Ages. ... We build our monuments in the name of scientific truth, they built theirs in the name of religious truth; we use our Big Science to add to our country's prestige, they used their churches for their cities' prestige; we build to placate what ex-President Eisenhower suggested could become a dominant scientific caste, they built to please the priests of Isis and Osiris. Weinberg's article addressed criticisms of the way in which the era of Big Science could negatively affect science — such as astronomer Fred Hoyle's contention that excessive money for science would only make science fat and lazy — and encouraged, in the end, limiting Big Science only to the national laboratory system and preventing its incursion into the university system. Since Weinberg's article there have been many historical and sociological studies on the effects of Big Science both in and out of the laboratory. Soon


id: book-of-nature-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature-0.md
category: reference
title: Book of Nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:39.495700+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: book-of-nature-20260505-0
summary:
The Book of Nature (Lat. liber naturae/liber mundi, Ar. kitāb takwīnī) is a religious and philosophical cosmological metaphor known from Antiquity in various cultures, and prominent in the Latin and Romance literature of the European Middle Ages. The idea of a cosmos formed by letters is already found in the fragments of Heraclitus, where it relates to the Greek concept of logos, in Plato’s Timaeus, and in Lucretius’ De rerum natura. The metaphor of the Book of Nature straddles the divide between religion and science, viewing nature as a readable text open to knowledge and understanding. Early theologians, such as St. Paul, believed the Book of Nature was a source of God's revelation to humankind. He believed that when read alongside sacred scripture, the "book" and the study of God's creations would lead to a knowledge of God himself. This type of revelation is often referred to as a general revelation. The concept corresponds to the early Greek philosophical concept of logos, which implies that humans, as part of a coherent universe, are capable of understanding the design of the natural world through reason. The phrase liber naturae was famously used by Galileo when writing about how "the book of


id: book-of-nature-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature-1.md
category: reference
title: Book of Nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:39.495700+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: book-of-nature-20260505-0
summary:
== Christianity and Greek culture == The Greeks constructed a view of the natural world in which all references to mythological origins and causes were removed. Greek philosophers inadvertently left the upper world vacant by abandoning ancient ties to free-acting, conspiring gods of nature. The new philosophy of nature made unseen mythological forces irrelevant. While some philosophers drifted toward atheism, others worked within the new philosophy to reconstitute the concept of a divine being. Consequently, the new outlook toward the natural world inspired the belief in one supreme force compatible with the new philosophy—in other words, monotheistic. However, the path from nature to rediscovering a divine being was uncertain. The belief in causality in nature implied an endless, interconnected chain of causation acting upon the natural world. It is presumed, however, that Greek thought denied the existence of a natural world where causality was infinite, which gave rise to the notion of "first cause", upon which the order of other causes must rely. The first contact between Christianity and Greek culture occurred in Athens in the first century CE. The Christian Scriptures note that within a few years of Christ’s crucifixion, Paul and Silas were debating with Epicureans and Stoics


id: book-of-nature-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature-2.md
category: reference
title: Book of Nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:39.495700+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: book-of-nature-20260505-0
summary:
From a single print shop in Mainz, Germany around 1440, the movable type printing-press had spread to no less than around 270 cities in Central, Western and Eastern Europe and had already produced more than 20 million volumes by the end of the 15th century. At the same time, the number of universities had grown to more than 60. By revealing a "New World" unknown to the ancients, the European encounter with the Americas specifically undermined the authority of Claudius Ptolemy, the 2nd-century scholar whose geographic and astronomical models had long been considered infallible. Tycho Brahe's unprecedentedly accurate astronomical observations in the late 16th century and Galileo Galilei’s early 17th-century telescopic observations combined to turn astronomy into the first modern science. Galileo's observations ended a millenium of pre-modern astronomical orthodoxy. Johannes Kepler used Brahe's data to discover that planets have elliptical, not circular, orbits and develop the laws of planetary motion. Because of Kepler, astronomical phenomena came to be seen as being governed by physical laws, a kind of clockwork. Ancient texts and doctrines were disputed, knowledge of the natural world was incomplete, interpretation of Christian Scripture was challenged, and Greek philosophy—which helped draft the Book of Nature—and Christian Scripture


id: bridgewater-treatises-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises-0.md
category: reference
title: Bridgewater Treatises
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:40.779771+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bridgewater-treatises-20260505-0
summary:
The Bridgewater Treatises (1833–36) are a series of eight works that were written by leading scientific figures appointed by the President of the Royal Society in fulfilment of a bequest of £8000, made by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater, for work on "the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation." Despite being voluminous and costly, the series was very widely read and discussed, becoming one of the most important contributions to Victorian literature on the relationship between religion and science. They made such an impact that Charles Darwin began On the Origin of Species with a quotation from the Bridgewater Treatise of William Whewell. == The Bridgewater Bequest == Before unexpectedly becoming the 8th Earl of Bridgewater in 1823, Francis Henry Egerton spent most of his life as an absentee parson. He published works of classical scholarship and issued others praising the historical achievements of his family, including those of his father's cousin, Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, the "father of British inland navigation." In 1781, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; after 1802 he lived mostly in Paris, where he amassed a collection of manuscripts later donated to the


id: bridgewater-treatises-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises-1.md
category: reference
title: Bridgewater Treatises
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:40.779771+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bridgewater-treatises-20260505-0
summary:
=== Medical practitioners: Kidd and Bell, Roget and Prout === The two medical professors John Kidd and Charles Bell wrote shorter and theologically lightweight contributions. Kidd's work, on the "physical constitution of man," was claimed to be "but a moderate thousand pounds worth," Like Bell, whose limited subject was "the hand," Kidd set out to show that modern developments in anatomy did not support either materialism or the transmutation of species, instead confirming belief in the reality of divine design. The two other medical authors, Peter Mark Roget and William Prout, wrote lengthier contributions considering how the emergence of physiological laws enhanced the belief in divine design, rather than diminishing it. In his treatise on "animal and vegetable physiology," Roget argued that the laws of "philosophical anatomy" provided a grander vision of divine action. Prout's rag-bag treatise on "chemistry, meteorology, and the function of digestion" was more ambivalent, arguing that God's action was strikingly evident in the laws of chemical action, but also that many phenomena seemed to subvert the general laws. === The Bible and science: Kirby and Buckland === The final two treatises, those of William Kirby and William Buckland, both addressed the relationship of the Bible to


id: bridgewater-treatises-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises-2.md
category: reference
title: Bridgewater Treatises
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:40.779771+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bridgewater-treatises-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Addinall, Peter (1991). Philosophy and Biblical Interpretation: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, Denis R.; Numbers, Ronald L. (2010). Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-60842-6. "Authors of the Bridgewater Treatises (act. c. 1833–1836)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/96360. Retrieved 2022-09-12. Brock, W. H. (1966). "The Selection of the Authors of the Bridgewater Treatises". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 21 (2): 162–179. ISSN 0035-9149. Clark, John F. M. (2009). Bugs and the Victorians. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15091-9. Desmond, Adrian. The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-14453-5. Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1996). Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-34481-5. Hilton, Boyd (1988). The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795-1865. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820107-6. Rehbock, Philip F. (1983). The Philosophical Naturalists: Themes in Early Nineteenth-century British Biology. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-09430-0. Robson, John M. "The Fiat and Finger of God: The Bridgewater Treatises". In Helmstadter, Richard


