# kb

id: languages-of-science-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-5.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== English standardization === Nearly all the scientific publications indexed on the leading commercial academic search engines are in English. As of 2022, this observation covers 95.86% of the 28,142,849 references indexed on the Web of Science platform, in addition to 84.35% of the 20,600,733 references indexed in the Scopus system. The minimal coverage of non-English languages creates a feedback loop—non-English publications can be considered less valuable because they are not indexed in international rankings and fare poorly in evaluation metrics. As many as 75,000 articles, book titles, and book reviews from Germany were excluded from Biological Abstracts between 1970 and 1996. In 2009, at least 6555 journals were published in Spanish and Portuguese on a global scale, and "only a small fraction are included in the Scopus and Web of Science indices." Criteria for inclusion in commercial databases not only favor English journals but also incentivize non-English journals to discontinue their local journals. They "demand that articles be in English, have abstracts in English, or at least have their references in English". In 2012, the Web of Science was explicitly committed to the anglicization (and Romanization) of published knowledge: English is the universal language of science. For this reason,


id: languages-of-science-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-6.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Persistence of linguistic diversity === Several languages have retained a secondary status as an international language of science, due to the extent of the local scientific production or to their continued use as a vehicular language in specific contexts. These languages generally include "Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish." Local languages have remained prevalent in major scientific countries: "most scientific publications are still published in Chinese in China". Empirical studies of the languages used in scientific publications have long been constrained by structural bias in the most readily accessible sources—commercial databases such as the Web of Science. Atypical access to a large corpus not covered by global indexes showed that multilingualism remains non-negligible, although little studied; as of 2022, there are "few examples of analyses at scale" for multilingualism in science. However, a 2026 study found that the proportion of English publications in Dimensions went down from 93.86% in 1990 to 85.52% in 2023, with Indonesian, Spanish and Portuguese expanding at a faster rate than English. In seven European countries with limited international reach for each local language, one third of researchers in social sciences and the humanities publish in two or more languages; "research is international,


id: languages-of-science-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-7.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Machine translation === Scientific publication has been the first major use case for machine translation, with early experiments dating back to 1954. Development in this area slowed after 1965, because of the increasing predominance of English, limitations in computing infrastructure, and the shortcomings of the leading approach—rule-based machine translation. By design, rule-based methods favored translation between a few major languages (English, Russian, French, German, ...), since a "transfer module" needed to be developed for "each pair of languages"; this situation led to a combinatorial explosion when more languages were considered. After the 1980s, the field of machine translation was revived as it underwent a "full-scale paradigm shift": explicit rules were replaced by statistical and machine learning methods applied to a large aligned corpus. By that time, most of the demand no longer came from scientific publishing, but instead from commercial documents such as technical and engineering manuals. A second paradigm shift occurred in the 2010s, with the development of deep learning methods, which can be partially trained on a non-aligned corpus (i.e., "zero-shot translation"). Requiring few supervision inputs, deep learning models make it possible to incorporate a wider diversity of languages, but also a wider diversity of linguistic contexts


id: languages-of-science-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-8.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Open science infrastructure === The development of open science infrastructure or "community-controlled infrastructure" has become a major policy issue in the open science movement. In the 2010s, the expansion of commercial scientific infrastructure led to major acknowledgment of the fragility of open scholarly publishing and open archives. The concept of open science infrastructure emerged in 2015 with the publication of the Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructures. In November 2021, a UNESCO recommendation acknowledged open science infrastructure as one of the four pillars of open science, along with open science knowledge, open engagement of societal actors, and open dialogue with other knowledge systems. UNESCO called for sustained investment and funding: "open science infrastructures are often the result of community-building efforts, which are crucial for their long-term sustainability and therefore should be not-for-profit and guarantee permanent and unrestricted access to all public to the largest extent possible." Examples of open science infrastructure include indexes, publishing platforms, shared databases, and computer grids. Open infrastructures have supported linguistic diversity in science. The leading free software for scientific publishing, Open Journal Systems, is available in 50 languages; it is widespread among non-commercial open-access journals. A landscape study was conducted by the SPARC alliance in


id: languages-of-science-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-9.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Policies in favor of multilingualism === A new scientific and policy debate over linguistic diversity emerged after 2015: "in recent years, policies for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science call for increasing access to research, interaction between science and society and public understanding of science". The debate initially stemmed from wider discussions about the evaluation of open science and the limitations of commercial metrics. In 2015, the Leiden Manifesto included ten principles to "guide research evaluation", which included a call to "protect excellence in locally relevant research". Building on empirical data showing the persistence of non-English research communities in Europe, Gunnar Sivertsen (in 2018) theorized the need for a balanced multilingualism "to consider all the communication purposes in all different areas of research, and all the languages needed to fulfil these purposes, in a holistic manner without exclusions or priorities." In 2016, Sivertsen contributed to the "Norwegian model" of scientific evaluation: he proposed a flat hierarchy among a few large international journals, along with a wide selection of journals that would not discriminate against local publications, and he encouraged journals in the social sciences and the humanities to favor Norwegian publications. These local initiatives developed into a


id: languages-of-science-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-10.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Articles & chapters === "Rapport de l'Académie des sciences sur la langue française et le rayonnement de la science française" [Report from the Academy of Sciences on the French language and the influence of French science]. Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Sciences [Reports of the sessions of the Academy of Sciences] (in French). 295: 131–146. 8 November 1982. Ammon, Ulrich (2012-10-10). "Linguistic inequality and its effects on participation in scientific discourse and on global knowledge accumulation – With a closer look at the problems of the second-rank language communities". Applied Linguistics Review. 3 (2): 333–355. doi:10.1515/applirev-2012-0016. ISSN 1868-6311. Anglaret, Anne-Sophie; Sofio, Séverine (2021-12-27). "Écrire en langues. Entre traduction automatique et hégémonie globish, le multilinguisme comme horizon réaliste pour les revues de sciences humaines et sociales". Biens Symboliques / Symbolic Goods. Revue de sciences sociales sur les arts, la culture et les idées. 9 (9). doi:10.4000/bssg.832. ISSN 2490-9424. S2CID 245925363. Retrieved 2022-01-17. Aronova, Elena (September 2017). "Russian and the Making of World Languages during the Cold War". Isis. 108 (3): 643–650. doi:10.1086/694163. ISSN 0021-1753. S2CID 148831824. Cameron-Pesant, Sarah (2018). "Usage et diffusion des revues savantes québécoises en sciences sociales et humaines : analyse des téléchargements de la plateforme


id: languages-of-science-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-11.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
9 (1): 168–174. doi:10.1002/nop2.1115. ISSN 2054-1058. PMC 8685880. PMID 34725950. Zhang, Lin; Sivertsen, Gunnar (2020-05-12). "The New Research Assessment Reform in China and Its Implementation". Scholarly Assessment Reports. 2 (1): 3. doi:10.29024/sar.15. hdl:11250/2733873. ISSN 2689-5870. Retrieved 2023-09-10.


id: languages-of-science-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science-12.md
category: reference
title: Languages of science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: languages-of-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Conferences === Shearer, Kathleen; Chan, Leslie; Kuchma, Iryna; Mounier, Pierre (2020-04-15). Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action. Retrieved 2020-06-17. Beigel, Fernanda (2022). Research evaluation in the southern road to open science (PDF). OSEC 2022. Paris. === Other articles === Garfield, Eugene (1967). "English – An international language for science?" (PDF). Current Contents. Huttner-Koros, Adam (2015-08-21). "Why Science's Universal Language Is a Problem for Research". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2020-09-24. van Weijen, Daphne (November 2012). "The Language of (Future) Scientific Communication". Research Trends. No. 31. Archived from the original on 2020-09-20. Retrieved 2020-09-24. Gordin, Michael D. "How did science come to speak only English? – Michael D Gordin | Aeon Essays". Aeon. Retrieved 2020-09-24. Taşkın, Zehra; Dogan, Guleda; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Zuccala, Alesia Ann (2020-06-18). "Science needs to inform the public. That can't be done solely in English". LSE COVID-19. Retrieved 2022-01-21. Pölönen, Janne; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Mustajoki, Henriikka; Røeggen, Vidar (2021-12-07). "Multilingualism is integral to accessibility and should be part of European research assessment reform". Impact of Social Sciences. Retrieved 2022-01-20. === Declaration === Bundy, McGeorge. "Memorandum # 332, U.S. Government Policy on English Language Teaching Abroad, 6/11/1965" (June 11, 1965). National Security Files, Series: National Security Action Memorandums,


id: leith-agcm-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leith_AGCM-0.md
category: reference
title: Leith AGCM
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leith_AGCM
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:43.327572+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: leith-agcm-20260505-0
summary:
Leith AGCM is a climate model that was developed by Cecil Leith beginning in 1958; it is likely the oldest atmospheric general circulation model. Leith published videos of its model output, inspiring other scientists to do the same. Today it has been superseded by climate models developed from different base codes; as such, it is little known. == History and development == Efforts to calculate the behaviour of the weather system commenced in the 1920s with a seminal paper by Lewis Fry Richardson. By the 1950s and 1960s several groups were involved in making climate models, with major efforts taking place at several US universities that eventually gave rise to the well-known GFDL, UCLA, and NCAR models. Today climate models are an important enterprise with significant impact on public policy, where hundreds of scientists and institutions participate worldwide. The researcher Cecil E. “Chuck” Leith (1923–2016) is well-known for his research on fluid mechanics. After an initial career on the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the invention of nuclear bombs, he joined the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory after 1946 and in 1968 the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Beginning in 1958, he began to work on a climate model that was later


id: logical-positivism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-0.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
Logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism or neo-positivism, was a philosophical movement, in the empiricist tradition, that sought to formulate a scientific philosophy in which philosophical discourse would be, in the perception of its proponents, as authoritative and meaningful as empirical science. Logical positivism's central thesis was the verification principle, also known as the "verifiability criterion of meaning", according to which a statement is cognitively meaningful only if it can be verified through empirical observation or if it is a tautology (true by virtue of its own meaning or its own logical form). The verifiability criterion thus rejected statements of metaphysics, theology, ethics and aesthetics as cognitively meaningless in terms of truth value or factual content. Despite its ambition to overhaul philosophy by mimicking the structure and process of empirical science, logical positivism became erroneously stereotyped as an agenda to regulate the scientific process and to place strict standards on it. The movement emerged in the late 1920s among philosophers, scientists and mathematicians congregated within the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle and flourished in several European centres through the 1930s. By the end of World War II, many of its members had settled in the English-speaking world and the


id: logical-positivism-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-1.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Anglosphere === As the movement's first emissary to the New World, Moritz Schlick visited Stanford University in 1929, yet otherwise remained in Vienna and was murdered in 1936 at the University by a former student, Johann Nelböck, who was reportedly deranged. That year, A. J. Ayer, a British attendee at various Vienna Circle meetings since 1933, published Language, Truth and Logic, which imported logical positivism to the English-speaking world. In 1933, the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany had triggered flight of intellectuals, which accelerated upon Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938. The logical positivists, many of whom were Jewish, were targeted and continued flight throughout the pre-war period. Their philosophy thus became dominant in the English-speaking world. By the late 1930s, many in the movement had replaced phenomenalism with Neurath's physicalism, whereby material objects are not reducible to sensory stimuli but exist as publicly observable entities in the real world. Neurath settled in England, where he died in 1945. Carnap, Reichenbach and Hempel settled permanently in America. === Post-war period === Following the Second World War, logical positivism—now referred to by some as logical empiricism—turned to less radical objectives in the philosophy of science. Led by Carl


id: logical-positivism-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-2.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
In theories of justification, a priori statements are those that can be known independently of observation, contrasting with a posteriori statements, which are dependent on observation. Statements may also be categorised into analytic and synthetic: Analytic statements are true by virtue of their own meaning or their own logical form, therefore are tautologies that are true by necessity but uninformative about the world. Synthetic statements, in comparison, are contingent propositions that refer to a state of facts concerning the world. David Hume proposed an unambiguous distinction between analytic and synthetic, categorising knowledge exclusively as either "relations of ideas" (which are a priori, analytic and abstract) or "matters of fact and real existence" (a posteriori, synthetic and concrete), a classification referred to as Hume's fork. Immanuel Kant identified a further category of knowledge: Synthetic a priori statements, which are informative about the world, but known without observation. This principle is encapsulated in Kant's transcendental idealism, which attributes the mind a constructive role in phenomena whereby intuitive truths—including synthetic a priori conceptions of space and time—function as an interpretative filter for an observer's experience of the world. His thesis would serve to rescue Newton's law of universal gravitation from Hume's problem of


