# kb

id: history-of-aviation-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aviation-12.md
category: reference
title: History of aviation
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aviation
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:28.223895+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-aviation-20260505-0
summary:
In 1929, Jimmy Doolittle developed flight instruments . 1929 also saw the first flight of by far the largest plane ever built until then: the Dornier Do X with a wingspan of 48 m. On its 70th test flight on 21 October 1929, there were 169 people on board, a record that was not broken for 20 years. In 1923, The first successful rotorcraft appeared in the form of the autogyro, invented by Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva and first flown in 1919. In this design, the rotor is not powered but spins freely as it moves through the air, while a separate engine powers the aircraft to move forward. This was the basis of further development and prototypes that led to the creation of the helicopter. In 1930 Corradino D'Ascanio, an Italian engineer, developed a coaxial helicopter with the important inclusion of three small propellers on the craft, which controlled the pitch, roll, and yaw of the aircraft. Later helicopters saw several adjustments to their rotors but the first modern helicopter was not constructed until 1947 by Igor Sikorsky Only five years after the German Dornier Do-X had flown, Tupolev designed the largest aircraft of the 1930s era,


id: history-of-aviation-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aviation-13.md
category: reference
title: History of aviation
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aviation
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:28.223895+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-aviation-20260505-0
summary:
The British de Havilland Comet became the first commercial jet airliner and was introduced into scheduled service by 1952. The aircraft was a breakthrough in technical achievements, but had several intense failures. The square design of the windows caused stress cracks from metal fatigue, caused by cycles of cabin pressurization and depressurization. This eventually led to severe structural failures in the fuel area. These issues were resolved too late, since competing jet airliners were already flying. On 15 September 1956, the USSR's airline Aeroflot became the first to offer continuous, regular jet services using the Tupolev Tu-104. Soon after, Boeing 707 and DC-8 also set new standards in comfort, safety, and passenger experience. This was the beginning of the Jet Age, the introduction of large-scale commercial air travel. Jet airliners were able to fly higher, faster, and farther than older piston‑powered propliners, making transcontinental and intercontinental travel considerably faster and easier. Aircraft leaving North America and crossing the Atlantic Ocean (and later, the Pacific Ocean) could now fly to their destinations non-stop, making much of the world accessible within a single day's travel for the first time. Large jetliners could carry more passengers than piston-powered airliners, which caused air fares


id: history-of-aviation-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aviation-14.md
category: reference
title: History of aviation
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aviation
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:28.223895+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-aviation-20260505-0
summary:
== 21st century == 21st-century aviation has seen increasing interest in fuel savings and fuel diversification, as well as low cost airlines and facilities. Additionally, much of the developing world that did not have good access to air transport has been steadily adding aircraft and facilities; though severe congestion remains a problem in many up and coming nations. Around 20,000 city pairs are served by commercial aviation, up from less than 10,000 as recently as 1996. There appears to be newfound interest in returning to the supersonic era whereby waning demand in the turn of the 20th century made flights unprofitable, as well as the final commercial stoppage of the Concorde due to reduced demand following a fatal accident and rising costs. At the beginning of the 21st century, digital technology allowed subsonic military aviation to begin eliminating the pilot in favour of remotely operated or completely autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In April 2001, the unmanned aircraft Global Hawk flew from Edwards AFB in the US to Australia non-stop and un-refuelled. This is the longest point-to-point flight ever undertaken by an unmanned aircraft and took 23 hours and 23 minutes. In October 2003, the first totally autonomous flight across


id: history-of-biochemistry-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biochemistry-0.md
category: reference
title: History of biochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:29.505507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-biochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
The history of biochemistry can be said to have started with the ancient Greeks who were interested in the composition and processes of life, although biochemistry as a specific scientific discipline has its beginning around the early 19th century. Some argued that the beginning of biochemistry may have been the discovery of the first enzyme, diastase (today called amylase), in 1833 by Anselme Payen, while others considered Eduard Buchner's first demonstration of a complex biochemical process alcoholic fermentation in cell-free extracts to be the birth of biochemistry. Some might also point to the influential work of Justus von Liebig from 1842, Animal chemistry, or, Organic chemistry in its applications to physiology and pathology, which presented a chemical theory of metabolism, or even earlier to the 18th century studies on fermentation and respiration by Antoine Lavoisier. The term biochemistry itself is derived from the combining form bio-, meaning 'life', and chemistry. The word is first recorded in English in 1848, while in 1877, Felix Hoppe-Seyler used the term (Biochemie in German) in the foreword to the first issue of Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie (Journal of Physiological Chemistry) as a synonym for physiological chemistry and argued for the setting up of institutes


id: history-of-biochemistry-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biochemistry-1.md
category: reference
title: History of biochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:29.505507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-biochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
As early as the late 18th century and early 19th century, the digestion of meat by stomach secretions and the conversion of starch to sugars by plant extracts and saliva were known. However, the mechanism by which this occurred had not been identified. In the 19th century, when studying the fermentation of sugar to alcohol by yeast, Louis Pasteur concluded that this fermentation was catalyzed by a vital force contained within the yeast cells called ferments, which he thought functioned only within living organisms. He wrote that "alcoholic fermentation is an act correlated with the life and organization of the yeast cells, not with the death or putrefaction of the cells." In 1833 Anselme Payen discovered the first enzyme, diastase, and in 1878 German physiologist Wilhelm Kühne (1837–1900) coined the term enzyme, which comes from Greek ενζυμον 'in leaven', to describe this process. The word enzyme was used later to refer to nonliving substances such as pepsin, and the word ferment was used to refer to chemical activity produced by living organisms. In 1897 Eduard Buchner began to study the ability of yeast extracts to ferment sugar despite the absence of living yeast cells. In a series of experiments at


id: history-of-biochemistry-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biochemistry-2.md
category: reference
title: History of biochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:29.505507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-biochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Since metabolism focuses on the breaking down (catabolic processes) of molecules and the building of larger molecules from these particles (anabolic processes), the use of glucose and its involvement in the formation of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is fundamental to this understanding. The most frequent type of glycolysis found in the body is the type that follows the Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas (EMP) Pathway, which was discovered by Gustav Embden, Otto Meyerhof, and Jakob Karol Parnas. These three men discovered that glycolysis is a strongly determinant process for the efficiency and production of the human body. The significance of the pathway shown in the adjacent image is that by identifying the individual steps in this process doctors and researchers are able to pinpoint sites of metabolic malfunctions such as pyruvate kinase deficiency that can lead to severe anemia. This is most important because cells, and therefore organisms, are not capable of surviving without proper functioning metabolic pathways. == Instrumental advancements (20th century) == Since then, biochemistry has advanced, especially since the mid-20th century, with the development of new techniques such as chromatography, X-ray diffraction, NMR spectroscopy, radioisotopic labelling, electron microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. These techniques allowed for the discovery and detailed analysis of


id: history-of-botany-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-0.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
The history of botany examines the human effort to understand life on Earth by tracing the historical development of the discipline of botany, the part of natural science dealing with organisms traditionally treated as plants. Rudimentary botanical science began with empirically based plant lore passed from generation to generation in the oral traditions of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. The first writings that show human curiosity about plants themselves, rather than the uses that could be made of them, appear in ancient Greece and ancient India. In Ancient Greece, the teachings of Aristotle's student Theophrastus at the Lyceum in ancient Athens in about 350 BC are considered the starting point for Western botany. In ancient India, the Vṛkṣāyurveda, attributed to Parashara, is also considered one of the earliest texts to describe various branches of botany. In Europe, botanical science was soon overshadowed by a medieval preoccupation with the medicinal properties of plants that lasted more than 1000 years. During this time, the medicinal works of classical antiquity were reproduced in manuscripts and books called herbals. In China and the Arab world, the Greco-Roman work on medicinal plants was preserved and extended. In Europe, the Renaissance of the 14th–17th centuries heralded a scientific revival


id: history-of-botany-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-1.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
==== Ancient India ==== Early Indian texts, like the Vedas mention plants with magical properties. The Sushruta Samhita, describes over 700 plants used for medicinal purposes. This text reflects a level of medical knowledge and practice comparable to ancient Egypt. Notably, the Sushruta Samhita categorizes food plants based on their parts used, taste, and dietary effects. While lacking detailed botanical descriptions beyond occasional habitat or foliage references, the text demonstrates close observation of plants. This is evident in the classification of sugarcane varieties and the listing of fungi based on their growth medium. The Charaka Samhitā, foundational Ayurvedic text, presents the earliest known plant classification system in India, using habitat, presence of flowers/fruits, and reproduction as criteria. === Classical antiquity === ==== Classical Greece ==== Ancient Athens, of the 6th century BC, was the busy trade centre at the confluence of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Minoan cultures at the height of Greek colonisation of the Mediterranean. The philosophical thought of this period ranged freely through many subjects. Empedocles (490–430 BC) foreshadowed Darwinian evolutionary theory in a crude formulation of the mutability of species and natural selection. The physician Hippocrates (460–370 BC) avoided the prevailing superstition of his day and approached healing


id: history-of-botany-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-2.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
=== Ancient China === In ancient China, lists of different plants and herb concoctions for pharmaceutical purposes date back to at least the time of the Warring States (481 BC-221 BC). Many Chinese writers over the centuries contributed to the written knowledge of herbal pharmaceutics. The Chinese dictionary-encyclopaedia Erh Ya probably dates from about 300 BC and describes about 334 plants classed as trees or shrubs, each with a common name and illustration. The Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) includes the notable work of the Huangdi Neijing and the famous pharmacologist Zhang Zhongjing. == Medieval knowledge == === Medicinal plants of the early Middle Ages === In Western Europe, after Theophrastus, botany passed through a bleak period of 1800 years when little progress was made and, indeed, many of the early insights were lost. As Europe entered the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries), China, India and the Arab world enjoyed a golden age. ==== Medieval China ==== Chinese philosophy had followed a similar path to that of the ancient Greeks. Between 100 and 1700 AD, many new works on pharmaceutical botany were produced. The 11th century scientists and statesmen Su Song and Shen Kuo compiled learned treatises on natural


id: history-of-botany-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-3.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
A great advance was made by the first German composers of herbals, who went straight to nature, described the wild plants growing around them and had figures of them carefully executed in wood. Thus was made the first beginning of a really scientific examination of plants, though the aims pursued were not yet truly scientific, for no questions were proposed as to the nature of plants, their organisation or mutual relations; the only point of interest was the knowledge of individual forms and of their medicinal virtues. German Otto Brunfels's (1464–1534) Herbarum Vivae Icones (1530) contained descriptions of about 47 species new to science combined with accurate illustrations. His fellow countryman Hieronymus Bock's (1498–1554) Kreutterbuch of 1539 described plants he found in nearby woods and fields and these were illustrated in the 1546 edition. However, it was Valerius Cordus (1515–1544) who pioneered the formal botanical description that detailed both flowers and fruits, some anatomy including the number of chambers in the ovary, and the type of ovule placentation. He also made observations on pollen and distinguished between inflorescence types. His five-volume Historia Plantarum was published about 18 years after his early death aged 29 in 1561–1563. In England, William Turner


id: history-of-botany-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-4.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
Public and private gardens have always been strongly associated with the historical unfolding of botanical science. Early botanical gardens were physic gardens, repositories for the medicinal plants described in the herbals. As they were generally associated with universities or other academic institutions, the plants were also used for study. The directors of these gardens were eminent physicians with an educational role as "scientific gardeners" and it was staff of these institutions that produced many of the published herbals. The botanical gardens of the modern tradition were established in northern Italy, the first being at Pisa (1544), founded by Luca Ghini (1490–1556). Although part of a medical faculty, the first chair of materia medica, essentially a chair in botany, was established in Padua in 1533. Then in 1534, Ghini became Reader in materia medica at Bologna University, where Ulisse Aldrovandi established a similar garden in 1568 (see below). Collections of pressed and dried specimens were called a hortus siccus (garden of dry plants) and the first accumulation of plants in this way (including the use of a plant press) is attributed to Ghini. Buildings called herbaria housed these specimens mounted on card with descriptive labels. Stored in cupboards in systematic order,


id: history-of-botany-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-5.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
By the middle of the 18th century, the botanical booty resulting from the era of exploration was accumulating in gardens and herbaria – and it needed to be systematically catalogued. This was the task of the taxonomists, the plant classifiers. Plant classifications have changed over time from "artificial" systems based on general habit and form, to pre-evolutionary "natural" systems expressing similarity using one to many characters, leading to post-evolutionary "natural" systems that use characters to infer evolutionary relationships. Italian physician Andrea Caesalpino (1519–1603) studied medicine and taught botany at the University of Pisa for about 40 years eventually becoming Director of the Botanic Garden of Pisa from 1554 to 1558. His sixteen-volume De Plantis (1583) described 1500 plants and his herbarium of 260 pages and 768 mounted specimens still remains. Caesalpino proposed classes based largely on the detailed structure of the flowers and fruit; he also applied the concept of the genus. He was the first to try and derive principles of natural classification reflecting the overall similarities between plants and he produced a classification scheme well in advance of its day. Gaspard Bauhin (1560–1624) produced two influential publications Prodromus Theatrici Botanici (1620) and Pinax (1623). These brought order to


id: history-of-botany-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-6.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
In plant physiology, research interest was focused on the movement of sap and the absorption of substances through the roots. Jan Helmont (1577–1644) by experimental observation and calculation, noted that the increase in weight of a growing plant cannot be derived purely from the soil, and concluded it must relate to water uptake. Englishman Stephen Hales (1677–1761) established by quantitative experiment that there is uptake of water by plants and a loss of water by transpiration and that this is influenced by environmental conditions: he distinguished "root pressure", "leaf suction" and "imbibition" and also noted that the major direction of sap flow in woody tissue is upward. His results were published in Vegetable Staticks (1727) He also noted that "air makes a very considerable part of the substance of vegetables". English chemist Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) is noted for his discovery of oxygen (as now called) and its production by plants. Later, Jan Ingenhousz (1730–1799) observed that only in sunlight do the green parts of plants absorb air and release oxygen, this being more rapid in bright sunlight while, at night, the air (CO2) is released from all parts. His results were published in Experiments upon vegetables (1779) and with this


id: history-of-botany-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-7.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
The opening of the 19th century was marked by an increase in interest in the connection between climate and plant distribution. Carl Willdenow (1765–1812) examined the connection between seed dispersal and distribution, the nature of plant associations and the impact of geological history. He noticed the similarities between the floras of N America and N Asia, the Cape and Australia, and he explored the ideas of "centre of diversity" and "centre of origin". German Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and Frenchman Aime Bonpland (1773–1858) published a massive and highly influential 30 volume work on their travels; Robert Brown (1773–1852) noted the similarities between the floras of S Africa, Australia and India, while Joakim Schouw (1789–1852) explored more deeply than anyone else the influence on plant distribution of temperature, soil factors, especially soil water, and light, work that was continued by Alphonse de Candolle (1806–1893). Joseph Hooker (1817–1911) pushed the boundaries of floristic studies with his work on Antarctica, India and the Middle East with special attention to endemism. August Grisebach (1814–1879) in Die Vegetation der Erde (1872) examined physiognomy in relation to climate and in America geographic studies were pioneered by Asa Gray (1810–1888). Physiological plant geography, or ecology, emerged from


id: history-of-botany-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-8.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
Until the 1860s, it was believed that species had remained unchanged through time: each biological form was the result of an independent act of creation and therefore absolutely distinct and immutable. But the hard reality of geological formations and strange fossils needed scientific explanation. Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) replaced the assumption of constancy with the theory of descent with modification. Phylogeny became a new principle as "natural" classifications became classifications reflecting, not just similarities, but evolutionary relationships. Wilhelm Hofmeister established that there was a similar pattern of organisation in all plants expressed through the alternation of generations and extensive homology of structures. German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), a polymath, had interests and influence that extended into botany. In Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen (1790), he provided a theory of plant morphology (he coined the word "morphology") and he included within his concept of "metamorphosis" modification during evolution, thus linking comparative morphology with phylogeny. Though the botanical basis of his work has been challenged, there is no doubt that he prompted discussion and research on the origin and function of floral parts. His theory probably stimulated the opposing views of German botanists Alexander Braun (1805–1877) and Matthias Schleiden


id: history-of-botany-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany-9.md
category: reference
title: History of botany
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:30.884011+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-botany-20260505-0
summary:
Increased experimental precision combined with vastly improved scientific instrumentation was opening up exciting new fields. In 1936, Alexander Oparin (1894–1980) demonstrated a possible mechanism for the synthesis of organic matter from inorganic molecules. In the 1960s, it was determined that the Earth's earliest life-forms treated as plants, the cyanobacteria known as stromatolites, dated back some 3.5 billion years. Mid-century transmission and scanning electron microscopy presented another level of resolution to the structure of matter, taking anatomy into the new world of "ultrastructure". New and revised "phylogenetic" classification systems of the plant kingdom were produced by several botanists, including August Eichler. A massive 23 volume Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien was published by Adolf Engler & Karl Prantl over the period 1887 to 1915. Taxonomy based on gross morphology was now being supplemented by using characters revealed by pollen morphology, embryology, anatomy, cytology, serology, macromolecules and more. The introduction of computers facilitated the rapid analysis of large data sets used for numerical taxonomy (also called taximetrics or phenetics). The emphasis on truly natural phylogenies spawned the disciplines of cladistics and phylogenetic systematics. The grand taxonomic synthesis An Integrated System of Classification of Flowering Plants (1981) of American Arthur Cronquist (1919–1992) was superseded when,


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-0.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
Maps have been one of the most important human inventions, allowing humans to explain and navigate their way. When and how the earliest maps were made is unclear, but maps of local terrain are believed to have been independently invented by many cultures. The earliest putative maps include cave paintings and etchings on tusk and stone. Maps were produced extensively by ancient Babylon, Greece, Rome, China, and India. The earliest maps ignored the curvature of Earth's surface, both because the shape of the Earth was unknown and because the curvature is not important across the small areas being mapped. However, since the age of Classical Greece, maps of large regions, and especially of the world, have used projection from a model globe to control how the inevitable distortion gets apportioned on the map.Modern methods of transportation, the use of surveillance aircraft, and more recently the availability of satellite imagery have made documentation of many areas possible that were previously inaccessible. Free online services such as Google Earth have made accurate maps of the world more accessible than ever before. == Etymology == The English term cartography is modern, borrowed from the French cartographie in the 1840s, itself based on Middle


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-1.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
=== Ancient Greece === Many scholars throughout history, such as Strabo, Kish, and Dilke, consider Homer to be the founder of the early Greek conception of Earth, and therefore of geography. Homer conceived Earth to be a disk surrounded by a constantly moving stream of Ocean, an idea which would be suggested by the appearance of the horizon as it is seen from a mountaintop or from a seacoast. This model was accepted by the early Greeks. Homer and his Greek contemporaries knew very little of the Earth beyond the Libyan desert of Egypt, the southwest coast of Asia Minor, and the northern boundary of the Greek homeland. Furthermore, the coast of the Black Sea was only known through myths and legends that circulated during his time. In his poems there is no mention of Europe and Asia as geographical concepts. That is why the big part of Homer's world that is portrayed on this interpretive map represents lands that border on the Aegean Sea. The Greeks believed that they occupied the central region of Earth and its edges were inhabited by savage, monstrous barbarians and strange animals and monsters: Homer's Odyssey mentions a great many of these. Additional statements


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-2.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
Herodotus traveled extensively, collecting information and documenting his findings in his books on Europe, Asia, and Libya. He also combined his knowledge with what he learned from the people he met. Herodotus wrote his Histories in the mid-5th century BC. Although his work was dedicated to the story of long struggle of the Greeks with the Persian Empire, Herodotus also included everything he knew about the geography, history, and peoples of the world. Thus, his work provides a detailed picture of the known world of the 5th century BC. Herodotus rejected the prevailing view of most 5th-century BC maps that the Earth is a disk surrounded by ocean. In his work he describes the Earth as an irregular shape with oceans surrounding only Asia and Africa. He introduces names such as the Atlantic Sea, and the Erythrean Sea, which translates as the "Red Sea". He also divided the world into three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. He depicted the boundary of Europe as the line from the Pillars of Hercules through the Bosphorus and the area between the Caspian Sea and the Indus River. He regarded the Nile as the boundary between Asia and Africa. He speculated that the extent


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-3.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
==== Marinus of Tyre ==== Marinus of Tyre (c. A.D. 70–130) was a Hellenized Phoenician geographer and cartographer. He founded mathematical geography and provided the underpinnings of Ptolemy's influential Geographia. Marinus's geographical treatise is lost and known only from Ptolemy's remarks. He introduced improvements to the construction of maps and developed a system of nautical charts. His chief legacy is that he first assigned to each place a proper latitude and longitude. His zero meridian ran through the westernmost land known to him, the Isles of the Blessed around the location of the Canary or Cape Verde Islands. He used the parallel of Rhodes for measurements of latitude. Ptolemy mentions several revisions of Marinus's geographical work, which is often dated to AD 114 although this is uncertain. Marinus estimated a length of 180,000 stadia for the equator, roughly corresponding to a circumference of the Earth of 33,300 km, about 17% less than the actual value. He also carefully studied the works of his predecessors and the diaries of travelers. His maps were the first in the Roman Empire to show China. He also invented equirectangular projection, which is still used in map creation today. A few of Marinus's opinions are


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-4.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
==== Earliest geographical writing ==== In China, the earliest known geographical Chinese writing dates back to the 5th century BC, during the beginning of the Warring States (481–221 BC). This was the Yu Gong or Tribute of Yu chapter of the Shu Jing or Book of Documents. The book describes the traditional nine provinces, their kinds of soil, their characteristic products and economic goods, their tributary goods, their trades and vocations, their state revenues and agricultural systems, and the various rivers and lakes listed and placed accordingly. The nine provinces in the time of this geographical work were very small in size compared to their modern Chinese counterparts. The Yu Gong's descriptions pertain to areas of the Yellow River, the lower valleys of the Yangzi, with the plain between them and the Shandong Peninsula, and to the west the most northern parts of the Wei River and the Han River were known (along with the southern parts of modern-day Shanxi). ==== Earliest known reference to a map (圖 tú) ==== The oldest reference to a map in China comes from the 3rd century BC. This was the event of 227 BC where Crown Prince Dan of Yan had his assassin


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-5.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
==== Pei Xiu, the 'Ptolemy of China' ==== In the year 267, Pei Xiu (224–271) was appointed as the Minister of Works by Emperor Wu of Jin, the first emperor of the Jin dynasty. Pei is best known for his work in cartography. Although map making and use of the grid existed in China before him, he was the first to mention a plotted geometrical grid and graduated scale displayed on the surface of maps to gain greater accuracy in the estimated distance between different locations. Pei outlined six principles that should be observed when creating maps, two of which included the rectangular grid and the graduated scale for measuring distance. Western historians compare him to the Greek Ptolemy for his contributions in cartography. However, Howard Nelson states that, although the accounts of earlier cartographic works by the inventor and official Zhang Heng (78–139) are somewhat vague and sketchy, there is ample written evidence that Pei Xiu derived the use of the rectangular grid reference from the maps of Zhang Heng. Later Chinese ideas about the quality of maps made during the Han dynasty and before stem from the assessment given by Pei Xiu. Pei Xiu noted that the extant


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-6.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
==== Yuan dynasty (Mongol Empire) ==== In the Mongol Empire, the Mongol scholars with the Persian and Chinese cartographers or their foreign colleagues created maps, geographical compendium as well as travel accounts. Rashid-al-Din Hamadani described his geographical compendium, "Suvar al-aqalim", constituted volume four of the Collected chronicles of the Ilkhanate in Persia. His works says about the borders of the seven climes (old world), rivers, major cities, places, climate, and Mongol yams (relay stations). The Great Khan Khubilai's ambassador and minister, Bolad, had helped Rashid's works in relation to the Mongols and Mongolia. Thanks to Pax Mongolica, the easterners and the westerners in Mongol dominions were able to gain access to one another's geographical materials. The Mongols required the nations they conquered to send geographical maps to the Mongol headquarters. One of medieval Persian work written in northwest Iran can clarify the historical geography of Mongolia where Genghis Khan was born and united the Mongol and Turkic nomads as recorded in native sources, especially the Secret History of the Mongols. Map of relay stations, called "yam", and strategic points existed in the Yuan dynasty. The Mongol cartography was enriched by traditions of ancient China and Iran which were now under


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-7.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
==== Mughal era ==== Maps from the Ain-e-Akbari, a Mughal document detailing India's history and traditions, contain references to locations indicated in earlier Indian cartographic traditions. Another map describing the kingdom of Nepal, four feet in length and about two and a half feet in breadth, was presented to Warren Hastings. In this map the mountains were elevated above the surface, and several geographical elements were indicated in different colors. The scholar Sadiq Isfahani of Jaunpur compiled an atlas of the parts of the world which he held to be 'suitable for human life'. The 32 sheet atlas—with maps oriented towards the south as was the case with Islamic works of the era—is part of a larger scholarly work compiled by Isfahani during 1647 CE. According to Joseph E. Schwartzberg (2008): 'The largest known Indian map, depicting the former Rajput capital at Amber in remarkable house-by-house detail, measures 661 × 645 cm. (260 × 254 in., or approximately 22 × 21 ft).' === Islamic cartographic schools === ==== Arab and Persian cartography ==== In the Middle Ages, Muslim scholars continued and advanced on the mapmaking traditions of earlier cultures. Most used Ptolemy's methods; but they also took advantage of what


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-8.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
===== Book on the appearance of the Earth ===== Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's Kitāb ṣūrat al-Arḍ ("Book on the appearance of the Earth") was completed in 833. It is a revised and completed version of Ptolemy's Geography, consisting of a list of 2402 coordinates of cities and other geographical features following a general introduction. Al-Khwārizmī, Al-Ma'mun's most famous geographer, corrected Ptolemy's gross overestimate for the length of the Mediterranean Sea (from the Canary Islands to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean); Ptolemy overestimated it at 63 degrees of longitude, while al-Khwarizmi almost correctly estimated it at nearly 50 degrees of longitude. Al-Ma'mun's geographers "also depicted the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as open bodies of water, not land-locked seas as Ptolemy had done." Al-Khwarizmi thus set the Prime Meridian of the Old World at the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, 10–13 degrees to the east of Alexandria (the prime meridian previously set by Ptolemy) and 70 degrees to the west of Baghdad. Most medieval Muslim geographers continued to use al-Khwarizmi's prime meridian. Other prime meridians used were set by Abū Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdānī and Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi at Ujjain, a centre of Indian astronomy, and by another anonymous writer at Basra.