id: charles-babbage-s-saturday-night-soir-es-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage's_Saturday_night_soirées-0.md
category: reference
title: Charles Babbage's Saturday night soirées
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage's_Saturday_night_soirées
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:41.921935+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-babbage-s-saturday-night-soir-es-20260505-0
summary:
Charles Babbage's Saturday night soirées were gatherings held by the mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage at his home in Dorset Street, Marylebone, London from 1828 and into the 1840s. The soirées were attended by the cultural elite of the time. == Scientific soirées == Babbage left England when his wife and father died in 1827. On his return in 1828, now in possession of a considerable inheritance, he began to host Saturday evening parties. The science historian James A. Secord describes the parties as "scientific soirées". Secord writes that Babbage imported the idea from France, and once established, such soirées "became one of the chief ways in which scientific discussion could take place on a more sustained basis within polite society." In her autobiography, the English writer and sociologist Harriet Martineau wrote: "All were eager to go to his glorious soirées and I always thought he appeared to great advantage as a host. His patience in explaining his machine in those days was really exemplary." According to biographers Bruce Collier and James H. MacLachlan, "Babbage was a bon vivant with a love of dining out and socialising. He sparkled as a host and raconteur. His Saturday soirées were glittering events


id: list-of-chemical-elements-named-after-people-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements_named_after_people-0.md
category: reference
title: List of chemical elements named after people
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements_named_after_people
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:43.127674+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: list-of-chemical-elements-named-after-people-20260505-0
summary:
This list of chemical elements named after people includes elements named for people both directly and indirectly. Of the 118 elements, 19 are connected with the names of 20 people. 15 elements were named to honor 16 scientists (as curium honours both Marie and Pierre Curie). Four others have indirect connection to the names of non-scientists. Only gadolinium and samarium occur in nature; the rest are man-made. == List == These 19 elements are connected to the names of people. Seaborg and Oganessian were the only living persons honored by having elements named after them; Oganessian is the only one still alive. Names were proposed to honor Einstein and Fermi while they were still alive, but they had both died by the time those names became official. The four elements associated with non-scientists were not named in their honor but named for something else bearing their name: samarium for the mineral samarskite from which it was isolated; and americium, berkelium and livermorium after places named for them. The cities of Berkeley, California and Livermore, California are the locations of the University of California Radiation Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, respectively. Six elements have only an indirect namesake: samarium, gadolinium,


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-0.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
The history of chemistry represents a time span from ancient history to the present. By 1000 BC, civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Examples include the discovery of fire, extracting metals from ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume, rendering fat into soap, making glass, and making alloys like bronze. The protoscience of chemistry, alchemy, was unsuccessful in explaining the nature of matter and its transformations. However, by performing experiments and recording the results, alchemists set the stage for modern chemistry. The history of chemistry is intertwined with the history of thermodynamics, especially through the work of Willard Gibbs. == Ancient history == === Early humans === ==== Fire ==== Arguably the first chemical reaction used in a controlled manner was fire. However, for millennia fire was seen simply as a mystical force that could transform one substance into another (burning wood, or boiling water) while producing heat and light. Fire affected many aspects of early societies. These ranged from the simplest facets of everyday life, such as cooking and habitat heating and lighting, to more advanced uses, such as making


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-1.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
==== Ferrous metallurgy ==== The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal is much more difficult than copper or tin. While iron is not better suited for tools than bronze (until steel was discovered), iron ore is much more abundant and common than either copper or tin, and therefore more often available locally, with no need to trade for it. Iron working appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, beginning the Iron Age. The secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Philistines. Cast iron smithing as well as the innovation of the Blast Furnace and Cupola furnace was invented in ancient China, during the Warring States period when armies sought to develop better weaponry and armor in state-armories. Many other applications, practices, and devices associated with or involved in metallurgy were also established in ancient China, with the innovations of hydraulic-powered trip hammers, and double-acting piston bellows. The Iron Age is named after the advent of iron working (ferrous metallurgy). Historical developments in ferrous metallurgy can be found in a wide variety of past cultures and civilizations. These include the ancient and medieval kingdoms


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-2.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Alchemy is defined by the Hermetic quest for the philosopher's stone, the study of which is steeped in symbolic mysticism, and differs greatly from modern science. Alchemists toiled to make transformations on an esoteric (spiritual) and/or exoteric (practical) level. It was the protoscientific, exoteric aspects of alchemy that contributed heavily to the evolution of chemistry in Greco-Roman Egypt, in the Islamic Golden Age, and then in Europe. Alchemy and chemistry share an interest in the composition and properties of matter, and until the 18th century they were not separate disciplines. The term chymistry has been used to describe the blend of alchemy and chemistry that existed before that time. During the Renaissance, exoteric alchemy remained popular in the form of Paracelsian iatrochemistry, while spiritual alchemy flourished, realigned to its Platonic, Hermetic, and Gnostic roots. Consequently, the symbolic quest for the philosopher's stone was not superseded by scientific advances, and was still the domain of respected scientists and doctors until the early 18th century. Early modern alchemists who are renowned for their scientific contributions include Jan Baptist van Helmont, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. === Alchemy in the Islamic world === In the Islamic World, the Muslims were translating the works


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-3.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their extraction to smelt metals was an important source of information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them Georg Agricola (1494–1555), who published his great work De re metallica in 1556. His work describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the time. His approach removed the mysticism associated with the subject, creating the practical base upon which others could build. The work describes the many kinds of furnace used to smelt ore, and stimulated interest in minerals and their composition. It is no coincidence that he gives numerous references to the earlier author, Pliny the Elder and his Naturalis Historia. Agricola has been described as the "father of metallurgy" and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. In 1605, Sir Francis Bacon published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, which contains a description of what would later be known as the scientific method. In 1605, Michal Sedziwój publishes the alchemical treatise A New Light of Alchemy which proposed the existence of the "food of life" within air, much later recognized as oxygen. In 1615 Jean Beguin published the Tyrocinium


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-4.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
In 1702, German chemist Georg Stahl coined the name "phlogiston" for the substance believed to be released in the process of burning. Around 1735, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt analyzed a dark blue pigment found in copper ore. Brandt demonstrated that the pigment contained a new element, later named cobalt. In 1751, a Swedish chemist and pupil of Stahl's named Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, identified an impurity in copper ore as a separate metallic element, which he named nickel. Cronstedt is one of the founders of modern mineralogy. Cronstedt also discovered the mineral scheelite in 1751, which he named tungsten, meaning "heavy stone" in Swedish. In 1754, Scottish chemist Joseph Black isolated carbon dioxide, which he called "fixed air". In 1757, Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt, while investigating arsenic compounds, creates Cadet's fuming liquid, later discovered to be cacodyl oxide, considered to be the first synthetic organometallic compound. In 1758, Joseph Black formulated the concept of latent heat to explain the thermochemistry of phase changes. In 1766, English chemist Henry Cavendish isolated hydrogen, which he called "inflammable air". Cavendish discovered hydrogen as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air, and published a paper on the