id: logical-positivism-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-3.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
Carl Hempel was prominent in the development of the deductive-nomological (DN) model, then the foremost model of scientific explanation defended even among critics of neo-positivism such as Popper. According to the DN model, a scientific explanation is valid only if it takes the form of a deductive inference from a set of explanatory premises (explanans) to the observation or theory to be explained (explanandum). The model stipulates that the premises must refer to at least one law, which it defines as an unrestricted generalization of the conditional form: "If A, then B". Laws therefore differ from mere regularities ("George always carries only $1 bills in his wallet") which do not necessarily support counterfactual claims. Furthermore, laws must be empirically verifiable in compliance with the verification principle. The DN model ignores causal mechanisms beyond the principle of constant conjunction ("first event A and then always event B") in accordance with the Humean empiricist postulate that, though sequences of events are observable, the underpinning causal principles are not. Hempel stated that well-formulated natural laws (empirically confirmed regularities) are satisfactory in approximating causal explanation. Hempel later proposed a probabilistic model of scientific explanation: The inductive-statistical (IS) model. Derivation of statistical laws from other


id: logical-positivism-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism-4.md
category: reference
title: Logical positivism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:44.646869+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: logical-positivism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Norwood Hanson === In 1958, Norwood Hanson's Patterns of Discovery characterised the concept of theory-ladenness. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn held that even direct observations are never truly neutral in that they are laden with theory, i.e. influenced by a system of theoretical presuppositions that function as an interpretative framework for the senses. Accordingly, individuals subscribed to different theories might report radically different observations even as they investigate the same phenomena. Hanson's thesis attacked the observation-theory distinction, which draws a dividing line between observational and non-observational (theoretical) language. More broadly, its findings challenged the central-most tenets of empiricism in questioning the infallibility and objectivity of empirical observation. === Thomas Kuhn === Thomas Kuhn's landmark book of 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—which discussed paradigm shifts in fundamental physics—critically undermined confidence in scientific foundationalism. Kuhn proposed in its place a coherentist model of science, whereby scientific progress revolves around cores of established, coherent ideas which periodically undergo abrupt revolutionary changes. Though foundationalism was often considered a constituent doctrine of logical positivism (and Kuhn's thesis an epistemological criticism of the movement) such views were simplistic: In the 1930s, Neurath had argued for the adoption of coherentism, famously comparing the progress of science


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-0.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The materialism controversy (German: Materialismusstreit) was a public debate in the mid-19th century about how new developments in the natural sciences might affect existing worldviews. During the 1840s, a new form of materialism emerged, shaped by advances in biology and the decline of idealistic philosophy. This form of materialism sought to explain human beings and their behavior through scientific methods. The central question of the debate was whether scientific discoveries were compatible with traditional ideas such as the existence of an immaterial soul, a personal God, and human free will. The discussion also touched on deeper philosophical issues, such as what kind of knowledge a materialist or mechanical view of the world could offer. In his Physiologische Briefe from 1846, zoologist Carl Vogt argued that mental processes were entirely physical, famously stating that "thoughts stand in the same relation to the brain as bile does to the liver or urine to the kidneys." In 1854, the physiologist Rudolf Wagner criticized this view in a speech to the Göttingen Naturalists' Assembly. He argued that religious belief and science belonged to separate areas of understanding, and that natural science could not answer questions about God, the soul, or free will. Wagner’s comments


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-1.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The materialism controversy was sparked in part by the writings of physiologist Carl Vogt, beginning in 1847. His commitment to materialism was shaped by the scientific and political reform movements of the time, as well as his own personal and political development. Vogt was born in Giessen in 1817, into a family with both scientific and revolutionary traditions. His father, Philipp Friedrich Wilhelm Vogt, was a professor of medicine who moved to Bern in 1834 after facing political persecution. On his mother’s side, political activism was also a strong influence: Louise Follen’s three brothers—Adolf, Karl, and Paul Follen—were all involved in nationalist and democratic causes and eventually went into exile. In 1817 Adolf Follen drafted a proposal for a future German constitution and was later arrested for his political activities. He avoided a 10-year prison sentence by fleeing to Switzerland. Karl Follen was suspected of encouraging the assassination of conservative writer August von Kotzebue and escaped to the United States, where he became a professor at Harvard University. The youngest brother, Paul Follen, helped found the Gießener Auswanderungsgesellschaft in 1833, which aimed to establish a German republic in the U.S. Though the plan failed, Paul settled in Missouri as a


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-2.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
During the summer of 1854, the 31st Naturalists' Meeting was held in Göttingen. A major topic of discussion was the existence of the soul and its compatibility with emerging materialist views in science. During the event, physiologist Rudolf Wagner gave a prominent lecture on human creation and the nature of the soul, in which he sharply criticized materialism. He argued that denying the existence of a soul created by God—and especially the rejection of free will—would undermine the moral foundations of society. Wagner claimed that materialist theories, such as those proposed by Carl Vogt, reduced human beings to passive machines without responsibility, which conflicted with the ethical duties of scientists. Later that year, Wagner published a second paper that expanded on his criticisms. He argued that science and faith occupy separate domains, and that science alone could neither prove nor disprove religious beliefs. He explained that while physiologists can describe the structure and function of physical organs, their findings can be interpreted in different ways. Materialists use these observations to argue that mental functions are based on physical processes, while dualists believe the body interacts with an immaterial soul. Wagner maintained that physiology cannot determine which interpretation is correct. He


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-3.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
== Reactions in the 19th century == === Philosophy of neo-Kantianism === Materialism, as promoted by scientists like Carl Vogt, Jakob Moleschott, and Ludwig Büchner, was presented as a direct consequence of empirical scientific research. Following the decline of German idealism, many saw academic philosophy—especially as taught in universities—as disconnected from reality and reduced to speculative thought. Even philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, once aligned with idealist traditions, placed his trust in the natural sciences to answer longstanding philosophical questions such as the relationship between body and soul. However, a strong philosophical critique of materialism did not emerge until the 1860s, with the rise of Neo-Kantianism. In 1865, Otto Liebmann published Kant und die Epigonen (Kant and His Followers), a work that sharply criticized major post-Kantian thinkers—from German idealists to Arthur Schopenhauer. Liebmann famously ended each chapter with the refrain: "So we must go back to Kant!". The following year,Friedrich Albert Lange published Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism), in which he aligned himself with the Neo-Kantian position. Lange accused the scientific materialists of “philosophical dilettantism”, claiming that they overlooked central insights of Kantian thought. At the core of Kant’s philosophy, particularly in the Critique of Pure Reason, is the question: What


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-4.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Even Ludwig Büchner, initially one of the most prominent advocates of materialism, eventually distanced himself from the term. In a letter to Haeckel dated 1875, he wrote:I ... have therefore never used the term 'materialism', which evokes a completely one-sided idea, for my school of thought and only accepted it here and there later out of necessity because the general public knew no other word for the whole movement ... . The term 'monism' that you suggest is very good in itself, but it is very doubtful whether it will be accepted by the general public. === Political and ideological impact === Although scientific materialism gained considerable popularity among the general public in 19th-century Germany, its proponents—Carl Vogt, Jakob Moleschott, and Ludwig Büchner—faced significant political opposition. All three lost their academic positions largely because of their outspoken advocacy of materialism. Vogt’s revolutionary materialism, in particular, failed to gain traction in the reactionary political climate following the revolutions of 1848. Scientific materialism also struggled to influence broader political movements, in part due to ideological conflicts with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx disparaged Vogt as a “small-university beer bouncer and misguided Barrot of the Reich", and personal denunciations escalated between the


id: materialism-controversy-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy-5.md
category: reference
title: Materialism controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:45.902602+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: materialism-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Primary literature === Beiser, Frederick C. (2014). After Hegel: German philosophy 1840-1900. Princeton, NJ Oxford: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17371-9. Büchner, Ludwig (1932). Kraft und Stoff (in German) (Pocket ed.). Leipzig: Kröner Verlag. Du Bois-Reymond, Emil; Wollgast, Siegfried (1974). Vorträge über Philosophie und Gesellschaft. Philosophische Bibliothek. Hamburg: F. Meiner. ISBN 978-3-7873-0320-5. Daum, Andreas W. (2002). Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert. Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit 1848–1914 (in German) (2 ed.). Munich: Oldenbourg. Feuerbach, Ludwig (1967). Gesammelte Werke (in German). Vol. 3. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Haeckel, Ernst (1908). Die Welträthsel (in German). Leipzig: Kröner. Helmholtz, Hermann (2003). "Ueber das Sehen des Menschen". Gesammelte Schriften (in German). Vol. 1. Hildesheim: Olms. Lange, Friedrich Albert (1920) [1866]. Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (in German). J. Baedeker. Marx, Karl (1961). Herr Vogt. Marx-Engels-Werke (in German). Vol. 14. Berlin: Dietz. Vogt, Carl (1856). Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft. Eine Streitschrift gegen Hofrasth Rudolph Wagner in Göttingen (in German) (4th ed.). Gießen: Rickersche Buchhandlung. Vogt, Carl (1874). Physiologische Briefe (in German) (14 ed.). Gießen: Rickersche Buchhandlung. Wagner, Rudolf (1854a). Menschenschöpfung und Seelensubstanz. Ein anthropologischer Vortrag (in German). Göttingen: G.H. Wigand. Wagner, Rudolf (1854b). Ueber Wissen und Glauben. Mit besonderer Beziehung


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-0.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
The history of metamaterials begins with artificial dielectrics in microwave engineering as it developed just after World War II. Yet, there are seminal explorations of artificial materials for manipulating electromagnetic waves at the end of the 19th century. Hence, the history of metamaterials is essentially a history of developing certain types of manufactured materials, which interact at radio frequency, microwave, and later optical frequencies. As the science of materials has advanced, photonic materials have been developed which use the photon of light as the fundamental carrier of information. This has led to photonic crystals, and at the beginning of the new millennium, the proof of principle for functioning metamaterials with a negative index of refraction in the microwave- (at 10.5 Gigahertz) and optical range. This was followed by the first proof of principle for metamaterial cloaking (shielding an object from view), also in the microwave range, about six years later. However, a cloak that can conceal objects across the entire electromagnetic spectrum is still decades away. Many physics and engineering problems need to be solved. Nevertheless, negative refractive materials have led to the development of metamaterial antennas and metamaterial microwave lenses for miniature wireless system antennas which are more efficient


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-1.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
=== Jagadish Chandra Bose === Jagadish Chandra Bose was a scientist involved in original microwave research during the 1890s. As officiating professor of physics at Presidency College he involved himself with laboratory experiments and studies involving refraction, diffraction and polarization, as well as transmitters, receivers and various microwave components. He connected receivers to a sensitive galvanometer, and developed crystals to be used as a receiver. The crystals operated in the shortwave radio range. Crystals were also developed to detect both white and ultraviolet light. These crystals were patented in 1904 for their capability to detect electromagnetic radiation. Furthermore, it appears that his work also anticipated the existence of p-type and n-type semiconductors by 60 years. For the general public in 1895, Bose was able to remotely ring a bell and explode gunpowder with the use of electromagnetic waves. In 1896, it was reported that Bose had transmitted electromagnetic signals over almost a mile. In 1897, Bose reported on his microwave research (experiments) at the Royal Institution in London. There he demonstrated his apparatus at wavelengths that ranged from 2.5 centimeters to 5 millimeters. == Early chiral media == In 1898, Jagadish Chandra Bose conducted the first microwave experiment on twisted


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-2.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
Much of the historic research related to metamaterials is weighted from the view of antenna beam shaping within microwave engineering just after World War II. Furthermore, metamaterials appear to be historically linked to the body of research pertaining to artificial dielectrics throughout the late 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s. The most common use for artificial dielectrics throughout prior decades has been in the microwave regime for antenna beam shaping. The artificial dielectrics had been proposed as a low cost and lightweight "tool". Research on artificial dielectrics, other than metamaterials, is still ongoing for pertinent parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Pioneering works in microwave engineering on artificial dielectrics in microwave were produced by Winston E. Kock, Seymour Cohn, John Brown, and Walter Rotman. Periodic artificial structures were proposed by Kock, Rotman, and Sergei Schelkunoff. There is also an extensive reference list that is focused on the properties of artificial dielectrics in the 1991 book, Field Theory of Guided Waves by Robert E. Collin. Schelkunoff achieved notice for contributions to antenna theory and electromagnetic wave propagation. "Magnetic particles made of capacitively loaded loops were also suggested by Sergei Schelkunoff in 1952 (who was a senior colleague of Winston Kock at Bell