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-9.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
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parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
==== Medieval maps and the Mappa Mundi ==== Medieval maps of the world in Europe were mainly symbolic in form along the lines of the much earlier Babylonian World Map. Known as Mappa Mundi (cloths or charts of the world) these maps were circular or symmetrical cosmological diagrams representing the Earth's single land mass as disk-shaped and surrounded by ocean. ==== Italian cartography and the birth of portolan charts ==== Roger Bacon's investigations of map projections and the appearance of portolano and then portolan charts for plying the European trade routes were rare innovations of the period. The Majorcan school is contrasted with the contemporary Italian cartography school. The Carta Pisana portolan chart, made at the end of the 13th century (1275–1300), is the oldest surviving nautical chart (that is, not simply a map but a document showing accurate navigational directions). ==== Majorcan cartographic school and the "normal" portolan chart ==== The Majorcan cartographic school was a predominantly Jewish cooperation of cartographers, cosmographers and navigational instrument-makers in late 13th to the 14th and 15th-century Majorca. With their multicultural heritage the Majorcan cartographic school experimented and developed unique cartographic techniques most dealing with the Mediterranean, as it can be seen in


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-10.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
1500: The Spanish cartographer and explorer Juan de la Cosa created the first known cartographic representations showing both the Americas as well as Africa and Eurasia. 1502: Unknown Portuguese cartographer made the Cantino planisphere, the first nautical chart to implicitly represent latitudes. 1504: Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel made the oldest known nautical chart with a scale of latitudes. 1519 : Portuguese cartographers Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel and Jorge Reinel made the group of maps known today as the Miller Atlas or Lopo Homem – Reinéis Atlas. 1530: Alonzo de Santa Cruz, Spanish cartographer, produced the first map of magnetic variations from true north. He believed it would be of use in finding the correct longitude. Santa Cruz also designed new nautical instruments, and was interested in navigational methods. ==== Padrón Real of the Spanish Empire ==== Founded 1504 in Seville, the Spanish House of Trade (Casa de Contratación) kept a large contingent of cartographers as Spain's overseas empire expanded. A royal standard map (Padrón Real) was established in 1508 and updated periodically as more information became available from major expeditions returning to Seville. This continued a practice of long standing in Portugal, whose Padrão Real was kept in the Guinea


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-11.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
Leuven, Antwerp, and Amsterdam were the main centres of the Netherlandish school of cartography in its golden age (the 16th and 17th centuries, approximately 1570–1670s). The Golden Age of Dutch cartography started in Flanders (mainly in Leuven and Antwerp) when Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius found its fullest expression during the 17th century with the production of monumental multi-volume world atlases in the Dutch Republic (mainly in Amsterdam) by competing mapmaking firms led by Lucas Waghenaer, Joan Blaeu, Jan Janssonius, Claes Janszoon Visscher, and Frederik de Wit. Notable representatives of the Netherlandish school of cartography and geography (1500s–1600s) include: Franciscus Monachus, Gemma Frisius, Gaspard van der Heyden, Christophe Plantin, Lucas Waghenaer, Jacob van Deventer, Willebrord Snell, Hessel Gerritsz, Petrus Plancius, Jodocus Hondius, Henricus Hondius II, Hendrik Hondius I, Willem Blaeu, Joan Blaeu, Andreas Cellarius, Gerard de Jode, Cornelis de Jode, Nicolaes Visscher I and Nicolaes Visscher II. Gerardus Mercator was a Flemish cartographer and geographer with a vast output of wall maps, bound maps, globes and scientific instruments but his greatest legacy was the mathematical projection he devised for his 1569 world map. The Mercator projection is an example of a cylindrical projection in which the meridians are straight and


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-12.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
Historian David Buisseret has traced the roots of the flourishing of cartography in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. He noted five distinct reasons: 1) admiration of antiquity, especially the rediscovery of Ptolemy, considered to be the first geographer; 2) increasing reliance on measurement and quantification as a result of the scientific revolution; 3) refinements in the visual arts, such as the discovery of perspective, that allowed for better representation of spatial entities; 4) development of estate property; and 5) the importance of mapping to nation-building. The reign of Louis XIV is generally considered to represent the beginning of cartography as a science in France. The evolution of cartography during the transition between the 17th and 18th centuries involved advancements on a technical level, as well as those on a representative level. According to Marco Petrella, the map developed "from a tool used to affirm the administrative borders of the reign and its features…into a tool which was necessary to intervene in territory and thus establish control of it." Because unification of the kingdom necessitated well-kept records of land and tax bases, Louis XIV and members of the royal court pushed the development and progression of the sciences, especially


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-13.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
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parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
==== Paris as the center of cartography ==== The seventeenth century marked the emergence of France as the center of the map trade in Europe, with much of the production and distribution of maps taking place in the capital Paris. In conjunction with the support of scientific development, the royal court encouraged the work of arts and artisans. This royal patronage attracted artists to Paris. As a result, many mapmakers, such as Nicolas Sanson and Alexis-Hubert Jaillot, moved to the national capital from the peripheries of the provinces. Many of the agents of cartography, including those involved in the creation, production and distribution of maps in Paris, came to live in the same section of the capital city. Booksellers congregated on rue St-Jacques along the left bank of the Seine, while engravers and cartographers lived along the quai de l'Horloge on the Île de la Cité (See Figure 1). Regulations enacted by the communautés informed the location of the libraries. These regulations included that each bookseller-printer was to have one shop, which had to be located in the university quarter or on the quai de l'Horloge. These restrictions enabled authorities to more easily inspect their businesses to enforce other regulations


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-14.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
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parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
=== 20th-century developments === During the 20th century, maps became more abundant due to improvements in printing and photography that made production cheaper and easier. Airplanes made it possible to photograph large areas at a time. Two-point equidistant projection was first drawn up by Hans Maurer in 1919. In this projection the distance from any point on the map to either of the two regulating points is accurate. The loximuthal projection was constructed by Karl Siemon in 1935 and refined by Waldo Tobler in 1966. Since the mid-1990s, the use of computers in map making has helped to store, sort, and arrange data for mapping to create map projections. === Contemporary developments === ==== Software development ==== Nowadays map-making heavily relies on computer software to develop and provide a variety of services, a trend that already started at the end of the previous century. For instance, self-location, browser search of places, business, products, and area, and distance calculation. At the present time, computer-based software is dominated by big companies that offer their services to a worldwide public, such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing Maps, National Geographic Maps, ESRI Geographic Information System (GIS), CartoDB, Mapbox, Waze, etc. Many other state-based,


id: history-of-cartography-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography-15.md
category: reference
title: History of cartography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:32.469141+00:00
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parent: history-of-cartography-20260505-0
summary:
Imago Mundi Archived 8 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine journal of History of Cartography The History of Cartography journal published by the University of Chicago Press Euratlas Historical Maps History maps from year zero AD The History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin, a comprehensive research project in the history of maps and mapping Three volumes of The History of Cartography are available free in PDF format The history of cartography at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St. Andrews, Scotland Mapping History – a learning resource from the British Library Modern Medieval Map Myths: The Flat World, Ancient Sea-Kings, and Dragons Concise Bibliography of the History of Cartography Archived 26 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Newberry Library Newberry Library Cartographic Catalog : map catalog and bibliography of the history of cartography American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection David Rumsey Historical map collection licensed under a Creative Commons License See Maps for more links to historical maps; however, most of the largest sites are listed at the sites linked below. Eratosthenes Map of the Earth, and Measuring of its Circumference at Convergence Ancient World Maps A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-0.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
The history of chemistry represents a time span from ancient history to the present. By 1000 BC, civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Examples include the discovery of fire, extracting metals from ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume, rendering fat into soap, making glass, and making alloys like bronze. The protoscience of chemistry, alchemy, was unsuccessful in explaining the nature of matter and its transformations. However, by performing experiments and recording the results, alchemists set the stage for modern chemistry. The history of chemistry is intertwined with the history of thermodynamics, especially through the work of Willard Gibbs. == Ancient history == === Early humans === ==== Fire ==== Arguably the first chemical reaction used in a controlled manner was fire. However, for millennia fire was seen simply as a mystical force that could transform one substance into another (burning wood, or boiling water) while producing heat and light. Fire affected many aspects of early societies. These ranged from the simplest facets of everyday life, such as cooking and habitat heating and lighting, to more advanced uses, such as making


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-1.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
==== Ferrous metallurgy ==== The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal is much more difficult than copper or tin. While iron is not better suited for tools than bronze (until steel was discovered), iron ore is much more abundant and common than either copper or tin, and therefore more often available locally, with no need to trade for it. Iron working appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, beginning the Iron Age. The secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Philistines. Cast iron smithing as well as the innovation of the Blast Furnace and Cupola furnace was invented in ancient China, during the Warring States period when armies sought to develop better weaponry and armor in state-armories. Many other applications, practices, and devices associated with or involved in metallurgy were also established in ancient China, with the innovations of hydraulic-powered trip hammers, and double-acting piston bellows. The Iron Age is named after the advent of iron working (ferrous metallurgy). Historical developments in ferrous metallurgy can be found in a wide variety of past cultures and civilizations. These include the ancient and medieval kingdoms


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-2.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Alchemy is defined by the Hermetic quest for the philosopher's stone, the study of which is steeped in symbolic mysticism, and differs greatly from modern science. Alchemists toiled to make transformations on an esoteric (spiritual) and/or exoteric (practical) level. It was the protoscientific, exoteric aspects of alchemy that contributed heavily to the evolution of chemistry in Greco-Roman Egypt, in the Islamic Golden Age, and then in Europe. Alchemy and chemistry share an interest in the composition and properties of matter, and until the 18th century they were not separate disciplines. The term chymistry has been used to describe the blend of alchemy and chemistry that existed before that time. During the Renaissance, exoteric alchemy remained popular in the form of Paracelsian iatrochemistry, while spiritual alchemy flourished, realigned to its Platonic, Hermetic, and Gnostic roots. Consequently, the symbolic quest for the philosopher's stone was not superseded by scientific advances, and was still the domain of respected scientists and doctors until the early 18th century. Early modern alchemists who are renowned for their scientific contributions include Jan Baptist van Helmont, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. === Alchemy in the Islamic world === In the Islamic World, the Muslims were translating the works


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-3.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their extraction to smelt metals was an important source of information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them Georg Agricola (1494–1555), who published his great work De re metallica in 1556. His work describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the time. His approach removed the mysticism associated with the subject, creating the practical base upon which others could build. The work describes the many kinds of furnace used to smelt ore, and stimulated interest in minerals and their composition. It is no coincidence that he gives numerous references to the earlier author, Pliny the Elder and his Naturalis Historia. Agricola has been described as the "father of metallurgy" and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. In 1605, Sir Francis Bacon published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, which contains a description of what would later be known as the scientific method. In 1605, Michal Sedziwój publishes the alchemical treatise A New Light of Alchemy which proposed the existence of the "food of life" within air, much later recognized as oxygen. In 1615 Jean Beguin published the Tyrocinium


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-4.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
In 1702, German chemist Georg Stahl coined the name "phlogiston" for the substance believed to be released in the process of burning. Around 1735, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt analyzed a dark blue pigment found in copper ore. Brandt demonstrated that the pigment contained a new element, later named cobalt. In 1751, a Swedish chemist and pupil of Stahl's named Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, identified an impurity in copper ore as a separate metallic element, which he named nickel. Cronstedt is one of the founders of modern mineralogy. Cronstedt also discovered the mineral scheelite in 1751, which he named tungsten, meaning "heavy stone" in Swedish. In 1754, Scottish chemist Joseph Black isolated carbon dioxide, which he called "fixed air". In 1757, Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt, while investigating arsenic compounds, creates Cadet's fuming liquid, later discovered to be cacodyl oxide, considered to be the first synthetic organometallic compound. In 1758, Joseph Black formulated the concept of latent heat to explain the thermochemistry of phase changes. In 1766, English chemist Henry Cavendish isolated hydrogen, which he called "inflammable air". Cavendish discovered hydrogen as a colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air, and published a paper on the


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-5.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
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parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Repeating the experiments of Priestley, he demonstrated that air is composed of two parts, one of which combines with metals to form calxes. In Considérations Générales sur la Nature des Acides (1778), he demonstrated that the "air" responsible for combustion was also the source of acidity. The next year, he named this portion oxygen (Greek for acid-former), and the other azote (Greek for no life). Because of his more thorough characterization of it as an element, Lavoisier thus has a claim to the discovery of oxygen along with Priestley and Scheele. He also discovered that the "inflammable air" discovered by Cavendish – which he termed hydrogen (Greek for water-former) – combined with oxygen to produce a dew, as Priestley had reported, which appeared to be water. In Reflexions sur le Phlogistique (1783), Lavoisier showed the phlogiston theory of combustion to be inconsistent. Mikhail Lomonosov independently established a tradition of chemistry in Russia in the 18th century; he also rejected the phlogiston theory, and anticipated the kinetic theory of gases. Lomonosov regarded heat as a form of motion, and stated the idea of conservation of matter. Lavoisier worked with Claude Louis Berthollet and others to devise a system of chemical nomenclature,


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-6.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
== 19th century == Throughout the 19th century, chemistry was divided between those who followed the atomic theory of John Dalton and the energeticists, such as Wilhelm Ostwald and Ernst Mach. Although such proponents of the atomic theory as Amedeo Avogadro and Ludwig Boltzmann made great advances in explaining the behavior of gases, this dispute was not finally settled until Jean Perrin's experimental investigation of Einstein's atomic explanation of Brownian motion in the first decade of the 20th century. Well before the dispute had been settled, many had already applied the concept of atomism to chemistry. A major example was the ion theory of Svante Arrhenius which anticipated ideas about atomic substructure that did not fully develop until the 20th century. Michael Faraday was another early worker, whose major contribution to chemistry was electrochemistry, in which (among other things) a certain quantity of electricity during electrolysis or electrodeposition of metals was shown to be associated with certain quantities of chemical elements, and fixed quantities of the elements therefore with each other, in specific ratios. These findings, like those of Dalton's combining ratios, were early clues to the atomic nature of matter. === John Dalton === In 1803, English meteorologist and


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-7.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
=== New elements and gas laws === English chemist Humphry Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis, using Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile to split up common compounds and thus isolate a series of new elements. He went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, especially sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals. Potassium, the first metal that was isolated by electrolysis, was discovered in 1807 by Davy, who derived it from caustic potash (KOH). Before the 19th century, no distinction was made between potassium and sodium. Sodium was first isolated by Davy in the same year by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide (NaOH). When Davy heard that Berzelius and Pontin prepared calcium amalgam by electrolyzing lime in mercury, he tried it himself. Davy was successful, and discovered calcium in 1808 by electrolyzing a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide. He worked with electrolysis throughout his life and, in 1808, he isolated magnesium, strontium and barium. Davy also experimented with gases by inhaling them. This experimental procedure nearly proved fatal on several occasions, but led to the discovery of the unusual effects of nitrous oxide, which came to be


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-8.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
After Dalton published his atomic theory in 1808, certain of his central ideas were soon adopted by most chemists. However, uncertainty persisted for half a century about how atomic theory was to be configured and applied to concrete situations; chemists in different countries developed several different incompatible atomistic systems. A paper that suggested a way out of this difficult situation was published as early as 1811 by the Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856), who hypothesized that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain equal numbers of molecules, from which it followed that relative molecular weights of any two gases are the same as the ratio of the densities of the two gases under the same conditions of temperature and pressure. Avogadro also reasoned that simple gases were not formed of solitary atoms but were instead compound molecules of two or more atoms. Thus Avogadro was able to overcome the difficulty that Dalton and others had encountered when Gay-Lussac reported that above 100 °C the volume of water vapor was twice the volume of the oxygen used to form it. According to Avogadro, the molecule of oxygen had split into two atoms in the course of forming


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-9.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
=== Mid-1800s === In 1840, Germain Hess proposed Hess's law, an early statement of the law of conservation of energy, which establishes that energy changes in a chemical process depend only on the states of the starting and product materials and not on the specific pathway taken between the two states. In 1847, Hermann Kolbe obtained acetic acid from completely inorganic sources, further disproving vitalism. In 1848, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (commonly known as Lord Kelvin) established the concept of absolute zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases. In 1849, Louis Pasteur discovered that the racemic form of tartaric acid is a mixture of the levorotatory and dextrotatory forms, thus clarifying the nature of optical rotation and advancing the field of stereochemistry. In 1852, August Beer proposed Beer's law, which explains the relationship between the composition of a mixture and the amount of light it will absorb. Based partly on earlier work by Pierre Bouguer and Johann Heinrich Lambert, it established the analytical technique known as spectrophotometry. In 1855, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. pioneered methods of petroleum cracking, which made the entire modern petrochemical industry possible. Avogadro's hypothesis began to gain broad appeal among chemists only after his


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-10.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
British chemist and physicist William Crookes is noted for his cathode ray studies, fundamental in the development of atomic physics. His researches on electrical discharges through a rarefied gas led him to observe the dark space around the cathode, now called the Crookes dark space. He demonstrated that cathode rays travel in straight lines and produce phosphorescence and heat when they strike certain materials. A pioneer of vacuum tubes, Crookes invented the Crookes tube – an early experimental discharge tube, with partial vacuum with which he studied the behavior of cathode rays. With the introduction of spectrum analysis by Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff (1859–1860), Crookes applied the new technique to the study of selenium compounds. Bunsen and Kirchhoff had previously used spectroscopy as a means of chemical analysis to discover caesium and rubidium. In 1861, Crookes used this process to discover thallium in some seleniferous deposits. He continued work on that new element, isolated it, studied its properties, and in 1873 determined its atomic weight. During his studies of thallium, Crookes discovered the principle of the Crookes radiometer, a device that converts light radiation into rotary motion. The principle of this radiometer has found numerous applications in the development


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-11.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
An important breakthrough in making sense of the list of known chemical elements (as well as in understanding the internal structure of atoms) was Dmitri Mendeleev's development of the first modern periodic table, or the periodic classification of the elements. Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, felt that there was some type of order to the elements and he spent more than thirteen years of his life collecting data and assembling the concept, initially with the idea of resolving some of the disorder in the field for his students. Mendeleev found that, when all the known chemical elements were arranged in order of increasing atomic weight, the resulting table displayed a recurring pattern, or periodicity, of properties within groups of elements. Mendeleev's law allowed him to build up a systematic periodic table of all the 66 elements then known based on atomic mass, which he published in Principles of Chemistry in 1869. His first Periodic Table was compiled on the basis of arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of properties. Mendeleev had such faith in the validity of the periodic law that he proposed changes to the generally accepted values for the atomic weight


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-12.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
American mathematical physicist J. Willard Gibbs's work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in transforming physical chemistry into a rigorous deductive science. During the years from 1876 to 1878, Gibbs worked on the principles of thermodynamics, applying them to the complex processes involved in chemical reactions. He discovered the concept of chemical potential, or the "fuel" that makes chemical reactions work. In 1876 he published his most famous contribution, "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances", a compilation of his work on thermodynamics and physical chemistry which laid out the concept of free energy to explain the physical basis of chemical equilibria. In these essays were the beginnings of Gibbs' theories of phases of matter: he considered each state of matter a phase, and each substance a component. Gibbs took all of the variables involved in a chemical reaction – temperature, pressure, energy, volume, and entropy – and included them in one simple equation known as Gibbs' phase rule. Within this paper was perhaps his most outstanding contribution, the introduction of the concept of free energy, now universally called Gibbs free energy in his honor. The Gibbs free energy relates the tendency of a physical or chemical system to simultaneously


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-13.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
German engineer Carl von Linde's invention of a continuous process of liquefying gases in large quantities formed a basis for the modern technology of refrigeration and provided both impetus and means for conducting scientific research at low temperatures and very high vacuums. He developed a dimethyl ether refrigerator (1874) and an ammonia refrigerator (1876). Though other refrigeration units had been developed earlier, Linde's were the first to be designed with the aim of precise calculations of efficiency. In 1895 he set up a large-scale plant for the production of liquid air. Six years later he developed a method for separating pure liquid oxygen from liquid air that resulted in widespread industrial conversion to processes utilizing oxygen (e.g., in steel manufacture). He founded the Linde plc, the world's largest industrial gas company by market share and revenue. In 1883, Svante Arrhenius developed an ion theory to explain conductivity in electrolytes. In 1884, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff published Études de Dynamique chimique (Studies in Dynamic Chemistry), a seminal study on chemical kinetics. In this work, van 't Hoff entered for the first time the field of physical chemistry. Of great importance was his development of the general thermodynamic relationship between the


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-14.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish-born French physicist and chemist who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She and her husband are considered to have laid the cornerstone of the nuclear age with their research on radioactivity. Marie was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered in 1896 that uranium casts off rays similar to the X-rays discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen. Marie Curie began studying uranium in late 1897 and theorized, according to a 1904 article she wrote for Century magazine, "that the emission of rays by the compounds of uranium is a property of the metal itself—that it is an atomic property of the element uranium independent of its chemical or physical state." Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and the Curies coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomenon. Pierre and Marie further explored radioactivity by working to separate the substances in uranium ores and then using the


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-15.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
He also observed that the intensity of radioactivity of a radioactive element decreases over a unique and regular amount of time until a point of stability, and he named the halving time the "half-life". In 1901 and 1902 he worked with Frederick Soddy to prove that atoms of one radioactive element would spontaneously turn into another, by expelling a piece of the atom at high velocity. In 1906 at the University of Manchester, Rutherford oversaw an experiment conducted by his students Hans Geiger (known for the Geiger counter) and Ernest Marsden. In the Geiger–Marsden experiment, a beam of alpha particles, generated by the radioactive decay of radon, was directed normally onto a sheet of very thin gold foil in an evacuated chamber. Under the prevailing plum pudding model, the alpha particles should all have passed through the foil and hit the detector screen, or have been deflected by, at most, a few degrees. However, the actual results surprised Rutherford. Although many of the alpha particles did pass through as expected, many others were deflected at small angles while others were reflected back to the alpha source. They observed that a very small percentage of particles were deflected through angles much


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-16.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
In 1913, Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, introduced the concepts of quantum mechanics to atomic structure by proposing what is now known as the Bohr model of the atom, where electrons exist only in strictly defined circular orbits around the nucleus similar to rungs on a ladder. The Bohr Model is a planetary model in which the negatively charged electrons orbit a small, positively charged nucleus similar to the planets orbiting the Sun (except that the orbits are not planar) – the gravitational force of the solar system is mathematically akin to the attractive Coulomb (electrical) force between the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electrons. In the Bohr model, however, electrons orbit the nucleus in orbits that have a set size and energy – the energy levels are said to be quantized, which means that only certain orbits with certain radii are allowed; orbits in between simply do not exist. The energy of the orbit is related to its size – that is, the lowest energy is found in the smallest orbit. Bohr also postulated that electromagnetic radiation is absorbed or emitted when an electron moves from one orbit to another. Because only certain electron orbits are permitted,


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-17.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
In 1924, French quantum physicist Louis de Broglie published his thesis, in which he introduced a revolutionary theory of electron waves based on wave–particle duality. In his time, the wave and particle interpretations of light and matter were seen as being at odds with one another, but de Broglie suggested that these seemingly different characteristics were instead the same behavior observed from different perspectives—that particles can behave like waves, and waves (radiation) can behave like particles. Broglie's proposal offered an explanation of the restricted motion of electrons within the atom. The first publications of Broglie's idea of "matter waves" had drawn little attention from other physicists, but a copy of his doctoral thesis chanced to reach Einstein, whose response was enthusiastic. Einstein stressed the importance of Broglie's work both explicitly and by building further on it. In 1925, Austrian-born physicist Wolfgang Pauli developed the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two electrons around a single nucleus in an atom can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously, as described by four quantum numbers. Pauli made major contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory – he was awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of the Pauli


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-18
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-18.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Hence the quantum mechanical methods developed in the 1930s and 1940s are often referred to as theoretical molecular or atomic physics to underline the fact that they were more the application of quantum mechanics to chemistry and spectroscopy than answers to chemically relevant questions. In 1951, a milestone article in quantum chemistry is the seminal paper of Clemens C. J. Roothaan on Roothaan equations. It opened the avenue to the solution of the self-consistent field equations for small molecules like hydrogen or nitrogen. Those computations were performed with the help of tables of integrals which were computed on the most advanced computers of the time. In the 1940s many physicists turned from molecular or atomic physics to nuclear physics (like J. Robert Oppenheimer or Edward Teller). Glenn T. Seaborg was an American nuclear chemist best known for his work on isolating and identifying transuranium elements (those heavier than uranium). He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Edwin Mattison McMillan for their independent discoveries of transuranium elements. Seaborgium was named in his honour, making him the only person, along with Albert Einstein and Yuri Oganessian, for whom a chemical element was named during his lifetime. === Molecular biology and


id: history-of-chemistry-20260505-19
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry-19.md
category: reference
title: History of chemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:33.777732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-chemistry-20260505-0
summary:
The later part of the nineteenth century saw a huge increase in the exploitation of petroleum extracted from the earth for the production of a host of chemicals and largely replaced the use of whale oil, coal tar and naval stores used previously. Large-scale production and refinement of petroleum provided feedstocks for liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel, solvents, lubricants, asphalt, waxes, and for the production of many of the common materials of the modern world, such as synthetic fibers, plastics, paints, detergents, pharmaceuticals, adhesives and ammonia as fertilizer and for other uses. Many of these required new catalysts and the utilization of chemical engineering for their cost-effective production. In the mid-twentieth century, control of the electronic structure of semiconductor materials was made precise by the creation of large ingots of extremely pure single crystals of silicon and germanium. Accurate control of their chemical composition by doping with other elements made the production of the solid state transistor in 1951 and made possible the production of tiny integrated circuits for use in electronic devices, especially computers. == See also == === Histories and timelines === === Notable chemists === listed chronologically: == Notes == == References == Selected classic


id: history-of-computer-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science-0.md
category: reference
title: History of computer science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:35.224961+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-computer-science-20260505-0
summary:
The history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science, usually appearing in forms like mathematics or physics. Developments in previous centuries alluded to the discipline that we now know as computer science. This progression, from mechanical inventions and mathematical theories towards modern computer concepts and machines, led to the development of a major academic field, massive technological advancement across the Western world, and the basis of massive worldwide trade and culture. == Early history == The earliest known tool for use in computation was the abacus, developed in the period between 2700 and 2300 BCE in Sumer. The Sumerians' abacus consisted of a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system. Its original style of usage was by lines drawn in sand with pebbles. Abaci of a more modern design are still used as calculation tools today, such as the Chinese abacus. In the 5th century BC in ancient India, the grammarian Pāṇini formulated the grammar of Sanskrit in 3959 rules known as the Ashtadhyayi which was highly systematized and technical. Panini used metarules, transformations and recursions. The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be an early mechanical


id: history-of-computer-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science-1.md
category: reference
title: History of computer science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:35.224961+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-computer-science-20260505-0
summary:
Ada Lovelace (Augusta Ada Byron) is credited as the pioneer of computer programming and is regarded as a mathematical genius. Lovelace began working with Charles Babbage as an assistant while Babbage was working on his "Analytical Engine", the first mechanical computer. During her work with Babbage, Ada Lovelace became the designer of the first computer algorithm, which could compute Bernoulli numbers, although this is arguable as Charles was the first to design the difference engine and consequently its corresponding difference based algorithms, making him the first computer algorithm designer. Moreover, Lovelace's work with Babbage resulted in her prediction of future computers to not only perform mathematical calculations but also manipulate symbols, mathematical or not. While she was never able to see the results of her work, as the "Analytical Engine" was not created in her lifetime, her efforts in later years, beginning in the 1840s, did not go unnoticed. === Early post-Analytical Engine designs === Following Babbage, although at first unaware of his earlier work, was Percy Ludgate, a clerk to a corn merchant in Dublin, Ireland. He independently designed a programmable mechanical computer, which he described in a work that was published in 1909. Two other inventors, Leonardo Torres


id: history-of-computer-science-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science-2.md
category: reference
title: History of computer science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:35.224961+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-computer-science-20260505-0
summary:
Before the 1920s, computers (sometimes computors) were human clerks that performed computations. They were usually under the lead of a physicist. Many thousands of computers were employed in commerce, government, and research establishments. Many of these clerks who served as human computers were women. Some performed astronomical calculations for calendars, others ballistic tables for the military. After the 1920s, the expression computing machine referred to any machine that performed the work of a human computer, especially those in accordance with effective methods of the Church-Turing thesis. The thesis states that a mathematical method is effective if it could be set out as a list of instructions able to be followed by a human clerk with paper and pencil, for as long as necessary, and without ingenuity or insight. Machines that computed with continuous values became known as the analog kind. They used machinery that represented continuous numeric quantities, like the angle of a shaft rotation or difference in electrical potential. Digital machinery, in contrast to analog, were able to render a state of a numeric value and store each individual digit. Digital machinery used difference engines or relays before the invention of faster memory devices. The phrase computing machine gradually


id: history-of-computer-science-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science-3.md
category: reference
title: History of computer science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:35.224961+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-computer-science-20260505-0
summary:
In 1941, Konrad Zuse developed the world's first functional program-controlled computer, the Z3. In 1998, it was shown to be Turing-complete in principle. Zuse also developed the S2 computing machine, considered the first process control computer. He founded one of the earliest computer businesses in 1941, producing the Z4, which became the world's first commercial computer. In 1946, he designed the first high-level programming language, Plankalkül. In 1948, the Manchester Baby was completed; it was the world's first electronic digital computer that ran programs stored in its memory, like almost all modern computers. The influence on Max Newman of Turing's seminal 1936 paper on the Turing Machines and of his logico-mathematical contributions to the project, were both crucial to the successful development of the Baby. In 1950, Britain's National Physical Laboratory completed Pilot ACE, a small scale programmable computer, based on Turing's philosophy. With an operating speed of 1 MHz, the Pilot Model ACE was for some time the fastest computer in the world. Turing's design for ACE had much in common with today's RISC architectures and it called for a high-speed memory of roughly the same capacity as an early Macintosh computer, which was enormous by the standards of


id: history-of-computer-science-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science-4.md
category: reference
title: History of computer science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:35.224961+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-computer-science-20260505-0
summary:
The term artificial intelligence was credited by John McCarthy to explain the research that they were doing for a proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research. The naming of artificial intelligence also led to the birth of a new field in computer science. On August 31, 1955, a research project was proposed consisting of John McCarthy, Marvin L. Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude E. Shannon. The official project began in 1956 that consisted of several significant parts they felt would help them better understand artificial intelligence's makeup. McCarthy and his colleagues' ideas behind automatic computers was while a machine is capable of completing a task, then the same should be confirmed with a computer by compiling a program to perform the desired results. They also discovered that the human brain was too complex to replicate, not by the machine itself but by the program. The knowledge to produce a program that sophisticated was not there yet. The concept behind this was looking at how humans understand our own language and structure of how we form sentences, giving different meaning and rule sets and comparing them to a machine process. The way computers can understand is at a hardware level. This language


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-0.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The history of economic thought is the study of the philosophies of the different thinkers and theories in the subjects that later became political economy and economics, from the ancient world to the present day. This field encompasses many disparate schools of economic thought. Ancient Greek writers such as the philosopher Aristotle examined ideas about the art of wealth acquisition, and questioned whether property is best left in private or public hands. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas argued that it was a moral obligation of businesses to sell goods at a just price. In the Western world, economics was not a separate discipline, but part of philosophy until the 18th–19th century Industrial Revolution and the 19th century Great Divergence, which accelerated economic growth. == Ancient economic thought (before 500 AD) == === Ancient Greece === Hesiod active 750 to 650 BC, a Boeotian who wrote the earliest known work concerning the basic origins of economic thought, contemporary with Homer. Of the 828 verses in his poem Works and Days, the first 383 centered on the fundamental economic problem of scarce resources for the pursuit of numerous and abundant human ends and desires. === China === Fan Li (also known


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-1.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) was an Italian theologian and economic writer. He taught in both Cologne and Paris, and was part of a group of Catholic scholars known as the Schoolmen, who moved their enquiries beyond theology to philosophical and scientific debates. In the treatise Summa Theologica Aquinas dealt with the concept of a just price, which he considered necessary for the reproduction of the social order. Similar in many ways to the modern concept of long-run equilibrium, a just price was just sufficient to cover the costs of production, including the maintenance of a worker and his family. Aquinas argued it was immoral for sellers to raise their prices simply because buyers had a pressing need for a product. Aquinas discusses a number of topics in the format of questions and replies, substantial tracts dealing with Aristotle's theory. Questions 77 and 78 concern economic issues, primarily what a just price might be, and the fairness of a seller dispensing faulty goods. Aquinas argued against any form of cheating and recommended always paying compensation in lieu of service obtained as it utilized resources. Whilst human laws might not impose sanctions for unfair dealing, divine law did, in his opinion. === Duns


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-2.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Mercantile theorists held that international trade could not benefit all countries at the same time. Money and precious metals were the only source of riches in their view, and limited resources must be allocated between countries, therefore tariffs should be used to encourage exports, which bring money into the country, and discourage imports which send it abroad. In other words, a positive balance of trade ought to be maintained through a surplus of exports, often backed by military might. Despite the prevalence of the model, the term mercantilism was not coined until 1763, by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau (1715–1789), and popularized by Adam Smith in 1776, who vigorously opposed it. === School of Salamanca === In the 16th and 17th centuries the School of Salamanca in Spain developed economic theory, one of the earliest forms of a study in the economic tradition of the field of economics. Even if his doctrine was influenced by the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, it sometimes renew the economic thought to such an extent that it was defined as "pro-market, pro-hard money, anti-state in many ways, pro-property, and pro-merchant to a surprising extent." There was also the development of an early form of