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-5.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Repeating the experiments of Priestley, he demonstrated that air is composed of two parts, one of which combines with metals to form calxes. In Considérations Générales sur la Nature des Acides (1778), he demonstrated that the "air" responsible for combustion was also the source of acidity. The next year, he named this portion oxygen (Greek for acid-former), and the other azote (Greek for no life). Because of his more thorough characterization of it as an element, Lavoisier thus has a claim to the discovery of oxygen along with Priestley and Scheele. He also discovered that the "inflammable air" discovered by Cavendish – which he termed hydrogen (Greek for water-former) – combined with oxygen to produce a dew, as Priestley had reported, which appeared to be water. In Reflexions sur le Phlogistique (1783), Lavoisier showed the phlogiston theory of combustion to be inconsistent. Mikhail Lomonosov independently established a tradition of chemistry in Russia in the 18th century; he also rejected the phlogiston theory, and anticipated the kinetic theory of gases. Lomonosov regarded heat as a form of motion, and stated the idea of conservation of matter. Lavoisier worked with Claude Louis Berthollet and others to devise a system of chemical nomenclature,


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-6.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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== 19th century == Throughout the 19th century, chemistry was divided between those who followed the atomic theory of John Dalton and the energeticists, such as Wilhelm Ostwald and Ernst Mach. Although such proponents of the atomic theory as Amedeo Avogadro and Ludwig Boltzmann made great advances in explaining the behavior of gases, this dispute was not finally settled until Jean Perrin's experimental investigation of Einstein's atomic explanation of Brownian motion in the first decade of the 20th century. Well before the dispute had been settled, many had already applied the concept of atomism to chemistry. A major example was the ion theory of Svante Arrhenius which anticipated ideas about atomic substructure that did not fully develop until the 20th century. Michael Faraday was another early worker, whose major contribution to chemistry was electrochemistry, in which (among other things) a certain quantity of electricity during electrolysis or electrodeposition of metals was shown to be associated with certain quantities of chemical elements, and fixed quantities of the elements therefore with each other, in specific ratios. These findings, like those of Dalton's combining ratios, were early clues to the atomic nature of matter. === John Dalton === In 1803, English meteorologist and


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-7.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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=== New elements and gas laws === English chemist Humphry Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis, using Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile to split up common compounds and thus isolate a series of new elements. He went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, especially sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals. Potassium, the first metal that was isolated by electrolysis, was discovered in 1807 by Davy, who derived it from caustic potash (KOH). Before the 19th century, no distinction was made between potassium and sodium. Sodium was first isolated by Davy in the same year by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide (NaOH). When Davy heard that Berzelius and Pontin prepared calcium amalgam by electrolyzing lime in mercury, he tried it himself. Davy was successful, and discovered calcium in 1808 by electrolyzing a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide. He worked with electrolysis throughout his life and, in 1808, he isolated magnesium, strontium and barium. Davy also experimented with gases by inhaling them. This experimental procedure nearly proved fatal on several occasions, but led to the discovery of the unusual effects of nitrous oxide, which came to be


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-8.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
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After Dalton published his atomic theory in 1808, certain of his central ideas were soon adopted by most chemists. However, uncertainty persisted for half a century about how atomic theory was to be configured and applied to concrete situations; chemists in different countries developed several different incompatible atomistic systems. A paper that suggested a way out of this difficult situation was published as early as 1811 by the Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856), who hypothesized that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain equal numbers of molecules, from which it followed that relative molecular weights of any two gases are the same as the ratio of the densities of the two gases under the same conditions of temperature and pressure. Avogadro also reasoned that simple gases were not formed of solitary atoms but were instead compound molecules of two or more atoms. Thus Avogadro was able to overcome the difficulty that Dalton and others had encountered when Gay-Lussac reported that above 100 °C the volume of water vapor was twice the volume of the oxygen used to form it. According to Avogadro, the molecule of oxygen had split into two atoms in the course of forming


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-9.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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=== Mid-1800s === In 1840, Germain Hess proposed Hess's law, an early statement of the law of conservation of energy, which establishes that energy changes in a chemical process depend only on the states of the starting and product materials and not on the specific pathway taken between the two states. In 1847, Hermann Kolbe obtained acetic acid from completely inorganic sources, further disproving vitalism. In 1848, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (commonly known as Lord Kelvin) established the concept of absolute zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases. In 1849, Louis Pasteur discovered that the racemic form of tartaric acid is a mixture of the levorotatory and dextrotatory forms, thus clarifying the nature of optical rotation and advancing the field of stereochemistry. In 1852, August Beer proposed Beer's law, which explains the relationship between the composition of a mixture and the amount of light it will absorb. Based partly on earlier work by Pierre Bouguer and Johann Heinrich Lambert, it established the analytical technique known as spectrophotometry. In 1855, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. pioneered methods of petroleum cracking, which made the entire modern petrochemical industry possible. Avogadro's hypothesis began to gain broad appeal among chemists only after his


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-10.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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British chemist and physicist William Crookes is noted for his cathode ray studies, fundamental in the development of atomic physics. His researches on electrical discharges through a rarefied gas led him to observe the dark space around the cathode, now called the Crookes dark space. He demonstrated that cathode rays travel in straight lines and produce phosphorescence and heat when they strike certain materials. A pioneer of vacuum tubes, Crookes invented the Crookes tube – an early experimental discharge tube, with partial vacuum with which he studied the behavior of cathode rays. With the introduction of spectrum analysis by Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff (1859–1860), Crookes applied the new technique to the study of selenium compounds. Bunsen and Kirchhoff had previously used spectroscopy as a means of chemical analysis to discover caesium and rubidium. In 1861, Crookes used this process to discover thallium in some seleniferous deposits. He continued work on that new element, isolated it, studied its properties, and in 1873 determined its atomic weight. During his studies of thallium, Crookes discovered the principle of the Crookes radiometer, a device that converts light radiation into rotary motion. The principle of this radiometer has found numerous applications in the development


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-11.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
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An important breakthrough in making sense of the list of known chemical elements (as well as in understanding the internal structure of atoms) was Dmitri Mendeleev's development of the first modern periodic table, or the periodic classification of the elements. Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, felt that there was some type of order to the elements and he spent more than thirteen years of his life collecting data and assembling the concept, initially with the idea of resolving some of the disorder in the field for his students. Mendeleev found that, when all the known chemical elements were arranged in order of increasing atomic weight, the resulting table displayed a recurring pattern, or periodicity, of properties within groups of elements. Mendeleev's law allowed him to build up a systematic periodic table of all the 66 elements then known based on atomic mass, which he published in Principles of Chemistry in 1869. His first Periodic Table was compiled on the basis of arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of properties. Mendeleev had such faith in the validity of the periodic law that he proposed changes to the generally accepted values for the atomic weight


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-12.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
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American mathematical physicist J. Willard Gibbs's work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in transforming physical chemistry into a rigorous deductive science. During the years from 1876 to 1878, Gibbs worked on the principles of thermodynamics, applying them to the complex processes involved in chemical reactions. He discovered the concept of chemical potential, or the "fuel" that makes chemical reactions work. In 1876 he published his most famous contribution, "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances", a compilation of his work on thermodynamics and physical chemistry which laid out the concept of free energy to explain the physical basis of chemical equilibria. In these essays were the beginnings of Gibbs' theories of phases of matter: he considered each state of matter a phase, and each substance a component. Gibbs took all of the variables involved in a chemical reaction – temperature, pressure, energy, volume, and entropy – and included them in one simple equation known as Gibbs' phase rule. Within this paper was perhaps his most outstanding contribution, the introduction of the concept of free energy, now universally called Gibbs free energy in his honor. The Gibbs free energy relates the tendency of a physical or chemical system to simultaneously