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-3.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
=== Invention of the metamaterial === Historically, and conventionally, the function or behavior of materials can be altered through their chemistry. This has long been known. For example, adding lead changes the color or hardness of glass. However, at the end of the 20th century this description was expanded by John Pendry, a physicist from Imperial College in London. In the 1990s he was consulting for a British company, Marconi Materials Technology, as a condensed matter physics expert. The company manufactured a stealth technology made of a radiation-absorbing carbon that was for naval vessels. However, the company did not understand the physics of the material. The company asked Pendry if he could understand how the material worked. Pendry discovered that the radiation absorption property did not come from the molecular or chemical structure of the material, i.e. the carbon per se. This property came from the long and thin, physical shape of the carbon fibers. He realized rather than conventionally altering a material through its chemistry, as lead does with glass, the behavior of a material can be altered by changing a material's internal structure on a very fine scale. The very fine scale was less than the wavelength of


id: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials-4.md
category: reference
title: History of metamaterials
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metamaterials
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:47.132262+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-metamaterials-20260505-0
summary:
=== The super lens === The super lens or superlens is a practical structure based on John Pendry's work describing a perfect lens that can go beyond the diffraction limit by focusing all four fourier components. Pendry's paper described a theoretical novel lens that could capture images below the diffraction limit by employing the negative refractive index behavior. The super lens is a practical realization of this theory. It is a working lens that can capture images below the diffraction limit even though limitations occur due to the inefficiencies of conventional materials. This means that although there are losses, enough of an image is returned to show this work was a successful demonstration. === Invisibility cloak === Ulf Leonhardt was born in East Germany, and presently occupies the theoretical physics chair at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and is considered one the leaders in the science of creating an invisibility cloak. Around 1999, Leonhardt began work on how to build a cloaking device with a few other colleagues. Leonhardt stated that at the time invisibility was not considered fashionable. He then wrote a theoretical study entitled "Optical Conformal Mapping". The first sentence sums up the objective: "An invisibility


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-0.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
The history of the metric system began during the Age of Enlightenment with measures of length and weight derived from nature, along with their decimal multiples and fractions. The system became the standard of France and Europe within half a century. Other measures with unity ratios were added, and the system went on to be adopted across the world. The first practical realisation of the metric system came in 1799, during the French Revolution, after the existing system of measures had become impractical for trade, and was replaced by a decimal system based on the kilogram and the metre. The basic units were taken from the natural world. The unit of length, the metre, was based on the dimensions of the Earth, and the unit of mass, the kilogram, was based on the mass of a volume of water of one litre (a cubic decimetre). Reference copies for both units were manufactured in platinum and remained the standards of measure for the next 90 years. After a period of reversion to the mesures usuelles due to unpopularity of the metric system, the metrication of France and much of Europe was complete by the 1850s. In the middle of the 19th


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-1.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
=== Clocks and pendulums === In 1656, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock, with its pendulum marking the seconds. This gave rise to proposals to use its length as a standard unit. But it became apparent that the pendulum lengths of calibrated clocks in different locations varied (due to local variations in the acceleration due to gravity), and this was not a good solution. A more uniform standard was needed. In 1670, Gabriel Mouton, a French abbot and astronomer, published the book Observationes diametrorum solis et lunae apparentium ("Observations of the apparent diameters of the Sun and Moon") in which he proposed a decimal system of measurement of length for use by scientists in international communication, to be based on the dimensions of the Earth. The milliare would be defined as a minute of arc along a meridian (such as the Paris meridian) and would be divided into 10 centuria, the centuria into 10 decuria and so on, successive units being the virga, virgula, decima, centesima, and the millesima. Mouton used Riccioli's estimate that one degree of arc was 321,185 Bolognese feet. Mouton's experiments showed that a pendulum of length one virgula would beat 3959.2 times in half


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-2.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
In 1790, a panel of five leading French scientists was appointed by the Académie des sciences to investigate weights and measures. They were Jean-Charles de Borda, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Gaspard Monge, and Nicolas de Condorcet. Over the following year, the panel, after studying various alternatives, made a series of recommendations regarding a new system of weights and measures, including that it should have a decimal radix, that the unit of length should be based on a fractional arc of a quadrant of the Earth's meridian, and that the unit of weight should be that of a cube of water whose dimension was a decimal fraction of the unit of length. The proposals were accepted by the French Assembly on 30 March 1791. Following acceptance, the Académie des sciences was instructed to implement the proposals. The Académie broke the tasks into five operations, allocating each part to a separate working group: Measuring the difference in latitude between Dunkirk and Barcelona and triangulating between them Measuring the baselines used for the survey Verifying the length of the second pendulum at 45° latitude. Verifying the weight in a vacuum of a given volume of distilled water. Publishing conversion tables relating the new


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-3.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
Delambre used a baseline of about 10 km in length along a straight road, located close to Melun. In an operation taking six weeks, the baseline was accurately measured using four platinum rods, each of length two toises (about 3.9 m). Thereafter he used, where possible, the triangulation points used by Cassini in his 1744 survey of France. Méchain's baseline, of a similar length, and also on a straight section of road was in the Perpignan area. Although Méchain's sector was half the length of Delambre, it included the Pyrenees and hitherto unsurveyed parts of Spain. After the two surveyors met, each computed the other's baseline in order to cross-check their results and they then recomputed the metre as 443.296 lignes, notably shorter than the 1795 provisional value of 443.44 lignes. On 15 November 1798, Delambre and Méchain returned to Paris with their data, having completed the survey. The final value of the mètre was defined in 1799 as the computed value from the survey. Historical note: It soon became apparent that Méchain and Delambre's result (443.296 lignes) was slightly too short for the meridional definition of the metre. Méchain had made a small error measuring the latitude of Barcelona,


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-4.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
=== The first structured metric system: CGS === In 1861, a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) including William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), James Clerk Maxwell, and James Prescott Joule among its members was tasked with investigating the "Standards of Electrical Resistance". In their first report (1862), they laid the ground rules for their work—the metric system was to be used, measures of electrical energy must have the same units as measures of mechanical energy, and two sets of electromagnetic units would have to be derived—an electromagnetic system and an electrostatic system. In the second report (1863), they introduced the concept of a coherent system of units whereby units of length, mass, and time were identified as "fundamental units" (now known as base units). All other units of measure could be derived (hence derived units) from these base units. The metre, gram, and second were chosen as base units. In 1861, before a meeting of the BAAS, Charles Bright and Latimer Clark proposed the names of ohm, volt, and farad in honour of Georg Ohm, Alessandro Volta, and Michael Faraday respectively for the practical units based on the CGS absolute system. This was supported by


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-5.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
==== Quadrant–eleventhgram–second (QES) or International System of Electrical and Magnetic Units ==== The CGS units of measure used in scientific work were not practical for engineering, leading to the development of a more applicable system of electric units especially for telegraphy. The unit of length was 107 m (the hebdometre, nominally the Earth quadrant), the unit of mass was an unnamed unit equal to 10−11 g and the unit of time was the second. The units of mass and length were scaled incongruously to yield more consistent and usable electric units in terms of mechanical measures. Informally called the "practical" system, it was properly termed the quadrant–eleventhgram–second (QES) system of units according to convention. The definitions of electrical units incorporated the magnetic constant like the EMU system, and the names of the units were carried over from that system, but scaled according to the defined mechanical units. The system was formalised as the International system late in the 19th century and its units later designated the "international ampere", "international volt", etc. ==== Heaviside–Lorentz system of units ==== The factor 4 π {\displaystyle 4\pi } that occurs in Maxwell's equations in the gaussian system (and the other CGS systems) comes from


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-6.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
Conférence générale des poids et mesures (CGPM or General Conference on Weights and Measures), an intergovernmental conference of official delegates of member nations and the supreme authority for all actions; Comité international des poids et mesures (CIPM or International Committee for Weights and Measures), consisting of selected scientists and metrologists, which prepares and executes the decisions of the CGPM and is responsible for the supervision of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; Bureau international des poids et mesures (BIPM or International Bureau of Weights and Measures), a permanent laboratory and world centre of scientific metrology, the activities of which include the establishment of the basic standards and scales of the principal physical quantities, maintenance of the international prototype standards, and oversight of regular comparisons between the international prototype and the various national standards. The international prototype of the metre and international prototype of the kilogram were both made from a 90% platinum, 10% iridium alloy which is exceptionally hard and which has good electrical and thermal conductivity properties. The prototype had a special X-shaped (Tresca) cross section to minimise the effects of torsional strain during length comparisons and the prototype kilograms were cylindrical in shape. The London firm Johnson


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-7.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
== Working draft of SI: Practical system of units == The 9th CGPM met in 1948, fifteen years after the 8th CGPM. In response to formal requests made by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and by the French government to establish a practical system of units of measure, the CGPM requested the CIPM to prepare recommendations for a single practical system of units of measurement, suitable for adoption by all countries adhering to the Metre Convention. The CIPM's draft proposal was an extensive revision and simplification of the metric unit definitions, symbols, and terminology based on the MKS system of units. Following astronomical observations, the second was set as a fraction of the year 1900. The electromagnetic base unit, as required by Giorgi, was accepted as the ampere. After negotiations with the CIS and IUPAP, two additional units—the degree kelvin and the candela—were also proposed as base units. For the first time, the CGPM made recommendations concerning derived units. At the same time, the CGPM adopted conventions for the writing and printing of unit symbols and numbers and catalogued the symbols for the most important MKS and CGS units of measure. === Time === Until the advent


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-8.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
=== New base and derived units === Over the ensuing years, the BIPM developed and maintained cross-correlations relating various measuring devices such as thermocouples, light spectra, and the like to the equivalent temperatures. The mole was originally known as a gram-atom or a gram-molecule—the amount of a substance measured in grams divided by its atomic weight. Originally chemists and physicists had differing views regarding the definition of the atomic weight—both assigned a value of 16 atomic mass units (amu) to oxygen, but physicists defined oxygen in terms of the 16O isotope whereas chemists assigned 16 amu to 16O, 17O and 18O isotopes mixed in the proportion that they occur in nature. Finally, an agreement between the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) brought this duality to an end in 1959/60, both parties agreeing to define the atomic weight of 12C as being exactly 12 amu. This agreement was confirmed by ISO and in 1969 the CIPM recommended its inclusion in SI as a base unit. This was done in 1971 at the 14th CGPM. === Start of migration to constant definitions === The second major trend in the


id: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system-9.md
category: reference
title: History of the metric system
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:48.437355+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-the-metric-system-20260505-0
summary:
At its 23rd meeting (2007), the CGPM mandated the CIPM to investigate the use of natural constants as the basis for all units of measure rather than the artefacts that were then in use. The following year, this was endorsed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). At a meeting of the CCU held in Reading, United Kingdom, in September 2010, a resolution and draft changes to the SI brochure that were to be presented to the next meeting of the CIPM in October 2010 were agreed in principle. The CIPM meeting of October 2010 found that "the conditions set by the General Conference at its 23rd meeting have not yet been fully met. For this reason the CIPM does not propose a revision of the SI at the present time". The CIPM, however, presented a resolution for consideration at the 24th CGPM (17–21 October 2011) to agree to the new definitions in principle, but not to implement them until the details had been finalised. In the revision, four of the seven SI base units—the kilogram, ampere, kelvin, and mole—were redefined by setting exact numerical values for the Planck constant (h), the elementary electric charge (e), the


id: mihi-itch-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihi_itch-0.md
category: reference
title: Mihi itch
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihi_itch
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:53.507857+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mihi-itch-20260505-0
summary:
Mihi itch or Mihisucht is the ambition to describe new species (or other taxa: subspecies, hybrids, genera, etc.) as a means to immortalize one's name. Mihi is the dative form of the Latin word ego, thus "mihi itch" means to satisfy one's egotistical impulses. The expression appeared in print as early as 1884. A consequence of the Mihi itch may be the unwarranted description of new taxa, differing only slightly from already established taxa, leading to taxonomic inflation. A more extreme case may be termed taxonomic vandalism when a large number of species are described with limited scientific evidence. == Examples == La "nouvelle école" in malacology, led by Jules René Bourguignat, was responsible for the description of hundreds of new species of molluscs in Europe at the end of the nineteen century. Harold St. John published 440 names in the genus Pandanus, which encompasses c. 600 accepted species, and 283 names in the genus Cyrtandra, which encompasses c. 700 accepted species. Between 2000 and 2011, Raymond Hoser published 582 species names, and 340 generic names of animals (mostly reptiles). == See also == Taxonomic vandalism Taxonomic inflation == References ==