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-3.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
==== Sir William Petty ==== In 1662 English economist Sir William Petty (1623–1687) began publishing short works applying the rational scientific tradition of Francis Bacon to economics, requiring that it only use measurable phenomena and seek quantitative precision, coining the term "political arithmetic", introducing statistical mathematics, and becoming the first scientific economist. ==== Philipp von Hörnigk ==== Philipp von Hörnigk (1640–1712, sometimes spelt Hornick or Horneck) was born in Frankfurt and became an Austrian civil servant writing in a time when his country was constantly threatened by Ottoman invasion. In Österreich Über Alles, Wann es Nur Will (1684, Austria Over All, If She Only Will) he laid out one of the clearest statements of mercantile policy, listing nine principal rules of national economy: To inspect the country's soil with the greatest care, and not to leave the agricultural possibilities of a single corner or clod of earth unconsidered... All commodities found in a country, which cannot be used in their natural state, should be worked up within the country... Attention should be given to the population, that it may be as large as the country can support... gold and silver once in the country are under no circumstances to be


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-4.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
"God hath given the world to men in common... Yet every man has a property in his own person. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." Locke argued that not only should the government cease interference with people's property (or their "lives, liberties and estates"), but also that it should positively work to ensure their protection. His views on price and money were laid out in a letter to a Member of Parliament in 1691 entitled Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money (1691), arguing that the "price of any commodity rises or falls, by the proportion of the number of buyers and sellers", a rule which "holds universally in all things that are to be bought and sold." ==== Dudley North ==== Dudley North (1641–1691) was a wealthy merchant and landowner who worked for Her Majesty's Treasury and opposed most mercantile


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-5.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
=== Ferdinando Galiani and On Money === In 1751, Neapolitan philosopher Ferdinando Galiani published a nearly exhaustive treatise on money called Della Moneta (On Money), 25 years before Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and therefore is seen as possibly the first truly modern economic analysis. In its five sections, Della Moneta covered all modern aspects of monetary theory, including the value and origin of money, its regulation, and inflation. This text remained cited by various economists for centuries, as wide-ranging a list as Karl Marx and Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter. === Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations === Adam Smith (1723–1790) is popularly seen as the father of modern political economy. His 1776 publication An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations happened to coincide not only with the American Revolution, shortly before the Europe-wide upheavals of the French Revolution, but also the dawn of a new industrial revolution that allowed more wealth to be created on a larger scale than ever before. Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher, whose first book was The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). He argued in it that people's ethical systems develop through personal relations with other individuals,


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-6.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
"Burke is the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do without any previous communication having passed between us." Burke was an established political economist himself, known for his book Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. He was widely critical of liberal politics, and condemned the French Revolution which began in 1789. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) he wrote that the "age of chivalry is dead, that of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever." Smith's contemporary influences included François Quesnay and Jacques Turgot whom he met on a visit to Paris, and David Hume, his Scottish compatriot. The times produced a common need among thinkers to explain social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution taking place, and in the seeming chaos without the feudal and monarchical structures of Europe, show there was order still. === Jeremy Bentham === Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was perhaps the most radical thinker of his time, and developed the concept of utilitarianism. Bentham was an atheist, a prison reformer, animal rights activist, believer in universal suffrage, freedom of speech, free trade and health insurance at a time when few dared to


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-7.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The classical economists were referred to as a group for the first time by Karl Marx. One unifying part of their theories was the labour theory of value, contrasting to value deriving from a general equilibrium theory of supply and demand. These economists had seen the first economic and social transformation brought by the Industrial Revolution: rural depopulation, precariousness, poverty, apparition of a working class. They wondered about population growth, because demographic transition had begun in Great Britain at that time. They also asked many fundamental questions, about the source of value, the causes of economic growth and the role of money in the economy. They supported a free-market economy, arguing it was a natural system based upon freedom and property. However, these economists were divided and did not make up a unified current of thought. A notable current within classical economics was underconsumption theory, as advanced by the Birmingham School and Thomas Robert Malthus in the early 19th century. These argued for government action to mitigate unemployment and economic downturns, and were an intellectual predecessor of what later became Keynesian economics in the 1930s. Another notable school was Manchester capitalism, which advocated free trade, against the previous policy of


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-8.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
American economist John Bates Clark (1847–1938) promoted the marginalist revolution, publishing The Distribution of Wealth (1899), which proposed Clark's Law of Capitalism: "Given competition and homogeneous factors of production labor and capital, the repartition of the social product will be according to the productivity of the last physical input of units of labor and capital", also expressed as "What a social class gets is, under natural law, what it contributes to the general output of industry." In 1947 the John Bates Clark Medal was established in his honor. ==== William Stanley Jevons ==== In 1871 Menger's English counterpart Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) independently published Theory of Political Economy (1871), stating that at the margin the satisfaction of goods and services decreases. An example of the Theory of Diminishing Marginal Utility is that for every orange one eats, one gets less pleasure until one stops eating oranges completely. ==== Alfred Marshall ==== Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) is also credited with an attempt to put economics on a more mathematical footing. The first professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, his 1890 work Principles of Economics abandoned the term "political economy" for his favorite "economics". He viewed math as a way to simplify


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-9.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
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In the early 19th century German-born English astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738–1822) noted a connection between 11-year sunspot cycles and wheat prices. In 1860 French economist Clément Juglar (1819–1905) posited business cycles seven to eleven years long. In 1925 the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev (1892–1938) proposed the existence of Kondratiev waves in Western capitalist economies fifty to sixty years long. === German historical school of economics === In the mid-1840s German economist Wilhelm Roscher (1817–1894) founded the German historical school of economics, which promoted the cyclical theory of nations—economies passing through youth, manhood, and senility—and spread through academia in Britain and the U.S., dominating it for the rest of the 19th century. === Thorstein Veblen and the American Way === Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), who came from rural midwestern America and worked at the University of Chicago is one of the best-known early critics of the "American Way". In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) he scorned materialistic culture and wealthy people who conspicuously consumed their riches as a way of demonstrating success. In The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) Veblen distinguished production for people to use things and production for pure profit, arguing that the former is often hindered


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-10.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The Great Depression was a time of significant upheaval in the world economy. One of the most original contributions to understanding what went wrong came from Harvard University lawyer Adolf Berle (1895–1971), who like John Maynard Keynes had resigned from his diplomatic job at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 and was deeply disillusioned by the Versailles Treaty. In his book with American economist Gardiner C. Means (1896–1988) The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) he detailed the evolution in the contemporary economy of big business and argued that those who controlled big firms should be better held to account. Directors of companies are held to account to the shareholders of companies, or not, by the rules found in company law statutes. This might include rights to elect and fire the management, requirements to hold regular general meetings, satisfy accounting standards, and so on. In 1930s America the typical company laws (e.g. in Delaware) did not clearly mandate such rights. Berle argued that the unaccountable directors of companies were therefore apt to funnel the fruits of enterprise profits into their own pockets, as well as manage in their own interests. The ability to do this was supported by the fact that


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-11.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
In 1920 Alfred Marshall's student Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877–1959) published Wealth and Welfare, which insisted on the possibility of market failures, claiming that markets are inefficient in the case of economic externalities, and the state must interfere to prevent them. However, Pigou retained free market beliefs, and in 1933, in the face of the economic crisis, he explained in The Theory of Unemployment that the excessive intervention of the state in the labor market was the real cause of massive unemployment because the governments had established a minimal wage, which prevented wages from adjusting automatically. This was to be the focus of attack from Keynes. In 1943 Pigou published the paper The Classical Stationary State, which popularized the Pigou (Real Balance) Effect, the stimulation of output and employment during deflation by increasing consumption due to a rise in wealth. === Market socialism === In response to the Economic Calculation Problem proposed by the Austrian School of Economics that disputes the efficiency of a state-run economy, the theory of Market Socialism was developed in the late 1920s and 1930s by economists Fred M. Taylor (1855–1932), Oskar R. Lange (1904–1965), Abba Lerner (1903–1982) et al., combining Marxian economics with neoclassical economics after


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-12.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
During the Great Depression, Keynes published his most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). The Great Depression had been sparked by the Wall Street crash of 1929, leading to massive rises in unemployment in the United States, leading to debts being recalled from European borrowers, and an economic domino effect across the world. Orthodox economics called for a tightening of spending, until business confidence and profit levels could be restored. Keynes by contrast, had argued in A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) (which argues for a stable currency) that a variety of factors determined economic activity, and that it was not enough to wait for the long run market equilibrium to restore itself. As Keynes famously remarked: "...this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." On top of the supply of money, Keynes identified the propensity to consume, inducement to invest, marginal efficiency of capital, liquidity preference, and multiplier effect as variables which determine the


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-13.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
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One of Keynes's pupils at Cambridge was Joan Robinson (1903–1983), a member of Keynes's Cambridge Circus, who contributed to the notion that competition is seldom perfect in a market, an indictment of the theory of markets setting prices. In The Production Function and the Theory of Capital (1953) Robinson tackled what she saw to be some of the circularity in orthodox economics. Neoclassicists assert that a competitive market forces producers to minimize the costs of production. Robinson said that costs of production are merely the prices of inputs, like capital. Capital goods get their value from the final products. And if the price of the final products determines the price of capital, then it is, argued Robinson, utterly circular to say that the price of capital determines the price of the final products. Goods cannot be priced until the costs of inputs are determined. This would not matter if everything in the economy happened instantaneously, but in the real world, price setting takes time – goods are priced before they are sold. Since capital cannot be adequately valued in independently measurable units, how can one show that capital earns a return equal to the contribution to production? Alfred Eichner (1937–1988)


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-14.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The government-interventionist monetary and fiscal policies that the postwar Keynesian economists recommended came under attack by a group of theorists working at the University of Chicago, which came in the 1950s to be known as the Chicago School of Economics. Before World War II, the Old Chicago School of strong Keynesians was founded by Frank Knight (1885–1972), Jacob Viner (1892–1970), and Henry Calvert Simons (1899–1946). The second generation was known for a more conservative line of thought, reasserting a libertarian view of market activity that people are best left to themselves to be free to choose how to conduct their own affairs. Ronald Coase (1910–2013) of the Chicago School of Economics was the most prominent economic analyst of law, and the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics winner. His first major article The Nature of the Firm (1937) argued that the reason for the existence of firms (companies, partnerships, etc.) is the existence of transaction costs. Homo economicus trades through bilateral contracts on open markets until the costs of transactions make the use of corporations to produce things more cost-effective. His second major article The Problem of Social Cost (1960) argued that if we lived in a world without transaction costs,


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-15.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
In 1965 Chicago School economist Eugene Fama (1939–) published The Behavior of Stock Market Prices, which found that stock market prices follow a random walk, proposing the Efficient Market Hypothesis, that randomness is characteristic of a perfectly functioning financial market. The same year Paul Samuelson published a paper concluding the same thing with a mathematical proof, sharing the credit. Earlier in 1948 Holbrook Working (1895–1985) published a paper saying the same thing, but not in a mathematical form. In 1970 Fama published Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work, proposing that efficient markets can be strong, semi-strong, or weak, and also proposing the Joint Hypothesis Problem, that the idea of market efficiency can not be rejected without also rejecting the market mechanism. == Games, evolution and growth (20th century) == In 1898 Thorstein Veblen published Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science, which coins the term Evolutionary economics, making use of anthropology to deny that there is a universal human nature, emphasizing the conflict between "industrial" or instrumental and "pecuniary" or ceremonial values, which became known as the Ceremonial/Instrumental Dichotomy. Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950) was an Austrian School economist and political scientist best known for his works


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-16.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The Paul Samuelson's (1915–2009) Foundations of Economic Analysis published in 1947 was an attempt to show that mathematical methods could represent a core of testable economic theory. Samuelson started with two assumptions. First, people and firms will act to maximize their self-interested goals. Second, markets tend towards an equilibrium of prices, where demand matches supply. He extended the mathematics to describe equilibrating behavior of economic systems, including that of the then new macroeconomic theory of John Maynard Keynes. Whilst Richard Cantillon had imitated Isaac Newton's mechanical physics of inertia and gravity in competition and the market, the physiocrats had copied the body's blood system into circular flow of income models, William Jevons had found growth cycles to match the periodicity of sunspots, Samuelson adapted thermodynamics formulae to economic theory. Reasserting economics as a hard science was being done in the United Kingdom also, and one celebrated "discovery", of A. W. Phillips, was of a correlative relationship between inflation and unemployment. The workable policy conclusion was that securing full employment could be traded-off against higher inflation. Samuelson incorporated the idea of the Phillips curve into his work. His introductory textbook Economics was influential and widely adopted. It became the most successful


id: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought-17.md
category: reference
title: History of economic thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_economic_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:36.630219+00:00
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parent: history-of-economic-thought-20260505-0
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In 1962–1963 Scottish economist Marcus Fleming (1911–1976) and Canadian economist Robert Mundell (1932–) published the Mundell–Fleming Model of the Economy, an extension of the IS–LM Model to an open economy, proposing the Impossible Trinity of fixed exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy, only two of which can be maintained simultaneously. Mundell received the 1999 Nobel Economics Prize. === Market for corporate control === In 1965 American economist Henry G. Manne (1928–2015) published Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control in Journal of Political Economy, which claims that changes in the price of a share of stock in the stock market will occur more rapidly when insider trading is prohibited than when it is permitted, founding the theory of market for corporate control. === Information economics === In 1970 George Akerlof (1940–) published the paper The Market for Lemons, founding the theory of Information Economics, receiving the 2001 Nobel Economics Prize. Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943–) also received the Nobel Economics Prize in 2001 for his work in Information Economics. He has served as chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and as chief economist for the World Bank. Stiglitz has taught at many universities, including Columbia,


id: history-of-education-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-0.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
The history of education extends at least as far back as the first written records recovered from ancient civilizations. Historical studies have included virtually every nation. The earliest known formal school was developed in Egypt's Middle Kingdom under the direction of Kheti, treasurer to Mentuhotep II (2061–2010 BC). In ancient India, education was mainly imparted through the Vedic and Buddhist learning system, while the first education system in ancient China was created in Xia dynasty (2076–1600 BC). In the city-states of ancient Greece, most education was private, except in Sparta. For example, in Athens, during the 5th and 4th century BC, aside from two years military training, the state played little part in schooling. The first schools in Ancient Rome arose by the middle of the 4th century BC. In Europe, during the Early Middle Ages, the monasteries of the Roman Catholic Church were the centers of education and literacy, preserving the Church's selection from Latin learning and maintaining the art of writing. In the Islamic civilization that spread all the way between China and Spain during the time between the 7th and 19th centuries, Muslims started schooling from 622 in Medina, which is now a city in Saudi Arabia.


id: history-of-education-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-1.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
The earliest known formal school was developed in Egypt's Middle Kingdom under the direction of Kheti, treasurer to Mentuhotep II (2061–2010 BC). In Mesopotamia, the early logographic system of cuneiform script took many years to master. Thus only a limited number of individuals were hired as scribes to be trained in writing. Only royal offspring and sons of the rich and professionals, such as scribes, physicians, and temple administrators, were schooled. Most boys were taught their father's trade or were apprenticed to learn a trade. Girls stayed at home with their mothers to learn housekeeping and cooking, and to look after the younger children. Later, when a syllabic script became more widespread, more of the Mesopotamian population became literate. Later still in Babylonian times there were libraries in most towns and temples; an old Sumerian proverb averred "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." There arose a whole social class of scribes, mostly employed in agriculture, but some as personal secretaries or lawyers. Women as well as men learned to read and write, and for the Semitic Babylonians, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and a complicated and extensive syllabary.


id: history-of-education-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-2.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
In ancient India, religious traditions were imparted and passed on orally rather than in written form. Education was a process that involved three steps. The first was Shravana (hearing) which was the acquisition of knowledge by listening to the Shrutis. The second was Manana (reflection) wherein the students would think, analyze and make inferences. The third was Nididhyāsana in which the students would apply the knowledge in their real life. During the Vedic period from about 1500 BC to 600 BC, Sanskrit learning in the Indo-Aryan society of northern India centered on the Veda (hymns, formulas, and incantations, that were recited or chanted by priests of Vedic tradition) and later Sanskrit texts and scriptures. Vedic learning included proper pronunciation and recitation of the Veda, the rules of sacrifice, grammar and derivation, composition, versification and meter, an understanding of secrets of nature, reasoning (including logic), the sciences, and the skills necessary for an occupation. Some medical knowledge existed and was taught. There are mentions in the Veda of herbal medicines for various conditions or diseases, including fever, cough, baldness, snake bites, and others. The oldest of the Upanishads date from around 700 BCE. The Upanishads are considered as "wisdom teachings" as


id: history-of-education-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-3.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
According to legendary accounts, the rulers Yao and Shun (ca. 24th–23rd century BC) established the first schools. The first education system was created in the Xia dynasty (2076–1600 BC). During the Xia dynasty, the government built schools to educate aristocrats about rituals, literature, and archery (important for ancient Chinese aristocrats). During the Shang dynasty (1600 BC to 1046 BC), normal people (farmers, workers, etc.) accepted rough education. At that time, aristocrats' children studied in government schools. Normal people studied in private schools. Government schools were always built in cities and private schools were built in rural areas. Government schools paid attention to educating students about rituals, literature, politics, music, arts, and archery. Private schools educated students to do farmwork and handworks. During the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BC), there were five national schools in the capital city, Pi Yong (an imperial school, located in a central location), and four other schools for the aristocrats and nobility, including Shang Xiang. The schools mainly taught the Six Arts: rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics. According to the Book of Rites, at age twelve, boys learned arts related to ritual (i.e. music and dance) and when older, archery and chariot driving. Girls learned


id: history-of-education-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-4.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
The first schools in Ancient Rome arose by the middle of the 4th century BC. These schools were concerned with the basic socialization and rudimentary education of young Roman children. The literacy rate in the 3rd century BC has been estimated as around 1–2%. There are very few primary sources or accounts of the Roman educational process until the 2nd century BC, during which there was a proliferation of private schools in Rome. At the height of the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire, the Roman educational system gradually found its final form. Formal schools were established, which served paying students (very little in the way of free public education as we know it can be found). Normally, both boys and girls were educated, though not necessarily together. In a system much like the one that predominates in the modern world, the Roman education system developed arranged schools in tiers. The educator Quintilian recognized the importance of starting education as early as possible, noting that "memory … not only exists even in small children but is specially retentive at that age". A Roman student would progress through schools just as a student today might go from elementary school to


id: history-of-education-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-5.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
The word school applies to a variety of educational organizations in the Middle Ages, including town, church, and monastery schools. During the late medieval period, students attending town schools were usually between the ages of seven and fourteen. Instruction for boys in such schools ranged from the basics of literacy (alphabet, syllables, simple prayers, and proverbs) to more advanced instruction in the Latin language. Occasionally, these schools may also have taught rudimentary arithmetic or letter writing and other skills useful in business. Often instruction at various levels took place in the same schoolroom. During the Early Middle Ages, the monasteries of the Roman Catholic Church were the centers of education and literacy, preserving the Church's selection from Latin learning and maintaining the art of writing. Before their formal establishment, many medieval universities were run for hundreds of years as Christian monastic schools (Scholae monasticae), in which monks taught classes, and later as cathedral schools; evidence of these immediate forerunners of the later university at many places dates back to the early 6th century. The first medieval institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and 12th centuries for the study of


id: history-of-education-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-6.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
Additionally, Charlemagne attempted to establish a free elementary education by parish priests for youth in a capitulary of 797. The capitulary states "that the priests establish schools in every town and village, and if any of the faithful wishes to entrust their children to them to learn letters, that they refuse not to accept them but with all charity teach them ... and let them exact no price from the children for their teaching nor receive anything from them save what parents may offer voluntarily and from affection" (P.L., CV., col. 196) Cathedral schools and monasteries remained important throughout the Middle Ages; at the Third Lateran Council of 1179 the Church mandated that priests provide the opportunity of free education to their flocks, and the 12th and 13th century renascence known as the Scholastic Movement was spread through the monasteries. These however ceased to be the sole sources of education in the 11th century when universities, which grew out of the monasticism began to be established in major European cities. Literacy became available to a wider class of people, and there were major advances in art, sculpture, music, and architecture. In 1120, Dunfermline Abbey in Scotland by order of Malcolm


id: history-of-education-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-7.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
Although there are more than 40,000 Chinese characters in written Chinese, many are rarely used. Studies have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters. In China, three oral texts were used to teach children by rote memorization of the written characters of their language and the basics of Confucian thought. The Thousand Character Classic, a Chinese poem originating in the 6th century, was used for more than a millennium as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children. The poem is composed of 250 phrases of four characters each, thus containing exactly one thousand unique characters, and was sung in the same way that children learning the Latin alphabet may use the "alphabet song". Later, children also learn the Hundred Family Surnames, a rhyming poem in lines of eight characters composed in the early Song dynasty (i.e. in about the 11th century) which listed more than four hundred of the common surnames in ancient China. From around the 13th century until the latter part of the 19th century, the Three Character Classic, which is an embodiment of Confucian thought suitable for teaching young children, served as a child's


id: history-of-education-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-8.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
==== Islamic education ==== After Muslims started ruling India, there was a rise in the spread of Islamic education. The main aim of Islamic education included the acquisition of knowledge, propagation of Islam and Islamic social morals, preservation and spread of Muslim culture, etc. Education was mainly imparted through Maqtabs, Madrassahas, and Mosques. Their education was usually funded by the nobles or the landlords. The education was imparted orally and the children learned a few verses from the Quran by rote. Indigenous education was widespread in India in the 18th century, with a school for every temple, mosque, or village in most regions of the country. The subjects taught included Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Theology, Law, Astronomy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Medical Science and Religion. The schools were attended by students representative of all classes of society. === Japan === The history of education in Japan dates back at least to the 6th century when Chinese learning was introduced at the Yamato court. Foreign civilizations have often provided new ideas for the development of Japan's own culture. Chinese teachings and ideas flowed into Japan from the sixth to the 9th century. Along with the introduction of Buddhism came the Chinese system of writing


id: history-of-education-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-9.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
Modern systems of education in Europe derive their origins from the schools of the High Middle Ages. Most schools during this era were founded upon religious principles with the primary purpose of training the clergy. Many of the earliest universities, such as the University of Paris founded in 1160, had a Christian basis. In addition to this, several secular universities existed, such as the University of Bologna, founded in 1088 in Italy, the oldest university in continuous operation in the world, and the University of Naples Federico II (founded in 1224) in Italy, the world's oldest state-funded university in continuous operation. Free education for the poor was officially mandated by the Church in 1179 when it decreed that every cathedral must assign a master to teach boys too poor to pay the regular fee; parishes and monasteries also established free schools teaching at least basic literary skills. With few exceptions, priests and brothers taught locally, and their salaries were frequently subsidized by towns. Private, independent schools reappeared in medieval Europe during this time, but they, too, were religious in nature and mission. The curriculum was usually based around the trivium and to a lesser extent quadrivium (the seven Artes Liberales


id: history-of-education-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-10.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
The Danish education system has its origin in the cathedral- and monastery schools established by the Church, and seven of the schools established in the 12th and 13th centuries still exist today. After the Reformation, which was officially implemented in 1536, the schools were taken over by the Crown. Their main purpose was to prepare the students for theological studies by teaching them Latin and Greek. Popular elementary education was at that time still very primitive, but in 1721, 240 rytterskoler ("cavalry schools") were established throughout the kingdom. Moreover, the religious movement of Pietism, spreading in the 18th century, required some level of literacy, thereby promoting the need for public education. Throughout the 19th century (and even up until today), the Danish education system was especially influenced by the ideas of clergymen, politicians, and poets N. F. S. Grundtvig, who advocated inspiring methods of teaching and the foundation of folk high schools. In 1871, there was a division of the secondary education into two lines: the languages and the mathematics-science line. This division was the backbone of the structure of the Gymnasium (i.e. academic general upper secondary education program) until the year 2005. In 1894, the Folkeskole ("public school", the


id: history-of-education-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-11.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
===== French Empire ===== French colonial officials, influenced by the revolutionary ideal of equality, standardized schools, curricula, and teaching methods as much as possible. They did not establish colonial school systems with the idea of furthering the ambitions of the local people, but rather simply exported the systems and methods in vogue in the mother nation. Having a moderately trained lower bureaucracy was of great use to colonial officials. The emerging French-educated indigenous elite saw little value in educating rural peoples. After 1946 the policy was to bring the best students to Paris for advanced training. The result was to immerse the next generation of leaders in the growing anti-colonial diaspora centered in Paris. Impressionistic colonials could mingle with studious scholars radical revolutionaries or so everything in between. Ho Chi Minh and other young radicals in Paris formed the French Communist Party in 1920. Tunisia was exceptional. The colony was administered by Paul Cambon, who built an educational system for colonists and indigenous people alike that was closely modeled on mainland France. He emphasized female and vocational education. By independence, the quality of Tunisian education nearly equaled that in France. African nationalists rejected such a public education system, which they


id: history-of-education-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-12.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
In Italy a state school system or Education System has existed since 1859, when the Legge Casati (Casati Act) mandated educational responsibilities for the forthcoming Italian state (Italian unification took place in 1861). The Casati Act made primary education compulsory and had the goal of increasing literacy. This law gave control of primary education to the single towns, of secondary education to the provinces, and the universities were managed by the State. Even with the Casati Act and compulsory education, in rural (and southern) areas children often were not sent to school (the rate of children enrolled in primary education would reach 90% only after 70 years) and the illiteracy rate (which was nearly 80% in 1861) took more than 50 years to halve. The next important law concerning the Italian education system was the Gentile Reform. This act was issued in 1923, thus when Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party were in power. In fact, Giovanni Gentile was appointed the task of creating an education system deemed fit for the fascist system. The compulsory age of education was raised to 14 years, and was somewhat based on a ladder system: after the first five years of primary education,


id: history-of-education-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-13.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
Japan isolated itself from the rest of the world in the year 1600 under the Tokugawa regime (1600–1867). In 1600 very few common people were literate. By the period's end, learning had become widespread. Tokugawa education left a valuable legacy: an increasingly literate populace, a meritocratic ideology, and an emphasis on discipline and competent performance. Traditional Samurai curricula for elites stressed morality and the martial arts. Confucian classics were memorized, and reading and recitation of them were common methods of study. Arithmetic and calligraphy were also studied. Education of commoners was generally practically oriented, providing basic three Rs, calligraphy and use of the abacus. Much of this education was conducted in so-called temple schools (terakoya), derived from earlier Buddhist schools. These schools were no longer religious institutions, nor were they, by 1867, predominantly located in temples. By the end of the Tokugawa period, there were more than 11,000 such schools, attended by 750,000 students. Teaching techniques included reading from various textbooks, memorizing, abacus, and repeatedly copying Chinese characters and Japanese script. By the 1860s, 40–50% of Japanese boys, and 15% of the girls, had some schooling outside the home. These rates were comparable to major European nations at the time


id: history-of-education-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-14.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
In the 1920s and 1930s Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) imposed radical educational reforms in trying to modernize Turkey. He first separated governmental and religious affairs. Education was the cornerstone of this effort. In 1923, there were three main educational groups of institutions. The most common institutions were medreses based on Arabic, the Qur'an, and memorization. The second type of institution was idadî and sultanî, the reformist schools of the Tanzimat era. The last group included colleges and minority schools in foreign languages that used the latest teaching models in educating pupils. The old medrese education was modernized. Atatürk changed classical Islamic education for a vigorously promoted reconstruction of educational institutions. He linked educational reform to the liberation of the nation from dogma, which he believed was more important than the Turkish War of Independence. He declared: Today, our most important and most productive task is the national education [unification and modernization] affairs. We have to be successful in national education affairs and we shall be. The liberation of a nation is only achieved through this way." In 1924, Atatürk invited American educational reformer John Dewey to Ankara to advise him on how to reform Turkish education. Unification was put into


id: history-of-education-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education-15.md
category: reference
title: History of education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:37.952046+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-education-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Benavot, Aaron, and Julia Resnik. "Lessons from the past: A comparative socio-historical analysis of primary and secondary education". in Joel Colton et al. eds. Educating all children: A global agenda (2006): 123–229. online Connell, W. F. ed. A History of Education in the Twentieth Century World (1981), 478pp; global coverage Cubberley, Ellwood Patterson. The History of Education: Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization (1920) [The history of education: educational practice and progress considered as a phase of the development and spread of Western civilization online] Foght, H.W. ed. Comparative education (1918), compares the United States, England, Germany, France, Canada, and Denmark online Rebecca Marlow-Ferguson, Rebecca, ed. World Education Encyclopedia: a survey of educational systems worldwide (Gage, 4 vol 2002) Palmer, Joy A., et al. eds. Fifty Major Thinkers on Education: From Confucius to Dewey (2001) Palmer, Joy A. ed. Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present Day (2001) Peterson, Penelope et al. eds. International Encyclopedia of Education (3rd ed. 8 vol 2010) comprehensive coverage for every nation Pink, M. Alderton. Procrustes; or, the future of English education United States: E. P. Dutton &


id: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry-0.md
category: reference
title: History of electrochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:39.209529+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Electrochemistry, a branch of chemistry, went through several changes during its evolution from early principles related to magnets in the early 16th and 17th centuries, to complex theories involving conductivity, electric charge and mathematical methods. The term electrochemistry was used to describe electrical phenomena in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In recent decades, electrochemistry has become an area of current research, including research in batteries and fuel cells, preventing corrosion of metals, the use of electrochemical cells to remove refractory organics and similar contaminants in wastewater electrocoagulation and improving techniques in refining chemicals with electrolysis and electrophoresis. == Background and dawn of electrochemistry == The 16th century marked the beginning of scientific understanding of electricity and magnetism that culminated with the production of electric power and the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century. In the 1550s, English scientist William Gilbert spent 17 years experimenting with magnetism and, to a lesser extent, electricity. For his work on magnets, Gilbert became known as "The Father of Magnetism." His book De Magnete quickly became the standard work throughout Europe on electrical and magnetic phenomena, and made a clear distinction between magnetism and what was then called the "amber effect" (static electricity).