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-13.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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German engineer Carl von Linde's invention of a continuous process of liquefying gases in large quantities formed a basis for the modern technology of refrigeration and provided both impetus and means for conducting scientific research at low temperatures and very high vacuums. He developed a dimethyl ether refrigerator (1874) and an ammonia refrigerator (1876). Though other refrigeration units had been developed earlier, Linde's were the first to be designed with the aim of precise calculations of efficiency. In 1895 he set up a large-scale plant for the production of liquid air. Six years later he developed a method for separating pure liquid oxygen from liquid air that resulted in widespread industrial conversion to processes utilizing oxygen (e.g., in steel manufacture). He founded the Linde plc, the world's largest industrial gas company by market share and revenue. In 1883, Svante Arrhenius developed an ion theory to explain conductivity in electrolytes. In 1884, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff published Études de Dynamique chimique (Studies in Dynamic Chemistry), a seminal study on chemical kinetics. In this work, van 't Hoff entered for the first time the field of physical chemistry. Of great importance was his development of the general thermodynamic relationship between the


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-14.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
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Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish-born French physicist and chemist who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She and her husband are considered to have laid the cornerstone of the nuclear age with their research on radioactivity. Marie was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered in 1896 that uranium casts off rays similar to the X-rays discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen. Marie Curie began studying uranium in late 1897 and theorized, according to a 1904 article she wrote for Century magazine, "that the emission of rays by the compounds of uranium is a property of the metal itself—that it is an atomic property of the element uranium independent of its chemical or physical state." Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and the Curies coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomenon. Pierre and Marie further explored radioactivity by working to separate the substances in uranium ores and then using the


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-15.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:44.469272+00:00
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
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He also observed that the intensity of radioactivity of a radioactive element decreases over a unique and regular amount of time until a point of stability, and he named the halving time the "half-life". In 1901 and 1902 he worked with Frederick Soddy to prove that atoms of one radioactive element would spontaneously turn into another, by expelling a piece of the atom at high velocity. In 1906 at the University of Manchester, Rutherford oversaw an experiment conducted by his students Hans Geiger (known for the Geiger counter) and Ernest Marsden. In the Geiger–Marsden experiment, a beam of alpha particles, generated by the radioactive decay of radon, was directed normally onto a sheet of very thin gold foil in an evacuated chamber. Under the prevailing plum pudding model, the alpha particles should all have passed through the foil and hit the detector screen, or have been deflected by, at most, a few degrees. However, the actual results surprised Rutherford. Although many of the alpha particles did pass through as expected, many others were deflected at small angles while others were reflected back to the alpha source. They observed that a very small percentage of particles were deflected through angles much


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-16.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
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In 1913, Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, introduced the concepts of quantum mechanics to atomic structure by proposing what is now known as the Bohr model of the atom, where electrons exist only in strictly defined circular orbits around the nucleus similar to rungs on a ladder. The Bohr Model is a planetary model in which the negatively charged electrons orbit a small, positively charged nucleus similar to the planets orbiting the Sun (except that the orbits are not planar) – the gravitational force of the solar system is mathematically akin to the attractive Coulomb (electrical) force between the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electrons. In the Bohr model, however, electrons orbit the nucleus in orbits that have a set size and energy – the energy levels are said to be quantized, which means that only certain orbits with certain radii are allowed; orbits in between simply do not exist. The energy of the orbit is related to its size – that is, the lowest energy is found in the smallest orbit. Bohr also postulated that electromagnetic radiation is absorbed or emitted when an electron moves from one orbit to another. Because only certain electron orbits are permitted,


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-17.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
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In 1924, French quantum physicist Louis de Broglie published his thesis, in which he introduced a revolutionary theory of electron waves based on wave–particle duality. In his time, the wave and particle interpretations of light and matter were seen as being at odds with one another, but de Broglie suggested that these seemingly different characteristics were instead the same behavior observed from different perspectives—that particles can behave like waves, and waves (radiation) can behave like particles. Broglie's proposal offered an explanation of the restricted motion of electrons within the atom. The first publications of Broglie's idea of "matter waves" had drawn little attention from other physicists, but a copy of his doctoral thesis chanced to reach Einstein, whose response was enthusiastic. Einstein stressed the importance of Broglie's work both explicitly and by building further on it. In 1925, Austrian-born physicist Wolfgang Pauli developed the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two electrons around a single nucleus in an atom can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously, as described by four quantum numbers. Pauli made major contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory – he was awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the Pauli


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-18
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-18.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
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Hence the quantum mechanical methods developed in the 1930s and 1940s are often referred to as theoretical molecular or atomic physics to underline the fact that they were more the application of quantum mechanics to chemistry and spectroscopy than answers to chemically relevant questions. In 1951, a milestone article in quantum chemistry is the seminal paper of Clemens C. J. Roothaan on Roothaan equations. It opened the avenue to the solution of the self-consistent field equations for small molecules like hydrogen or nitrogen. Those computations were performed with the help of tables of integrals which were computed on the most advanced computers of the time. In the 1940s many physicists turned from molecular or atomic physics to nuclear physics (like J. Robert Oppenheimer or Edward Teller). Glenn T. Seaborg was an American nuclear chemist best known for his work on isolating and identifying transuranium elements (those heavier than uranium). He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Edwin Mattison McMillan for their independent discoveries of transuranium elements. Seaborgium was named in his honour, making him the only person, along with Albert Einstein and Yuri Oganessian, for whom a chemical element was named during his lifetime. === Molecular biology and


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-19
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-19.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
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The later part of the nineteenth century saw a huge increase in the exploitation of petroleum extracted from the earth for the production of a host of chemicals and largely replaced the use of whale oil, coal tar and naval stores used previously. Large-scale production and refinement of petroleum provided feedstocks for liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel, solvents, lubricants, asphalt, waxes, and for the production of many of the common materials of the modern world, such as synthetic fibers, plastics, paints, detergents, pharmaceuticals, adhesives and ammonia as fertilizer and for other uses. Many of these required new catalysts and the utilization of chemical engineering for their cost-effective production. In the mid-twentieth century, control of the electronic structure of semiconductor materials was made precise by the creation of large ingots of extremely pure single crystals of silicon and germanium. Accurate control of their chemical composition by doping with other elements made the production of the solid state transistor in 1951 and made possible the production of tiny integrated circuits for use in electronic devices, especially computers. == See also == === Histories and timelines === === Notable chemists === listed chronologically: == Notes == == References == Selected classic


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-0.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
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Most scientific and technical innovations prior to the Scientific Revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions. Ancient Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Historically, Christianity has been and still is a patron of sciences. It has been prolific in the foundation of schools, universities and hospitals, and many Christian clergy have been active in the sciences and have made significant contributions to the development of science. Historians of science such as Pierre Duhem credit medieval Catholic mathematicians and philosophers such as John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Roger Bacon as the founders of modern science. Duhem concluded that "the mechanics and physics of which modern times are justifiably proud to proceed, by an uninterrupted series of scarcely perceptible improvements, from doctrines professed in the heart of the medieval schools". Many of the most distinguished classical scholars in the Byzantine Empire held high office in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Protestantism has had an important influence on science, according to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand, and early experimental science on the other. Christian scholars and scientists have made noted contributions to science