id: natural-history-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history-0.md
category: reference
title: Natural history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:54.706913+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-history-20260505-0
summary:
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is called a naturalist or natural historian. Natural history encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it. It involves the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms, so while it dates from studies in the ancient Greco-Roman world and the medieval Arab world, through to European Renaissance naturalists working in near isolation, today's natural history is a cross-discipline umbrella of many specialty sciences; e.g., geobiology has a strong multidisciplinary nature. == Definitions == === Before 1900 === The meaning of the English term "natural history" (a calque of the Latin historia naturalis) has narrowed progressively with time, while, by contrast, the meaning of the related term "nature" has widened (see also History below). In antiquity, "natural history" covered essentially anything connected with nature, or used materials drawn from nature, such as Pliny the Elder's encyclopedia of this title, published c. 77 to 79 AD, which covers astronomy, geography, humans and their technology, medicine, and superstition, as well as animals and plants. Medieval European


id: natural-history-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history-1.md
category: reference
title: Natural history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:54.706913+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-history-20260505-0
summary:
=== Prehistory === Prior to the advent of Western science, humans were engaged and highly competent in indigenous ways of understanding the more-than-human world that are now referred to as traditional ecological knowledge. 21st century definitions of natural history are inclusive of this understanding, such as this by Thomas Fleischner of the Natural History Institute (Prescott, Arizona): Natural history – a practice of intentional focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy – is the oldest continuous human endeavor. In the evolutionary past of our species, the practice of natural history was essential for our survival, imparting critical information on habits and chronologies of plants and animals that we could eat or that could eat us. Natural history continues to be critical to human survival and thriving. It contributes to our fundamental understanding of how the world works by providing the empirical foundation of natural sciences, and it contributes directly and indirectly to human emotional and physical health, thereby fostering healthier human communities. It also serves as the basis for all conservation efforts, with natural history both informing the science and inspiring the values that drive these. === Ancient === As a precursor to Western


id: natural-history-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history-2.md
category: reference
title: Natural history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:54.706913+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-history-20260505-0
summary:
Natural history museums, which evolved from cabinets of curiosities, played an important role in the emergence of professional biological disciplines and research programs. Particularly in the 19th century, scientists began to use their natural history collections as teaching tools for advanced students and the basis for their own morphological research. == Societies == The term "natural history" alone, or sometimes together with archaeology, forms the name of many national, regional, and local natural history societies that maintain records for animals—including birds (ornithology), insects (entomology) and mammals (mammalogy)—fungi (mycology), plants (botany), and other organisms. They may also have geological and microscopical sections. Examples of these societies in Britain include the Natural History Society of Northumbria founded in 1829, London Natural History Society (1858), Birmingham Natural History Society (1859), British Entomological and Natural History Society founded in 1872, Glasgow Natural History Society, Manchester Microscopical and Natural History Society established in 1880, Whitby Naturalists' Club founded in 1913, Scarborough Field Naturalists' Society and the Sorby Natural History Society, Sheffield, founded in 1918. The growth of natural history societies was also spurred due to the growth of British colonies in tropical regions with numerous new species to be discovered. Many civil servants took an


id: natural-magic-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic-0.md
category: reference
title: Natural magic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:55.929681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-magic-20260505-0
summary:
Natural magic is a tradition concerning the manipulation and development of the occult, or hidden, mechanisms within nature. Unlike ceremonial magic, it does not rely on a relationship with summoning spirits. Natural magic sometimes makes use of physical substances from the natural world such as stones or herbs. In the Medieval era, many theologians utilized the term natural magic when referring to the properties of the natural world that would operate within the realm of divinity. Natural magic worked to expose underlying mechanisms occurring in nature that cannot be explained through rational knowledge. The lack of concrete evidence results in these mechanisms being referred to as "occult properties". Natural magic so defined includes astrology, alchemy, and certain disciplines that would today be considered fields of natural science, such as astronomy and chemistry (divergently evolved from astrology and alchemy, respectively) or botany (from herbology). Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher wrote that "there are as many types of natural magic as there are subjects of applied sciences". Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa discusses natural magic in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533), where he calls it "nothing else but the highest power of natural sciences". The Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who


id: natural-magic-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic-1.md
category: reference
title: Natural magic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_magic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:55.929681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-magic-20260505-0
summary:
During the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century, the way science was viewed started to drastically change. The role of natural magic began to shift, but it did not disappear. Specifically, the idea of “occult properties” had an important role in the developing scientific worldview. The invisible forces in nature, which were previously thought of as magical concepts, came to be known as more rational and mathematical ones. For example, phenomena such as gravity and light were once thought to be mysterious, unknown forces, but during the Scientific Revolution, scientists began to explain them as rays or forces acting across a space. This transformation of thought is shown through figures like Isaac Newton, whose theory of gravity relied on a force at a distance, similar to earlier beliefs related to natural magic. While Newton and other scientists moved away from magical explanations, theories of natural magic helped to inspire their work. Despite beliefs and reasonings changing, “occult qualities” helped to establish ideas such as force interactions, which remain a central part of modern physics today. == See also == Kitāb al-nawāmīs – Arabic book of magic Giambattista della Porta – Italian polymath (1535–1615) Magia Naturalis – Book by Giambattista della


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-0.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
Natural philosophy, philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis), or experimental philosophy, until the late modern period, was the systematic and research-based study of nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. Used since at least Aristotle (classical antiquity) until the 19th century, the term natural philosophy referred to a branch of philosophy—a broader term then, meaning all rational fields of study and contemplation—that explored topics now considered to fall under the purview of science, such as physics, biology, chemistry, and astronomy. Thus, natural philosophy served as the precursor to, and has been mostly supplanted by, modern science. The 19th century established the term science as distinct from philosophy in its rigorously empirical and experimental approach, along with its many modern sub-disciplines, plus the founding of various institutions and communities devoted to them. Isaac Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) (English: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) reflects the use of the term natural philosophy in the 17th century. Even in the 19th century, the work that helped define much of modern physics bore the title Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), authored by Lord Kelvin and Tait. In the German tradition, Naturphilosophie (philosophy of nature) persisted into the


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-1.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
Humankind's mental engagement with nature certainly predates civilization and the record of history. Philosophical, and specifically non-religious, thought about the natural world goes back to ancient Greece. These lines of thought began before Socrates, who turned his philosophical studies from speculations about nature to a consideration of man, or in other words, political philosophy. The thought of early philosophers such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Democritus centered on the natural world. In addition, three Presocratic philosophers who lived in the Ionian town of Miletus (hence the Milesian School of philosophy), Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, attempted to explain natural phenomena without recourse to creation myths involving the Greek gods. They were called the physikoi ("natural philosophers") or, as Aristotle referred to them, the physiologoi. Plato followed Socrates in concentrating on man. It was Plato's student, Aristotle, who, in basing his thought on the natural world, returned empiricism to its primary place, while leaving room in the world for man. Martin Heidegger observes that Aristotle was the originator of conception of nature that prevailed in the Middle Ages into the modern era: The Physics is a lecture in which he seeks to determine beings that arise on their own, τὰ φύσει ὄντα (ta


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-2.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
=== In ancient Greece === Early Greek philosophers studied motion and the cosmos. Figures like Hesiod regarded the natural world as offspring of the gods, whereas others like Leucippus and Democritus regarded the world as lifeless atoms in a vortex. Anaximander deduced that eclipses happen because of apertures in rings of celestial fire. Heraclitus believed that the heavenly bodies were made of fire that were contained within bowls. He thought that eclipses happen when the bowl turned away from the earth. Anaximenes is believed to have stated that an underlying element was air, and by manipulating air someone could change its thickness to create fire, water, dirt, and stones. Empedocles identified the elements that make up the world, which he termed the roots of all things, as fire, air, earth, and water. Parmenides argued that all change is a logical impossibility. He gives the example that nothing can go from nonexistence to existence. Plato argues that the world is an imperfect replica of an idea that a divine craftsman once held. He also believed that the only way to truly know something was through reason and logic. Not the study of the object itself, but that changeable matter is a


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-3.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Natural philosophy in the early modern period === The scientific method has ancient precedents, and Galileo exemplifies a mathematical understanding of nature, which is a hallmark of modern natural scientists. Galileo proposed that objects falling regardless of their mass would fall at the same rate, as long as the medium they fall in is identical. The 19th-century distinction of a scientific enterprise apart from traditional natural philosophy has its roots in prior centuries. Proposals for a more "inquisitive" and practical approach to the study of nature are notable in Francis Bacon, whose ardent convictions did much to popularize his insightful Baconian method. The Baconian method is employed throughout Thomas Browne's encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–1672), which debunks a wide range of common fallacies through empirical investigation of nature. The late-17th-century natural philosopher Robert Boyle wrote a seminal work on the distinction between physics and metaphysics called, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, as well as The Skeptical Chymist, after which the modern science of chemistry is named, (as distinct from proto-scientific studies of alchemy). These works of natural philosophy are representative of a departure from the medieval scholasticism taught in European universities, and anticipate in many


id: natural-philosophy-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy-4.md
category: reference
title: Natural philosophy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:57.359234+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: natural-philosophy-20260505-0
summary:
Environmental philosophy – Branch of philosophy Gentleman scientist – Financially independent scientistPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets History of science Natural environment – Living and non-living things on Earth Natural theology – Theology reliant on rational and empirical arguments Naturalism (philosophy) – Belief that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe Nature (philosophy) – Philosophical term Protoscience – Research field that may become a science == References == == Further reading == Adler, Mortimer J. (1993). The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical, Moral, Objective, Categorical. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-500574-X. E.A. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954). Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Science. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. LCCN:2001036144 ISBN 0-19-514583-6 Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1945) Simon & Schuster, 1972. Santayana, George (1923). Scepticism and Animal Faith. Dover Publications. pp. 27–41. ISBN 0-486-20236-4. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) David Snoke, Natural Philosophy: A Survey of Physics and Western Thought. Access Research Network, 2003. ISBN 1-931796-25-4.Natural Philosophy: A Survey of Physics and Western Thought


id: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories-0.md
category: reference
title: One-sex and two-sex theories
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:58.564653+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-0
summary:
The one-sex and two-sex theories (also referred to as the one-sex and two-sex models) are historiographical concepts introduced by historian Thomas Laqueur in his 1990 book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Laqueur proposed that Western medical and philosophical thought underwent a fundamental shift in the 18th century: from a "one-sex model," in which female anatomy was understood as an inverted, inferior version of male anatomy, to a "two-sex model" treating men and women as anatomically distinct and opposite. While Making Sex has been highly influential in gender studies, literary criticism, and cultural history, its thesis has attracted substantial criticism from historians of medicine and science. Critics including Helen King, Joan Cadden, Katharine Park, and Michael Stolberg have argued that Laqueur oversimplifies the historical record, misreads primary sources, and imposes an artificial chronological divide where one-sex and two-sex understandings in fact coexisted throughout Western history. The historian Monica H. Green has called on scholars to move beyond the framework entirely. == Laqueur's thesis == === The one-sex model === According to Laqueur, Western medicine from antiquity through the early modern period operated under a "one-sex model" in which women were understood as imperfect or inverted versions


id: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories-1.md
category: reference
title: One-sex and two-sex theories
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:58.564653+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: one-sex-and-two-sex-theories-20260505-0
summary:
=== Calls to move beyond the framework === Critics have noted that Making Sex achieved widespread influence partly because its binary framework offered a conveniently simple narrative for scholars across disciplines. As historiographical surveys have observed, the neatness of Laqueur's story—one era, one model, replaced by another era, another model—made it highly exportable, even as specialists in the history of medicine increasingly found it inadequate. Monica H. Green's 2018 article in Eugesta titled "Let Go of Laqueur" called for scholars to move beyond the one-sex/two-sex framework entirely and develop more nuanced histories of how bodies have been understood as sexed across different times and cultures. === Laqueur's response === In a 2003 response to Stolberg, Laqueur argued that isolated pieces of evidence for sexual dimorphism in Renaissance anatomy do not undermine his thesis, since individual observations do not discredit prevailing worldviews. He maintained that the fundamental epistemological shift he described—from sex as reflecting metaphysical truths to sex as biological foundation for gender—remained valid regardless of when specific anatomical differences were first noted. == Influence and legacy == Despite the scholarly criticisms described above, Making Sex has remained widely cited, particularly in gender studies, literary criticism, and cultural history. The book