id: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry-1.md
category: reference
title: History of electrochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:39.209529+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
In 1709, Francis Hauksbee at the Royal Society in London discovered that by putting a small amount of mercury in the glass of Von Guericke's generator and evacuating the air from it, it would glow whenever the ball built up a charge and his hand was touching the globe. He had created the first gas-discharge lamp. Between 1729 and 1736, two English scientists, Stephen Gray and Jean Desaguliers, performed a series of experiments which showed that a cork or other object as far away as 800 or 900 feet (245–275 m) could be electrified by connecting it via a charged glass tube to materials such as metal wires or hempen string. They found that other materials, such as silk, would not convey the effect. By the mid-18th century, French chemist Charles François de Cisternay Du Fay had discovered two forms of static electricity, and that like charges repel each other while unlike charges attract. Du Fay announced that electricity consisted of two fluids: vitreous (from the Latin for "glass"), or positive, electricity; and resinous, or negative, electricity. This was the "two-fluid theory" of electricity, which was opposed by Benjamin Franklin's "one-fluid theory" later in the century. In 1745, Jean-Antoine Nollet


id: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry-2.md
category: reference
title: History of electrochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:39.209529+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
In 1800, English chemists William Nicholson and Johann Wilhelm Ritter succeeded in separating water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. Soon thereafter, Ritter discovered the process of electroplating. He also observed that the amount of metal deposited and the amount of oxygen produced during an electrolytic process depended on the distance between the electrodes. By 1801 Ritter had observed thermoelectric currents, which anticipated the discovery of thermoelectricity by Thomas Johann Seebeck. In 1802, William Cruickshank designed the first electric battery capable of mass production. Like Volta, Cruickshank arranged square copper plates, which he soldered at their ends, together with plates of zinc of equal size. These plates were placed into a long rectangular wooden box which was sealed with cement. Grooves inside the box held the metal plates in position. The box was then filled with an electrolyte of brine, or watered down acid. This flooded design had the advantage of not drying out with use and provided more energy than Volta's arrangement, which used brine-soaked papers between the plates. In the quest for a better production of platinum metals, two scientists, William Hyde Wollaston and Smithson Tennant, worked together to design an efficient electrochemical technique to refine or purify


id: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry-3.md
category: reference
title: History of electrochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:39.209529+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
Second, the amount of the decomposition was found to be related directly to the amount of electricity passing through the solution. These findings led Faraday to a new theory of electrochemistry. The electric force, he argued, threw the molecules of a solution into a state of tension. When the force was strong enough to distort the forces that held the molecules together so as to permit the interaction with neighbouring particles, the tension was relieved by the migration of particles along the lines of tension, the different parts of atoms migrating in opposite directions. The amount of electricity that passed, then, was clearly related to the chemical affinities of the substances in solution. These experiments led directly to Faraday's two laws of electrochemistry which state:


id: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry-4.md
category: reference
title: History of electrochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:39.209529+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
The amount of a substance deposited on each electrode of an electrolytic cell is directly proportional to the amount of electricity passing through the cell. The quantities of different elements deposited by a given amount of electricity are in the ratio of their chemical equivalent weights. William Sturgeon built an electric motor in 1832 and invented the commutator, a ring of metal-bristled brushes which allow the spinning armature to maintain contact with the electric current and changed the alternating current to a pulsating direct current. He also improved the voltaic battery and worked on the theory of thermoelectricity. Hippolyte Pixii, a French instrument maker, constructed the first dynamo in 1832 and later built a direct current dynamo using the commutator. This was the first practical mechanical generator of electric current that used concepts demonstrated by Faraday. John Daniell began experiments in 1835 in an attempt to improve the voltaic battery with its problems of being unsteady and a weak source of electric current. His experiments soon led to remarkable results. In 1836, he invented a primary cell in which hydrogen was eliminated in the generation of the electricity. Daniell had solved the problem of polarization. In his laboratory he had


id: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry-5.md
category: reference
title: History of electrochemistry
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_electrochemistry
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:39.209529+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-electrochemistry-20260505-0
summary:
The race for the commercially viable production of aluminium was won in 1886 by Paul Héroult and Charles M. Hall. The problem many researchers had with extracting aluminium was that electrolysis of an aluminium salt dissolved in water yields aluminium hydroxide. Both Hall and Héroult avoided this problem by dissolving aluminium oxide in a new solvent— fused cryolite (Na3AlF6). Wilhelm Ostwald, 1909 Nobel Laureate, started his experimental work in 1875, with an investigation on the law of mass action of water in relation to the problems of chemical affinity, with special emphasis on electrochemistry and chemical dynamics. In 1894 he gave the first modern definition of a catalyst and turned his attention to catalytic reactions. Ostwald is especially known for his contributions to the field of electrochemistry, including important studies of the electrical conductivity and electrolytic dissociation of organic acids. Hermann Nernst developed the theory of the electromotive force of the voltaic cell in 1888. He developed methods for measuring dielectric constants and was the first to show that solvents of high dielectric constants promote the ionization of substances. Nernst's early studies in electrochemistry were inspired by Arrhenius' dissociation theory which first recognised the importance of ions in solution. In


id: history-of-engineering-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_engineering-0.md
category: reference
title: History of engineering
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_engineering
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:40.442313+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-engineering-20260505-0
summary:
The concept of engineering has existed since ancient times as humans devised fundamental inventions such as the pulley, lever, and wheel. Each of these inventions is consistent with the modern definition of engineering, exploiting basic mechanical principles to develop useful tools and objects. The term engineering itself has a much more recent etymology, deriving from the word engineer, which itself dates back to 1325, when an engine’er (literally, one who operates an engine) originally referred to "a constructor of military engines." In this context, now obsolete, an "engine" referred to a military machine, i. e., a mechanical contraption used in war (for example, a catapult). The word "engine" itself is of even older origin, ultimately deriving from the Latin ingenium (c. 1250), meaning "innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention." Later, as the design of civilian structures such as bridges and buildings matured as a technical discipline, the term civil engineering entered the lexicon as a way to distinguish between those specializing in the construction of such non-military projects and those involved in the older discipline of military engineering (the original meaning of the word "engineering," now largely obsolete, with notable exceptions that have survived to the present


id: history-of-engineering-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_engineering-1.md
category: reference
title: History of engineering
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_engineering
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:40.442313+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-engineering-20260505-0
summary:
=== Islamic Golden Age === Islamic Golden Age witnessed advances of engineering knowledge, after translating the works of Greek, Persian, Roman, and Indian scholars. The earliest practical wind-powered machines, the windmill and wind pump, first appeared in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age, in what are now Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, by the 9th century AD. The earliest practical steam-powered machine was a steam jack steam turbine, described in 1551 by Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf in Ottoman Egypt. The cotton gin was invented in India by the 6th century AD, and the spinning wheel was invented in the Islamic world by the early 11th century, both of which were fundamental to the growth of the cotton industry. The spinning wheel was also a precursor to the spinning jenny, which was a key development during the early Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. After translating the works of Hero of Alexandria, by Qusta ibn Luqa, the earliest programmable machines were developed in the Muslim world. A music sequencer, a programmable musical instrument, was the earliest type of programmable machine. The first music sequencer was an automated flute player invented by the Banu Musa brothers, described in their Book


id: history-of-ethics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics-0.md
category: reference
title: History of ethics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:41.736033+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-ethics-20260505-0
summary:
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that examines right and wrong moral behavior, moral concepts (such as justice, virtue, duty) and moral language. Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology. Various ethical theories pose various answers to the question "What is the greatest good?" and elaborate a complete set of proper behaviors for individuals and groups. Ethical theories are closely related to forms of life in various social orders. == Origins == The epic poems that stand at the beginning of many world literatures, such as the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's Iliad and the Icelandic Eddas, portray a set of values that suit the strong leader of a small tribe. Valour and success are the principal qualities of a hero and are generally not constrained by moral considerations. Revenge and vendetta are appropriate activities for heroes. The gods that appear in such epics are not defenders of moral values but are capricious forces of nature and are to be feared and propitiated. More strictly ethical


id: history-of-ethics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics-1.md
category: reference
title: History of ethics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:41.736033+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-ethics-20260505-0
summary:
== Ancient Greek ethics == While Greek moral thought was originally based on mythology, which provided moral meaning but no comprehensive framework, from the 600s BC a new moral approach emerged which used rational arguments instead, leading to the rise of philosophy as a distinct mode of thought. This has been especially attributed to Socrates. The Socratic method aimed to establish moral truths by questioning the beliefs of others, rather than by explaining them directly. He opposed the moral relativism of the Sophists, insisting on the formulation of moral principles from beginning. As portrayed in Plato's Republic, he articulates the greatest good as the transcendent "form of good itself". In his personal life, Socrates lived extremely morally. He was chaste, disciplined, pious, responsible, and cared for his friends. In the so-called Euthyphro dilemma, he raised the problem of whether divine action was motivated by it being good, or whether it was good because it was divine. In Gorgias he defends the notion that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it. The key work of Plato's ethics was the Republic, which was focused on conceiving justice, a concept which for Plato was inclusive of wider morality as well.


id: history-of-ethics-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics-2.md
category: reference
title: History of ethics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:41.736033+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-ethics-20260505-0
summary:
The foundation of Hinduism is in the epic of Mahabharata, which contains the concept of dharma, a conception of natural law and the duties required for the upholding of the natural order. Hinduism itself is viewed by its followers as Sanātana Dharma, or the 'Eternal Law', which binds everyone. The four aims of Hinduism are moksha (enlightenment), artha (wealth), kama (pleasure), and dharma. The significance of moksha is that only it can break through maya, the illusion hiding reality, which requires both understanding the impermanence of material reality as well as the attainment of an understanding of the unity of the Self (atman) and the foundation of being (brahman). Moksha also means breaking free from the cycle of reincarnation which is governed by karma, the accumulated balance of good and bad actions by an individual. This was in turn used as a justification for the caste system. During the Axial Age, asceticism and becoming a hermit increased in popularity, sometimes being a reaction to the prevailing social structures. Two significant belief systems emerged from this reaction. Jainism, formalised by the ascetic philosopher Mahavira, according to which enlightenment came through a perfectly ethical life that necessitated a complete renunciation of the


id: history-of-ethics-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics-3.md
category: reference
title: History of ethics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ethics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:41.736033+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-ethics-20260505-0
summary:
== Twentieth century == The early twentieth century saw many debates on metaethics, that is, philosophical theory on the nature of ethics. Views ranged from moral realism, which holds that moral truths are about mind-independent realities, to evolutionary ethics, which believes ethical practices are merely evolved ways of behavior that led to evolutionary success, to the error theory of J. L. Mackie, which held that the entire notion of ethical obligation is a mistake. Reflections on the Holocaust, such as those of Hannah Arendt, led to a deepening appreciation of the reality of extreme evil. The Holocaust impacted other Jewish philosophers immensely, for instance, the post-war period saw Emmanuel Levinas develop his 'ethics of the other' and situate ethics as 'first philosophy'. This philosophy showed a focus on the relation to the other in distress as central to the development of ethics and placed ethical theories center-stage in philosophy. Also, in reaction to the Holocaust, rights theories, as expressed for example in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserted the inalienable moral rights of humans to life, education, and other basic goods. Another response to the atrocities of World War II included existential reflections on the meaning of life,


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-0.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
The history of eugenics is the study of development and advocacy of ideas related to eugenics around the world. Early eugenic ideas were discussed in Ancient Greece and Rome. The height of the modern eugenics movement came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. == Ancient eugenics == According to Plutarch, in Sparta every proper citizen's child was inspected by the council of elders, the Gerousia, which determined whether or not the child was fit to live. If the child was deemed unfit, the child was thrown into a chasm. Plutarch is the sole historical source for the Spartan practice of systemic infanticide motivated by eugenics. While infanticide was practiced by Greeks, no contemporary sources support Plutarch's claims of mass infanticide motivated by eugenics. In 2007 the suggestion that infants were dumped near Mount Taygete was called into question due to a lack of physical evidence. Anthropologist Theodoros Pitsios' research found only bodies from adolescents up to the age of approximately 35. Plato's political philosophy included the belief that human reproduction should be cautiously monitored and controlled by the state through selective breeding. According to Tacitus (c. 56 – c. 120), a Roman of the Imperial Period, the Germanic


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-1.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
That is, with questions bearing on what is termed in Greek, eugenes namely, good in stock, hereditary endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalized one than viriculture which I once ventured to use. In 1908, in Memories of my Life, Galton defined eugenics as "the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally", a definition agreed in consultation with a committee that included the biometrician Karl Pearson. It was slightly at odds with Galton's preferred definition, given in a lecture to the newly formed Sociological


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-2.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
In September 1903, an "Inter-departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration" chaired by Almeric W. FitzRoy was appointed by the government "to make a preliminary enquiry into the allegations concerning the deterioration of certain classes of the population as shown by the large percentage of rejections for physical causes of recruits for the Army", and gave its Report to both houses of parliament in the following year. Among its recommendations, originating from professor Daniel John Cunningham, were an anthropometric survey of the British population. The Catholic church was opposed to eugenics, as illustrated in the writings of Father Thomas John Gerrard. Eugenics was supported by many prominent figures of different political persuasions before World War I (and as positive eugenics after the War), including: Liberal economists William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes; Fabian socialists such as the Irish author George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Havelock Ellis, Beatrice Webb and Sidney Webb and other literary figures such as D. H. Lawrence; and Conservatives such as the future Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Arthur Balfour. The influential economist John Maynard Keynes was a prominent supporter of eugenics, serving as Director of the British Eugenics Society, and writing that eugenics is "the most important,


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-3.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
Michigan became the first state to introduce a compulsory sterilization bill on May 16, 1897. However, the law did not pass. The proposed law, which called for the mandatory castration of defined types of criminals and "degenerates," fails to pass in the legislature but sets a precedent for similar laws. In 1907 Indiana became the first of more than thirty states to adopt legislation aimed at compulsory sterilization of certain individuals. Although the law was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1921, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in 1927. Beginning with Connecticut in 1896, many states enacted marriage laws with eugenic criteria, prohibiting anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded" from marrying. In 1898 Charles B. Davenport, a prominent American biologist, began as director of a biological research station based in Cold Spring Harbor where he experimented with evolution in plants and animals. In 1904 Davenport received funds from the Carnegie Institution to found the Station for Experimental Evolution. The Eugenics Record Office (ERO) opened in 1910 while Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin began to promote eugenics. W. E. B. Du Bois


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-4.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
The idea of "genius" and "talent" is also considered by William Graham Sumner, a founder of the American Sociological Society (now called the American Sociological Association). He maintained that if the government did not meddle with the social policy of laissez-faire, a class of genius would rise to the top of the system of social stratification, followed by a class of talent. Most of the rest of society would fit into the class of mediocrity. Those who were considered to be defective (mentally delayed, handicapped, etc.) had a negative effect on social progress by draining off necessary resources. They should be left on their own to sink or swim. But those in the class of delinquent (criminals, deviants, etc.) should be eliminated from society ("Folkways", 1907). However, methods of eugenics were applied to reformulate more restrictive definitions of white racial purity in existing state laws banning interracial marriage: the so-called anti-miscegenation laws. The most famous example of the influence of eugenics and its emphasis on strict racial segregation on such "anti-miscegenation" legislation was Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned this law in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, and declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. With the passage


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-5.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
The idea of Social Darwinism was widespread among Brazil's leading scientists, educators, social thinkers, as well as many elected officials, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This led to the "Politica de Branqueamento" (Whitening Policies) set in practice in Brazil in the early part of the 20th century. This series of laws intended to enlarge the numbers of the white race in Brazil through miscegenation with European immigrants. The first official organized movement of eugenics in South America was a Eugenics Conference in April 1917, which was followed in January 1918 by the founding of the São Paulo Society of Eugenics. This society worked with health agencies and psychiatric offices to promote their ideas. The year 1931 saw the foundation of the "Comitê Central de Eugenismo" (Central Committee on Eugenics) presided by Renato Kehl. Among its suggestions were an end to the immigration of non-whites to Brazil, and the spread of policies against miscegenation. The ideas of the Central Committee on Eugenics clashed with the Whitening Policies of the beginning of the 20th century. While the Whitening Policies advocated miscegenation in order to reduce the numbers of pure Africans in Brazil in favor of mulattos, who were expected to


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-6.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler was well known for eugenics programs which attempted to maintain a "pure" Aryan race through a series of programs that ran under the banner of racial hygiene. Among other activities, the Nazis performed extensive experimentation on live human beings to test their genetic theories, ranging from simple measurement of physical characteristics to the research for Otmar von Verschuer carried out by Karin Magnussen using "human material" gathered by Josef Mengele on twins and others at Auschwitz death camp. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazi regime used forced sterilization on hundreds of thousands of people whom they viewed as mentally ill, an estimated 400,000 between 1934 and 1937. The scale of the Nazi program prompted one American eugenics advocate to seek an expansion of their program, with one complaining that "the Germans are beating us at our own game." The Nazis went further, however, murdering tens of thousands of the institutionalized disabled through compulsory "euthanasia" programs such as Aktion T4. They used gas chambers and lethal injections to murder their victims. They also implemented a number of "positive" eugenics policies, giving awards to Aryan women who had large numbers of children and encouraged a service


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-7.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
In the early part of the Shōwa era, Japanese governments executed a eugenics policy to limit the birth of children with "inferior" traits, as well as aiming to protect the life and health of mothers. The Race Eugenic Protection Law was submitted from 1934 to 1938 to the Imperial Diet. After four amendments, this draft was promulgated as the National Eugenic Law in 1940 by the Konoe government. According to the Eugenic Protection Law (1948), sterilization could be enforced on criminals "with genetic predisposition to commit crime", patients with genetic diseases such as total color-blindness, hemophilia, albinism and ichthyosis, and mental affections such as schizophrenia, and manic-depressiveness, and those with epilepsy. Mental illnesses were added in 1952. The Leprosy Prevention laws of 1907, 1931 and 1953, the last one only repealed in 1996, permitted the segregation of patients in sanitariums where forced abortions and sterilization were common, even if the laws did not refer to it, and authorized punishment of patients "disturbing peace", as most Japanese leprologists believed that vulnerability to the disease was inheritable. There were a few Japanese leprologists such as Noburo Ogasawara who argued against the "isolation-sterilization policy" but he was denounced as a traitor to the


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-8.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
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parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
Beginning in the late 1920s, greater appreciation of the difficulty of predicting characteristics of offspring from their heredity, and scientists' recognition of the inadequacy of simplistic theories of eugenics, undermined whatever scientific basis had been ascribed to the social movement. As the Great Depression took hold, criticism of economic value as a proxy for human worth became increasingly compelling. After the experience of Nazi Germany, many ideas about "racial hygiene" and "unfit" members of society were discredited. The Nuremberg Trials against former Nazi leaders revealed to the world many of the regime's genocidal practices and resulted in formalized policies of medical ethics and the 1950 UNESCO statement on race. Many scientific societies released their own similar "race statements" over the years, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, developed in response to abuses during the Second World War, was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and affirmed, "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family." In continuation, the 1978 UNESCO declaration on race and racial prejudice states that the fundamental equality of all human beings is the ideal toward which ethics and


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-9.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
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parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
== Modern eugenics, genetic engineering, and ethical re-evaluation == Beginning in the 1980s, the history and concept of eugenics were widely discussed as knowledge about genetics advanced significantly, making practical genetic engineering, which has been widely used to produce genetically modified organisms, with genetically modified foods being most visible to the general public. Endeavors such as the Human Genome Project made the effective modification of the human species seem possible again (as did Darwin's initial theory of evolution in the 1860s, along with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws in the early 20th century). Article 23 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities prohibits compulsory sterilization of disabled individuals and guarantees their right to adopt children. A few scientific researchers such as psychologist Richard Lynn, psychologist Raymond Cattell, and scientist Gregory Stock have openly called for eugenic policies using modern technology, but they represent a minority opinion in current scientific and cultural circles. One attempted implementation of a form of eugenics was a "genius sperm bank" (1980–99) created by Robert Klark Graham, from which nearly 230 children were conceived (the best-known donors were Nobel Prize winners William Shockley and J. D. Watson). After Graham died in 1997 funding


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-10.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
Dor Yeshorim, a program which seeks to reduce the incidence of Tay–Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis, Canavan disease, Fanconi anemia, familial dysautonomia, glycogen storage disease, Bloom Syndrome, Gaucher disease, Niemann-Pick disease, and mucolipidosis IV among certain Jewish communities, is another screening program which has drawn comparisons with liberal eugenics. In Israel, at the expense of the state, the general public is advised to carry out genetic tests to diagnose these diseases early in the pregnancy. If a fetus is diagnosed with one of these diseases, among which Tay–Sachs is the most commonly known, the pregnancy may be terminated, subject to consent. Most other Ashkenazi Jewish communities also run screening programs because of the higher incidence of genetic diseases. In some Jewish communities, the ancient custom of matchmaking (shidduch) is still practiced, and some matchmakers require blood tests so that they can avoid making matches between individuals who share the same recessive disease traits. In order to attempt to prevent the tragedy of infant death which always results from being homozygous for Tay–Sachs, associations such as the strongly observant Dor Yeshorim (which was founded by Rabbi Joseph Ekstein, who lost four children to the disease) with the purpose of preventing others from


id: history-of-eugenics-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics-11.md
category: reference
title: History of eugenics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:43.014512+00:00
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parent: history-of-eugenics-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Blom, Philipp (2008). The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900–1914. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. pp. 335–336. ISBN 9780771016301. Carlson, Elof Axel (2001). The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Press. ISBN 9780879695873. Engs, Ruth C. (2005). The Eugenics Movement: An Encyclopedia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing. ISBN 9780313327919. Farrall, Lyndsay (1985). The Origins and Growth of the English eugenics movement, 1865–1925. Garland Publishing. ISBN 9780824058104. Joseph, Jay (June 2005). "The 1942 'euthanasia' debate in the American Journal of Psychiatry" (PDF). History of Psychiatry. 16 (62 Pt. 2): 171–179. doi:10.1177/0957154x05047004. PMID 16013119. S2CID 35728753. Gillette, Aaron (2007). The Nature–Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230108455. Holmes, Samuel J. (1924). A Bibliography of Eugenics. University of California Press. Largent, Mark (2008). Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813541839. Leon, Sharon M. (2013). An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ordover, Nancy (2003). American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816635597. Paul, Diane (2006). Darwin, Social


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-0.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Evolutionary thought, the recognition that species change over time and the perceived understanding of how such processes work, has roots in antiquity. With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking: essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept which had developed from medieval Aristotelian metaphysics, and that fit well with natural theology; and the development of the new anti-Aristotelian approach to science. Naturalists began to focus on the variability of species; the emergence of palaeontology with the concept of extinction further undermined static views of nature. In the early 19th century prior to Darwinism, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed his theory of the transmutation of species, the first fully formed theory of evolution. In 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published a new evolutionary theory, explained in detail in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin's theory, originally called descent with modification, is known contemporarily as Darwinism or Darwinian theory. Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposed common descent and a branching tree of life, meaning that two very different species could share a common ancestor. Darwin based his theory on the idea of natural selection:


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-1.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Plato was called by biologist Ernst Mayr "the great antihero of evolutionism," because he promoted belief in essentialism, which is also referred to as the theory of Forms. This theory holds that each natural type of object in the observed world is an imperfect manifestation of the ideal, form or "species" which defines that type. In his Timaeus for example, Plato has a character tell a story that the Demiurge created the cosmos and everything in it because, being good, and hence, "free from jealousy, He desired that all things should be as like Himself as they could be." The creator created all conceivable forms of life, since "without them the universe will be incomplete, for it will not contain every kind of animal which it ought to contain, if it is to be perfect." This "principle of plenitude"—the idea that all potential forms of life are essential to a perfect creation—greatly influenced Christian thought. However, some historians of science have questioned how much influence Plato's essentialism had on natural philosophy by stating that many philosophers after Plato believed that species might be capable of transformation and that the idea that biologic species were fixed and possessed unchangeable essential characteristics


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-2.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
==== Gregory of Nyssa ==== Gregory of Nyssa wrote:Scripture informs us that the Deity proceeded by a sort of graduated and ordered advance to the creation of man. After the foundations of the universe were laid, as the history records, man did not appear on the earth at once, but the creation of the brutes preceded him, and the plants preceded them. Thereby Scripture shows that the vital forces blended with the world of matter according to a gradation; first it infused itself into insensate nature; and in continuation of this advanced into the sentient world; and then ascended to intelligent and rational beings (emphasis added).Henry Fairfield Osborn wrote in his work on the history of evolutionary thought, From the Greeks to Darwin (1894): Among the Christian Fathers the movement towards a partly naturalistic interpretation of the order of Creation was made by Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century, and was completed by Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries. ...[Gregory of Nyssa] taught that Creation was potential. God imparted to matter its fundamental properties and laws. The objects and completed forms of the Universe developed gradually out of chaotic material. ==== Augustine of Hippo ==== In the fourth


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-3.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars ... Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. == Middle Ages == === Islamic philosophy and the struggle for existence === Although Greek and Roman evolutionary ideas died out in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, they were not lost to Islamic philosophers and scientists (nor to the culturally Greek Byzantine Empire). In the Islamic Golden Age of the 8th to the 13th centuries, philosophers explored ideas about natural history. These ideas


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-4.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
In the first half of the 17th century, René Descartes' mechanical philosophy encouraged the use of the metaphor of the universe as a machine, a concept that would come to characterise the Scientific Revolution. Between 1650 and 1800, some naturalists, such as Benoît de Maillet, produced theories that maintained that the universe, the Earth, and life, had developed mechanically, without divine guidance. In contrast, most contemporary theories of evolution, such of those of Gottfried Leibniz and Johann Gottfried Herder, regarded evolution as a fundamentally spiritual process. In 1751, Pierre Louis Maupertuis veered toward more materialist ground. He wrote of natural modifications occurring during reproduction and accumulating over the course of many generations, producing races and even new species, a description that anticipated in general terms the concept of natural selection. Maupertuis' ideas were in opposition to the influence of early taxonomists like John Ray. In the late 17th century, Ray had given the first formal definition of a biological species, which he described as being characterized by essential unchanging features, and stated the seed of one species could never give rise to another. The ideas of Ray and other 17th-century taxonomists were influenced by natural theology and the argument from


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-5.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed, in his Philosophie zoologique of 1809, a theory of the transmutation of species (transformisme). Lamarck did not believe that all living things shared a common ancestor but rather that simple forms of life were created continuously by spontaneous generation. He also believed that an innate life force drove species to become more complex over time, advancing up a linear ladder of complexity that was related to the great chain of being. Lamarck recognized that species adapted to their environment. He explained this by saying that the same innate force driving increasing complexity caused the organs of an animal (or a plant) to change based on the use or disuse of those organs, just as exercise affects muscles. He argued that these changes would be inherited by the next generation and produce slow adaptation to the environment. It was this secondary mechanism of adaptation through the inheritance of acquired characteristics that would become known as Lamarckism and would influence discussions of evolution into the 20th century. A radical British school of comparative anatomy that included the anatomist Robert Edmond Grant was closely in touch with Lamarck's French school of Transformationism. One of the French scientists who influenced Grant


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-6.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
=== Anticipations of natural selection === It is possible to look through the history of biology from the ancient Greeks onwards and discover anticipations of almost all of Charles Darwin's key ideas. As an example, Loren Eiseley has found isolated passages written by Buffon suggesting he was almost ready to piece together a theory of natural selection, but states that such anticipations should not be taken out of the full context of the writings or of cultural values of the time which made Darwinian ideas of evolution unthinkable. When Darwin was developing his theory, he investigated selective breeding and was impressed by John Sebright's observation that "A severe winter, or a scarcity of food, by destroying the weak and the unhealthy, has all the good effects of the most skilful selection" so that "the weak and the unhealthy do not live to propagate their infirmities." Darwin was influenced by Charles Lyell's ideas of environmental change causing ecological shifts, leading to what Augustin de Candolle had called a war between competing plant species, competition well described by the botanist William Herbert. Darwin was struck by Thomas Robert Malthus' phrase "struggle for existence" used of warring human tribes. Several writers anticipated evolutionary


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-7.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The biogeographical patterns Charles Darwin observed in places such as the Galápagos Islands during the second voyage of HMS Beagle caused him to doubt the fixity of species, and in 1837 Darwin started the first of a series of secret notebooks on transmutation. Darwin's observations led him to view transmutation as a process of divergence and branching, rather than the ladder-like progression envisioned by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and others. In 1838 he read the new sixth edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population, written in the late 18th century by Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus' idea of population growth leading to a struggle for survival combined with Darwin's knowledge on how breeders selected traits, led to the inception of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Darwin did not publish his ideas on evolution for 20 years. However, he did share them with certain other naturalists and friends, starting with Joseph Dalton Hooker, with whom he discussed his unpublished 1844 essay on natural selection. During this period he used the time he could spare from his other scientific work to slowly refine his ideas and, aware of the intense controversy around transmutation, amass evidence to support them. In September 1854 he began