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-1.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
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Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas held that scriptures can have multiple interpretations on certain areas where the matters were far beyond their reach, therefore one should leave room for future findings to shed light on the meanings. Augustine argued:Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars ... Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.The "Handmaiden" tradition, which saw secular studies of the universe as a very important and helpful part of arriving at a better understanding of scripture, was


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-2.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
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Physics teacher David Hutchings and intellectual historian James C. Ungureanu credit the central tenets of traditional Christianity for having been the greatest benefit to scientific thinking, while at the same time noting the irony of the conflict thesis:And yet, as impossible as it might seem, both Conflict and Warfare are plagued by an even greater irony than that. It turns out that when they went after Christian doctrine for being the ultimate enemy of science, they were engaging in friendly fire. For, in actual fact, no other body of thought has ever been of greater benefit to scientific thinking than the central tenets of traditional Christianity have—in the whole of human history.David C. Lindberg states that the widespread popular belief that the Middle Ages was a time of ignorance and superstition due to the Christian church is a "caricature". According to Lindberg, while there are some portions of the classical tradition which suggest this view, these were exceptional cases. It was common to tolerate and encourage critical thinking about the nature of the world. The relation between Christianity and science is complex and cannot be simplified to either harmony or conflict, according to Lindberg. Lindberg reports that "the late medieval


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-3.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
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parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Influence of biblical worldviews on early modern science === At first, according to Andrew Dickson White's 1896 book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, a biblical worldview affected negatively the progress of science through time. Dickinson also argues that immediately following the Reformation matters were even worse. The interpretations of Scripture by Luther and Calvin became as sacred to their followers as the Scripture itself. For instance, when Georg Calixtus ventured, in interpreting the Psalms, to question the accepted belief that "the waters above the heavens" were contained in a vast receptacle upheld by a solid vault, he was bitterly denounced as heretical. Today, much of the scholarship in which the conflict thesis was originally based is considered to be inaccurate. For instance, the claim that early Christians rejected scientific findings by the Greco-Romans is false, since the "handmaiden" view of secular studies was seen to shed light on theology. This view was widely adapted throughout the early medieval period and afterwards by theologians (such as Augustine) and ultimately resulted in fostering interest in knowledge about nature through time. Also, the claim that people of the Middle Ages widely believed that the Earth was


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-4.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
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parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Catholicism === While refined and clarified over the centuries, the Catholic position on the relationship between science and religion is one of harmony and has maintained the teaching of natural law as set forth by Thomas Aquinas. For example, regarding scientific study such as that of evolution, the church's unofficial position is an example of theistic evolution, stating that faith and scientific findings regarding human evolution are not in conflict, though humans are regarded as a special creation, and that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual component of human origins. Catholic schools have included all manners of scientific study in their curriculum for many centuries. Historian John Heilbron says that "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, then any other, and probably all, other Institutions." The first universities in Europe were established by Catholic Church monks. The first Western European institutions generally considered to be universities were established in present-day Italy (including the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Kingdom of Italy), the


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-5.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
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parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
The Catholic Cistercian order used its own numbering system, which could express numbers from 0 to 9999 in a single sign. According to one modern Cistercian, "enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit" have always been a part of the order's identity, and the Cistercians "were catalysts for development of a market economy" in twelfth-century Europe. Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the technological advances in Europe were made in the monasteries. According to the medievalist Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor." Waterpower was used for crushing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth and tanning – a "level of technological achievement [that] could have been observed in practically all" of the Cistercian monasteries. The English science historian James Burke examines the impact of Cistercian waterpower, derived from Roman watermill technology such as that of Barbegal aqueduct and mill near Arles in the fourth of his ten-part Connections TV series, called "Faith in Numbers". The Cistercians made major contributions to culture and technology in medieval Europe: Cistercian


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-6.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, encouraged some values which may have been conducive to encouraging scientific talents. A theory suggested by David Hackett Fischer in his book Albion's Seed indicated early Quakers in the US preferred "practical study" to the more traditional studies of Greek or Latin popular with the elite. Another theory suggests their avoidance of dogma or clergy gave them a greater flexibility in response to science. Despite those arguments a major factor is agreed to be that the Quakers were initially discouraged or forbidden to go to the major law or humanities schools in Britain due to the Test Act. They also at times faced similar discriminations in the United States, as many of the colonial universities had a Puritan or Anglican orientation. This led them to attend "Godless" institutions or forced them to rely on hands-on scientific experimentation rather than academia. Because of these issues it has been stated Quakers are better represented in science than most religions. There are sources, Pendlehill (Thomas 2000) and Encyclopædia Britannica, that indicate that for over two centuries they were overrepresented in the Royal Society. Mention is made of this possibility in studies referenced in religiosity


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-7.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
In the field of Optics, Nestorian Christian Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's textbook on ophthalmology called the Ten Treatises on the Eye, which was written in 950 A.D., remained the authoritative source on the subject in the western world until the 1800s. It was a Christian scholar and Bishop from Nisibis named Severus Sebokht who was the first to describe and incorporate Indian mathematical symbols in the mid 7th century, which were then adopted into Islamic culture and are now known as the Arabic numerals. During the fourth through the seventh centuries, scholarly work in the Syriac and Greek languages was either newly initiated, or carried on from the Hellenistic period. Centers of learning and of transmission of classical wisdom included colleges such as the School of Nisibis, and later the School of Edessa, and the renowned hospital and medical academy of Jundishapur; libraries included the Library of Alexandria and the Imperial Library of Constantinople; other centers of translation and learning functioned at Merv, Salonika, Nishapur and Ctesiphon, situated just south of what later became Baghdad. The House of Wisdom was a library, translation institute, and academy established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq. Nestorians played a prominent role in the formation of Arab culture,


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-8.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
== Perspectives on evolution == In recent history, the theory of evolution has been at the centre of controversy between Christianity and science, largely in America. Christians who accept a literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation find incompatibility between Darwinian evolution and their interpretation of the Christian faith. Creation science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and attempts to disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the geological history of Earth, formation of the Solar System, Big Bang cosmology, the chemical origins of life and evolution. It began in the 1960s as a fundamentalist Christian effort in the United States to prove Biblical inerrancy and falsify the scientific evidence for evolution. It has since developed a sizable religious following in the United States, with creation science ministries branching worldwide. In 1925, The State of Tennessee passed the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution in all schools in the state. Later that year, a similar law was passed in Mississippi, and likewise, Arkansas in 1927. In 1968, these "anti-monkey" laws were struck down