id: oral-history-of-british-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_History_of_British_Science-0.md
category: reference
title: Oral History of British Science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_History_of_British_Science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:39:59.812145+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: oral-history-of-british-science-20260505-0
summary:
An Oral History of British Science is an oral history project conducted by National Life Stories at the British Library. The project began in 2009 with funding from the Arcadia Fund, the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and a number of other private donors and focuses on audio interviews with British science and engineering figures. == Project background == The project focused on 200 video interviews lasting 8–15 hours, with four themes: Made in Britain, A Changing Planet, Cosmologies and Biomedicine. The project Advisory Committee included Jon Agar, Alec Broers, Tilly Blyth, Georgina Ferry, Dame Julia Higgins, Maja Kominko, Sir Harry Kroto, John Lynch, Chris Rapley and Simone Turchetti. An Oral History of British Science was conducted by National Life Stories (NLS) at the British Library, and formed part of a wider institutional initiative to better document contemporary history of science and technology through the addition of audio visual sources as well as written sources. == Methodology == The oral history of British science follows the biographical, or life story, oral history approach with each audio interview averaging 8 to 15 hours in length. The interviews cover the individual’s career history, education, background and family. == Access to


id: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish-0.md
category: reference
title: Parable of the Sunfish
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:01.010546+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
summary:
"The Parable of the Sunfish" is an anecdote with which Ezra Pound opens ABC of Reading, a 1934 work of literary criticism. Pound uses this anecdote to emphasize an empirical approach for learning about art, in contrast to relying on commentary rooted in abstraction. While the parable is based on students' recollections of Louis Agassiz's teaching style, Pound's retelling diverges from these sources in several respects. The parable has been used to illustrate the benefits of scientific thinking, but more recent literary criticism has split on whether the parable accurately reflects the scientific process and calls into question Pound's empirical approach to literature. == The Parable == The text of the parable below is excerpted from Pound's ABC of Reading. == Context == === ABC of Reading === Pound opens ABC of Reading with the following pronouncement: The proper METHOD for studying poetry and good letters is the method of contemporary biologists, that is careful first-hand examination of the matter, and continual COMPARISON of one 'slide' or specimen with another. No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the sunfish. In the parable, a graduate student is sent to noted biologist Louis


id: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish-1.md
category: reference
title: Parable of the Sunfish
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:01.010546+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
summary:
At length on the seventh day, came the question "Well?" and my disgorge of learning to him as he sat on the edge of my table puffing his cigar. At the end of the hour's telling, he swung off and away, saying "That is not right." Shaler concluded Agassiz was testing him to see if he was capable of "doing hard, continuous work without the support of a teacher" and redoubled his efforts, starting from scratch and, over the course of seven ten-hour days, managed to describe the specimen to Agassiz's satisfaction. === Scudder's "Look at your fish!" === Samuel Hubbard Scudder recorded a similar experience, first published in 1874 as "Look at Your Fish" in Every Saturday magazine. Agassiz again starts his new student off with a fish preserved in alcohol and instructs the student to "look at it", and promises "by and by I will ask what you have seen". As opposed to Pound's decomposing sunfish, Scudder's account emphasizes the care taken to keep the specimen in good condition: I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar ... In ten minutes I had seen


id: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish-2.md
category: reference
title: Parable of the Sunfish
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:01.010546+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: parable-of-the-sunfish-20260505-0
summary:
=== Pound === Pound, echoing Cooper, opens ABC of Reading by stating that the correct method for the study of poetry is "the method of contemporary biologists" and that "No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish." Commentators have summarized Pound's position with the term empiricism, but have divided over whether the parable endorses or indicts the idea. The simplest interpretations in scientific writing, history of science, and literary criticism take the parable at face value, accepting empiricism and observation as legitimate techniques. For example, when writing about stellar atmospheres, Dimitri Mihalas states that "it is specimens, not facts, that are the ultimate empirical currency that we must use if we wish to purchase a valid theory" before beginning a discussion of Pound's sunfish. Moving from acceptance of empiricism to an understanding of its limitations, Christopher Tilley emphasizes in his comments on "scientific archeology" that Pound's student "was not simply learning about 'reality', the sunfish, but a way of approaching that reality – a discourse bound up in a particular thought tradition (empiricism)". Robert Scholes reaches a similar conclusion, noting that the student "seems to be reporting about a real


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-0.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form found in the natural world. These patterns recur in different contexts and can sometimes be modelled mathematically. Natural patterns include symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tessellations, cracks and stripes. Early Greek philosophers studied pattern, with Plato, Pythagoras and Empedocles attempting to explain order in nature. The modern understanding of visible patterns developed gradually over time. In the 19th century, the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau examined soap films, leading him to formulate the concept of a minimal surface. The German biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel painted hundreds of marine organisms to emphasise their symmetry. Scottish biologist D'Arcy Thompson pioneered the study of growth patterns in both plants and animals, showing that simple equations could explain spiral growth. In the 20th century, the English mathematician Alan Turing predicted mechanisms of morphogenesis which give rise to patterns of spots and stripes. The Hungarian biologist Aristid Lindenmayer and the French American mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot showed how the mathematics of fractals could create plant growth patterns. Mathematics, physics and chemistry can explain patterns in nature at different levels and scales. Patterns in living things are explained by the biological processes of natural selection and sexual selection.


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-1.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Living things like orchids, hummingbirds, and the peacock's tail have abstract designs with a beauty of form, pattern and colour that artists struggle to match. The beauty that people perceive in nature has causes at different levels, notably in the mathematics that governs what patterns can physically form, and among living things in the effects of natural selection, that govern how patterns evolve. Mathematics seeks to discover and explain abstract patterns or regularities of all kinds. Visual patterns in nature find explanations in chaos theory, fractals, logarithmic spirals, topology and other mathematical patterns. For example, L-systems form convincing models of different patterns of tree growth. The laws of physics apply the abstractions of mathematics to the real world, often as if it were perfect. For example, a crystal is perfect when it has no structural defects such as dislocations and is fully symmetric. Exact mathematical perfection can only approximate real objects. Visible patterns in nature are governed by physical laws; for example, meanders can be explained using fluid dynamics. In biology, natural selection can cause the development of patterns in living things for several reasons, including camouflage, sexual selection, and different kinds of signalling, including mimicry and cleaning symbiosis. In


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-2.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Spirals are common in plants and in some animals, notably molluscs. For example, in the nautilus, a cephalopod mollusc, each chamber of its shell is an approximate copy of the next one, scaled by a constant factor and arranged in a logarithmic spiral. Given a modern understanding of fractals, a growth spiral can be seen as a special case of self-similarity. Plant spirals can be seen in phyllotaxis, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, and in the arrangement (parastichy) of other parts as in composite flower heads and seed heads like the sunflower or fruit structures like the pineapple and snake fruit, as well as in the pattern of scales in pine cones, where multiple spirals run both clockwise and anticlockwise. These arrangements have explanations at different levels – mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology – each individually correct, but all necessary together. Phyllotaxis spirals can be generated from Fibonacci ratios: the Fibonacci sequence runs 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13... (each subsequent number being the sum of the two preceding ones). For example, when leaves alternate up a stem, one rotation of the spiral touches two leaves, so the pattern or ratio is 1/2. In hazel the ratio is


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-3.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
=== Bubbles, foam === A soap bubble forms a sphere, a surface with minimal area (minimal surface) — the smallest possible surface area for the volume enclosed. Two bubbles together form a more complex shape: the outer surfaces of both bubbles are spherical; these surfaces are joined by a third spherical surface as the smaller bubble bulges slightly into the larger one. A foam is a mass of bubbles; foams of different materials occur in nature. Foams composed of soap films obey Plateau's laws, which require three soap films to meet at each edge at 120° and four soap edges to meet at each vertex at the tetrahedral angle of about 109.5°. Plateau's laws further require films to be smooth and continuous, and to have a constant average curvature at every point. For example, a film may remain nearly flat on average by being curved up in one direction (say, left to right) while being curved downwards in another direction (say, front to back). Structures with minimal surfaces can be used as tents. At the scale of living cells, foam patterns are common; radiolarians, sponge spicules, silicoflagellate exoskeletons and the calcite skeleton of a sea urchin, Cidaris rugosa, all resemble


id: patterns-in-nature-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature-4.md
category: reference
title: Patterns in nature
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_in_nature
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:02.241373+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: patterns-in-nature-20260505-0
summary:
Alan Turing, and later the mathematical biologist James Murray, described a mechanism that spontaneously creates spotted or striped patterns: a reaction–diffusion system. The cells of a young organism have genes that can be switched on by a chemical signal, a morphogen, resulting in the growth of a certain type of structure, say a darkly pigmented patch of skin. If the morphogen is present everywhere, the result is an even pigmentation, as in a black leopard. But if it is unevenly distributed, spots or stripes can result. Turing suggested that there could be feedback control of the production of the morphogen itself. This could cause continuous fluctuations in the amount of morphogen as it diffused around the body. A second mechanism is needed to create standing wave patterns (to result in spots or stripes): an inhibitor chemical that switches off production of the morphogen, and that itself diffuses through the body more quickly than the morphogen, resulting in an activator-inhibitor scheme. The Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction is a non-biological example of this kind of scheme, a chemical oscillator. Later research has managed to create convincing models of patterns as diverse as zebra stripes, giraffe blotches, jaguar spots (medium-dark patches surrounded by dark broken


id: physica-speculatio-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physica_speculatio-0.md
category: reference
title: Physica speculatio
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physica_speculatio
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:03.407258+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physica-speculatio-20260505-0
summary:
Physica speculatio is a text of scientific character written by Alonso de la Vera Cruz in 1557 in the capital of New Spain. It was the first published work in the American continent that specifically addressed the study of physics, and was written to teach the students of the Real University of Mexico. It introduced the main theoretical concepts of geocentric astronomy and references the heliocentric model. Fray Alonso de la Vera Cruz published in the capital of New Spain a Course of Arts, constituted in three volumes in Latin. The first form in 1553 under the title of Recognitio Summularum, that had like purpose help to the students of the Real University of Mexico to understand the philosophy by means of the understanding of the formal logic. A year afterwards appeared the second called Dialectica Resolutio, that was a continuation of the previous. The last was Physica speculatio. They did four editions, the last 3 of which were for use of the salmantino students and were abbreviated versions of the Mexican one. == Subjects == The Physica speculatio has by object the study or "investigation" -speculatio- and the exhibition, in general, of subjects of physics on the nature -Physica-,


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-0.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
The Physics (Ancient Greek: Φυσικής ἀκρόασις, romanized: Physikḗs akróasis, or: Φυσικής ακροάσεως, Physikḗs akroáseōs; Latin: Physica or Naturales Auscultationes, possibly meaning "Lectures on nature") is a named text, written in ancient Greek, collated from a collection of surviving manuscripts known as the Corpus Aristotelicum, attributed to the 4th-century BC philosopher Aristotle. == The meaning of physics in Aristotle == It is a collection of treatises or lessons that deals with the most general (philosophical) principles of natural or moving things, both living and non-living, rather than physical theories (in the modern sense) or investigations of the particular contents of the universe. The chief purpose of the work is to discover the principles and causes of (and not merely to describe) change, or movement, or motion (κίνησις kinesis), especially that of natural wholes (mostly living things, but also inanimate wholes like the cosmos). In the conventional Andronicean ordering of Aristotle's works, it stands at the head of, as well as being foundational to, the long series of physical, cosmological and biological treatises, whose ancient Greek title, τὰ φυσικά, means "the [writings] on nature" or "natural philosophy". == Description of the content == The Physics is composed of eight books, which are


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-1.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
The necessary in nature, then, is plainly what we call by the name of matter, and the changes in it. Both causes must be stated by the physicist, but especially the end; for that is the cause of the matter, not vice versa; and the end is 'that for the sake of which', and the beginning starts from the definition or essence… In chapter 3, Aristotle presents his theory of the four causes (material, efficient, formal, and final). Material cause explains what something is made of (for example, the wood of a house), formal cause explains the form which a thing follows to become that thing (the plans of an architect to build a house), efficient cause is the actual source of the change (the physical building of the house), and final cause is the intended purpose of the change (the final product of the house and its purpose as a shelter and home). Of particular importance is the final cause or purpose (telos). It is a common mistake to conceive of the four causes as additive or alternative forces pushing or pulling; in reality, all four are needed to explain (7.198a22-25). What we typically mean by cause in the