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-8.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Charles Darwin was aware of the severe reaction in some parts of the scientific community against the suggestion made in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation that humans had arisen from animals by a process of transmutation. Therefore, he almost completely ignored the topic of human evolution in On the Origin of Species. Despite this precaution, the issue featured prominently in the debate that followed the book's publication. For most of the first half of the 19th century, the scientific community believed that, although geology had shown that the Earth and life were very old, human beings had appeared suddenly just a few thousand years before the present. However, a series of archaeological discoveries in the 1840s and 1850s showed stone tools associated with the remains of extinct animals. By the early 1860s, as summarized in Charles Lyell's 1863 book Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, it had become widely accepted that humans had existed during a prehistoric period—which stretched many thousands of years before the start of written history. This view of human history was more compatible with an evolutionary origin for humanity than was the older view. On the other hand, at that time there was


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-9.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The concept of evolution was widely accepted in scientific circles within a few years of the publication of Origin, but the acceptance of natural selection as its driving mechanism was much less widespread. The four major alternatives to natural selection in the late 19th century were theistic evolution, neo-Lamarckism, orthogenesis, and saltationism. Alternatives supported by biologists at other times included structuralism, Georges Cuvier's teleological but non-evolutionary functionalism, and vitalism. Theistic evolution was the idea that God intervened in the process of evolution, to guide it in such a way that the living world could still be considered to be designed. The term was promoted by Charles Darwin's greatest American advocate Asa Gray. However, this idea gradually fell out of favor among scientists, as they became more and more committed to the idea of methodological naturalism and came to believe that direct appeals to supernatural involvement were scientifically unproductive. By 1900, theistic evolution had largely disappeared from professional scientific discussions, although it retained a strong popular following. In the late 19th century, the term neo-Lamarckism came to be associated with the position of naturalists who viewed the inheritance of acquired characteristics as the most important evolutionary mechanism. Advocates of this position


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-10.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
In the early 20th century, most field naturalists continued to believe that alternative mechanisms of evolution such as Lamarckism and orthogenesis provided the best explanation for the complexity they observed in the living world. But as the field of genetics continued to develop, those views became less tenable. Theodosius Dobzhansky, a postdoctoral worker in Thomas Hunt Morgan's lab, had been influenced by the work on genetic diversity by Russian geneticists such as Sergei Chetverikov. He helped to bridge the divide between the foundations of microevolution developed by the population geneticists and the patterns of macroevolution observed by field biologists, with his 1937 book Genetics and the Origin of Species. Dobzhansky examined the genetic diversity of wild populations and showed that, contrary to the assumptions of the population geneticists, these populations had large amounts of genetic diversity, with marked differences between sub-populations. The book also took the highly mathematical work of the population geneticists and put it into a more accessible form. In Britain, E. B. Ford, the pioneer of ecological genetics, continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s to demonstrate the power of selection due to ecological factors including the ability to maintain genetic diversity through genetic polymorphisms such as human


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-11.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
In the mid-1960s, George C. Williams strongly critiqued explanations of adaptations worded in terms of "survival of the species" (group selection arguments). Such explanations were largely replaced by a gene-centered view of evolution, epitomized by the kin selection arguments of W. D. Hamilton, George R. Price and John Maynard Smith. This viewpoint would be summarized and popularized in the influential 1976 book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Models of the period seemed to show that group selection was severely limited in its strength; though newer models do admit the possibility of significant multi-level selection. In 1973, Leigh Van Valen proposed the term "Red Queen," which he took from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, to describe a scenario where a species involved in evolutionary arms races would have to constantly change to keep pace with the species with which it was co-evolving. Hamilton, Williams and others suggested that this idea might explain the evolution of sexual reproduction: the increased genetic diversity caused by sexual reproduction would help maintain resistance against rapidly evolving parasites, thus making sexual reproduction common, despite the tremendous cost from the gene-centric point of view of a system where only half of an organism's genome is


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-12.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
Microbiology was largely ignored by early evolutionary theory due to the paucity of morphological traits and the lack of a species concept in microbiology, particularly amongst prokaryotes. Now, evolutionary researchers are taking advantage of their improved understanding of microbial physiology and ecology, produced by the comparative ease of microbial genomics, to explore the taxonomy and evolution of these organisms. These studies are revealing unanticipated levels of diversity amongst microbes. One important development in the study of microbial evolution came with the discovery in Japan in 1959 of horizontal gene transfer. This transfer of genetic material between different species of bacteria came to the attention of scientists because it played a major role in the spread of antibiotic resistance. More recently, as knowledge of genomes has continued to expand, it has been suggested that lateral transfer of genetic material has played an important role in the evolution of all organisms. These high levels of horizontal gene transfer have led to suggestions that the family tree of today's organisms, the so-called "tree of life," is more similar to an interconnected web. The endosymbiotic theory for the origin of organelles sees a form of horizontal gene transfer as a critical step in the


id: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought-13.md
category: reference
title: History of evolutionary thought
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:44.469537+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-evolutionary-thought-20260505-0
summary:
The Gaia hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock holds that the living and nonliving parts of Earth can be viewed as a complex interacting system with similarities to a single organism. The Gaia hypothesis has also been viewed by Lynn Margulis and others as an extension of endosymbiosis and exosymbiosis. This modified hypothesis postulates that all living things have a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that promotes life overall. === Self-organization === The mathematical biologist Stuart Kauffman suggested that self-organization may play roles alongside natural selection in three areas of evolutionary biology: population dynamics, molecular evolution, and morphogenesis. However, Kauffman does not take into account the essential role of energy in driving biochemical reactions in cells, as proposed by Christian de Duve and modelled mathematically by Richard Bagley and Walter Fontana. Their systems are self-catalyzing but not simply self-organizing as they are thermodynamically open systems relying on a continuous input of energy. == See also == == Notes == == References == == Bibliography == == Further reading == Zimmer, Carl (2001). Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea (1st ed.). New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-019906-7. LCCN 2001024077. OCLC 46359440. Levinson, Gene (2020). Rethinking evolution: the revolution that's hiding in plain


id: history-of-forensic-photography-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_forensic_photography-0.md
category: reference
title: History of forensic photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_forensic_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:45.725952+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-forensic-photography-20260505-0
summary:
Forensic science holds the branch of forensic photography which encompasses documenting both suspected and convicted criminals, and also the crime scenes, victims, and other evidence needed to make a conviction. Although photography was widely acknowledged as the most accurate way to depict and document people and objects, it was not until key developments in the late 19th century that it came to be widely accepted as a forensic means of identification. == Overview == Forensic photography resulted from the modernization of criminal justice systems and the power of photographic realism. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these two developments were significant to both forensic photography and police work in general. They can be attributed to a desire for accuracy. First, government bureaucracies became more professionalized and thus collected much more data about their citizens. Then, criminal justice systems began incorporating science into the procedures of police and judiciaries. The main reason, however, for the acceptance of police photography, is a conventional one. Other than its growing popularity, the widespread notion of photography was the prominent belief in the realism of the medium. == History == The earliest evidence of photographic documentation of prison inmates dates back to 1843–44 in Belgium


id: history-of-forensic-photography-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_forensic_photography-1.md
category: reference
title: History of forensic photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_forensic_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:45.725952+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-forensic-photography-20260505-0
summary:
== Crime photography == On the other side of the spectrum of forensic photography, is the crime photography that involves documenting the scene of the crime, rather than the criminal. Though this type of forensic photography was also created for the purpose of documenting, identifying and convicting, it allows more room for creative interpretation and variance of style. It includes taking pictures of the victim (scars, wounds, birthmarks, etc.) for the purpose of identification or conviction; and pictures of the scene (placement of objects, position of body, photos of evidence and fingerprints). The development of this type of forensic photography is responsible for radical changes in the field, including public involvement (crime photos appearing in the newspaper) and new interpretations and purposes of the field. Weiner. Bertillon was also the first to methodically photograph and document crime scenes. He did this both at ground level and overhead, which he called "God's-eye-view." While his mug shots encourage people to find differences (from themselves) in physical characteristics of criminals, his crime scene photographs revealed similarities to the public. This made people question, when looking in a newspaper at pictures of a murder that took place in a home that resembles their own,


id: history-of-genetics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_genetics-0.md
category: reference
title: History of genetics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_genetics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:46.986349+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-genetics-20260505-0
summary:
The history of genetics dates from the classical era with contributions by Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, and others. Modern genetics began with the work of the Augustinian friar Gregor Johann Mendel. His works on pea plants, published in 1866, provided the initial evidence that, on its rediscovery in the 1900s, helped to establish the theory of Mendelian inheritance. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates suggested that all organs of the body of a parent gave off invisible "seeds", miniaturised components that were transmitted during sexual intercourse and combined in the mother's womb to form a baby. In the early modern period, William Harvey's book On Animal Generation contradicted Aristotle's theories of genetics and embryology. The 1900 rediscovery of Mendel's work by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak led to rapid advances in genetics. By 1915 the basic principles of Mendelian genetics had been studied in a wide variety of organisms – most notably the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Led by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his fellow "drosophilists", geneticists developed the Mendelian model, which was widely accepted by 1925. Alongside experimental work, mathematicians developed the statistical framework of population genetics, bringing genetic explanations into the study of evolution. With the


id: history-of-genetics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_genetics-1.md
category: reference
title: History of genetics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_genetics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:46.986349+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-genetics-20260505-0
summary:
== Mendel == Between 1856 and 1865, Gregor Mendel conducted breeding experiments using the pea plant Pisum sativum and traced the inheritance patterns of certain traits. Through these experiments, Mendel saw that the genotypes and phenotypes of the progeny were predictable and that some traits were dominant over others. These patterns of Mendelian inheritance demonstrated the usefulness of applying statistics to inheritance. They also contradicted 19th-century theories of blending inheritance, showing, rather, that genes remain discrete through multiple generations of hybridisation. From his statistical analysis, Mendel defined a concept that he described as a character (which in his mind holds also for "determinant of that character"). In only one sentence of his historical paper, he used the term "factors" to designate the "material creating" the character: " So far as experience goes, we find it in every case confirmed that constant progeny can only be formed when the egg cells and the fertilising pollen are off like the character so that both are provided with the material for creating quite similar individuals, as is the case with the normal fertilisation of pure species. We must, therefore, regard it as certain that exactly similar factors must be at work also in


id: history-of-genetics-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_genetics-2.md
category: reference
title: History of genetics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_genetics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:46.986349+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-genetics-20260505-0
summary:
In 1910, Thomas Hunt Morgan showed that genes reside on specific chromosomes. He later showed that genes occupy specific locations on the chromosome. With this knowledge, Alfred Sturtevant, a member of Morgan's famous fly room, using Drosophila melanogaster, provided the first chromosomal map of any biological organism. In 1928, Frederick Griffith showed that genes could be transferred. In what is now known as Griffith's experiment, injections into a mouse of a deadly strain of bacteria that had been heat-killed transferred genetic information to a safe strain of the same bacteria, killing the mouse. A series of subsequent discoveries (e.g.) led to the realization decades later that the genetic material is made of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and not, as was widely believed until then, of proteins. In 1941, George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum showed that mutations in genes caused errors in specific steps of metabolic pathways. This showed that specific genes code for specific proteins, leading to the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis. Oswald Avery, Colin Munro MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty showed in 1944 that DNA holds the gene's information. In 1952, Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling produced a strikingly clear x-ray diffraction pattern indicating a helical form. Using


id: history-of-geography-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-0.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
The history of geography includes many histories of geography which have differed over time and between different cultural and political groups. In more recent developments, geography has become a distinct academic discipline. 'Geography' derives from the Greek γεωγραφία – geographia, literally "Earth-writing", that is, description or writing about the Earth. The first person to use the word geography was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). However, there is evidence for recognizable practices of geography, such as cartography, prior to the use of the term. == Egypt == The known world of Ancient Egypt saw the Nile as the center, and the world as based upon "the" river. Various oasis were known to the east and west, and were considered locations of various gods (e.g. Siwa, for Amon). To the South lay the Kushitic region, known as far as the 4th cataract. Punt was a region south along the shores of the Red Sea. Various Asiatic peoples were known as Retenu, Kanaan, Que, Harranu, or Khatti (Hittites). At various times especially in the Late Bronze Age Egyptians had diplomatic and trade relationships with Babylonia and Elam. The Mediterranean was called "the Great Green" and was believed to be part of a world encircling ocean.


id: history-of-geography-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-1.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
=== Hellenistic period === These theories clashed with the evidence of explorers, however, Hanno the Navigator had traveled as far south as Sierra Leone, and Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II of Africa is related by Herodotus and others as having commissioned a successful circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician sailors. While they were sailing west around the Southern tip of Africa, it was found that the Sun was to their right (the north). This is thought to have been a key trigger in the realization that the Earth is spherical, in the classical world. In the 4th century BC the Greek explorer Pytheas traveled through northeast Europe, and circled the British Isles. He found that the region was considerably more habitable than theory expected, but his discoveries were largely dismissed by his contemporaries because of this. Conquerors also carried out exploration, for example, Caesar's invasions of Britain and Germany, expeditions/invasions sent by Augustus to Arabia Felix and Ethiopia (Res Gestae 26), and perhaps the greatest Ancient Greek explorer of all, Alexander the Great, who deliberately set out to learn more about the east through his military expeditions and so took a large number of geographers and writers with his army who recorded


id: history-of-geography-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-2.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
== India == A vast corpus of Indian texts embraced the study of geography. The Vedas and Puranas contain elaborate descriptions of rivers and mountains and treat the relationship between physical and human elements. According to religious scholar Diana Eck, a notable feature of geography in India is its interweaving with Hindu mythology, No matter where one goes in India, one will find a landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests, and villages are elaborately linked to the stories and gods of Indian culture. Every place in this vast country has its story; and conversely, every story of Hindu myth and legend has its place. === Ancient period === The geographers of ancient India put forward theories regarding the origin of the Earth. They theorized that the Earth was formed by the solidification of gaseous matter and that the Earth's crust is composed of hard rocks (sila), clay (bhumih) and sand (asma). Theories were also propounded to explain earthquakes (bhukamp) and it was assumed that earth, air and water combined to cause earthquakes. The Arthashastra, a compendium by Kautilya (also known as Chanakya) contains a range of geographical and statistical information about the various regions of India. The composers of the


id: history-of-geography-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-3.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
In China, the earliest known geographical Chinese writing dates back to the 5th century BC, during the beginning of the Warring States period (481 BC – 221 BC). This work was the Yu Gong ('Tribute of Yu') chapter of the Shu Jing or Book of Documents, which describes the traditional nine provinces of ancient China, their kinds of soil, their characteristic products and economic goods, their tributary goods, their trades and vocations, their state revenues and agricultural systems, and the various rivers and lakes listed and placed accordingly. The nine provinces at the time of this geographical work were relatively small in size compared to those of modern China with the book's descriptions pertaining to areas of the Yellow River, the lower valleys of the Yangtze and the plain between them as well as the Shandong peninsula and to the west the most northern parts of the Wei and Han Rivers along with the southern parts of modern-day Shanxi province. In this ancient geographical treatise, which would greatly influence later Chinese geographers and cartographers, the Chinese used the mythological figure of Yu the Great to describe the known earth (of the Chinese). Apart from the appearance of Yu, however, the


id: history-of-geography-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-4.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
== Middle Ages == === Byzantine Empire and Syria === After the fall of the western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople and known as the Byzantine Empire, continued to thrive and produced several noteworthy geographers. Stephanus of Byzantium (6th century) was a grammarian at Constantinople and authored the important geographical dictionary Ethnica. This work is of enormous value, providing well-referenced geographical and other information about ancient Greece. The geographer Hierocles (6th century) authored the Synecdemus (prior to AD 535) in which he provides a table of administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire and lists the cities in each. The Synecdemus and the Ethnica were the principal sources of Constantine VII's work on the Themes or divisions of Byzantium, and are the primary sources we have today on political geography of the sixth-century East. George of Cyprus is known for his Descriptio orbis Romani (Description of the Roman world), written in the decade 600–610. Beginning with Italy and progressing counterclockwise including Africa, Egypt and the western Middle East, George lists cities, towns, fortresses and administrative divisions of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Cosmas Indicopleustes, (6th century) also known as "Cosmas the Monk", was an Alexandrian merchant.


id: history-of-geography-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-5.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
Al-Jahiz (776-869) who described the impact of the physical environment of man upon his appearance, which led him to compare the peoples of various regions of the world and the peoples inhabiting them. Ya'qubi (d. 897) whose Kitab al-Buldan describes numerous places across Africa and Asia, while also giving pride of place to the description of the peoples inhabiting the lands mentioned, as well as their beliefs and practices. Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani (893-947) whose Sifat Jazirat al-Arab remains one of the most valuable sources on the geography, flaura, fauna, and peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. al-Masudi (896-956) who wrote The Meadows of Gold, combining universal history with scientific geography. Ibn Hawqal (d. 978) who wrote Surat Al-Ard, adding further detail on the Islamic West as well as more accurate maps to the currents of Western Asian scholarship to which he belonged. al-Maqdisi (945-991) whose description and cultural division of the world in his work Aḥsan al-taqāsīm make it a landmark in geographical studies. His work also highlighted a tendency to give greater attention and depth of analysis to the lands of the Islamic world. Al-Bakri (1040-1094) whose Book of Roads and Kingdoms (al-Bakri) contains important descriptions of the Atlantic


id: history-of-geography-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-6.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
== Early modern period == Following the journeys of Marco Polo, interest in geography spread throughout Europe. From around c. 1400, the writings of Ptolemy and his successors provided a systematic framework to tie together and portray geographical information. This framework was used by academics for centuries to come, the positives being the lead-up to the geographical enlightenment, however, women and indigenous writings were largely excluded from the discourse. The European global conquests started in the early 15th century with the first Portuguese expeditions to Africa and India, as well as the conquest of America by Spain in 1492 and continued with a series of European naval expeditions across the Atlantic and later the Pacific and Russian expeditions to Siberia until the 18th century. European overseas expansion led to the rise of colonial empires, with the contact between the "Old" and "New World"s producing the Columbian Exchange: a wide transfer of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases and culture between the continents. These colonialist endeavours in 16th and 17th centuries revived a desire for both "accurate" geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations. The Geographia Generalis by Bernhardus Varenius, which was used in Newton's teaching of geography


id: history-of-geography-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-7.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
Geography as a science experiences excitement and exerts influence during the Scientific Revolution and Reformation. In the Victorian period, the oversea exploration gave it institutional identity and geography was "the science of imperialism par excellence."Imperialism is a crucial concept for the Europeans, as the institution become involved in geographical exploration and colonial project. Authority was questioned, and utility gained its importance. In the era of Enlightenment, geography generated knowledge and made it intellectually and practically possible as a university discipline. The natural theology required geography to investigate the world as a grand machine from the Divine. Scientific voyages and travels constructed geopolitical power from geographical knowledge, partly sponsored by Royal Society. The discourse of geographical history gave way to many new thoughts and theories, but the hegemony of the European male academia led to the exclusion of non-western theories, observations and knowledges. One such example is the interaction between humans and nature, with Marxist thought critiquing nature as a commodity within Capitalism, European thought seeing nature as either a romanticised or objective concept differing to human society, and Native American discourse, which saw nature and humans as within one category. The implied hierarchy of knowledge that perpetuated throughout these institutions


id: history-of-geography-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-8.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
Humboldt and Ritter are both regarded as the founders of modern geography as they later established it as an independent scientific discipline. Humboldt is admired as a great geographer, according to D. Livingstone that "modern geography was first and last a synthesizing science and as such, if Goetzmann is to be believed, 'it became the key scientific activity of the age'." In 1789, Humboldt met the geographer George Forster in Mainz, before travelling with him through parts of Western Europe the following year. Forster's travel accounts and writings influenced Humboldt. His Geognosia including the geography of rocks, animals, and plants is "an important model for modern geography". As a Prussian mining officer, Humboldt founded the Free Royal Mining School at Steben for miners, later regarded the prototype of such institutes. German Naturphilosophie, especially the work of Goethe and Herder, stimulated Humboldt's idea and research of a universal science. In his letter, he made observations while his "attention will never lose sight of the harmony of concurrent forces, the influence of the inanimate world on the animal and vegetable kingdom." His American travel stressed the geography of plants as his focus of science. Meanwhile, Humboldt used empirical method to study the


id: history-of-geography-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-9.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
== 19th century == By the 18th century, geography had become recognized as a discrete discipline and became part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially Paris and Berlin), although not in the United Kingdom where geography was generally taught as a sub-discipline of other subjects. A holistic view of geography and nature can be seen in the work by the 19th-century polymath Alexander von Humboldt. One of the great works of this time was Humboldt's Kosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the Universe, the first volume of which was published in German in 1845. Such was the power of this work that Dr Mary Somerville, of Cambridge University intended to scrap publication of her own Physical Geography on reading Kosmos. Von Humboldt himself persuaded her to publish (after the publisher sent him a copy). In 1877, Thomas Henry Huxley published his Physiography with the philosophy of universality presented as an integrated approach in the study of the natural environment. The philosophy of universality in geography was not a new one but can be seen as evolving from the works of Alexander von Humboldt and Immanuel Kant. The publication of Huxley physiography presented a new form of


id: history-of-geography-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography-10.md
category: reference
title: History of geography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:48.474424+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-geography-20260505-0
summary:
The term critical geography has been in use since at least 1749, when the book Geography reformed: a new system of general geography, according to an Accurate Analysis of the science in four parts dedicated a chapter to the topic titled "of Critical Geography." This chapter described critical geography as an approach geographers take to build upon the work of others, and make corrections to their maps based on new information. In the 1970s, the term saw a resurgence as so called "radical geographers" took on the framework of critical theory and Marxist philosophy, using critical geography as an umbrella uniting various theoretical frameworks in geography, including Marxist geography and feminist geography. Critical geography re-emerged within the discipline in part as a radical critique of positivist approaches that gained popularity during the quantitative revolution. The first strain of critical geography to emerge was humanistic geography. Drawing on the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology, humanistic geographers (such as Yi-Fu Tuan) focused on people's sense of, and relationship with, places. More influential was Marxist geography, which applied the social theories of Karl Marx and his followers to geographic phenomena. David Harvey, Milton Santos and Richard Peet are well-known Marxist geographers. Feminist geography


id: history-of-glass-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass-0.md
category: reference
title: History of glass
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:49.696073+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-glass-20260505-0
summary:
The history of glass-making dates back to at least 3,600 years ago in Mesopotamia. However, most writers claim that they may have been producing copies of glass objects from Egypt. Other archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made in coastal east Syria, Mesopotamia or Egypt. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid 2,000 BCE, were beads, perhaps initially created as the accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing. Glass products remained a luxury until the disasters that overtook the late Bronze Age civilizations seemingly brought glass-making to a halt. Development of glass technology in India may have begun in 1,730 BCE. From across the former Roman Empire, archaeologists have recovered glass objects that were used in domestic, industrial and funerary contexts. Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both settlement and cemetery sites. Glass in the Anglo-Saxon period was used in the manufacture of a range of objects, including vessels, beads, windows, and was even used in jewellery. == Origins == Naturally occurring glass, especially the volcanic glass obsidian, has been used by many Stone Age societies


id: history-of-glass-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass-1.md
category: reference
title: History of glass
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:49.696073+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-glass-20260505-0
summary:
The tradition is that a merchant ship laden with nitrum being moored at this place, the merchants were preparing their meal on the beach, and not having stones to prop up their pots, they used lumps of nitrum from the ship, which fused and mixed with the sands of the shore, and there flowed streams of a new translucent liquid, and thus was the origin of glass. This account is more a reflection of Roman experience of glass production, however, as white silica sand from this area was used in the production of glass within the Roman Empire due to its high purity levels. During the 1st century BCE, glass blowing was discovered on the Syro-Judean coast, revolutionizing the industry. The first evidence of the invention of glassblowing was found in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, in a layer of fill inside a ritual bath that was overlain with the paving stones of the Herodian street. Several other site of producing "Judean Glass" were found in Galilee. Glass vessels were now inexpensive compared to pottery vessels. Growth of the use of glass products occurred throughout the Roman world. Glass became the Roman plastic, and glass containers produced in Alexandria spread


id: history-of-glass-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass-2.md
category: reference
title: History of glass
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:49.696073+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-glass-20260505-0
summary:
In China, glass played a peripheral role in arts and crafts when compared to ceramics and metal work. The earliest glass items in China come from the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), although they are rare in number and limited in archaeological distribution. Glassmaking developed later in China compared to cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt and India. Imported glass objects first reached China during the late Spring and Autumn period (early 5th century BCE), in the form of polychrome eye beads. These imports created the impetus for the production of indigenous glass beads. During the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), the use of glass diversified. The introduction of glass casting in this period encouraged the production of moulded objects, such as bi disks and other ritual objects. Chinese glass objects from the Warring States and Han period vary greatly in chemical composition from the imported glass objects. The glasses from this period contain high levels of barium oxide and lead, distinguishing them from the soda–lime–silica glasses of Western Asia and Mesopotamia. At the end of the Han Dynasty (AD 220), the lead-barium glass tradition declined, with glass production only resuming during the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Literary sources also mention


id: history-of-glass-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass-3.md
category: reference
title: History of glass
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:49.696073+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-glass-20260505-0
summary:
Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both settlement and cemetery sites. Glass in the Anglo-Saxon period was used in the manufacture of a range of objects including vessels, beads, windows and was even used in jewelry. In the 5th century AD with the Roman departure from Britain, there were also considerable changes in the usage of glass. Excavation of Romano-British sites has revealed plentiful amounts of glass but, in contrast, the amount recovered from the 5th century and later Anglo-Saxon sites is minuscule. The majority of complete vessels and assemblages of beads come from the excavations of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, but a change in burial rites in the late 7th century affected the recovery of glass, as Christian Anglo-Saxons were buried with fewer grave goods, and glass is rarely found. From the late 7th century onwards, window glass is found more frequently. This is directly related to the introduction of Christianity and the construction of churches and monasteries. There are a few Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical literary sources that mention the production and use of glass, although these relate to window glass used in ecclesiastical buildings. Glass was also used by the Anglo-Saxons in their jewelry, both


id: history-of-glass-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass-4.md
category: reference
title: History of glass
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_glass
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:49.696073+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-glass-20260505-0
summary:
The use of glass as a building material was heralded by The Crystal Palace of 1851, built by Joseph Paxton to house the Great Exhibition. Paxton's revolutionary new building inspired the public use of glass as a material for domestic and horticultural architecture. In 1832, the British Crown Glass Company (later Chance Brothers) became the first company to adopt the cylinder method to produce sheet glass with the expertise of Georges Bontemps, a famous French glassmaker. This glass was produced by blowing long cylinders of glass, which were then cut along the length and then flattened onto a cast-iron table, before being annealed. Plate glass involves the glass being ladled onto a cast-iron bed, where it is rolled into a sheet with an iron roller. The sheet, still soft, is pushed into the open mouth of an annealing tunnel or temperature-controlled oven called a lehr, down which it was carried by a system of rollers. James Hartley introduced the Rolled Plate method in 1847. This allowed a ribbed finish and was often used for extensive glass roofs such as within railway stations. An early advance in automating glass manufacturing was patented in 1821 by Henry Ricketts and in 1848 by


id: history-of-information-theory-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_information_theory-0.md
category: reference
title: History of information theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_information_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:50.907833+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-information-theory-20260505-0
summary:
The study of information theory began with the publication of Claude E. Shannon's classic paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in the Bell System Technical Journal in July and October 1948, although Shannon had substantially completed the paper at Bell Labs by the end of 1944, Shannon introduced the qualitative and quantitative model of communication as a statistical process, opening with the assertion that "The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point, either exactly or approximately, a message selected at another point." With it came the ideas of the information entropy and redundancy of a source, and its relevance through the source coding theorem; the mutual information, and the channel capacity of a noisy channel, including the promise of perfect loss-free communication given by the noisy-channel coding theorem; the practical result of the Shannon–Hartley law for the channel capacity of a Gaussian channel; and of course the bit - a new way of seeing the most fundamental unit of information. == Before 1948 == === Early telecommunications === Some of the oldest methods of telecommunications implicitly used some of the ideas that were later formalized by Shannon in the development of information theory. In telegraphy, starting


id: history-of-information-theory-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_information_theory-1.md
category: reference
title: History of information theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_information_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:50.907833+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-information-theory-20260505-0
summary:
This (Gibbs) entropy, from statistical mechanics, can be found to directly correspond to the Clausius's classical thermodynamic definition. Shannon himself was apparently not particularly aware of the close similarity between his new measure and earlier work in thermodynamics, but John von Neumann was. It is said that, when Shannon was deciding what to call his new measure and fearing the term 'information' was already over-used, von Neumann told him firmly: "You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage." (Connections between information-theoretic entropy and thermodynamic entropy, including the important contributions by Rolf Landauer in the 1960s, are explored further in the article Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory). == Development since 1948 == The publication of Shannon's 1948 paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", in the Bell System Technical Journal was the founding of information theory as we know it today. Many developments and applications of the theory have taken place since then, which


id: legal-history-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history-0.md
category: reference
title: Legal history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:52.199055+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: legal-history-20260505-0
summary:
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it has changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and operates in the wider context of social history. Certain jurists and historians of legal process have seen legal history as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved, with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts; some consider legal history a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth-century historians viewed legal history in a more contextualised manner – more in line with the thinking of social historians. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society. Such legal historians have tended to analyze case histories through the lens of social-science inquiry, using statistical methods to analyse class distinctions among litigants, petitioners, and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, and the number of settled cases, they have begun examining legal institutions, practices, procedures, and briefs, offering a more nuanced


id: legal-history-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history-1.md
category: reference
title: Legal history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:52.199055+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: legal-history-20260505-0
summary:
One of the major legal systems developed during the Middle Ages was Islamic law and jurisprudence. Some important legal institutions were developed by Islamic jurists during the classical period of Islamic law and jurisprudence. One such institution was the Hawala, an early informal value transfer system mentioned in texts of Islamic jurisprudence as early as the 8th century. Hawala itself later influenced the development of the Aval in French civil law and the Avallo in Italian law. == European laws == === Roman Empire === Roman law was heavily influenced by Greek teachings. It forms the bridge to the modern legal world, over the centuries between the rise and decline of the Roman Empire. Roman law, in the days of the Roman Republic and Empire, was heavily procedural, and there was no professional legal class. Instead a lay person, iudex, was chosen to adjudicate. Precedents were not reported, so any case law that developed was disguised and almost unrecognised. Each case was to be decided afresh from the laws of the state, which mirrors the (theoretical) unimportance of judges' decisions for future cases in civil law systems today. During the 6th century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Emperor