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-9.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (427 prizes). Overall, Christians are considered a total of 72.5% in Chemistry between 1901 and 2000, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, 54% in Economics. Between 1901 and 2000 it was revealed that among 654 Laureates 31.9% have identified as Protestant in its various forms (208 prize), 20.3% were Christians (no information about their denominations; 133 prize), 11.6% have identified as Catholic and 1.6% have identified as Eastern Orthodox. Although Christians make up over 33.2% of the world's population, they have won a total of 65.4% of all Nobel prizes between 1901 and 2000. In an estimate by scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, between 1901 and 2001, about 57.1% of Nobel Prize winners were either Christians or with a Christian background. Between 1901 and 2001, about 56.5% of laureates in scientific fields were Christians. According to scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Protestants were overrepresented in scientific categories and Catholics were well-represented in the Literature and Peace categories. In an estimate made by Weijia Zhang from Arizona State University and


id: christianity-and-science-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science-10.md
category: reference
title: Christianity and science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:49.364601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: christianity-and-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Works cited === Numbers, Ronald L. (2006). The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02339-0. Shalev, Baruch A. (2003). 100 Years of Nobel Prizes. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. ISBN 978-81-269-0278-1. Thomas, Anne (24 April 2000), This I Know Experimentally, Spring 2000 Monday Night Lecture Series: Science and Religion, Pendle Hill (published 6 October 2003), archived from the original on 1 May 2006, retrieved 29 June 2009 == Further reading == Buxhoeveden, Daniel; Woloschak, Gayle, eds. (2011). Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church (1. ed.). Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 9781409481614. Spierer, Eugen. God-of-the-Gaps Arguments in Light of Luther's Theology of the Cross. Archived 19 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine Matthews, Roy T.; Platt, F. DeWitt (1991). The Western Humanities. Mayfield Publishing Co. ISBN 0874847850. == External links == Christianity And The Scientist by Ian G. Barbour Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Cambridge Christians in Science (CiS) group Archived 3 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine Christians in Science website Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford The Society of Ordained Scientists-Mostly Church of England "Science in Christian Perspective" The (ASA) Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation (CSCA) The International Society for Science & Religion's founding members.(Of


id: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity-0.md
category: reference
title: Science in classical antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:50.555898+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
Science in classical antiquity encompasses inquiries into the workings of the world or universe aimed at both practical goals (e.g., establishing a reliable calendar or determining how to cure a variety of illnesses) as well as more abstract investigations belonging to natural philosophy. Classical antiquity is traditionally defined as the period between the 8th century BC (beginning of Archaic Greece) and the 6th century AD (after which there was medieval science). It is typically limited geographically to the Greco-Roman West, Mediterranean basin, and Ancient Near East, thus excluding traditions of science in the ancient world in regions such as China and the Indian subcontinent. Ideas regarding nature that were theorized during classical antiquity were not limited to science but included myths as well as religion. Those who are now considered as the first scientists may have thought of themselves as natural philosophers, as practitioners of a skilled profession (e.g., physicians), or as followers of a religious tradition (e.g., temple healers). Some of the more widely known figures active in this period include Hippocrates, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Galen, and Ptolemy. Their contributions and commentaries spread throughout the Eastern, Islamic, and Latin worlds and contributed to the birth of modern science.


id: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity-1.md
category: reference
title: Science in classical antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:50.555898+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
The earliest Greek philosophers, known as the pre-Socratics, were materialists who provided alternative answers to the same question found in the myths of their neighbors: "How did the ordered cosmos in which we live come to be?" Although the question is much the same, their answers and their attitude towards the answers is markedly different. As reported by such later writers as Aristotle, their explanations tended to center on the material source of things. Thales of Miletus (624–546 BC) considered that all things came to be from and find their sustenance in water. Anaximander (610–546 BC) then suggested that things could not come from a specific substance like water, but rather from something he called the "boundless". Exactly what he meant is uncertain but it has been suggested that it was boundless in its quantity, so that creation would not fail; in its qualities, so that it would not be overpowered by its contrary; in time, as it has no beginning or end; and in space, as it encompasses all things. Anaximenes (585–525 BC) returned to a concrete material substance, air, which could be altered by rarefaction and condensation. He adduced common observations (the wine stealer) to demonstrate that air


id: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity-2.md
category: reference
title: Science in classical antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:50.555898+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
The first institution of higher learning in Ancient Greece was founded by Plato (c. 427 – c. 347 BC), an Athenian who—perhaps under Pythagorean influence—appears to have identified the ordering principle of the universe as one based on number and geometry. A later account has it that Plato had inscribed at the entrance to the academy the words "Let no man ignorant of geometry enter." Although the story is most likely a myth, it nonetheless testifies to Plato's interest in mathematics, which is alluded to in several of his dialogues. Plato's philosophy maintained that all material things are imperfect reflections of eternal unchanging ideas, just as all mathematical diagrams are reflections of eternal unchanging mathematical truths. Since Plato believed that material things had an inferior kind of reality, he considered that demonstrative knowledge cannot be achieved by looking at the imperfect material world. Truth is to be found through rational argumentation, analogous to the demonstrations of mathematicians. For instance, Plato recommended that astronomy be studied in terms of abstract geometrical models rather than empirical observations, and proposed that leaders be trained in mathematics in preparation for philosophy. Aristotle (384–322 BC) studied at the academy and nonetheless disagreed with Plato in


id: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity-3.md
category: reference
title: Science in classical antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:50.555898+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
The military campaigns of Alexander the Great spread Greek thought to Egypt, Asia Minor, Persia, up to the Indus River. The resulting migration of many Greek speaking populations across these territories provided the impetus for the foundation of several seats of learning, such as those in Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamum. Hellenistic science differed from Greek science in at least two respects: first, it benefited from the cross-fertilization of Greek ideas with those that had developed in other non-Hellenic civilizations; secondly, to some extent, it was supported by royal patrons in the kingdoms founded by Alexander's successors. The city of Alexandria, in particular, became a major center of scientific research in the 3rd century BC. Two institutions established there during the reigns of Ptolemy I Soter (367–282 BC) and Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) were the Library and the Museum. Unlike Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, these institutions were officially supported by the Ptolemies, although the extent of patronage could be precarious depending on the policies of the current ruler. Hellenistic scholars often employed the principles developed in earlier Greek thought in their scientific investigations, such as the application of mathematics to phenomena or the deliberate collection of empirical data. The


id: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity-4.md
category: reference
title: Science in classical antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:50.555898+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
Advances in mathematical astronomy also took place during the Hellenistic age. Aristarchus of Samos (310–230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis once a day. Aristarchus also estimated the sizes of the Sun and Moon as compared to Earth's size, and the distances to the Sun and Moon. His heliocentric model did not find many adherents in antiquity but did influence some early modern astronomers, such as Nicolaus Copernicus, who was aware of the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus. In the 2nd century BC, Hipparchus discovered precession, calculated the size and distance of the Moon and invented the earliest known astronomical devices such as the astrolabe. Hipparchus also created a comprehensive catalog of 1020 stars, and most of the constellations of the northern hemisphere derive from Greek astronomy. It has recently been claimed that a celestial globe based on Hipparchus's star catalog sits atop the broad shoulders of a large 2nd-century Roman statue known as the Farnese Atlas. == Roman era == Science during the Roman Empire


id: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity-5.md
category: reference
title: Science in classical antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_classical_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:50.555898+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-classical-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100–170 AD), living in or around Alexandria, carried out a scientific program centered on the writing of about a dozen books on astronomy, astrology, cartography, harmonics, and optics. Despite their severe style and high technicality, a great deal of them have survived, in some cases the sole remnants of their kind of writing from antiquity. Two major themes that run through Ptolemy's works are mathematical modelling of physical phenomena and methods of visual representation of physical reality. Ptolemy's research program involved a combination of theoretical analysis with empirical considerations seen, for instance, in his systematized study of astronomy. Ptolemy's Mathēmatikē Syntaxis (Ancient Greek: Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις), better known as the Almagest, sought to improve on the work of his predecessors by building astronomy not only upon a secure mathematical basis but also by demonstrating the relationship between astronomical observations and the resulting astronomical theory. In his Planetary Hypotheses, Ptolemy describes in detail physical representations of his mathematical models found in the Almagest, presumably for didactic purposes. Likewise, the Geography was concerned with the drawing of accurate maps using astronomical information, at least in principle. Apart from astronomy, both the Harmonics and the Optics contain (in addition to mathematical