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-2.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
=== Book VII (Η; 241a25–250b7) === Book VII briefly deals with the relationship of the moved to his mover, which Aristotle describes in substantial divergence with Plato's theory of the soul as capable of setting itself in motion (Laws book X, Phaedrus, Phaedo). Everything which moves is moved by another. He then tries to correlate the species of motion and their speeds, with the local change (locomotion, phorà) as the most fundamental to which the others can be reduced. Book VII.1-3 also exist in an alternative version, not included in the Bekker edition. === Book VIII (Θ; 250a14–267b26) === Book VIII (which occupies almost a fourth of the entire Physics, and probably constituted originally an independent course of lessons) discusses two main topics, though with a wide deployment of arguments: the time limits of the universe, and the existence of a Prime Mover — eternal, indivisible, without parts and without magnitude. Isn't the universe eternal, has it had a beginning, will it ever end? Aristotle's response, as a Greek, could hardly be affirmative, never having been told of a creatio ex nihilo, but he also has philosophical reasons for denying that motion had not always existed, on the grounds of


id: physics-aristotle-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)-3.md
category: reference
title: Physics (Aristotle)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_(Aristotle)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:04.675125+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: physics-aristotle-20260505-0
summary:
=== Classical and medieval commentaries on the Physics === A commentary differs from a note in being a distinct work analyzing the language and subsumed concepts of some other work classically notable. A note appears within the annotated work on the same page or in a separate list. Commentaries are typically arranged by lemmas, or quotes from the notable work, followed by an analysis of the author of the commentary. The commentaries on every work of Aristotle are a vast and mainly unpublished topic. They extend continuously from the death of the philosopher, representing the entire history of Graeco-Roman philosophy. There are thousands of commentators and commentaries known wholly or more typically in fragments of manuscripts. The latter especially occupy the vaults of institutions formerly responsible for copying them, such as monasteries. The process of publishing them is slow and ongoing. Below is a brief representative bibliography of published commentaries on Aristotle's Physics available on or through the Internet. Like the topic itself, they are perforce multi-cultural, but English has been favored, as well as the original languages, ancient Greek and Latin. === Some modern commentaries, monographs and articles === == Further reading == Books Die Aristotelische Physik, W. Wieland,


id: pictet-s-experiment-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictet's_experiment-0.md
category: reference
title: Pictet's experiment
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictet's_experiment
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:09.323520+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: pictet-s-experiment-20260505-0
summary:
Pictet's experiment is the demonstration of the reflection of heat and the apparent reflection of cold in a series of experiments performed in 1790 (reported in English in 1791 in An Essay on Fire) by Marc-Auguste Pictet—ten years before the discovery of infrared heating of the Earth by the Sun. The apparatus for most of the experiments used two concave mirrors facing one another at a distance. An object placed at the focus of one mirror would have heat and light reflected by the mirror and focused. An object at the focus of the counterpart mirror would do the same. Placing a hot object at one focus and a thermometer at the other would register an increase in temperature on the thermometer. This was sometimes demonstrated with the explosion of a flammable mix of gasses in a blackened balloon, as described and depicted by John Tyndall in 1863. After "demonstrating that radiant heat, even when it was not accompanied by any light, could be reflected and focused like light", Pictet used the same apparatus to demonstrate the apparent reflection of cold in a similar manner. This demonstration was important to Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford who argued for the existence of


id: list-of-chemical-elements-named-after-places-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements_named_after_places-0.md
category: reference
title: List of chemical elements named after places
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements_named_after_places
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:10.575281+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: list-of-chemical-elements-named-after-places-20260505-0
summary:
Of the 118 chemical elements, 41 are named after, or have names associated with, places around the world or among astronomical objects. 32 of these have names tied to the Earth and the other 10 have names connected to bodies in the Solar System. The first table below lists terrestrial locations (excluding the entire Earth taken as a whole) and the last table lists astronomical objects which the chemical elements are named after. == Terrestrial locations == == Astronomical objects == * - The element mercury was named directly for the deity, with only indirect naming connection to the planet (see etymology of mercury). ** - Phosphorus was the Ancient Greek name for the planet Venus. (see history of phosphorus). == See also == List of chemical elements named after people List of chemical element name etymologies == References ==


id: history-of-science-policy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy-0.md
category: reference
title: History of science policy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:11.934210+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-policy-20260505-0
summary:
Through history, the systems of economic support for scientists and their work have been important determinants of the character and pace of scientific research. The ancient foundations of the sciences were driven by practical and religious concerns and or the pursuit of philosophy more generally. From the Middle Ages until the Age of Enlightenment, scholars sought various forms of noble and religious patronage or funded their own work through medical practice. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many disciplines began to professionalize, and both government-sponsored "prizes" and the first research professorships at universities drove scientific investigation. In the 20th century, a variety of sources, including government organizations, military funding, patent profits, corporate sponsorship, and private philanthropies, have shaped scientific research. == Ancient science == Most early advances in mathematics, astronomy and engineering were byproducts of more immediate and practical goals. Surveying and accounting needs drove ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Chinese, and Indian mathematics, while calendars created for religious and agricultural purposes drove early astronomy. Modern science owes much of its heritage to ancient Greek philosophers; influential work in astronomy, mechanics, geometry, medicine, and natural history was part of the general pursuit of philosophy. Architectural knowledge, especially in ancient Greece and Rome,


id: history-of-science-policy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy-1.md
category: reference
title: History of science policy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:11.934210+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-policy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Patronage === Most of the important astronomers and natural philosophers (as well as artists) in the 16th and 17th centuries depended on the patronage of powerful religious or political figures to fund their work. Patronage networks extended all the way from Emperors and Popes to regional nobles to artisans to peasants; even university positions were based to some extent on patronage. Scholarly careers in this period were driven by patronage, often starting in undistinguished universities or local schools or courts, and traveling closer or farther from centers of power as their fortunes rose and fell. Patronage, and the desire for more, also shaped the work and publications of scientists. Effusive dedications to current or potential patrons can be found in almost every scholarly publication, while the interests of a patron in a specific topic was a strong incentive to pursue said topic—or reframe one's work in terms of it. Galileo, for example, first presented the telescope as a naval instrument to military- and commerce-focused Republic of Venice; when he sought the more prestigious patronage of the Medici court in Florence, he instead promoted the astronomical potential of the device (by naming the moons of Jupiter after the Medicis). A


id: history-of-science-policy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy-2.md
category: reference
title: History of science policy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:11.934210+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-policy-20260505-0
summary:
== 1900–1945 == In the twentieth century, scientific and technological research became increasingly systematised, as corporations developed, and discovered that continuous investment in research and development could be a key element of success in a competitive strategy. It remained the case, however, that imitation by competitors—circumventing or simply flouting patents, especially those registered abroad—was often just as successful a strategy for companies focused on innovation in matters of organisation and production technique, or even in marketing. A classic example is that of Wilkinson Sword and Gillette in the disposable razor market, where the former has typically had the technological edge, and the latter the commercial one. Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel's will directed that his vast fortune be utilized to establish prizes in the scientific fields of medicine, physics and chemistry as well as literature and peace. The Nobel Prize served to provide financial incentives for scientists, elevated leading scientists to unprecedented visibility, and provided an example for other philanthropists of the industrial era to provide private sources of funding for scientific research and education. Ironically, it was not an era of peace that followed, but rather wars fought on unprecedented international scale that led to expanded state interest in the


id: history-of-science-policy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy-3.md
category: reference
title: History of science policy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_policy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:11.934210+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-science-policy-20260505-0
summary:
=== State funding cuts === Starting with the first Oil shock, an economic crisis hit the western world which made it more difficult for the states to maintain their uncritical funding of research and teaching. In the United Kingdom, the University Grants Committee started to lower their annual block grant for certain universities as soon as 1974. This was compounded by the access to power of the Thatcher government in 1979, who pledged a radical reduction of public spending. Between 1979 and 1981, more cuts in the block grant threatened universities and became opportunities seized by certain actors (heads of departments, vice-chancellors, etc.) for radical reorganisation and reorientation of the university's research. In 1970 in the United States, the Military Authorization Act forbade the DOD to support research unless it had "direct or apparent relationship to a specific military function." This cut the ability of the government to fund basic research. === Selectivity === In order to administer severely depleted resources in a (theoretically) transparent manner, several selectivity mechanisms were developed through the 1980s and 1990s. In the United Kingdom, the funding cuts of 1984–1986 were accompanied by an assessment of the quality of research. This was done by estimating


id: protoscience-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoscience-0.md
category: reference
title: Protoscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:13.190217+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: protoscience-20260505-0
summary:
In the philosophy of science, protoscience (adj. protoscientific) is a research field that has the characteristics of an undeveloped science that may ultimately develop into an established science. Philosophers use protoscience to understand the history of science and distinguish protoscience from science and pseudoscience. The word "protoscience" is a hybrid Greek-Latin compound of the roots proto- + scientia, meaning a first or primeval rational knowledge. Examples of protoscience include alchemy, Wegener's original theory of continental drift and political economy (the predecessor to the modern economic sciences). == History == Protoscience as a research field with the characteristics of an undeveloped science appeared in the early 20th century. In 1910, Jones described the field of political economy as it began the transition to the modern field of economics: I confess to a personal predilection for some term such as proto-science, pre-science, or nas-science, to give expression to what I conceive to be the true state of affairs, which I take to be this, that economics and kindred subjects are not sciences, but are on the way to become sciences. Thomas Kuhn later provided a more precise description, protoscience as a field that generates testable conclusions, faces "incessant criticism and continually strive


id: protoscience-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoscience-1.md
category: reference
title: Protoscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:13.190217+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: protoscience-20260505-0
summary:
=== Science field === A science field is a research field that satisfies 12 conditions: 1) all components of the science field invariably change over time from research in the field, especially logical/mathematical tools and specific background/presuppositions from other fields; 2) the research community has special training, "hold strong information links", initiates or continues the "tradition of inquiry"; 3) researchers have autonomy to pursue research and receive support from the host society; 4) the researchers worldview is the real world as contains "lawfully changing concrete" objects, an adequate view of the scientific method, a vision of organized science achieving truthfull descriptions and explanations, ethical principles for conducting research, and the free search for truthful, deep and systematic understanding; 5) up-to-date logical/mathematical tools precisely determine and process information; 6) the domain of research are real objects/entities; 7) specific background knowledge is up-to-date, confirmed data, hypotheses and theories from relevant neighboring fields; 8) the set of problems investigated are from the domain of inquiry or within the research field; 9) the accumulated knowledge includes worldview-compatible, up-to-date testworthy/testable theories, hypotheses and data, and special knowledge previously accumlated in the research field; 10) the aims are find and apply laws and theories in the


id: history-of-pseudoscience-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pseudoscience-0.md
category: reference
title: History of pseudoscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pseudoscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:14.450688+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-pseudoscience-20260505-0
summary:
The history of pseudoscience is the study of pseudoscientific theories over time. A pseudoscience is a set of ideas that presents itself as science, while it does not meet the criteria to properly be called such. Distinguishing between proper science and pseudoscience is sometimes difficult. One popular proposal for demarcation between the two is the falsification criterion, most notably contributed to by the philosopher Karl Popper. In the history of pseudoscience it can be especially hard to separate the two, because some sciences developed from pseudosciences. An example of this is the science chemistry, which traces its origins from the protoscience of alchemy. The vast diversity in pseudosciences further complicates the history of pseudoscience. Some pseudosciences originated in the pre-scientific era, such as astrology and acupuncture. Others developed as part of an ideology, such as Lysenkoism, or as a response to perceived threats to an ideology. An example of this is creationism, which was developed as a response to the scientific theory of evolution. Despite failing to meet proper scientific standards, many pseudosciences survive. This is usually due to a persistent core of devotees who refuse to accept scientific criticism of their beliefs, or due to popular misconceptions. Sheer popularity


id: history-of-pseudoscience-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pseudoscience-1.md
category: reference
title: History of pseudoscience
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pseudoscience
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:14.450688+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-pseudoscience-20260505-0
summary:
== 20th century == Among the most notable developments to pseudoscience in the 20th century are the rise of Creationism, the demise of Spiritualism, and the first formulation of ancient astronaut theories. Reflexology, the idea that an undetectable life force connects various parts of the body to the feet and sometimes the hands and ears, was introduced in the US in 1913 as 'zone therapy'. Creationism arose during the 20th century as a result of various other historical developments. When the modern evolutionary synthesis overcame the eclipse of Darwinism in the first half of the 20th century, American fundamentalist Christians began opposing the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools. They introduced numerous laws to this effect, one of which was notoriously upheld by the Scopes Trial. In the second half of the century the Space Race caused a renewed interest in science and worry that the USA was falling behind on the Soviet Union. Stricter science standards were adopted and led to the re-introduction of the theory of evolution in the curriculum. The laws against teaching evolution were now ruled unconstitutional, because they violated the separation of church and state. Attempting to evade this ruling, the Christian