id: legal-history-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history-2.md
category: reference
title: Legal history
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:52.199055+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: legal-history-20260505-0
summary:
The African law system is based on common law and civilian law. Many legal systems in Africa were based on ethnic customs and traditions before colonization took over their original system. The people listened to their elders and relied on them as mediators during disputes. Several states didn't keep written records, as their laws were often passed orally. In the Mali Empire, the Kouroukan Fouga was proclaimed in 1222–1236 AD as the state's official constitution. It defined regulations in both constitutional and civil matters. The provisions of the constitution are still transmitted to this day by griots under oath. During colonization, authorities in Africa developed an official legal system called the Native Courts. After colonialism, the major faiths that stayed were Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. == United States == The United States legal system developed primarily from the English common law system (except for the state of Louisiana, which continued to follow the French civil law system after being admitted to statehood). Some concepts from Spanish law, such as the prior appropriation doctrine and community property, persist in some US states, particularly those that were part of the Mexican Cession in 1848. Under the doctrine of federalism, each state has


id: history-of-linguistics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics-0.md
category: reference
title: History of linguistics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:53.401614+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-linguistics-20260505-0
summary:
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, involving analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. Language use was first systematically documented in Mesopotamia, with extant lexical lists of the 3rd to the 2nd Millennia BCE, offering glossaries on Sumerian cuneiform usage and meaning, and phonetical vocabularies of foreign languages. Later, Sanskrit would be systematically analysed, and its rules described, by Pāṇini (fl. 6-4th century BCE), in the Indus Valley. Beginning around the 4th century BCE, Warring States period China also developed its own grammatical traditions. Aristotle laid the foundation of Western linguistics as part of the study of rhetoric in his Poetics c. 335 BC. Traditions of Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar developed during the Middle Ages in a religious context like Pānini's Sanskrit grammar. Modern approaches began to develop in the 18th century, eventually being regarded in the 19th century as belonging to the disciplines of psychology or biology, with such views establishing the foundation of mainstream Anglo-American linguistics, although in England philological approaches such as that of Henry Sweet tended to predominate. This was contested in the early 20th century by Ferdinand de Saussure, who established linguistics as an autonomous discipline within social sciences. Following


id: history-of-linguistics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics-1.md
category: reference
title: History of linguistics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:53.401614+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-linguistics-20260505-0
summary:
Map the semantics of verb argument structures into thematic roles Provide morphosyntactic rules for creating verb forms and nominal forms whose seven cases are called karaka (similar to case) that generate the morphology Take these morphological structures and consider phonological processes (e.g., root or stem modification) by which the final phonological form is obtained In addition, the Pāṇinian school also provides a list of 2000 verb roots which form the objects on which these rules are applied, a list of sounds (the so-called Shiva-sutras), and a list of 260 words not derivable by the rules. The extremely succinct specification of these rules and their complex interactions led to considerable commentary and extrapolation over the following centuries. The phonological structure includes defining a notion of sound universals similar to the modern phoneme, the systematization of consonants based on oral cavity constriction, and vowels based on height and duration. However, it is the ambition of mapping these from morpheme to semantics that is truly remarkable in modern terms. Grammarians following Pāṇini include Kātyāyana (c. 3rd century BCE), who wrote aphorisms on Pāṇini (the Varttika) and advanced mathematics; Patañjali (2nd century BCE), known for his commentary on selected topics in Pāṇini's grammar (the


id: history-of-linguistics-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics-2.md
category: reference
title: History of linguistics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:53.401614+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-linguistics-20260505-0
summary:
Either simple, without composition or structure, such as "man," "horse," "fights," etc. Or having composition and structure, such as "a man fights," "the horse runs," etc. Next, he distinguishes between a subject of predication, namely that of which anything is affirmed or denied, and a subject of inhesion. A thing is said to be inherent in a subject, when, though it is not a part of the subject, it cannot possibly exist without the subject, e.g., shape in a thing having a shape. The categories are not abstract platonic entities but are found in speech, these are substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action and affection. In de Interpretatione, Aristotle analyzes categoric propositions, and draws a series of basic conclusions on the routine issues of classifying and defining basic linguistic forms, such as simple terms and propositions, nouns and verbs, negation, the quantity of simple propositions (primitive roots of the quantifiers in modern symbolic logic), investigations on the excluded middle (which to Aristotle isn't applicable to future tense propositions — the Problem of future contingents), and on modal propositions. The Stoics made linguistics an important part of their system of the cosmos and the human. They played an


id: history-of-linguistics-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics-3.md
category: reference
title: History of linguistics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:53.401614+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-linguistics-20260505-0
summary:
=== China === Similar to the Indian tradition, Chinese philology (小學; xiǎoxué; 'elementary studies') emerged as an aid to understanding the Chinese classics c. the 3rd century BCE, during the Western Han dynasty. Philology came to be divided into three branches: exegesis (訓詁; xùngǔ), grammatology (文字; wénzì) and phonology (音韻; yīnyùn). The field reached its golden age in the 17th century, during the Qing dynasty. The Erya (c. 3rd century BCE), comparable to the Indian Nighantu, is regarded as the first linguistic work in China. Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100 CE), the first Chinese dictionary, classifies Chinese characters by radicals, a practice that would be followed by most subsequent lexicographers. Two more pioneering works produced during the Han dynasty are Fangyan, the first Chinese work concerning dialects, and Shiming, devoted to etymology. As in ancient Greece, early Chinese thinkers were concerned with the relationship between names and reality. Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BCE) famously emphasized the moral commitment implicit in a name, (zhengming) stating that the moral collapse of the pre-Qin was a result of the failure to rectify behaviour to meet the moral commitment inherent in names: "Good government consists in the ruler being a ruler, the minister


id: history-of-linguistics-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics-4.md
category: reference
title: History of linguistics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:53.401614+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-linguistics-20260505-0
summary:
=== European vernaculars === The Irish Sanas Cormaic 'Cormac's Glossary' (10th century) is Europe's first etymological and encyclopedic dictionary in any non-Classical language. The Auraicept na n-Éces, compiled over the course of several centuries — possibly starting as early as in the 8th century — is a treatise on that same language and the first instance of a philosophical defence of a spoken European vernacular over Latin. A milestone in the early history of Germanic linguistics, the First Grammatical Treatise (12th century) offers a wealth of information on Old Norse lexicon, grammar and phonology. In the 13th century, the Modistae or "speculative grammarians" introduced the notion of universal grammar. In the treatise De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"), dating to 1303-1305, the Italian poet Dante presented a theory of language and discussed the origin of languages after the confusion of tongues following the events of the Tower of Babel. By recognizing the instrinsically human nature of language, Dante first recognized that — like customs and traditions — languages are bound to evolve over time and to differentiate in space giving birth to dialects. He argued that the wave of human populations migrating westward to Europe after the confusion


id: history-of-linguistics-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics-5.md
category: reference
title: History of linguistics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:53.401614+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-linguistics-20260505-0
summary:
In Europe there was a development of structural linguistics, initiated by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss professor of Indo-European and general linguistics, whose lectures on general linguistics, published posthumously by his students, set the direction of European linguistic analysis from the 1920s on; his approach has been widely adopted in other fields under the broad term "Structuralism". By the 20th century, the attention shifted from language change to the structure, which is governed by rules and principles. This structure turned more into grammar and by the 1920s structural linguistic, was developing into sophisticated methods of grammatical analysis. === Descriptive linguistics === During the second World War, North American linguists Leonard Bloomfield, William Mandeville Austin and several of his students and colleagues developed teaching materials for a variety of languages whose knowledge was needed for the war effort. This work led to an increasing prominence of the field of linguistics, which became a recognized discipline in most American universities only after the war. In 1965, William Stokoe, Carl G. Croneberg, and Dorothy C. Casterline linguists from Gallaudet University published an analysis which proved that American Sign Language fits the criteria for a natural language. === Generative linguistics === Generative linguistics focuses


id: history-of-logic-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-0.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
The history of logic deals with the study of the development of the science of valid inference (logic). Formal logics developed in ancient times in India, China, and Greece. Greek methods, particularly Aristotelian logic (or term logic) as found in the Organon, found wide application and acceptance in Western science and mathematics for millennia. The Stoics, especially Chrysippus, began the development of predicate logic. Christian and Islamic philosophers such as Boethius (died 524), Avicenna (died 1037), Thomas Aquinas (died 1274) and William of Ockham (died 1347) further developed Aristotle's logic in the Middle Ages, reaching a high point in the mid-fourteenth century, with Jean Buridan. The period between the fourteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century saw largely decline and neglect, and at least one historian of logic regards this time as barren. Empirical methods ruled the day, as evidenced by Sir Francis Bacon's Novum Organon of 1620. Logic revived in the mid-nineteenth century, at the beginning of a revolutionary period when the subject developed into a rigorous and formal discipline which took as its exemplar the exact method of proof used in mathematics, a hearkening back to the Greek tradition. The development of the modern "symbolic" or


id: history-of-logic-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-1.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
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parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
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=== Dignaga === However, Dignāga (c 480–540 AD) is sometimes said to have developed a formal syllogism, and it was through him and his successor, Dharmakirti, that Buddhist logic reached its height; it is contested whether their analysis actually constitutes a formal syllogistic system. In particular, their analysis centered on the definition of an inference-warranting relation, "vyapti", also known as invariable concomitance or pervasion. To this end, a doctrine known as "apoha" or differentiation was developed. This involved what might be called inclusion and exclusion of defining properties. Dignāga's famous "wheel of reason" (Hetucakra) is a method of indicating when one thing (such as smoke) can be taken as an invariable sign of another thing (like fire), but the inference is often inductive and based on past observation. Matilal remarks that Dignāga's analysis is much like John Stuart Mill's Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, which is inductive. == Logic in China == In China, a contemporary of Confucius, Mozi, "Master Mo", is credited with founding the Mohist school, whose canons dealt with issues relating to valid inference and the conditions of correct conclusions. In particular, one of the schools that grew out of Mohism, the Logicians, are credited by


id: history-of-logic-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-2.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
In contrast to Heraclitus, Parmenides held that all is one and nothing changes. He may have been a dissident Pythagorean, disagreeing that One (a number) produced the many. "X is not" must always be false or meaningless. What exists can in no way not exist. Our sense perceptions with its noticing of generation and destruction are in grievous error. Instead of sense perception, Parmenides advocated logos as the means to Truth. He has been called the discoverer of logic, For this view, that That Which Is Not exists, can never predominate. You must debar your thought from this way of search, nor let ordinary experience in its variety force you along this way, (namely, that of allowing) the eye, sightless as it is, and the ear, full of sound, and the tongue, to rule; but (you must) judge by means of the Reason (Logos) the much-contested proof which is expounded by me. Zeno of Elea, a pupil of Parmenides, had the idea of a standard argument pattern found in the method of proof known as reductio ad absurdum. This is the technique of drawing an obviously false (that is, "absurd") conclusion from an assumption, thus demonstrating that the assumption is


id: history-of-logic-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-3.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
The Stoics adopted the Megarian logic and systemized it. The most important member of the school was Chrysippus (c. 278 – c. 206 BC), who was its third head, and who formalized much of Stoic doctrine. He is supposed to have written over 700 works, including at least 300 on logic, almost none of which survive. Unlike with Aristotle, we have no complete works by the Megarians or the early Stoics, and have to rely mostly on accounts (sometimes hostile) by later sources, including prominently Diogenes Laërtius, Sextus Empiricus, Galen, Aulus Gellius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Cicero. Three significant contributions of the Stoic school were (i) their account of modality, (ii) their theory of the Material conditional, and (iii) their account of meaning and truth. Modality. According to Aristotle, the Megarians of his day claimed there was no distinction between potentiality and actuality. Diodorus Cronus defined the possible as that which either is or will be, the impossible as what will not be true, and the contingent as that which either is already, or will be false. Diodorus is also famous for what is known as his Master argument, which states that each pair of the following 3 propositions contradicts


id: history-of-logic-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-4.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
The works of Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Averroes and other Muslim logicians were based on Aristotelian logic and were important in communicating the ideas of the ancient world to the medieval West. Al-Farabi (Alfarabi) (873–950) was an Aristotelian logician who discussed the topics of future contingents, the number and relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar, and non-Aristotelian forms of inference. Al-Farabi also considered the theories of conditional syllogisms and analogical inference, which were part of the Stoic tradition of logic rather than the Aristotelian. Maimonides (1138-1204) wrote a Treatise on Logic (Arabic: Maqala Fi-Sinat Al-Mantiq), referring to Al-Farabi as the "second master", the first being Aristotle. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037) was the founder of Avicennian logic, which replaced Aristotelian logic as the dominant system of logic in the Islamic world, and also had an important influence on Western medieval writers such as Albertus Magnus. Avicenna wrote on the hypothetical syllogism and on the propositional calculus, which were both part of the Stoic logical tradition. He developed an original "temporally modalized" syllogistic theory, involving temporal logic and modal logic. He also made use of inductive logic, such as the methods of agreement, difference, and concomitant variation which


id: history-of-logic-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-5.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
The theory of supposition. Supposition theory deals with the way that predicates (e.g., 'man') range over a domain of individuals (e.g., all men). In the proposition 'every man is an animal', does the term 'man' range over or 'supposit for' men existing just in the present, or does the range include past and future men? Can a term supposit for a non-existing individual? Some medievalists have argued that this idea is a precursor of modern first-order logic. "The theory of supposition with the associated theories of copulatio (sign-capacity of adjectival terms), ampliatio (widening of referential domain), and distributio constitute one of the most original achievements of Western medieval logic". The theory of syncategoremata. Syncategoremata are terms which are necessary for logic, but which, unlike categorematic terms, do not signify on their own behalf, but 'co-signify' with other words. Examples of syncategoremata are 'and', 'not', 'every', 'if', and so on. The theory of consequences. A consequence is a hypothetical, conditional proposition: two propositions joined by the terms 'if ... then'. For example, 'if a man runs, then God exists' (Si homo currit, Deus est). A fully developed theory of consequences is given in Book III of William of Ockham's work Summa


id: history-of-logic-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-6.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
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=== Logic and psychology === Between the work of Mill and Frege stretched half a century during which logic was widely treated as a descriptive science, an empirical study of the structure of reasoning, and thus essentially as a branch of psychology. The German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, for example, discussed deriving "the logical from the psychological laws of thought", emphasizing that "psychological thinking is always the more comprehensive form of thinking." This view was widespread among German philosophers of the period: Theodor Lipps described logic as "a specific discipline of psychology". Christoph von Sigwart understood logical necessity as grounded in the individual's compulsion to think in a certain way. Benno Erdmann argued that "logical laws only hold within the limits of our thinking". Such was the dominant view of logic in the years following Mill's work. This psychological approach to logic was rejected by Gottlob Frege. It was also subjected to an extended and destructive critique by Edmund Husserl in the first volume of his Logical Investigations (1900), an assault which has been described as "overwhelming". Husserl argued forcefully that grounding logic in psychological observations implied that all logical truths remained unproven, and that skepticism and relativism were unavoidable consequences.


id: history-of-logic-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-7.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
The idea that inference could be represented by a purely mechanical process is found as early as Raymond Llull, who proposed a (somewhat eccentric) method of drawing conclusions by a system of concentric rings. The work of logicians such as the Oxford Calculators led to a method of using letters instead of writing out logical calculations (calculationes) in words, a method used, for instance, in the Logica magna by Paul of Venice. Three hundred years after Llull, the English philosopher and logician Thomas Hobbes suggested that all logic and reasoning could be reduced to the mathematical operations of addition and subtraction. The same idea is found in the work of Leibniz, who had read both Llull and Hobbes, and who argued that logic can be represented through a combinatorial process or calculus. But, like Llull and Hobbes, he failed to develop a detailed or comprehensive system, and his work on this topic was not published until long after his death. Leibniz says that ordinary languages are subject to "countless ambiguities" and are unsuited for a calculus, whose task is to expose mistakes in inference arising from the forms and structures of words; hence, he proposed to identify an alphabet of


id: history-of-logic-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-8.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
The defects in Boole's system (such as the use of the letter v for existential propositions) were all remedied by his followers. Jevons published Pure Logic, or the Logic of Quality apart from Quantity in 1864, where he suggested a symbol to signify exclusive or, which allowed Boole's system to be greatly simplified. This was usefully exploited by Schröder when he set out theorems in parallel columns in his Vorlesungen (1890–1905). Peirce (1880) showed how all the Boolean elective functions could be expressed by the use of a single primitive binary operation, "neither ... nor ..." and equally well "not both ... and ...", however, like many of Peirce's innovations, this remained unknown or unnoticed until Sheffer rediscovered it in 1913. Boole's early work also lacks the idea of the logical sum which originates in Peirce (1867), Schröder (1877) and Jevons (1890), and the concept of inclusion, first suggested by Gergonne (1816) and clearly articulated by Peirce (1870). The success of Boole's algebraic system suggested that all logic must be capable of algebraic representation, and there were attempts to express a logic of relations in such form, of which the most ambitious was Schröder's monumental Vorlesungen über die Algebra der


id: history-of-logic-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-9.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
In English, "for all x, if Ax then Bx". Thus only singular propositions are of subject-predicate form, and they are irreducibly singular, i.e. not reducible to a general proposition. Universal and particular propositions, by contrast, are not of simple subject-predicate form at all. If "all mammals" were the logical subject of the sentence "all mammals are land-dwellers", then to negate the whole sentence we would have to negate the predicate to give "all mammals are not land-dwellers". But this is not the case. This functional analysis of ordinary-language sentences later had a great impact on philosophy and linguistics. This means that in Frege's calculus, Boole's "primary" propositions can be represented in a different way from "secondary" propositions. "All inhabitants are either men or women" is ∀ x ( I ( x ) → ( M ( x ) ∨ W ( x ) ) ) {\displaystyle \forall \;x{\Big (}I(x)\rightarrow {\big (}M(x)\lor W(x){\big )}{\Big )}} whereas "All the inhabitants are men or all the inhabitants are women" is ∀ x ( I ( x ) → M ( x ) ) ∨ ∀ x ( I ( x ) → W ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \forall \;x{\big (}I(x)\rightarrow M(x){\big )}\lor


id: history-of-logic-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-10.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
The names of Gödel and Tarski dominate the 1930s, a crucial period in the development of metamathematics—the study of mathematics using mathematical methods to produce metatheories, or mathematical theories about other mathematical theories. Early investigations into metamathematics had been driven by Hilbert's program. Work on metamathematics culminated in the work of Gödel, who in 1929 showed that a given first-order sentence is deducible if and only if it is logically valid—i.e. it is true in every structure for its language. This is known as Gödel's completeness theorem. A year later, he proved two important theorems, which showed Hibert's program to be unattainable in its original form. The first is that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure such as an algorithm or computer program is capable of proving all facts about the natural numbers. For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second is that if such a system is also capable of proving certain basic facts about the natural numbers, then the system cannot prove the consistency of the system itself. These two results are known


id: history-of-logic-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-11.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
After World War II, mathematical logic branched into four inter-related but separate areas of research: model theory, proof theory, computability theory, and set theory. In set theory, the method of forcing revolutionized the field by providing a robust method for constructing models and obtaining independence results. Paul Cohen introduced this method in 1963 to prove the independence of the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. His technique, which was simplified and extended soon after its introduction, has since been applied to many other problems in all areas of mathematical logic. Computability theory had its roots in the work of Turing, Church, Kleene, and Post in the 1930s and 40s. It developed into a study of abstract computability, which became known as recursion theory. The priority method, discovered independently by Albert Muchnik and Richard Friedberg in the 1950s, led to major advances in the understanding of the degrees of unsolvability and related structures. Research into higher-order computability theory demonstrated its connections to set theory. The fields of constructive analysis and computable analysis were developed to study the effective content of classical mathematical theorems; these in turn inspired the program of reverse mathematics. A separate branch of


id: history-of-logic-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic-12.md
category: reference
title: History of logic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:54.611600+00:00
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parent: history-of-logic-20260505-0
summary:
== References == Primary Sources Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis An. Pr. Lib. I Commentarium, ed. Wallies, Berlin, C.I.A.G. vol. II/1, 1882. Avicenna, Avicennae Opera Venice 1508. Boethius Commentary on the Perihermenias, Secunda Editio, ed. Meiser, Leipzig, Teubner, 1880. Bolzano, Bernard Wissenschaftslehre, (1837) 4 Bde, Neudr., hrsg. W. Schultz, Leipzig I–II 1929, III 1930, IV 1931 (Theory of Science, four volumes, translated by Rolf George and Paul Rusnock, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Bolzano, Bernard Theory of Science (Edited, with an introduction, by Jan Berg. Translated from the German by Burnham Terrell – D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht and Boston 1973). Boole, George (1847) The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (Cambridge and London); repr. in Studies in Logic and Probability, ed. R. Rhees (London 1952). Boole, George (1854) The Laws of Thought (London and Cambridge); repr. as Collected Logical Works. Vol. 2, (Chicago and London: Open Court, 1940). Epictetus, Epicteti Dissertationes ab Arriano digestae, edited by Heinrich Schenkl, Leipzig, Teubner. 1894. Frege, G., Boole's Logical Calculus and the Concept Script, 1882, in Posthumous Writings transl. P. Long and R. White 1969, pp. 9–46. Gergonne, Joseph Diaz, (1816) Essai de dialectique rationelle, in Annales de mathématiques pures et appliquées 7, 1816/1817,


id: a-man-of-misconceptions-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_of_Misconceptions-0.md
category: reference
title: A Man of Misconceptions
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_of_Misconceptions
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:55.871806+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: a-man-of-misconceptions-20260505-0
summary:
A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change is a biography written by John Glassie about Athanasius Kircher, a 17th-century German Jesuit scholar, scientist, author, and inventor. Published by Riverhead Books in 2012, it is regarded by The New York Times as the first general-interest biography of Kircher, who has experienced a resurgence of academic attention in recent decades. The book traces Kircher's life from his birth in 1602 in Germany through his rise as a scholar at the Jesuit Collegio Romano to the decline of his reputation and his death in Rome in 1680. After Kircher arrived in Rome in 1633, a few months after the Galileo trial, he pursued myriad interests, authoring more than thirty books on such subjects as optics, magnetism, music, medicine, and mathematics, and developing a collection of natural specimens and curiosities into a well known Cabinet of Curiosities or early modern museum. He also worked with Gianlorenzo Bernini on his Fountain of the Four Rivers in the Piazza Navona and labored for many years on the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The book places Kircher's work and his interest in natural magic and mysticism within the context of the


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-0.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments have come to light only in a few locales. From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for taxation, commerce, trade, and in astronomy, to record time and formulate calendars. The earliest mathematical texts available are from Mesopotamia and Egypt – Plimpton 322 (Babylonian c. 2000 – 1900 BC), the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (Egyptian c. 1800 BC) and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus (Egyptian c. 1890 BC). All these texts mention the so-called Pythagorean triples, so, by inference, the Pythagorean theorem seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development, after basic arithmetic and geometry. The study of mathematics as a "demonstrative discipline" began in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, who coined the term "mathematics" from the ancient Greek μάθημα (mathema), meaning "subject of instruction". Greek mathematics greatly refined the methods (especially through the introduction of deductive reasoning and mathematical rigor in


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-1.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
In contrast to the sparsity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. Some of these appear to be graded homework. The earliest evidence of written mathematics dates back to the ancient Sumerians, who built the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia. They developed a complex system of metrology from 3000 BC that was chiefly concerned with administrative/financial counting, such as grain allotments, workers, weights of silver, or even liquids, among other things. From around 2500 BC onward, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period. Babylonian mathematics was written using a sexagesimal (base-60) numeral system. From this derives the modern-day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 × 6) degrees in a circle, as well as the use of seconds and minutes of arc to denote fractions of a degree. It is thought the


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-2.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
Greek mathematics refers to the mathematics written in the Greek language from the time of Thales of Miletus (~600 BC) to the closure of the Academy of Athens in 529 AD. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean, from Italy to North Africa, but were united by culture and language. Greek mathematics of the period following Alexander the Great is sometimes called Hellenistic mathematics. Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures. All surviving records of pre-Greek mathematics show the use of inductive reasoning, that is, repeated observations used to establish rules of thumb. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them. Greek mathematics is thought to have begun with Thales of Miletus (c. 624 – c. 546 BC) and Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582 – c. 507 BC). Although the extent of the influence is disputed, they were probably inspired by Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics. According to legend, Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn mathematics, geometry, and astronomy from Egyptian priests. Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-3.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
Apollonius of Perga (c. 262–190 BC) made significant advances to the study of conic sections, showing that one can obtain all three varieties of conic section by varying the angle of the plane that cuts a double-napped cone. He also coined the terminology in use today for conic sections, namely parabola ("place beside" or "comparison"), "ellipse" ("deficiency"), and "hyperbola" ("a throw beyond"). His work Conics is one of the best known and preserved mathematical works from antiquity, and in it he derives many theorems concerning conic sections that would prove invaluable to later mathematicians and astronomers studying planetary motion, such as Isaac Newton. While neither Apollonius nor any other Greek mathematicians made the leap to coordinate geometry, Apollonius' treatment of curves is in some ways similar to the modern treatment, and some of his work seems to anticipate the development of analytical geometry by Descartes some 1800 years later. Around the same time, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276–194 BC) devised the Sieve of Eratosthenes for finding prime numbers. The 3rd century BC is generally regarded as the "Golden Age" of Greek mathematics, with advances in pure mathematics henceforth in relative decline. Nevertheless, in the centuries that followed significant advances were


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-4.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
Although ethnic Greek mathematicians continued under the rule of the late Roman Republic and subsequent Roman Empire, there were no noteworthy native Latin mathematicians in comparison. Ancient Romans such as Cicero (106–43 BC), an influential Roman statesman who studied mathematics in Greece, believed that Roman surveyors and calculators were far more interested in applied mathematics than the theoretical mathematics and geometry that were prized by the Greeks. It is unclear if the Romans first derived their numerical system directly from the Greek precedent or from Etruscan numerals used by the Etruscan civilization centered in what is now Tuscany, central Italy. Using calculation, Romans were adept at both instigating and detecting financial fraud, as well as managing taxes for the treasury. Siculus Flaccus, one of the Roman gromatici (i.e. land surveyor), wrote the Categories of Fields, which aided Roman surveyors in measuring the surface areas of allotted lands and territories. Aside from managing trade and taxes, the Romans also regularly applied mathematics to solve problems in engineering, including the erection of architecture such as bridges, road-building, and preparation for military campaigns. Arts and crafts such as Roman mosaics, inspired by previous Greek designs, created illusionist geometric patterns and rich, detailed scenes


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-5.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
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In 212 BC, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang commanded all books in the Qin Empire other than officially sanctioned ones be burned. This decree was not universally obeyed, but as a consequence of this order little is known about ancient Chinese mathematics before this date. After the book burning of 212 BC, the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) produced works of mathematics which presumably expanded on works that are now lost. The most important of these is The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, the full title of which appeared by AD 179, but existed in part under other titles beforehand. It consists of 246 word problems involving agriculture, business, employment of geometry to figure height spans and dimension ratios for Chinese pagoda towers, engineering, surveying, and includes material on right triangles. It created mathematical proof for the Pythagorean theorem, and a mathematical formula for Gaussian elimination. The treatise also provides values of π, which Chinese mathematicians originally approximated as 3 until Liu Xin (d. 23 AD) provided a figure of 3.1457 and subsequently Zhang Heng (78–139) approximated pi as 3.1724, as well as 3.162 by taking the square root of 10. Liu Hui commented on the Nine Chapters in


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-6.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
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Around 500 AD, Aryabhata wrote the Aryabhatiya, a slim volume, written in verse, intended to supplement the rules of calculation used in astronomy and mathematical mensuration, though with no feeling for logic or deductive methodology. It is in the Aryabhatiya that the decimal place-value system first appears. Several centuries later, the Muslim mathematician Abu Rayhan Biruni described the Aryabhatiya as a "mix of common pebbles and costly crystals". In the 7th century, Brahmagupta identified the Brahmagupta theorem, Brahmagupta's identity and Brahmagupta's formula, and for the first time, in Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta, he lucidly explained the use of zero as both a placeholder and decimal digit, and explained the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. It was from a translation of this Indian text on mathematics (c. 770) that Islamic mathematicians were introduced to this numeral system, which they adapted as Arabic numerals. Islamic scholars carried knowledge of this number system to Europe by the 12th century, and it has now displaced all older number systems throughout the world. Various symbol sets are used to represent numbers in the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, all of which evolved from the Brahmi numerals. Each of the roughly dozen major scripts of India has its own numeral glyphs. In the


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-7.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
The Islamic Empire established across the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia, and in parts of India in the 8th century made significant contributions towards mathematics. Although most Islamic texts on mathematics were written in Arabic, they were not all written by Arabs, since much like the status of Greek in the Hellenistic world, Arabic was used as the written language of non-Arab scholars throughout the Islamic world at the time. In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote an important book on the Hindu–Arabic numerals and one on methods for solving equations. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, along with the work of Al-Kindi, were instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī hīsāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). He gave an exhaustive explanation for the algebraic solution of quadratic equations with positive roots, and he was the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake. He also