id: conversazione-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversazione-0.md
category: reference
title: Conversazione
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversazione
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:51.782607+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: conversazione-20260505-0
summary:
A conversazione is a "social gathering [predominantly] held by [a] learned or art society" for conversation and discussion, especially about the arts, literature, medicine, and science. It would not be easy to devise a happier way [than the conversazione] of bringing novelties at once under practical criticism—of making the outliers of science acquainted with the centre, of enabling investigators to compare operations and discuss facts and speculations, and of giving occasion for renewal of intercourse and removal of misunderstandings. …[The] tangible gain to science [from the conversazione is that] inventors and experimentalists … hear [directly] what contemporaries say of their schemes and experiments, and much can be said and done with advantage amid the free talk of a general gathering which could not be permitted in the formal meeting of a scientific society. (Nature, 5 May 1870.) == Origin == The writer Horace Walpole is credited with the first recorded English use of conversazione in a letter written (from Italy) on 11 November 1739 to Richard West (1716–1742) in which he writes, "After the play we were introduced to the assembly, which they [viz., the Italians] call the conversazione". == Historical usage in Britain == In Italy, the term generally


id: darwin-s-ghosts-the-secret-history-of-evolution-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_Ghosts:_The_Secret_History_of_Evolution-0.md
category: reference
title: Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_Ghosts:_The_Secret_History_of_Evolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:52.950721+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: darwin-s-ghosts-the-secret-history-of-evolution-20260505-0
summary:
Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution is a nonfiction history of science book by British author Rebecca Stott. It was published in the United States in 2012 by Spiegel & Grau, the international version is subtitled differently: Darwin's Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists. It is written in 12 distinct chapters that highlight persons that contributed to the pre-history of evolution by natural selection, published by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species in 1859. The book contains biographical sketches of 12 persons spanning from 344 BC to 19th century contemporaries of Darwin. The book has received reviews from notable reviewers and was included on the New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books 2012 list. == Synopsis == Tho focus of each chapter is summarized in the table below. == References ==


id: department-of-history-and-philosophy-of-science-university-of-cambridge-20260505-0
category: reference
title: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
tags: science, encyclopedia
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:54.049300+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: department-of-history-and-philosophy-of-science-university-of-cambridge-20260505-0
file:
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_History_and_Philosophy_of_Science,_University_of_Cambridge-0.md

summary:
The Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), of the University of Cambridge is the largest department of history and philosophy of science in the United Kingdom. A majority of its submissions received maximum ratings of 4* and 3* in the 2014 REF (Research Excellence Framework). Located in the historic buildings of the Old Physical Chemistry Laboratories on Free School Lane, Cambridge, the department teaches undergraduate courses towards the Cambridge Tripos and graduate courses including a taught Masters and PhD supervision in the field of HPS. The department shares its premises with the Whipple Museum and Whipple Library which provide important resources for its teaching and research. == Academic staff == The Department of HPS at Cambridge employs fifteen full-time teaching staff, approximately thirty research staff, numerous supervisors and research associates from departments and colleges across the University of Cambridge, in addition to external supervisors and examiners. A long-standing head of department was the noted Professor Peter Lipton, who served until his unexpected death in 2007. He was followed as head of department by the late Professor John Forrester, an international authority in the History of Mind, and a leading figure on Sigmund Freud and the history of psychoanalysis.

source_url:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_History_and_Philosophy_of_Science,_University_of_Cambridge


id: dibner-institute-for-the-history-of-science-and-technology-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dibner_Institute_for_the_History_of_Science_and_Technology-0.md
category: reference
title: Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dibner_Institute_for_the_History_of_Science_and_Technology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:55.314813+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: dibner-institute-for-the-history-of-science-and-technology-20260505-0
summary:
The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (1992–2006) was a research institute established at MIT, and housed in a renovated building (E56) on campus at 38 Memorial Drive, overlooking the Charles River. == Description == At the heart of the Institute was the Burndy Library on the ground floor, initially containing 37,000 volumes on the history of science and technology collected by the Dibner Fund. The Library also possessed a large collection of antique scientific instruments, such as astrolabes, telescopes, microscopes, early spectrometers, and a Wimshurst machine, which were on public display in a dedicated gallery outside the library. Also on display was a large collection of antique incandescent light bulbs, gas discharge tubes, electronic vacuum tubes, and other early examples of electrical and electronic technology. The Library would mount occasional special exhibits, such as The Afterlife of Immortality: Obelisks Outside Egypt. The building was a modest Art Deco structure, fronting on Memorial Drive and the Charles River. Above the Library and display space, on the second and third floor were offices and lecture and seminar rooms. The Institute held regular lectures, seminars, study programs, and an annual symposium in the history of science and technology. Over


id: list-of-discoveries-influenced-by-chance-circumstances-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_discoveries_influenced_by_chance_circumstances-0.md
category: reference
title: List of discoveries influenced by chance circumstances
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_discoveries_influenced_by_chance_circumstances
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:56.462578+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: list-of-discoveries-influenced-by-chance-circumstances-20260505-0
summary:
Below are discoveries in science that involve chance circumstances in a particularly salient way. This page should not list all chance involved in all discoveries (i.e. it should focus on discoveries reported for their notable circumstances). == Overview == 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. Major everyday discoveries that were helped by luck in some way include products like vulcanized rubber, teflon, nylon, penicillin, cyanoacrylate (Super Glue), the implantable pacemaker, the microwave oven, Scotchgard, Saran wrap, Silly Putty, Slinky, safety glass, propeller, snowmaking, stainless steel, Perkin's mauve, and popsicles. Most artificial sweeteners have been discovered when accidentally tasted, including aspartame and saccharin. Ideas include the theory of the Big Bang, tissue culture, radio astronomy, and the discovery of DNA. Such archeological discoveries as the Rosetta Stone, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ruins of Pompeii also emerged partly out of serendipity. Many relevant and well known scientific theories were developed by chance at some degree along history. According to a legend, Archimedes realized his principle on hydrostatics when he


id: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity-0.md
category: reference
title: Discovery of human antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:57.794617+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
The discovery of human antiquity was a major achievement of science in the middle of the 19th century, and the foundation of scientific paleoanthropology. The antiquity of man, human antiquity, or in simpler language the age of the human race, are names given to the series of scientific debates it involved, which with modifications continue in the 21st century. These debates have clarified and given scientific evidence, from a number of disciplines, towards solving the basic question of dating the first human being. Controversy was very active in this area in parts of the 19th century, with some dormant periods also. A key date was the 1859 re-evaluation of archaeological evidence that had been published 12 years earlier by Boucher de Perthes. It was then widely accepted, as validating the suggestion that man was much older than had previously been believed, for example than the 6,000 years implied by some traditional chronologies. In 1863 T. H. Huxley argued that man was an evolved species; and in 1864 Alfred Russel Wallace combined natural selection with the issue of antiquity. The arguments from science for what was then called the "great antiquity of man" became convincing to most scientists, over the following