id: history-of-randomness-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness-0.md
category: reference
title: History of randomness
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:15.668742+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-randomness-20260505-0
summary:
In ancient history, the concepts of chance and randomness were intertwined with that of fate. Many ancient peoples threw dice to determine fate, and this later evolved into games of chance. At the same time, most ancient cultures used various methods of divination to attempt to circumvent randomness and fate. Beyond religion and games of chance, randomness has been attested for sortition since at least ancient Athenian democracy in the form of a kleroterion. The formalization of odds and chance was perhaps earliest done by the Chinese 3,000 years ago. The Greek philosophers discussed randomness at length, but only in non-quantitative forms. It was only in the sixteenth century that Italian mathematicians began to formalize the odds associated with various games of chance. The invention of modern calculus had a positive impact on the formal study of randomness. In the 19th century the concept of entropy was introduced in physics. The early part of the twentieth century saw a rapid growth in the formal analysis of randomness, and mathematical foundations for probability were introduced, leading to its axiomatization in 1933. At the same time, the advent of quantum mechanics changed the scientific perspective on determinacy. In the mid to late


id: history-of-randomness-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness-1.md
category: reference
title: History of randomness
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:15.668742+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-randomness-20260505-0
summary:
For several centuries thereafter, the idea of chance continued to be intertwined with fate. Divination was practiced in many cultures, using diverse methods. The Chinese analyzed the cracks in turtle shells, while the Germans, who according to Tacitus had the highest regards for lots and omens, utilized strips of bark. In the Roman Empire, chance was personified by the Goddess Fortuna. The Romans would partake in games of chance to simulate what Fortuna would have decided. In 49 BC, Julius Caesar allegedly decided on his fateful decision to cross the Rubicon after throwing dice. Aristotle's classification of events into the three classes: certain, probable and unknowable was adopted by Roman philosophers, but they had to reconcile it with deterministic Christian teachings in which even events unknowable to man were considered to be predetermined by God. About 960 Bishop Wibold of Cambrai correctly enumerated the 56 different outcomes (without permutations) of playing with three dice. No reference to playing cards has been found in Europe before 1350. The Church preached against card playing, and card games spread much more slowly than games based on dice. The Christian Church specifically forbade divination; and wherever Christianity went, divination lost most of its old-time


id: history-of-randomness-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness-2.md
category: reference
title: History of randomness
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:15.668742+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-randomness-20260505-0
summary:
The words of Goethe proved prophetic, when in the 20th century randomized algorithms were discovered as powerful tools. By the end of the 19th century, Newton's model of a mechanical universe was fading away as the statistical view of the collision of molecules in gases was studied by Maxwell and Boltzmann. Boltzmann's equation S = k loge W (inscribed on his tombstone) first related entropy with logarithms. == 20th century == During the 20th century, the five main interpretations of probability theory (e.g., classical, logical, frequency, propensity and subjective) became better understood, were discussed, compared and contrasted. A significant number of application areas were developed in this century, from finance to physics. In 1900 Louis Bachelier applied Brownian motion to evaluate stock options, effectively launching the fields of financial mathematics and stochastic processes. Émile Borel was one of the first mathematicians to formally address randomness in 1909, and introduced normal numbers. In 1919 Richard von Mises gave the first definition of algorithmic randomness via the impossibility of a gambling system. He advanced the frequency theory of randomness in terms of what he called the collective, i.e. a random sequence. Von Mises regarded the randomness of a collective as an empirical


id: history-of-randomness-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness-3.md
category: reference
title: History of randomness
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_randomness
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:15.668742+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-randomness-20260505-0
summary:
By the early 1940s, the frequency theory approach to probability was well accepted within the Vienna circle, but in the 1950s Karl Popper proposed the propensity theory. Given that the frequency approach cannot deal with "a single toss" of a coin, and can only address large ensembles or collectives, the single-case probabilities were treated as propensities or chances. The concept of propensity was also driven by the desire to handle single-case probability settings in quantum mechanics, e.g. the probability of decay of a specific atom at a specific moment. In more general terms, the frequency approach can not deal with the probability of the death of a specific person given that the death can not be repeated multiple times for that person. Karl Popper echoed the same sentiment as Aristotle in viewing randomness as subordinate to order when he wrote that "the concept of chance is not opposed to the concept of law" in nature, provided one considers the laws of chance. Claude Shannon's development of Information theory in 1948 gave rise to the entropy view of randomness. In this view, randomness is the opposite of determinism in a stochastic process. Hence if a stochastic system has entropy zero it


id: relationship-between-mathematics-and-physics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_mathematics_and_physics-0.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between mathematics and physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_mathematics_and_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:16.838189+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-mathematics-and-physics-20260505-0
summary:
The relationship between mathematics and physics has been a subject of study of philosophers, mathematicians and physicists since antiquity, and more recently also by historians and educators. Generally considered a relationship of great intimacy, mathematics has been described as "an essential tool for physics" and physics has been described as "a rich source of inspiration and insight in mathematics". Some of the oldest and most discussed themes are about the main differences between the two subjects, their mutual influence, the role of mathematical rigor in physics, and the problem of explaining the effectiveness of mathematics in physics. In his work Physics, one of the topics treated by Aristotle is about how the study carried out by mathematicians differs from that carried out by physicists. Considerations about mathematics being the language of nature can be found in the ideas of the Pythagoreans: the convictions that "Numbers rule the world" and "All is number", and two millennia later were also expressed by Galileo Galilei: "The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics". == Historical interplay == Before giving a mathematical proof for the formula for the volume of a sphere, Archimedes used physical reasoning to discover the solution (imagining


id: relationship-between-mathematics-and-physics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_mathematics_and_physics-1.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between mathematics and physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_mathematics_and_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:16.838189+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-mathematics-and-physics-20260505-0
summary:
Rigor is indispensable in pure mathematics. But many definitions and arguments found in the physics literature involve concepts and ideas that are not up to the standards of rigor in mathematics. For example, Freeman Dyson characterized quantum field theory as having two "faces". The outward face looked at nature and there the predictions of quantum field theory are exceptionally successful. The inward face looked at mathematical foundations and found inconsistency and mystery. The success of the physical theory comes despite its lack of rigorous mathematical backing. Some mathematicians, such as Arthur Jaffe and Frank Quinn, argue that non-rigorous mathematical work can sometimes bring benefits too. == Philosophical problems == Some of the problems considered in the philosophy of mathematics are the following: Explain the effectiveness of mathematics in the study of the physical world: "At this point an enigma presents itself which in all ages has agitated inquiring minds. How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?" —Albert Einstein, in Geometry and Experience (1921). Clearly delineate mathematics and physics: For some results or discoveries, it is difficult to say to


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-0.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
The relationship between science and religion involves discussions that interconnect the study of the natural world, history, philosophy, and theology. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern understandings of "science" or of "religion", certain elements of modern ideas on the subject recur throughout history. The pair-structured phrases "religion and science" and "science and religion" first emerged in the literature during the 19th century. This coincided with the refining of "science" (from the studies of "natural philosophy") and of "religion" as distinct concepts in the preceding few centuries—partly due to professionalization of the sciences, the Protestant Reformation, colonization, and globalization. Since then the relationship between science and religion has been characterized in terms of "conflict", "harmony", "complexity", and "mutual independence", among others. Both science and religion are complex social and cultural endeavors that may vary across cultures and change over time. Most scientific and technical innovations until the scientific revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions. Ancient pagan, Islamic, and Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Roger Bacon, often credited with formalizing the scientific method, was a Franciscan friar, and medieval Christians who studied nature emphasized natural explanations. Confucian


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-1.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
=== Concepts of science and religion === The concepts of "science" and "religion" are a recent invention: "religion" emerged in the 17th century in the midst of colonization, globalization and as a consequence of the Protestant reformation. "Science" emerged in the 19th century in the midst of attempts to narrowly define those who studied nature. Originally what is now known as "science" was pioneered as "natural philosophy". It was in the 19th century that the terms "Buddhism", "Hinduism", "Taoism", "Confucianism" and "World Religions" first emerged. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin roots of both science (scientia) and religion (religio) were understood as inner qualities of the individual or virtues, never as doctrines, practices, or actual sources of knowledge. The 19th century also experienced the concept of "science" receiving its modern shape with new titles emerging such as "biology" and "biologist", "physics", and "physicist", among other technical fields and titles; institutions and communities were founded, and unprecedented applications to and interactions with other aspects of society and culture occurred. The term scientist was coined by the naturalist-theologian William Whewell in 1834 and it was applied to those who sought knowledge and understanding of nature. From the ancient world,


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-2.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
"In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture." (Gen. ad lit. i, 18) In medieval universities, the faculty for natural philosophy and theology were separate, and discussions pertaining to theological issues were often not allowed to be undertaken by the faculty of philosophy. Natural philosophy, as taught in the arts faculties of the universities, was seen as an essential area of study in its own right and was considered necessary for almost every area of study. It was an independent field, separated from theology, and enjoyed a good deal of intellectual freedom as long as it was restricted to the natural


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-3.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
According to Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C and Avelina Espinosa, the historical conflict between evolution and religion is intrinsic to the incompatibility between scientific rationalism/empiricism and the belief in supernatural causation/faith. According to evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, views on evolution and levels of religiosity in some countries, along with the existence of books explaining reconciliation between evolution and religion, indicate that people have trouble in believing both at the same time, thus implying incompatibility. According to physical chemist Peter Atkins, "whereas religion scorns the power of human comprehension, science respects it." Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco describes a hope that "the confrontation between science and formal religion will come to an end when the role played by science in the lives of all people is the same played by religion today." Geologist and paleontologist Donald Prothero has stated that religion is the reason "questions about evolution, the age of the earth, cosmology, and human evolution nearly always cause Americans to flunk science literacy tests compared to other nations." However, Jon Miller, who studies science literacy across nations, states that Americans in general are slightly more scientifically literate than Europeans and the Japanese. According to cosmologist and astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, compatibility or incompatibility is a


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-4.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
The conflict thesis, which holds that religion and science have been in conflict continuously throughout history, was popularized in the 19th century by John William Draper's and Andrew Dickson White's accounts. It was in the 19th century that relationship between science and religion became an actual formal topic of discourse, while before this no one had pitted science against religion or vice versa, though occasional complex interactions had been expressed before the 19th century. Most contemporary historians of science now reject the conflict thesis in its original form and no longer support it. Instead, it has been superseded by subsequent historical research which has resulted in a more nuanced understanding. Historian of science, Gary Ferngren, has stated: "Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule." Most historians today have moved away from a conflict model, which is based mainly on two historical episodes


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-5.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to put science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist. According to Archbishop John Habgood, both science and religion represent distinct ways of approaching experience and these differences are sources of debate. He views science as descriptive and religion as prescriptive. He stated that if science and mathematics concentrate on what the world ought to be, in the way that religion does, it may lead to improperly ascribing properties to the natural world as happened among the followers of Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C. In contrast, proponents of


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-6.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
=== Integration === As a general view, this holds that while interactions are complex between influences of science, theology, politics, social, and economic concerns, the productive engagements between science and religion throughout history should be duly stressed as the norm. Scientific and theological perspectives often coexist peacefully. Christian and non-Christian religions have historically integrated well with scientific ideas, as in the ancient Egyptian technological mastery applied to monotheistic ends, the scientific advances made by Muslim scholars during the Ottoman Empire and mathematics under Hinduism and Buddhism. Even many 19th-century Christian communities welcomed scientists who claimed that science was not at all concerned with discovering the ultimate nature of reality. According to Lawrence M. Principe, the Johns Hopkins University Drew Professor of the Humanities, from a historical perspective this points out that much of the current-day clashes occur between limited extremists—both religious and scientistic fundamentalists—over a very few topics, and that the movement of ideas back and forth between scientific and theological thought has been more usual. To Principe, this perspective would point to the fundamentally common respect for written learning in religious traditions of rabbinical literature, Christian theology, and the Islamic Golden Age, including a Transmission of the Classics from


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-7.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
Among early Christian teachers, Tertullian (c. 160–220) held a generally negative opinion of Greek philosophy, while Origen (c. 185–254) regarded it much more favorably and required his students to read nearly every work available to them. Earlier attempts at reconciliation of Christianity with Newtonian mechanics appear quite different from later attempts at reconciliation with the newer scientific ideas of evolution or relativity. Many early interpretations of evolution polarized themselves around a struggle for existence. These ideas were significantly countered by later findings of universal patterns of biological cooperation. According to John Habgood, the universe seems to be a mix of good and evil, beauty and pain, and that suffering may somehow be part of the process of creation. Habgood holds that Christians should not be surprised that suffering may be used creatively by God, given their faith in the symbol of the Cross. Robert John Russell has examined consonance and dissonance between modern physics, evolutionary biology, and Christian theology. Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) 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