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-8.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
Medieval European interest in mathematics was driven by concerns quite different from those of modern mathematicians. One driving element was the belief that mathematics provided the key to understanding the created order of nature, frequently justified by Plato's Timaeus and the biblical passage (in the Book of Wisdom) that God had ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight. Boethius provided a place for mathematics in the curriculum in the 6th century when he coined the term quadrivium to describe the study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. He wrote De institutione arithmetica, a free translation from the Greek of Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic; De institutione musica, also derived from Greek sources; and a series of excerpts from Euclid's Elements. His works were theoretical, rather than practical, and were the basis of mathematical study until the recovery of Greek and Arabic mathematical works. In the 12th century, European scholars traveled to Spain and Sicily seeking scientific Arabic texts, including al-Khwārizmī's The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, translated into Latin by Robert of Chester, and the complete text of Euclid's Elements, translated in various versions by Adelard of Bath, Herman of Carinthia, and Gerard of Cremona. These


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-9.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
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Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità (Italian: "Review of Arithmetic, Geometry, Ratio and Proportion") was first printed and published in Venice in 1494. It included a 27-page treatise on bookkeeping, "Particularis de Computis et Scripturis" (Italian: "Details of Calculation and Recording"). It was written primarily for, and sold mainly to, merchants who used the book as a reference text, as a source of pleasure from the mathematical puzzles it contained, and to aid the education of their sons. In Summa Arithmetica, Pacioli introduced symbols for plus and minus for the first time in a printed book, symbols that became standard notation in Italian Renaissance mathematics. Summa Arithmetica was also the first known book printed in Italy to contain algebra. Pacioli obtained many of his ideas from Piero Della Francesca whom he plagiarized. In Italy, during the first half of the 16th century, Scipione del Ferro and Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia discovered solutions for cubic equations. Gerolamo Cardano published them in his 1545 book Ars Magna, together with a solution for the quartic equations, discovered by his student Lodovico Ferrari. In 1572 Rafael Bombelli published his L'Algebra in which he showed how to deal with the imaginary quantities that


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-10.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
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This century saw the development of the two forms of non-Euclidean geometry, where the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry no longer holds. The Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky and his rival, the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai, independently defined and studied hyperbolic geometry, where uniqueness of parallels no longer holds. In this geometry the sum of angles in a triangle add up to less than 180°. Elliptic geometry was developed later in the 19th century by the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann; here no parallel can be found and the angles in a triangle add up to more than 180°. Riemann also developed Riemannian geometry, which unifies and vastly generalizes the three types of geometry, and he defined the concept of a manifold, which generalizes the ideas of curves and surfaces, and set the mathematical foundations for the theory of general relativity. The 19th century saw the beginning of a great deal of abstract algebra. Hermann Grassmann in Germany gave a first version of vector spaces, William Rowan Hamilton in Ireland developed noncommutative algebra.The British mathematician George Boole devised an algebra that soon evolved into what is now called Boolean algebra, in which the only numbers were 0 and 1. Boolean algebra


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-11.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
Differential geometry came into its own when Albert Einstein used it in general relativity. Entirely new areas of mathematics such as mathematical logic, topology, and John von Neumann's game theory changed the kinds of questions that could be answered by mathematical methods. All kinds of structures were abstracted using axioms and given names like metric spaces, topological spaces etc. The concept of an abstract structure was itself abstracted and led to category theory. Grothendieck and Serre recast algebraic geometry using sheaf theory. Large advances were made in the qualitative study of dynamical systems that Poincaré had begun in the 1890s. Measure theory was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Applications of measures include the Lebesgue integral, Kolmogorov's axiomatisation of probability theory, and ergodic theory. Knot theory greatly expanded. Quantum mechanics aided the development of functional analysis, a branch of mathematics developed by Stefan Banach and his collaborators who formed the Lwów School of Mathematics. Other new areas include Laurent Schwartz's distribution theory, fixed point theory, singularity theory and René Thom's catastrophe theory, model theory, and Mandelbrot's fractals. Lie theory with its Lie groups and Lie algebras became one of the major areas of study. Nonstandard analysis, introduced


id: history-of-mathematics-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics-12.md
category: reference
title: History of mathematics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:57.304778+00:00
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parent: history-of-mathematics-20260505-0
summary:
In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the seven Millennium Prize Problems. In 2003 the Poincaré conjecture was solved by Grigori Perelman (who declined to accept an award, as he was critical of the mathematics establishment). Most mathematical journals now have online versions as well as print versions, and many online-only journals are launched. There is an increasing drive toward open access publishing, first made popular by arXiv. Many other important problems have been solved in this century. Examples include the Green–Tao theorem (2004), existence of bounded gaps between arbitrarily large primes (2013), and the modularity theorem (2001). The AKS primality test was published in 2002, which is the first algorithm that can determine whether a number is prime or composite in polynomial time. A proof of Goldbach's weak conjecture was published by Harald Helfgott in 2013; as of 2025, the proof has not yet been fully reviewed. The first einstein was discovered in 2023. In addition, a lot of work has been done toward long-lasting projects which began in the twentieth century. For example, the classification of finite simple groups was completed in 2008. Similarly, work on the Langlands program has progressed significantly, and there have been proofs of


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-0.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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The history of medicine is both a study of medicine throughout history as well as a multidisciplinary field of study that seeks to explore and understand medical practices, both past and present, throughout human societies. The history of medicine is the study and documentation of the evolution of medical treatments, practices, and knowledge over time. Medical historians often draw from other humanities fields of study including economics, health sciences, sociology, and politics to better understand the institutions, practices, people, professions, and social systems that have shaped medicine. When a period which predates or lacks written sources regarding medicine, information is instead drawn from archaeological sources. This field tracks the evolution of human societies' approach to health, illness, and injury ranging from prehistory to the modern day, the events that shape these approaches, and their impact on populations. Early medical traditions include those of Babylon, Egypt, China and India. Invention of the microscope was a consequence of improved understanding, during the Renaissance. Prior to the 19th century, humorism (also known as humoralism) was thought to explain the cause of disease but it was gradually replaced by the germ theory of disease, leading to effective treatments and even cures for many infectious


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-1.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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=== Ancient Mesopotamian medicine === The Mesopotamian region, covering much of present-day Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, was dominated by a series of civilisations including Sumer, the earliest known civilisation in the Fertile Crescent region, alongside the Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians). Overlapping ideas of what we now understand as medicine, science, magic, and religion characterised early Mesopotamian healing practices as a hybrid naturalistic and supernatural belief system. The Sumerians developed one of the earliest known writing systems in the 3rd millennium BCE, and created numerous cuneiform clay tablets regarding their civilisation. These included detailed accounts of drug prescriptions and operations, as well as exorcisms. These were administered and carried out by highly defined professionals including bârû (seers), âs[h]ipu (exorcists), and asû (physician-priests). An example of an early, prescription-like medication appeared in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 BCE – c. 2004 BCE). Following the conquest of the Sumerian civilisation by the Akkadian Empire and the empire's eventual collapse from a number of social and environmental factors, the Babylonian civilisation began to dominate the region. Examples of Babylonian Medicine include the extensive Babylonian medical text, the Diagnostic Handbook, written by the ummânū, or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-2.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
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Medical and healing practices in early Chinese dynasties were heavily shaped by the practice of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Starting around the Zhou dynasty, parts of this system were being developed and are demonstrated in early writings on herbs in Classic of Changes (Yi Jing) and Classic of Poetry (Shi Jing). China also developed a large body of traditional medicine. Much of the philosophy of traditional Chinese medicine derived from empirical observations of disease and illness by Taoist physicians and reflects the classical Chinese belief that individual human experiences express causative principles effective in the environment at all scales. These causative principles, whether material, essential, or mystical, correlate as the expression of the natural order of the universe. The foundational text of Chinese medicine is the Huangdi Neijing, (or Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon), written 5th century to 3rd century BCE. Near the end of the 2nd century CE, during the Han dynasty, Zhang Zhongjing, wrote a Treatise on Cold Damage, which contains the earliest known reference to the Neijing Suwen. The Jin dynasty practitioner and advocate of acupuncture and moxibustion, Huangfu Mi (215–282), also quotes the Yellow Emperor in his Jiayi jing, c. 265. During the Tang dynasty, the Suwen


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-3.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
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==== Humors ==== The theory of humors was derived from ancient medical works, dominated Western medicine until the 19th century, and is credited to Greek philosopher and surgeon Galen of Pergamon (129 – c. 216 CE). In Greek medicine, there are thought to be four humors, or bodily fluids that are linked to illness: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Early scientists believed that food is digested into blood, muscle, and bones, while the humors that were not blood were then formed by indigestible materials that are left over. An excess or shortage of any one of the four humors is theorized to cause an imbalance that results in sickness; the aforementioned statement was hypothesized by sources before Hippocrates. Hippocrates (c. 400 BCE) deduced that the four seasons of the year and four ages of man that affect the body in relation to the humors. The four ages of man are childhood, youth, prime age, and old age. Black bile is associated with autumn, phlegm with winter, blood with spring, and yellow bile with summer. In De temperamentis, Galen linked what he called temperaments, or personality characteristics, to a person's natural mixture of humors. He also said that the


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-4.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
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Temples dedicated to the healer-god Asclepius, known as Asclepieia (Ancient Greek: Ἀσκληπιεῖα, sing. Ἀσκληπιεῖον, Asclepieion), functioned as centers of medical advice, prognosis, and healing. At these shrines, patients would enter a dream-like state of induced sleep known as enkoimesis (ἐγκοίμησις) not unlike anesthesia, in which they either received guidance from the deity in a dream or were cured by surgery. Asclepeia provided carefully controlled spaces conducive to healing and fulfilled several of the requirements of institutions created for healing. In the Asclepeion of Epidaurus, three large marble boards dated to 350 BCE preserve the names, case histories, complaints, and cures of about 70 patients who came to the temple with a problem and shed it there. Some of the surgical cures listed, such as the opening of an abdominal abscess or the removal of traumatic foreign material, are realistic enough to have taken place, but with the patient in a state of enkoimesis induced with the help of soporific substances such as opium. Alcmaeon of Croton wrote on medicine between 500 and 450 BCE. He argued that channels linked the sensory organs to the brain, and it is possible that he discovered one type of channel, the optic nerves, by


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-5.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
Two great Alexandrians laid the foundations for the scientific study of anatomy and physiology, Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Ceos. Other Alexandrian surgeons gave us ligature (hemostasis), lithotomy, hernia operations, ophthalmic surgery, plastic surgery, methods of reduction of dislocations and fractures, tracheotomy, and mandrake as an anaesthetic. Some of what we know of them comes from Celsus and Galen of Pergamum. Herophilus of Chalcedon, the renowned Alexandrian physician, was one of the pioneers of human anatomy. Though his knowledge of the anatomical structure of the human body was vast, he specialized in the aspects of neural anatomy. Thus, his experimentation was centered around the anatomical composition of the blood-vascular system and the pulsations that can be analyzed from the system. Furthermore, the surgical experimentation he administered caused him to become very prominent throughout the field of medicine, as he was one of the first physicians to initiate the exploration and dissection of the human body. The banned practice of human dissection was lifted during his time within the scholastic community. This brief moment in the history of Greek medicine allowed him to further study the brain, which he believed was the core of the nervous system. He also distinguished


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-6.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
Islamic medicine grew significantly when the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258 CE) overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate in 750 CE. This change in dynasty served as a turning point towards scientific and medical developments. A large contributor to this was that, under Abbasid rule, much of the Greek legacy was transmitted into Arabic which by then, was the main language of Islamic peoples. Many Islamic physicians were heavily influenced by the works of Greek scholars of Alexandria and Egypt and were able to expand on those texts to produce new medical knowledge. This period of time is known as the Islamic Golden Age where there was development and flourishment of technology, commerce and sciences, including medicine. The creation of the first Islamic Hospital in 805 CE by the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad was a significant development. This hospital provided educational opportunities for Islamic physicians. Muslims were influenced by ancient Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman and Byzantine medical practices, and helped them to develop it further. Galen & Hippocrates were pre-eminent authorities. The translation of 129 of Galen's works into Arabic by the Nestorian Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq and his assistants, and in particular Galen's insistence on a rational systematic approach to medicine,


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-7.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
After 400 CE, the study and practice of medicine in the Western Roman Empire went into deep decline. Medical services were provided, especially for the poor, in the thousands of monastic hospitals that sprang up across Europe, but the care was rudimentary and mainly palliative. Most of the writings of Galen and Hippocrates were lost to the West, with the summaries and compendia of St. Isidore of Seville being the primary channel for transmitting Greek medical ideas. The Carolingian Renaissance brought increased contact with Byzantium and a greater awareness of ancient medicine, but only with the Renaissance of the 12th century and the new translations coming from Muslim and Jewish sources in Spain, and the fifteenth-century flood of resources after the fall of Constantinople did the West fully recover its acquaintance with classical antiquity. The Carolingian Renaissance served as a starting point for incorporating ancient medicine into the early Middle Ages. One work which stands out in the historical timeline is the Lorscher Arzneibuch, a product of the scriptorium at the Lorsch monastery, copied between 784 through the early 9th century. To bolster confidence in medicine, the author of this apologetic work reasoned that medicines were created from earth materials,


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-8.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
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==== England ==== In England, there were but three small hospitals after 1550. Pelling and Webster estimate that in London in the 1580 to 1600 period, out of a population of nearly 200,000 people, there were about 500 medical practitioners. Nurses and midwives are not included. There were about 50 physicians, 100 licensed surgeons, 100 apothecaries, and 250 additional unlicensed practitioners. In the last category about 25% were women. All across England—and indeed all of the world—the vast majority of the people in city, town or countryside depended for medical care on local amateurs with no professional training but with a reputation as wise healers who could diagnose problems and advise sick people what to do—and perhaps set broken bones, pull a tooth, give some traditional herbs or brews or perform magic to cure what ailed them. === People === === Europe === The Renaissance brought an intense focus on scholarship to Christian Europe. A major effort to translate the Arabic and Greek scientific works into Latin emerged. Europeans gradually became experts not only in the ancient writings of the Romans and Greeks, but in the contemporary writings of Islamic scientists. During the later centuries of the Renaissance came an


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-9.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
==== India ==== Unani medicine, based on Avicenna's Canon of Medicine (ca. 1025), was developed in India throughout the medieval and Early Modern periods. Its use continued, especially in Muslim communities, during the Indian Sultanate and Mughal periods. Unani medicine is in some respects close to Ayurveda and to Early Modern European medicine. All share a theory of the presence of the elements (in Unani, as in Europe, they are considered to be fire, water, earth, and air) and humors in the human body. According to Unani physicians, these elements are present in different humoral fluids and their balance leads to health and their imbalance leads to illness. Sanskrit medical literature of the Early Modern period included innovative works such as the Compendium of Śārṅgadhara (Skt. Śārṅgadharasaṃhitā, ca. 1350) and especially The Illumination of Bhāva (Bhāvaprakāśa, by Bhāvamiśra, ca. 1550). The latter work also contained an extensive dictionary of materia medica, and became a standard textbook used widely by ayurvedic practitioners in north India up to the present day (2024). Medical innovations of this period included pulse diagnosis, urine diagnosis, the use of mercury and china root to treat syphilis, and the increasing use of metallic ingredients in drugs. By


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-10.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
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===== Spanish Quest for Medicinal Spices ===== Botanical medicines also became popular during the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Spanish pharmaceutical books during this time contain medicinal recipes consisting of spices, herbs, and other botanical products. For example, nutmeg oil was documented for curing stomach ailments and cardamom oil was believed to relieve intestinal ailments. During the rise of the global trade market, spices and herbs, along with many other goods, that were indigenous to different territories began to appear in different locations across the globe. Herbs and spices were especially popular for their utility in cooking and medicines. As a result of this popularity and increased demand for spices, some areas in Asia, like China and Indonesia, became hubs for spice cultivation and trade. The Spanish Empire also wanted to benefit from the international spice trade, so they looked towards their American colonies. The Spanish American colonies became an area where the Spanish searched to discover new spices and indigenous American medicinal recipes. The Florentine Codex, a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, is a major contribution to the history of Nahua medicine. The Spanish did discover many spices and herbs


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-11.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
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parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
French scientist Louis Pasteur confirmed Schwann's fermentation experiments in 1857 and afterwards supported the hypothesis that yeast were microorganisms. Moreover, he suggested that such a process might also explain contagious disease. In 1860, Pasteur's report on bacterial fermentation of butyric acid motivated fellow Frenchman Casimir Davaine to identify a similar species (which he called bacteridia) as the pathogen of the deadly disease anthrax. Others dismissed "bacteridia" as a mere byproduct of the disease. British surgeon Joseph Lister, however, took these findings seriously and subsequently introduced antisepsis to wound treatment in 1865. German physician Robert Koch, noting fellow German Ferdinand Cohn's report of a spore stage of a certain bacterial species, traced the life cycle of Davaine's bacteridia, identified spores, inoculated laboratory animals with them, and reproduced anthrax—a breakthrough for experimental pathology and germ theory of disease. Pasteur's group added ecological investigations confirming spores' role in the natural setting, while Koch published a landmark treatise in 1878 on the bacterial pathology of wounds. In 1881, Koch reported discovery of the "tubercle bacillus", cementing germ theory and Koch's acclaim. Upon the outbreak of a cholera epidemic in Alexandria, Egypt, two medical missions went to investigate and attend the sick, one was sent


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-12.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
Until the nineteenth century, the care of the insane was largely a communal and family responsibility rather than a medical one. The vast majority of the mentally ill were treated in domestic contexts with only the most unmanageable or burdensome likely to be institutionally confined. This situation was transformed radically from the late eighteenth century as, amid changing cultural conceptions of madness, a new-found optimism in the curability of insanity within the asylum setting emerged. Increasingly, lunacy was perceived less as a physiological condition than as a mental and moral one to which the correct response was persuasion, aimed at inculcating internal restraint, rather than external coercion. This new therapeutic sensibility, referred to as moral treatment, was epitomised in French physician Philippe Pinel's quasi-mythological unchaining of the lunatics of the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris and realised in an institutional setting with the foundation in 1796 of the Quaker-run York Retreat in England. From the early nineteenth century, as lay-led lunacy reform movements gained influence, ever more state governments in the West extended their authority and responsibility over the mentally ill. Small-scale asylums, conceived as instruments to reshape both the mind and behaviour of the disturbed, proliferated across these regions. By


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-13.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
European ideas of modern medicine were spread widely through the world by medical missionaries, and the dissemination of textbooks. Japanese elites enthusiastically embraced Western medicine after the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s. However they had been prepared by their knowledge of the Dutch and German medicine, for they had some contact with Europe through the Dutch. Highly influential was the 1765 edition of Hendrik van Deventer's pioneer work Nieuw Ligt ("A New Light") on Japanese obstetrics, especially on Katakura Kakuryo's publication in 1799 of Sanka Hatsumo ("Enlightenment of Obstetrics"). A cadre of Japanese physicians began to interact with Dutch doctors, who introduced smallpox vaccinations. By 1820 Japanese ranpô medical practitioners not only translated Dutch medical texts, they integrated their readings with clinical diagnoses. These men became leaders of the modernization of medicine in their country. They broke from Japanese traditions of closed medical fraternities and adopted the European approach of an open community of collaboration based on expertise in the latest scientific methods. Kitasato Shibasaburō (1853–1931) studied bacteriology in Germany under Robert Koch. In 1891 he founded the Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo, which introduced the study of bacteriology to Japan. He and French researcher Alexandre Yersin went to


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-14.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
===== Vienna ===== The First Viennese School of Medicine, 1750–1800, was led by the Dutchman Gerard van Swieten (1700–1772), who aimed to put medicine on new scientific foundations—promoting unprejudiced clinical observation, botanical and chemical research, and introducing simple but powerful remedies. When the Vienna General Hospital opened in 1784, it at once became the world's largest hospital and physicians acquired a facility that gradually developed into the most important research centre. Progress ended with the Napoleonic wars and the government shutdown in 1819 of all liberal journals and schools; this caused a general return to traditionalism and eclecticism in medicine. Vienna was the capital of a diverse empire and attracted not just Germans but Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, Poles and others to its world-class medical facilities. After 1820 the Second Viennese School of Medicine emerged with the contributions of physicians such as Carl Freiherr von Rokitansky, Josef Škoda, Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra, and Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis. Basic medical science expanded and specialization advanced. Furthermore, the first dermatology, eye, as well as ear, nose, and throat clinics in the world were founded in Vienna. The textbook Lehre von den Augenkrankheiten of ophthalmologist Georg Joseph Beer (1763–1821) combined practical research and philosophical speculations,


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-15.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
=== Diagnosis === X-ray imaging was the first kind of medical imaging, and later ultrasonic imaging, CT scanning, MR scanning and other imaging methods became available. === Disabilities === Prosthetics have improved with lightweight materials as well as neural prosthetics emerging in the end of the 20th century. === Diseases === Oral rehydration therapy has been extensively used since the 1970s to treat cholera and other diarrhea-inducing infections. As infectious diseases have become less lethal, and the most common causes of death in developed countries are now tumors and cardiovascular diseases, these conditions have received increased attention in medical research. === Disease eradication === ==== Malaria eradication ==== Starting in World War II, DDT was used as insecticide to combat insect vectors carrying malaria, which was endemic in most tropical regions of the world. The first goal was to protect soldiers, but it was widely adopted as a public health device. In Liberia, for example, the United States had large military operations during the war and the U.S. Public Health Service began the use of DDT for indoor residual spraying (IRS) and as a larvicide, with the goal of controlling malaria in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. In the early 1950s,


id: history-of-medicine-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine-16.md
category: reference
title: History of medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:40:59.819880+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
"By 1944 most casualties were receiving treatment within hours of wounding, due to the increased mobility of field hospitals and the extensive use of aeroplanes as ambulances. The care of the sick and wounded had also been revolutionized by new medical technologies, such as active immunization against tetanus, sulphonamide drugs, and penicillin." During the second World War, Alexis Carrel and Henry Dakin developed the Carrel-Dakin method of treating wounds with an irrigation, Dakin's solution, a germicide which helped prevent gangrene. The War spurred the usage of Roentgen's X-ray, and the electrocardiograph, for the monitoring of internal bodily functions. This was followed in the inter-war period by the development of the first anti-bacterial agents such as the sulpha antibiotics. ==== Nazi and Japanese medical research ==== Unethical human subject research, and killing of patients with disabilities, peaked during the Nazi era, with Nazi human experimentation and Aktion T4 during the Holocaust as the most significant examples. Many of the details of these and related events were the focus of the Doctors' Trial. Subsequently, principles of medical ethics, such as the Nuremberg Code, were introduced to prevent a recurrence of such atrocities. After 1937, the Japanese Army established programs of biological warfare


id: history-of-narcissism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_narcissism-0.md
category: reference
title: History of narcissism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_narcissism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:01.253726+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-narcissism-20260505-0
summary:
The concept of excessive selfishness has been recognized throughout history. The term "narcissism" is derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus, but was only coined at the close of the nineteenth century. Since then, narcissism has become a household word; in analytic literature, given the great preoccupation with the subject, the term is used more than almost any other'. The meaning of narcissism has changed over time. Today narcissism "refers to an interest in or concern with the self along a broad continuum, from healthy to pathological ... including such concepts as self-esteem, self-system, and self-representation, and true or false self". == Before Freud == In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus 'lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour', and finally pined away, changing into a flower that bears his name, the narcissus. The story was retold in Latin by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, in which form it would have great influence on medieval and Renaissance culture. 'Ovid's tale of Echo and Narcissus...weaves in


id: history-of-narcissism-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_narcissism-1.md
category: reference
title: History of narcissism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_narcissism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:01.253726+00:00
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parent: history-of-narcissism-20260505-0
summary:
== Later psychoanalysts == === Karen Horney === Karen Horney saw narcissism quite differently from Freud, Kohut and other mainstream psychoanalytic theorists in that she did not posit a primary narcissism but saw the narcissistic personality as the product of a certain kind of early environment acting on a certain kind of temperament. For her, narcissistic needs and tendencies are not inherent in human nature. Narcissism is different from Horney's other major defensive strategies or solutions in that it is not compensatory. Self-idealization is compensatory in her theory, but it differs from narcissism. All the defensive strategies involve self-idealization, but in the narcissistic solution it tends to be the product of indulgence rather than of deprivation. The narcissist's self-esteem is not strong, however, because it is not based on genuine accomplishments. === Heinz Kohut === Heinz Kohut explored further the implications of Freud's perception of narcissism. He maintained that a child will tend to fantasize about having a grandiose self and ideal parents. He claimed that deep down, all people retain a belief in their own perfection and the perfection of anything they are part of. As a person matures, grandiosity gives way to self-esteem, and the idealization of the


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-0.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the history of Earth itself. In ancient times, Xenophanes (570–480 BC), Herodotus (484–425 BC), Eratosthenes (276–194 BC), and Strabo (64 BC–24 AD) wrote about fossils of marine organisms, indicating that land was once under water. The ancient Chinese considered them to be dragon bones and documented them as such. During the Middle Ages, fossils were discussed by Persian naturalist Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in Europe) in The Book of Healing (1027), which proposed a theory of petrifying fluids that Albert of Saxony would elaborate on in the 14th century. The Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) would propose a theory of climate change based on evidence from petrified bamboo. In early modern Europe, the systematic study of fossils emerged as an integral part of the changes in natural philosophy that occurred during the Age of Reason.


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-1.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
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parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
== Prior to the 17th century == A San cave painting dating to prior to 1835 may be inspired by dicynodont remains. As early as the 6th century BC, the Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon (570–480 BC) recognized that some fossil shells were remains of shellfish, which he used to argue that what was at the time dry land was once under the sea. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), in an unpublished notebook, also concluded that some fossil sea shells were the remains of shellfish. However, in both cases, the fossils were complete remains of shellfish species that closely resembled living species, and were therefore easy to classify. In 1027, the Persian naturalist Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in Europe), proposed an explanation of how the stoniness of fossils was caused in The Book of Healing. He modified an idea of Aristotle's, which explained it in terms of vaporous exhalations. Ibn Sina modified this into the theory of petrifying fluids (succus lapidificatus), which was elaborated on by Albert of Saxony in the 14th century and was accepted in some form by most naturalists by the 16th century. Shen Kuo (Chinese: 沈括; 1031–1095) of the Song dynasty used marine fossils found in


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-2.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
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parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
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=== Leonardo da Vinci and the development of paleontology === Leonardo da Vinci established a line of continuity between the two main branches of paleontology: body fossil palaeontology and ichnology. In fact, Leonardo dealt with both major classes of fossils: (1) body fossils, e.g. fossilized shells; (2) ichnofossils (also known as trace fossils), i.e. the fossilized products of life-substrate interactions (e.g. burrows and borings). In folios 8 to 10 of the Leicester code, Leonardo examined the subject of body fossils, tackling one of the vexing issues of his contemporaries: why do we find petrified seashells on mountains? Leonardo answered this question by correctly interpreting the biogenic nature of fossil mollusks and their sedimentary matrix. The interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci appears extraordinarily innovative as he surpassed three centuries of scientific debate on the nature of body fossils. Da Vinci took into consideration invertebrate ichnofossils to prove his ideas on the nature of fossil objects. To da Vinci, ichnofossils played a central role in demonstrating: (1) the organic nature of petrified shells and (2) the sedimentary origin of the rock layers bearing fossil objects. Da Vinci described what are bioerosion ichnofossils: The hills around Parma and Piacenza show abundant mollusks and


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-3.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
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parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
Hooke was prepared to accept the possibility that some such fossils represented species that had become extinct, possibly in past geological catastrophes. In 1667 Nicholas Steno wrote a paper about a shark head he had dissected. He compared the teeth of the shark with the common fossil objects known as "tongue stones" or glossopetrae. He concluded that the fossils must have been shark teeth. Steno then took an interest in the question of fossils, and to address some of the objections to their organic origin he began studying rock strata. The result of this work was published in 1669 as Forerunner to a Dissertation on a solid naturally enclosed in a solid. In this book, Steno drew a clear distinction between objects such as rock crystals that really were formed within rocks and those such as fossil shells and shark teeth that were formed outside of those rocks. Steno realized that certain kinds of rock had been formed by the successive deposition of horizontal layers of sediment and that fossils were the remains of living organisms that had become buried in that sediment. Steno who, like almost all 17th-century natural philosophers, believed that the earth was only a few thousand


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-4.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
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parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
The Smithsonian Libraries consider that the first edition of a work which laid the foundation to vertebrate paleontology was Georges Cuvier's Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes (Researches on quadruped fossil bones), published in France in 1812. Referring to the second edition of this work (1821), Cuvier's disciple and editor of the scientific publication Journal de physique Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville published in January 1822, in the Journal de physique, an article titled "Analyse des principaux travaux dans les sciences physiques, publiés dans l'année 1821" ("Analysis of the main works in the physical sciences, published in the year 1821"). In this article Blainville unveiled for the first time the printed word palæontologie which later gave the English word "paleontology". Blainville had already coined the term paléozoologie in 1817 to refer to the work Cuvier and others were doing to reconstruct extinct animals from fossil bones. However, Blainville began looking for a term that could refer to the study of both fossil animal and plant remains. After trying some unsuccessful alternatives, he hit on "palaeontologie" in 1822. Blainville's term for the study of the fossilized organisms quickly became popular and was anglicized into "paleontology". In 1828 Alexandre Brongniart's son,


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-5.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
In 1808, Cuvier identified a fossil found in Maastricht as a giant marine reptile that would later be named Mosasaurus. He also identified, from a drawing, another fossil found in Bavaria as a flying reptile and named it Pterodactylus. He speculated, based on the strata in which these fossils were found, that large reptiles had lived prior to what he was calling "the age of mammals". Cuvier's speculation would be supported by a series of finds that would be made in Great Britain over the course of the next two decades. Mary Anning, a professional fossil collector since age eleven, collected the fossils of a number of marine reptiles and prehistoric fish from the Jurassic marine strata at Lyme Regis. These included the first ichthyosaur skeleton to be recognized as such, which was collected in 1811, and the first two plesiosaur skeletons ever found in 1821 and 1823. Mary Anning was only 12 when she and her brother discovered the Ichthyosaurus skeleton. Many of her discoveries would be described scientifically by the geologists William Conybeare, Henry De la Beche, and William Buckland. It was Anning who observed that stony objects known as "bezoar stones" were often found in the abdominal