id: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity-1.md
category: reference
title: Discovery of human antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:57.794617+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
==== Human origins and the "universal deluge" debated ==== The Flood could explain extinctions of species at that date, on the hypothesis that the Ark had not contained all species of animal. A Flood that was not universal, on the other hand, had implications for the biblical theory of races and Noah's sons. The theory of catastrophism, which was as much secular as theological in attitude, could be used in analogous ways. There was interest in matters arising from modification of the biblical narrative, therefore, and it was fuelled by the new knowledge of the world in early modern Europe, and then by the growth of the sciences. One hypothesis was of people not descended from Adam. This hypothesis of polygenism (no unique origin of humans) implied nothing on the antiquity of man, but the issue was implicated in counter-arguments, for monogenism. ==== La Peyrère and the completeness of the Biblical account ==== Isaac La Peyrère appealed in formulating his Preadamite theory of polygenism to Jewish tradition; it was intended to be compatible with the biblical creation of man. It was rejected by many contemporary theologians. This idea of humans before Adam had been current in earlier Christian scholars and


id: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity-2.md
category: reference
title: Discovery of human antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:57.794617+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
The three-age system was in place from about 1820, in the form given to it by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen in his work on the collections that became the National Museum of Denmark. He published his ideas in 1836. Postulating cultural change, in itself and without explaining a rate of change, did not generate reasons to revise traditional chronology. But the concept of Stone Age artifacts became current. Thomsen's book in Danish, Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed, was translated into German (Leitfaden zur Nordischen Alterthumskunde, 1837), and English (Guide to Northern Archæology, 1848). John Frere's 1797 discovery of the Hoxne handaxe helped to initiate the 19th century debate, but it started in earnest around 1810. There were then a number of false starts relating to different European sites. William Buckland misjudged what he had found in 1823 with the misnamed Red Lady of Paviland, and explained away the mammoth remains with the find. He also was dismissive of the Kent's Cavern findings of John MacEnery in the later 1820s. In 1829 Philippe-Charles Schmerling discovered a Neanderthal fossil skull (at Engis). At that point, however, its significance was not recognised, and Rudolf Virchow consistently opposed the theory that it was very old. The


id: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity-3.md
category: reference
title: Discovery of human antiquity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_human_antiquity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:57.794617+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: discovery-of-human-antiquity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Acceptance of human association with extinct animal species === Boucher de Perthes had written up discoveries in the Somme valley in 1847. Joseph Prestwich and John Evans in April 1859, and Charles Lyell with others also in 1859, made field trips to the sites, and returned convinced that humans had coexisted with extinct mammals. In general and qualitative terms, Lyell felt the evidence established the "antiquity of man": that humans were much older than the traditional assumptions had made them. His conclusions were shared by the Royal Society and other British learned institutions, as well as in France. It was this recognition of the early date of Acheulean handaxes that first established the scientific credibility of the deep antiquity of humans. This debate was concurrent with that over the book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, and was evidently related; but was not one in which Charles Darwin initially made his own views public. Consolidation of the "antiquity of man" required more work, with stricter methods; and this proved possible over the next two decades. The discoveries of Boucher de Perthes therefore motivated further researches to try to repeat and confirm the findings at other sites. Significant


id: doctrine-of-signatures-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_signatures-0.md
category: reference
title: Doctrine of signatures
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_signatures
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:58.963519+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: doctrine-of-signatures-20260505-0
summary:
The doctrine of signatures, also known as the doctrine of correspondences, is a biomedicinal theory of pseudoscience. It states that herbs or animals have physical or behavioral traits that mirror the ailment it can successfully treat. Theological justifications, such as that of botanist William Cole, were that God would want to show men what plants would be useful for. The doctrine of signatures has a debated origin. Many historians believe it begins with primitive thinking methods, while other historians believe it originated with Dioscorides and was popularized in the 16th and 17th centuries after Jakob Böhme coined the doctrine of signatures in his book The Signature of All Things. This theory is a possible explanation for the ancient discovery of medicinal properties; however, there is no definitive proof as to whether the medicinal property or the connection in physical/behavioral traits was realized first. The theory later became a scientific basis for trying new remedies solely based upon their qualities in an attempt to find new medicines. While there are some homeopathic remedies that are still used today which have been connected to this theory, there are also remedies from this theory which have been found harmful. For instance, birthwort (so-called


id: doctrine-of-signatures-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_signatures-1.md
category: reference
title: Doctrine of signatures
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_signatures
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:38:58.963519+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: doctrine-of-signatures-20260505-0
summary:
It is worth noting that it is possible that these are post hoc attributions—the appearance and treatment linked after the medicinal property was discovered. Depending on the article, remedies connected to the doctrine vary in number and consistency. == Scientific, spiritual, and social context == Signatures are often described as post hoc attributions and mnemonics used to remember the properties of a plant rather than the reason it was originally used. There is no scientific or historical evidence that plant shapes and colors have aided in the discovery of their medical uses. In Europe, the idea of doctrine of signatures was linked with Christian beliefs. However, similar theories were created within black magic with sympathetic magic. Similar theories have been observed all over the world in ancient Egypt, China, pre-Columbian America, and the Middle East. This can also explain how varied, and at times contradictory, applications of the doctrine can be because traditional botany is subject to optimal foraging theory. Remedies would, in many cases, be based on the environmental availability of that resource rather than its objective effectiveness. Some sociologists frame the doctrine of signatures as a type of "enchantment", the idea that it is not just what one


id: dyson-sphere-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere-0.md
category: reference
title: Dyson sphere
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:00.169646+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: dyson-sphere-20260505-0
summary:
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy. The earliest modern imagining of such a structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937). The same concept was later used by physicist Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. A signature of such spheres detected in astronomical searches would be an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence. Since Dyson's paper, many variant designs involving an artificial structure or series of structures to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction, often


id: dyson-sphere-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere-1.md
category: reference
title: Dyson sphere
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:00.169646+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: dyson-sphere-20260505-0
summary:
== Feasibility and science-based speculation == Although Dyson spheres in the form of a swarm are theoretically possible, building a stable megastructure around the Sun is currently far beyond humanity's engineering capacity. The number of craft required to obtain, transmit, and maintain a complete Dyson sphere exceeds present-day industrial capabilities. Dyson spheres have prompted speculation into the feasibility of a class of proposed stellar engines, hypothetical megastructures whose purpose is to extract useful energy from a star, sometimes for specific purposes. For example, Matrioshka brains have been proposed to use energy extracted by Dyson spheres for computation, while Shkadov thrusters would extract energy for propulsion. Some proposed stellar engine designs are based on the Dyson sphere. Futurist George Dvorsky has advocated the use of self-replicating robots to overcome the limitation of humanity's engineering capacity in the relatively near term. Some have suggested that Dyson sphere habitats could be built around white dwarfs or pulsars. In 2022 it was suggested that a Dyson swarm around the Sun could be launched from either Mercury or Mars. In order to transmit the energy back, far-field radiative wireless power transfer was proposed, a technology that is not yet fully developed. == Fictional examples ==