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-8.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
==== Perspectives on evolution ==== In recent history, the theory of evolution has been at the center of some controversy between Christianity and science. 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 a literal reading of 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 the Earth, cosmology of the early universe, the chemical origins of life and biological 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


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-9.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
According to Andrew Dickson White's 1896 book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, a biblical world view 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 flat was first propagated in the same period that originated the


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-10.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
==== Reconciliation in Britain in the early 20th century ==== In Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-twentieth-century Britain, historian of biology Peter J. Bowler argues that in contrast to the conflicts between science and religion in the U.S. in the 1920s (most famously the Scopes Trial), during this period Great Britain experienced a concerted effort at reconciliation, championed by intellectually conservative scientists, supported by liberal theologians but opposed by younger scientists and secularists and conservative Christians. These attempts at reconciliation fell apart in the 1930s due to increased social tensions, moves towards neo-orthodox theology and the acceptance of the modern evolutionary synthesis. In the 20th century, several ecumenical organizations promoting a harmony between science and Christianity were founded, most notably the American Scientific Affiliation, The Biologos Foundation, Christians in Science, The Society of Ordained Scientists, and The Veritas Forum. === Confucianism and traditional Chinese religion === The historical process of Confucianism has largely been antipathic towards scientific discovery. However the religio-philosophical system itself is more neutral on the subject than such an analysis might suggest. In his writings On Heaven, Xunzi espoused a proto-scientific world view. However, during the Han Synthesis the more anti-empirical Mencius was favored and


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-11.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
Pratyakṣa or Dṛṣṭam – direct sense perception, Anumāna – logical inference and Śabda or Āptavacana – verbal testimony. Nyaya, the Hindu school of logic, accepts all these 3 means and in addition accepts one more – Upamāna (comparison). The accounts of the emergence of life within the universe vary in description, but classically the deity called Brahma, from a Trimurti of three deities also including Vishnu and Shiva, is described as performing the act of 'creation', or more specifically of 'propagating life within the universe' with the other two deities being responsible for 'preservation' and 'destruction' (of the universe) respectively. In this respect some Hindu schools do not treat the scriptural creation myth literally and often the creation stories themselves do not go into specific detail, thus leaving open the possibility of incorporating at least some theories in support of evolution. Some Hindus find support for, or foreshadowing of evolutionary ideas in scriptures, namely the Vedas. The incarnations of Vishnu (Dashavatara) is almost identical to the scientific explanation of the sequence of biological evolution of man and animals. The sequence of avatars starts from an aquatic organism (Matsya), to an amphibian (Kurma), to a land-animal (Varaha), to a humanoid (Narasimha),


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-12.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
The Ahmadiyya movement emphasize that "there is no contradiction between Islam and science". For example, Ahmadi Muslims universally accept in principle the process of evolution, albeit divinely guided, and actively promote it. Over the course of several decades the movement has issued various publications in support of the scientific concepts behind the process of evolution, and frequently engages in promoting how religious scriptures, such as the Qur'an, supports the concept. For general purposes, the second Khalifa of the community, Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad says: The Holy Quran directs attention towards science, time and again, rather than evoking prejudice against it. The Quran has never advised against studying science, lest the reader should become a non-believer; because it has no such fear or concern. The Holy Quran is not worried that if people will learn the laws of nature its spell will break. The Quran has not prevented people from science, rather it states, "Say, 'Reflect on what is happening in the heavens and the earth.'" (Al Younus) === Jainism === ==== Biology ==== Jainism classifies life into two main divisions those who are static by nature (sthavar) and those who are mobile (trasa). Jain texts describes life in plant long


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-13.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
==== United States ==== In 1916, 1,000 leading American scientists were randomly chosen from American Men of Science and 42% believed God existed, 42% disbelieved, and 17% had doubts/did not know; however, when the study was replicated 80 years later using American Men and Women of Science in 1996, the results were very much the same with 39% believing God exists, 45% disbelieved, and 15% had doubts/did not know. In the same 1996 survey, for scientists in the fields of biology, mathematics, and physics/astronomy, belief in a god that is "in intellectual and affective communication with humankind" was most popular among mathematicians (about 45%) and least popular among physicists (about 22%). In terms of belief in God among elite scientists, such as "great scientists" in the "American Men of Science" or members of the National Academies of Science; 53% disbelieved, 21% were agnostic, and 28% believed in 1914; 68% disbelieved, 17% were agnostic, and 15% believed in 1933; and 72% disbelieved, 21% were agnostic, and 7% believed in 1998. However Eugenie Scott argued that there are methodological issues in the study, including ambiguity in the questions such using a personal definition of God instead of broader definitions of God. A


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-14.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
==== Other or multiple countries ==== According to the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture's report on 1,100 scientists in India: 66% are Hindu, 14% did not report a religion, 10% are atheist/no religion, 3% are Muslim, 3% are Christian, 4% are Buddhist, Sikh or other. 39% have a belief in a god, 6% have belief in a god sometimes, 30% do not believe in a god but believe in a higher power, 13% do not know if there is a god, and 12% do not believe in a god. 49% believe in the efficacy of prayer, 90% strongly agree or somewhat agree with approving degrees in Ayurvedic medicine. Furthermore, the term "secularism" is understood to have diverse and simultaneous meanings among Indian scientists: 93% believe it to be tolerance of religions and philosophies, 83% see it as involving separation of church and state, 53% see it as not identifying with religious traditions, 40% see it as absence of religious beliefs, and 20% see it as atheism. Accordingly, 75% of Indian scientists had a "secular" outlook in terms of being tolerant of other religions. According to the Religion Among Scientists in International Context (RASIC) study on 1,581 scientists from


id: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion-15.md
category: reference
title: Relationship between science and religion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_science_and_religion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:18.112185+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relationship-between-science-and-religion-20260505-0
summary:
==== United States ==== According to a 2015 Pew Research Center Study on the public perceptions on science, people's perceptions on conflict with science have more to do with their perceptions of other people's beliefs than their own personal beliefs. For instance, the majority of people with a religious affiliation (68%) saw no conflict between their own personal religious beliefs and science while the majority of those without a religious affiliation (76%) perceived science and religion to be in conflict. The study noted that people who are not affiliated with any religion, also known as "religiously unaffiliated", often have supernatural beliefs and spiritual practices despite them not being affiliated with any religion and also that "just one-in-six religiously unaffiliated adults (16%) say their own religious beliefs conflict with science." Furthermore, the study observed, "The share of all adults who perceive a conflict between science and their own religious beliefs has declined somewhat in recent years, from 36% in 2009 to 30% in 2014. Among those who are affiliated with a religion, the share of people who say there is a conflict between science and their personal religious beliefs dropped from 41% to 34% during this period." In a 2024 Pew


id: science-in-the-renaissance-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Renaissance-0.md
category: reference
title: Science in the Renaissance
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Renaissance
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:19.278771+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-the-renaissance-20260505-0
summary:
Science in the Renaissance was predominantly an extension of medieval traditions of natural philosophy but also produced new ideas and methods in mathematics, anatomy and astronomy and included a revolution in the European understanding of the Earth's geography. The collection of ancient scientific texts began in earnest at the start of the 15th century and continued up to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention of printing allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. Some scholars have argued that the era was scientifically backward because Renaissance humanists favored human-centered subjects like politics and history over study of natural philosophy or applied mathematics. More recently, however, scholars have acknowledged the positive impact of the rediscovery of lost or obscure texts and the increased focus on the study of language and the correct reading of texts, while also emphasizing how the invention and rapid spread of the moveable type printing press and the encounter with the Americas served as necessary preconditions for the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. == Context == During and after the Renaissance of the 12th century, Europe experienced an intellectual revitalization, especially with regard to the investigation of the natural world. In the 14th century,


id: science-in-the-renaissance-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Renaissance-1.md
category: reference
title: Science in the Renaissance
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Renaissance
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:19.278771+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-the-renaissance-20260505-0
summary:
While differing in some respects, alchemy and chemistry often had similar goals during the Renaissance period, and together they are sometimes referred to as chymistry. Alchemy is the study of the transmutation of materials through obscure processes. Although it is often viewed as a pseudoscientific endeavor, many of its practitioners utilized widely accepted scientific theories of their times to formulate hypotheses about the constituents of matter and the ways matter could be changed. One of the main aims of alchemists was to find a method of creating gold and other precious metals from the transmutation of base materials. A common belief of alchemists was that there is an essential substance from which all other substances formed, and that if you could reduce a substance to this original material, you could then construct it into another substance, like lead to gold. Medieval alchemists worked with two main elements or "principles", sulphur and mercury. Paracelsus was a chymist and physician of the Renaissance period who believed that, in addition to sulphur and mercury, salt served as one of the primary alchemical principles from which everything else was made. Paracelsus was also instrumental in helping to put chemical practices to practical medicinal use


id: science-in-the-renaissance-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Renaissance-2.md
category: reference
title: Science in the Renaissance
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Renaissance
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:19.278771+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-in-the-renaissance-20260505-0
summary:
The accomplishments of Greek mathematicians survived throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages through a long and indirect history. Much of the work of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius, along with later authors such as Hero and Pappus, were copied and studied in both Byzantine culture and in Islamic centers of learning. Translations of these works began already in the 12th century, with the work of translators in Spain and Sicily, working mostly from Arabic and Greek sources into Latin. Two of the most prolific were Gerard of Cremona and William of Moerbeke. The greatest of all translation efforts, however, took place in the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy, as attested by the numerous manuscripts dating from this period currently found in European libraries. Virtually all leading mathematicians of the era were obsessed with the need for restoring the mathematical works of the ancients. Not only did humanists assist mathematicians with the retrieval of Greek manuscripts, they also took an active role in translating these work into Latin, often commissioned by religious leaders such as Nicholas V and Cardinal Bessarion. Some of the leading figures in this effort include Regiomontanus, who made a copy of the Latin Archimedes and had


id: repression-of-science-in-the-soviet-union-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union-0.md
category: reference
title: Repression of science in the Soviet Union
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:20.455651+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: repression-of-science-in-the-soviet-union-20260505-0
summary:
Many fields of scientific research in the Soviet Union were banned or suppressed with various justifications. All humanities and social sciences were tested for strict accordance with dialectical materialism. These tests served as a cover for political suppression of scientists who engaged in research labeled as "idealistic" or "bourgeois". Many scientists were fired, others were arrested and sent to Gulags. The suppression of scientific research began during the Stalin era and continued after his death. The ideologically motivated persecution damaged many fields of Soviet science. == Examples == === Biology === In the mid-1930s, the agronomist Trofim Lysenko started a campaign against genetics and was supported by Stalin. If the field of genetics' connection to Nazis wasn't enough, Mendelian genetics was also suppressed due to beliefs that it was "bourgeoisie science" and its association with the priest Gregor Mendel due to hostility to religion because of the Soviet policy of state atheism. In 1950, the Soviet government organized the Joint Scientific Session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, the "Pavlovian session". Several prominent Soviet physiologists (L.A. Orbeli, P.K. Anokhin, Aleksey Speransky, Ivane Beritashvili) were accused of deviating from Pavlov's teaching. As a consequence


id: repression-of-science-in-the-soviet-union-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union-1.md
category: reference
title: Repression of science in the Soviet Union
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union
date_saved: 2026-05-05T03:40:20.455651+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: repression-of-science-in-the-soviet-union-20260505-0
summary:
=== Physics === In the late 1940s, some areas of physics, were also criticized on grounds of "idealism". In quantum mechanics Soviet physicists Dmitry Blokhintsev, Yaakov Terletsky and K. V. Nikolsky developed a version of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was seen as more adhering to the principles of dialectical materialism. Special and general relativity were a matter of controversy among the Soviet scientists since 1920. Some of them argued that this theory is grounded in Machism (acutely criticized by Vladimir Lenin in his Materialism and Empiriocriticism), others were a group of so-called "mechanists" (see Mechanists and dialecticians controversy), later "Young Stalinists" joined the ranks of the relativity theory. At the same time a considerable number of prominent Soviet physicists defended the relativity theory. The attacks on the relativity theory intensified in 1949 under the auspices of the struggle against the "physical idealism" in the work of Leonid Mandelstam. Initially Sergey Vavilov, President of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, managed to defend Mandelstam, but in 1952 the political attacks on "reactionary Einsteinianism" intensified further. This pseudoscientific campaign sizzled after the death of Stalin. Although initially planned, the process of "ideological cleansing" in physics did not