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-6.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
=== Transmutation of species and the fossil record === In the early 19th century Jean Baptiste Lamarck used fossils to argue for his theory of the transmutation of species. Fossil finds, and the emerging evidence that life had changed over time, fueled speculation on this topic during the next few decades. Robert Chambers used fossil evidence in his 1844 popular science book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which advocated an evolutionary origin for the cosmos as well as for life on earth. Like Lamarck's theory it maintained that life had progressed from the simple to the complex. These early evolutionary ideas were widely discussed in scientific circles but were not accepted into the scientific mainstream. Many of the critics of transmutational ideas used fossil evidence in their arguments. In the same paper that coined the term dinosaur Richard Owen pointed out that dinosaurs were at least as sophisticated and complex as modern reptiles, which he claimed contradicted transmutational theories. Hugh Miller would make a similar argument, pointing out that the fossil fish found in the Old Red Sandstone formation were fully as complex as any later fish, and not the primitive forms alleged by Vestiges. While these early


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-7.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
Charles Darwin's publication of the On the Origin of Species in 1859 was a watershed event in all the life sciences, especially paleontology. Fossils had played a role in the development of Darwin's theory. In particular he had been impressed by fossils he had collected in South America during the voyage of the Beagle of giant armadillos, giant sloths, and what at the time he thought were giant llamas that seemed to be related to species still living on the continent in modern times. The scientific debate that started immediately after the publication of Origin led to a concerted effort to look for transitional fossils and other evidence of evolution in the fossil record. There were two areas where early success attracted considerable public attention, the transition between reptiles and birds, and the evolution of the modern single-toed horse. In 1861 the first specimen of Archaeopteryx, an animal with both teeth and feathers and a mix of other reptilian and avian features, was discovered in a limestone quarry in Bavaria and described by Richard Owen. Another would be found in the late 1870s and put on display at the Natural History Museum, Berlin in 1881. Other primitive toothed birds were


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-8.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
Throughout the 20th century new fossil finds continued to contribute to understanding the paths taken by evolution. Examples include major taxonomic transitions such as finds in Greenland, starting in the 1930s (with more major finds in the 1980s), of fossils illustrating the evolution of tetrapods from fish, and fossils in China during the 1990s that shed light on the dinosaur-bird relationship. Other events that have attracted considerable attention have included the discovery of a series of fossils in Pakistan that have shed light on whale evolution, and most famously of all a series of finds throughout the 20th century in Africa (starting with Taung child in 1924) and elsewhere have helped illuminate the course of human evolution. Increasingly, at the end of the 20th century, the results of paleontology and molecular biology were being brought together to reveal detailed phylogenetic trees. The results of paleontology have also contributed to the development of evolutionary theory. In 1944 George Gaylord Simpson published Tempo and Mode in Evolution, which used quantitative analysis to show that the fossil record was consistent with the branching, non-directional, patterns predicted by the advocates of evolution driven by natural selection and genetic drift rather than the linear trends


id: history-of-paleontology-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology-9.md
category: reference
title: History of paleontology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:02.529558+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-paleontology-20260505-0
summary:
== References == Bowler, Peter J. (2003). Evolution: The History of an Idea. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23693-6. Bowler, Peter J. (1992). The Earth Encompassed: A History of the Environmental Sciences. W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-32080-0. Bowler, Peter J.; Iwan Rhys Morus (2005). Making Modern Science. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-06861-9. Desmond, Adrian (1975). "The Discovery of Marine Transgressions and the Explanation of Fossils in Antiquity". American Journal of Science, Volume 275. Larson, Edward J. (2004). Evolution: the remarkable history of scientific theory. Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-679-64288-6. McGowan, Christopher (2001). The Dragon Seekers. Persus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7382-0282-2. Everhart, Michael J. (2005). Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34547-9. Greene, Marjorie; David Depew (2004). The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-64371-9. Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Caves Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-253-34547-9. Robert Hooke (1665) Micrographia The Royal Society. Palmer, Douglas (2005) Earth Time: Exploring the Deep Past from Victorian England to the Grand Canyon. Wiley, Chichester. ISBN 978-0-470-02221-4 Rudwick, Martin J.S. (1997). Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes.


id: history-of-photography-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography-0.md
category: reference
title: History of photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:03.827937+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-photography-20260505-0
summary:
The history of photography began with the discovery of two critical principles: The first is camera obscura image projection; the second is the discovery that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. There are no artifacts or descriptions that indicate any attempt to capture images with light sensitive materials prior to the 18th century. Around 1717, Johann Heinrich Schulze used a light-sensitive slurry to capture images of cut-out letters on a bottle. However, he did not pursue making these results permanent. Around 1800, Thomas Wedgwood made the first reliably documented, although unsuccessful attempt at capturing camera images in permanent form. His experiments did produce detailed photograms, but Wedgwood and his associate Humphry Davy found no way to fix these images. In 1826, Nicéphore Niépce first managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera, but at least eight hours or even several days of exposure in the camera were required and the earliest results were very crude. Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced and commercially viable photographic process. The daguerreotype required only minutes of exposure in the camera, and produced clear, finely detailed results. On August 2,


id: history-of-photography-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography-1.md
category: reference
title: History of photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:03.827937+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-photography-20260505-0
summary:
=== Before 1700: Light-sensitive materials === The notion that light can affect various substances—for instance, the sun tanning of skin or fading of textile—must have been around since very early times. Ideas of fixing the images seen in mirrors or other ways of creating images automatically may also have been in people's minds long before anything like photography was developed. However, there seem to be no historical records of any ideas even remotely resembling photography before 1700, despite early knowledge of light-sensitive materials and the camera obscura. In 1614 Angelo Sala noted that sunlight will turn powdered silver nitrate black, and that paper wrapped around silver nitrate for a year will turn black. Wilhelm Homberg described how light darkened some chemicals in 1694. == 1700 to 1802: earliest concepts and fleeting photogram results == === Schulze's Scotophors: earliest fleeting letter photograms (circa 1717) === Around 1717, German polymath Johann Heinrich Schulze accidentally discovered that a slurry of chalk and nitric acid into which some silver particles had been dissolved was darkened by sunlight. After experiments with threads that had created lines on the bottled substance after he placed it in direct sunlight for a while, he applied stencils of words


id: history-of-photography-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography-2.md
category: reference
title: History of photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:03.827937+00:00
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parent: history-of-photography-20260505-0
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=== Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy: Fleeting detailed photograms (1790–1802) === English photographer and inventor Thomas Wedgwood is believed to have been the first person to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. He originally wanted to capture the images of a camera obscura, but found they were too faint to have an effect upon the silver nitrate solution that was recommended to him as a light-sensitive substance. Wedgwood did manage to copy painted glass plates and captured shadows on white leather, as well as on paper moistened with a silver nitrate solution. Attempts to preserve the results with their "distinct tints of brown or black, sensibly differing in intensity" failed. It is unclear when Wedgwood's experiments took place. He may have started before 1790; James Watt wrote a letter to Thomas Wedgwood's father Josiah Wedgwood to thank him "for your instructions as to the Silver Pictures, about which, when at home, I will make some experiments". This letter (now lost) is believed to have been written in 1790, 1791 or 1799. In 1802, an account by Humphry Davy detailing Wedgwood's experiments was published in an early journal of the


id: history-of-photography-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography-3.md
category: reference
title: History of photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:03.827937+00:00
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parent: history-of-photography-20260505-0
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Niépce died suddenly in 1833, leaving his notes to Daguerre. More interested in silver-based processes than Niépce had been, Daguerre experimented with photographing camera images directly onto a mirror-like silver-surfaced plate that had been fumed with iodine vapor, which reacted with the silver to form a coating of silver iodide. As with the bitumen process, the result appeared as a positive when it was suitably lit and viewed. Exposure times were still impractically long until Daguerre made the pivotal discovery that an invisibly slight or "latent" image produced on such a plate by a much shorter exposure could be "developed" to full visibility by mercury fumes. This brought the required exposure time down to a few minutes under optimum conditions. A strong hot solution of common salt served to stabilize or fix the image by removing the remaining silver iodide. On 7 January 1839, this first complete practical photographic process was announced at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, and the news quickly spread. At first, all details of the process were withheld and specimens were shown only at Daguerre's studio, under his close supervision, to Academy members and other distinguished guests. Arrangements were made for the French


id: history-of-photography-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography-4.md
category: reference
title: History of photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:03.827937+00:00
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parent: history-of-photography-20260505-0
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== 1850 to 1900 == In 1851, English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process. Photographer and children's author Lewis Carroll used this process. Carroll refers to the process as "Talbotype" in the story "A Photographer's Day Out". Herbert Bowyer Berkeley discovered that with his own addition of sulfite, to absorb the sulfur dioxide given off by the chemical dithionite in the developer, dithionite was not required in the developing process. In 1881, he published his discovery. Berkeley's formula contained pyrogallol, sulfite, and citric acid. Ammonia was added just before use to make the formula alkaline. The new formula was sold by the Platinotype Company in London as Sulphur-Pyrogallol Developer. Nineteenth-century experimentation with photographic processes frequently became proprietary. The German-born, New Orleans photographer Theodore Lilienthal successfully sought legal redress in an 1881 infringement case involving his "Lambert Process" in the Eastern District of Louisiana. == Popularization == The daguerreotype proved popular in response to the demand for portraiture that emerged from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution. This demand, which could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, added to the push for the development of photography. Roger Fenton and Philip Henry Delamotte helped


id: history-of-photography-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography-5.md
category: reference
title: History of photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:03.827937+00:00
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parent: history-of-photography-20260505-0
summary:
A practical means of color photography was sought from the very beginning. Results were demonstrated by Edmond Becquerel as early as the year of 1848, but exposures lasting for hours or days were required and the captured colors were so light-sensitive they would only bear very brief inspection in dim light. The first color photograph was a set of three black-and-white photographs taken through red, green, and blue color filters and shown superimposed by using three projectors with similar filters. It was taken by Thomas Sutton in 1861 for use in a lecture by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who had proposed the method in 1855. The photographic emulsions then in use were insensitive to most of the spectrum, so the result was very imperfect and the demonstration was soon forgotten. Maxwell's method is now most widely known through the early 20th century work of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii. It was made practical by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel's 1873 discovery of a way to make emulsions sensitive to the rest of the spectrum, gradually introduced into commercial use beginning in the mid-1880s. Two French inventors, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros, working unknown to each other during the 1860s, famously unveiled


id: history-of-photography-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography-6.md
category: reference
title: History of photography
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:03.827937+00:00
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parent: history-of-photography-20260505-0
summary:
1973 – Fairchild Semiconductor releases the first large image-capturing CCD chip: 100 rows and 100 columns. 1975 – Bryce Bayer of Kodak develops the Bayer filter mosaic pattern for CCD color image sensors 1986 – Kodak scientists develop the world's first megapixel sensor. The web has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published on the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes). Since then sites and apps such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Picasa (discontinued in 2016), Imgur, Photobucket and Snapchat have been used by many millions of people to share their pictures. == Gallery of historical photos == == See also == History of the camera History of Photography (academic journal) Albumen print History of photographic lens design Timeline of photography technology Outline of photography List of photographs considered the most important Photography by indigenous peoples of the Americas Women photographers Movie camera Instant film == References == == Further reading == Hannavy, John. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, 5 volumes Clerc, L.P. Photography Theory and Practice, being an English edition of "La Technique Photographique" Manitta, Guglielmo (2024). Storia e origini della fotografia.


id: history-of-physics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-0.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:05.139372+00:00
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parent: history-of-physics-20260505-0
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Physics is a branch of science in which the primary objects of study are matter and energy. These topics were discussed across many cultures in ancient times by philosophers, but they had no means to distinguish causes of natural phenomena from superstitions. The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, especially the discovery of the law of gravity, began a process of knowledge accumulation and specialization that gave rise to the field of physics. Mathematical advances of the 18th century gave rise to classical mechanics, and the increased used of the experimental method led to new understanding of thermodynamics. In the 19th century, the basic laws of electromagnetism and statistical mechanics were discovered. At the beginning of the 20th century, physics was transformed by the discoveries of quantum mechanics, relativity, and atomic theory. Physics today may be divided loosely into classical physics and modern physics. == Ancient history == Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields of astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which were methodologically united through the study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in antiquity with the Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy. Ancient philosophy, meanwhile, included what was called "Physics". ===


id: history-of-physics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-1.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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In the 3rd century BCE, the Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης (287–212 BCE) – generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time – laid the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and calculated the underlying mathematics of the lever. A scientist of classical antiquity, Archimedes also developed elaborate systems of pulleys to move large objects with a minimum of effort. The Archimedes' screw underpins modern hydroengineering, and his machines of war helped to hold back the armies of Rome in the First Punic War. Archimedes even tore apart the arguments of Aristotle and his metaphysics, pointing out that it was impossible to separate mathematics and nature and proved it by converting mathematical theories into practical inventions. Furthermore, in his work On Floating Bodies, around 250 BCE, Archimedes developed the law of buoyancy, also known as Archimedes' principle. In mathematics, Archimedes used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi. He also defined the spiral bearing his name, formulae for the volumes of surfaces of revolution and an ingenious system for


id: history-of-physics-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-2.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:05.139372+00:00
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parent: history-of-physics-20260505-0
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In the 7th to 15th centuries, scientific progress occurred in the Muslim world. Many classic works in Indian, Assyrian, Sassanian (Persian) and Greek, including the works of Aristotle, were translated into Arabic. Important contributions were made by Ibn al-Haytham (965–1040), an Arab or Persian scientist, considered to be a founder of modern optics. Ptolemy and Aristotle theorised that light either shone from the eye to illuminate objects or that "forms" emanated from objects themselves, whereas al-Haytham (known by the Latin name "Alhazen") suggested that light travels to the eye in rays from different points on an object. The works of Ibn al-Haytham and al-Biruni (973–1050), a Persian scientist, eventually passed on to Western Europe where they were studied by scholars such as Roger Bacon and Vitello. Ibn al-Haytham used controlled experiments in his work on optics, although to what extent it differed from Ptolemy is debated. Arabic mechanics like Bīrūnī and Al-Khazini developed sophisticated "science of weight", carrying out measurements of specific weights and volumes. Ibn Sīnā (980–1037), known as "Avicenna", was a polymath from Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan) responsible for important contributions to physics, optics, philosophy and medicine. He published his theory of motion in Book of Healing (1020),


id: history-of-physics-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-3.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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== Scientific Revolution == During the 16th and 17th centuries, a large advancement of scientific progress known as the Scientific Revolution took place in Europe. Dissatisfaction with older philosophical approaches had begun earlier and had produced other changes in society, such as the Protestant Reformation, but the revolution in science began when natural philosophers began to mount a sustained attack on the Scholastic philosophical programme and supposed that mathematical descriptive schemes adopted from such fields as mechanics and astronomy could actually yield universally valid characterizations of motion and other concepts. === Nicolaus Copernicus === A breakthrough in astronomy was made by Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) when, in 1543, he gave strong arguments for the heliocentric model of the Solar System, ostensibly as a means to render tables charting planetary motion more accurate and to simplify their production. In heliocentric models of the Solar system, the Earth orbits the Sun along with other bodies in Earth's galaxy, a contradiction according to the Greek-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (2nd century CE; see above), whose system placed the Earth at the center of the Universe and had been accepted for over 1,400 years. The Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 – c. 230


id: history-of-physics-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-4.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and a key figure in the 17th century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science. Kepler was partly driven by his belief that there is an intelligible plan that is accessible through reason. Kepler described his new astronomy as "celestial physics", as "an excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics", and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the Heavens", treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics. === René Descartes === The French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) was well-connected to, and influential within, experimental philosophy networks. Descartes had an agenda, however, which was geared toward replacing the Scholastic philosophical tradition. Questioning the reality interpreted through the senses, Descartes sought to re-establish philosophical explanations by reducing all phenomena to the motion of an invisible sea of "corpuscles". (Notably, he reserved human thought and God from his scheme, holding these


id: history-of-physics-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-5.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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The Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer and inventor Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) was the leading scientist in Europe between Galileo and Newton. Huygens came from a family of nobility that had an important position in the Dutch society of the 17th century; a time in which the Dutch Republic flourished economically and culturally. This period – roughly between 1588 and 1702 – of the history of the Netherlands is also referred to as the Dutch Golden Age, an era during the Scientific Revolution when Dutch science was among the most acclaimed in Europe. At this time, intellectuals and scientists like René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Pierre Bayle, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, John Locke and Hugo Grotius resided in the Netherlands. It was in this intellectual environment that Christiaan Huygens grew up. Christiaan's father, Constantijn Huygens, was, apart from an important poet, the secretary and diplomat for the Princes of Orange. He knew many scientists of his time because of his contacts and intellectual interests, including René Descartes and Marin Mersenne, and it was because of these contacts that Christiaan Huygens became aware of their work, especially Descartes, whose mechanistic philosophy was going to have a huge influence on Huygens' own work. Descartes was later


id: history-of-physics-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-6.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:05.139372+00:00
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parent: history-of-physics-20260505-0
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Newton's principles (but not his mathematical treatments) proved controversial with Continental philosophers, who found his lack of metaphysical explanation for movement and gravitation philosophically unacceptable. Beginning around 1700, a bitter rift opened between the Continental and British philosophical traditions, which were stoked by heated, ongoing, and viciously personal disputes between the followers of Newton and Leibniz concerning priority over the analytical techniques of calculus, which each had developed independently. Initially, the Cartesian and Leibnizian traditions prevailed on the Continent (leading to the dominance of the Leibnizian calculus notation everywhere except Britain). Newton himself remained privately disturbed at the lack of a philosophical understanding of gravitation while insisting in his writings that none was necessary to infer its reality. As the 18th century progressed, Continental natural philosophers increasingly accepted the Newtonians' willingness to forgo ontological metaphysical explanations for mathematically described motions. Newton built the first functioning reflecting telescope and developed a theory of color, published in Opticks, based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours forming the visible spectrum. While Newton explained light as being composed of tiny particles, a rival theory of light which explained its behavior in terms of waves was presented in


id: history-of-physics-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-7.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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A precursor of the engine was designed by the German scientist Otto von Guericke who, in 1650, designed and built the world's first vacuum pump to create a vacuum as demonstrated in the Magdeburg hemispheres experiment. He was driven to make a vacuum to disprove Aristotle's long-held supposition that 'Nature abhors a vacuum'. Shortly thereafter, Irish physicist and chemist Boyle had learned of Guericke's designs and in 1656, in coordination with English scientist Robert Hooke, built an air pump. Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed the pressure-volume correlation for a gas: PV = k, where P is pressure, V is volume and k is a constant: this relationship is known as Boyle's law. In that time, air was assumed to be a system of motionless particles, and not interpreted as a system of moving molecules. The concept of thermal motion came two centuries later. Therefore, Boyle's publication in 1660 speaks about a mechanical concept: the air spring. Later, after the invention of the thermometer, the property temperature could be quantified. This tool gave Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac the opportunity to derive his law, which led shortly later to the ideal gas law. But, already before the establishment of the ideal


id: history-of-physics-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-8.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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In 1714, Brook Taylor derived the fundamental frequency of a stretched vibrating string in terms of its tension and mass per unit length by solving a differential equation. The Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) made important mathematical studies of the behavior of gases, anticipating the kinetic theory of gases developed more than a century later, and has been referred to as the first mathematical physicist. In 1733, Daniel Bernoulli derived the fundamental frequency and harmonics of a hanging chain by solving a differential equation. In 1734, Bernoulli solved the differential equation for the vibrations of an elastic bar clamped at one end. Bernoulli's treatment of fluid dynamics and his examination of fluid flow was introduced in his 1738 work Hydrodynamica. Rational mechanics dealt primarily with the development of elaborate mathematical treatments of observed motions, using Newtonian principles as a basis, and emphasized improving the tractability of complex calculations and developing of legitimate means of analytical approximation. A representative contemporary textbook was published by Johann Baptiste Horvath. By the end of the century analytical treatments were rigorous enough to verify the stability of the Solar System solely on the basis of Newton's laws without reference to divine intervention – even as


id: history-of-physics-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-9.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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During the 18th century, thermodynamics was developed through the theories of weightless "imponderable fluids", such as heat ("caloric"), electricity, and phlogiston (which was rapidly overthrown as a concept following Antoine Lavoisier's identification of oxygen gas late in the century). Assuming that these concepts were real fluids, their flow could be traced through a mechanical apparatus or chemical reactions. This tradition of experimentation led to the development of new kinds of experimental apparatus, such as the Leyden jar; and new kinds of measuring instruments, such as the calorimeter, and improved versions of old ones, such as the thermometer. Experiments also produced new concepts, such as the University of Glasgow experimenter Joseph Black's notion of latent heat and Philadelphia intellectual Benjamin Franklin's characterization of electrical fluid as flowing between places of excess and deficit (a concept later reinterpreted in terms of positive and negative charges). Franklin also showed that lightning is electricity in 1752. The accepted theory of heat in the 18th century viewed it as a kind of fluid, called caloric; although this theory was later shown to be erroneous, a number of scientists adhering to it nevertheless made important discoveries useful in developing the modern theory, including Joseph Black (1728–1799)


id: history-of-physics-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-10.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:05.139372+00:00
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parent: history-of-physics-20260505-0
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In the 19th century, the connection between heat and mechanical energy was established quantitatively by Julius Robert von Mayer and James Prescott Joule, who measured the mechanical equivalent of heat in the 1840s. In 1849, Joule published results from his series of experiments (including the paddlewheel experiment) which show that heat is a form of energy, a fact that was accepted in the 1850s. The relation between heat and energy was important for the development of steam engines, and in 1824 the experimental and theoretical work of Sadi Carnot was published. Carnot captured some of the ideas of thermodynamics in his discussion of the efficiency of an idealized engine. Sadi Carnot's work provided a basis for the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics – a restatement of the law of conservation of energy – which was stated around 1850 by William Thomson, later known as Lord Kelvin, and Rudolf Clausius. Lord Kelvin, who had extended the concept of absolute zero from gases to all substances in 1848, drew upon the engineering theory of Lazare Carnot, Sadi Carnot, and Émile Clapeyron as well as the experimentation of James Prescott Joule on the interchangeability of mechanical, chemical, thermal, and electrical forms


id: history-of-physics-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-11.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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At the end of the 19th century, physics had evolved to the point at which classical mechanics could cope with highly complex problems involving macroscopic situations; thermodynamics and kinetic theory were well established; geometrical and physical optics could be understood in terms of electromagnetic waves; and the conservation laws for energy and momentum (and mass) were widely accepted. So profound were these and other developments that it was generally accepted that all the important laws of physics had been discovered and that, henceforth, research would be concerned with clearing up minor problems and particularly with improvements of method and measurement. However, around 1900 serious doubts arose about the completeness of the classical theories – the triumph of Maxwell's theories, for example, was undermined by inadequacies that had already begun to appear – and their inability to explain certain physical phenomena, such as the energy distribution in blackbody radiation and the photoelectric effect, while some of the theoretical formulations led to paradoxes when pushed to the limit. Prominent physicists such as Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Cohn, Ernst Wiechert and Wilhelm Wien believed that some modification of Maxwell's equations might provide the basis for all physical laws. These shortcomings of classical physics were


id: history-of-physics-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-12.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
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==== Special relativity ==== Einstein argued that the speed of light was a constant in all inertial reference frames and that electromagnetic laws should remain valid independent of reference frame – assertions which rendered the ether "superfluous" to physical theory, and that held that observations of time and length varied relative to how the observer was moving with respect to the object being measured (what came to be called the "special theory of relativity"). It also followed that mass and energy were interchangeable quantities according to the equation E=mc2. In another paper published the same year, Einstein asserted that electromagnetic radiation was transmitted in discrete quantities ("quanta"), according to a constant that the theoretical physicist Max Planck had posited in 1900 to arrive at an accurate theory for the distribution of blackbody radiation – an assumption that explained the strange properties of the photoelectric effect. The special theory of relativity is a formulation of the relationship between physical observations and the concepts of space and time. The theory arose out of contradictions between electromagnetism and Newtonian mechanics and had great impact on both those areas. The original historical issue was whether it was meaningful to discuss the electromagnetic wave-carrying "ether"


id: history-of-physics-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-13.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:05.139372+00:00
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parent: history-of-physics-20260505-0
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Although relativity resolved the electromagnetic phenomena conflict demonstrated by Michelson and Morley, a second theoretical problem was the explanation of the distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body; experiment showed that at shorter wavelengths, toward the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, the energy approached zero, but classical theory predicted it should become infinite. This glaring discrepancy, known as the ultraviolet catastrophe, was solved by the new theory of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the theory of atoms and subatomic systems. Approximately the first 30 years of the 20th century represent the time of the conception and evolution of the theory. The basic ideas of quantum theory were introduced in 1900 by Max Planck (1858–1947), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918 for his discovery of the quantified nature of energy. The quantum theory (which previously relied in the "correspondence" at large scales between the quantized world of the atom and the continuities of the "classical" world) was accepted when the Compton Effect established that light carries momentum and can scatter off particles, and when Louis de Broglie asserted that matter can be seen as behaving as a wave in much the same way as electromagnetic


id: history-of-physics-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-14.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:05.139372+00:00
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parent: history-of-physics-20260505-0
summary:
the invention of the laser (1964 Nobel Prize in Physics); the theoretical and experimental research of superconductivity, especially the invention of a quantum theory of superconductivity by Vitaly Ginzburg and Lev Landau (1962 Nobel Prize in Physics) and, later, its explanation via Cooper pairs (1972 Nobel Prize in Physics). The Cooper pair was an early example of quasiparticles. === Unified field theories === Einstein deemed that all fundamental interactions in nature can be explained in a single theory. Unified field theories were numerous attempts to "merge" several interactions. One of many formulations of such theories (as well as field theories in general) is a gauge theory, a generalization of the idea of symmetry. Eventually the Standard Model (see below) succeeded in unification of strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions. All attempts to unify gravitation with something else failed. === Particle physics and the Standard Model === When parity was broken in weak interactions by Chien-Shiung Wu in her experiment, a series of discoveries were created thereafter. The interaction of these particles by scattering and decay provided a key to new fundamental quantum theories. Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'eman brought some order to these new particles by classifying them according to certain


id: history-of-physics-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics-15.md
category: reference
title: History of physics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:05.139372+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-physics-20260505-0
summary:
"This is a big moment for particle physics and a crossroads – will this be the high water mark or will it be the first of many discoveries that point us toward solving the really big questions that we have posed?" Peter Higgs was one of six physicists, working in three independent groups, who, in 1964, invented the notion of the Higgs field ("cosmic molasses"). The others were Tom Kibble of Imperial College, London; Carl Hagen of the University of Rochester; Gerald Guralnik of Brown University; and François Englert and Robert Brout, both of Université libre de Bruxelles. Although they have never been seen, Higgslike fields play an important role in theories of the universe and in string theory. Under certain conditions, according to the strange accounting of Einsteinian physics, they can become suffused with energy that exerts an antigravitational force. Such fields have been proposed as the source of an enormous burst of expansion, known as inflation, early in the universe and, possibly, as the secret of the dark energy that now seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe. === Physical sciences === With increased accessibility to and elaboration upon advanced analytical techniques in the 19th century,


id: history-of-political-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_science-0.md
category: reference
title: History of political science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:06.422366+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-political-science-20260505-0
summary:
While the term "political science" as a separate field is a rather late arrival in terms of social sciences, analyzing political power and the impact that it had on history has been occurring for centuries. However, the term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy, and the modern discipline has a clear set of antecedents including moral philosophy, political economy, political theology, history, and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the realist political state and the ideal state. == Western == === Ancient === The antecedents of Western politics can be traced back to the Socratic political philosophers, such as Aristotle ("The Father of Political Science") (384–322 BC). Aristotle was one of the first people to give a working definition of political science. He believed that it was a powerful branch of science, and that it held special authority over other branches, such as military science. Political philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle began to analyze political thought in a way that placed more significance on the scientific aspect of political science, which was contrary to how it was portrayed by the Greek philosophers that


id: history-of-political-science-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_science-1.md
category: reference
title: History of political science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:06.422366+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-political-science-20260505-0
summary:
=== Renaissance === During the Italian Renaissance, Niccolò Machiavelli established the emphasis of modern political science on direct empirical observation of political institutions and actors. In his treatise, The Prince, Machiavelli famously posited that at certain times in a prince's reign, controversial means should be considered if they help establish a prince royal authority. Machiavelli therefore also argues against the use of idealistic models in politics, and has been described as the father of the "politics model" of political science. In this work he expounds on how one should proceed in establishing and running a republic. However, some similar themes from The Prince can even be found in the Discourses as well. Later, the expansion of the scientific paradigm during the Enlightenment further pushed the study of politics beyond normative determinations. === Enlightenment === The works of the French philosophers Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot to name a few are paragon for political analysis, social science, social and political critic. Their influence leading to the French revolution has been enormous in the development of modern democracy throughout the world. Thomas Hobbes, well known for his theory of the social contract, believed that a strong central power, such as a monarchy, was necessary


id: history-of-political-science-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_science-2.md
category: reference
title: History of political science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_political_science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T06:41:06.422366+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: history-of-political-science-20260505-0
summary:
==== Canada ==== Canadian universities until the 1950s were led by British trained scholars for whom political science was not a high priority. Canadians favoured the study of political economy. After 1950 younger scholars increasingly took American PhDs and Canadian departments promoted behavioralism and quantification. ==== Europe ==== Political science operates on a smaller scale in European universities compared to American ones. Traditionally political studies were handled by law professors or professors of philosophy. American impulses toward behavioralism have made the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) is a unifying force. It sponsors several scholarly journals including European Political Science (EPS) (since 2001), European Journal of Political Research (EJPR) and European Political Science Review (EPSR). ==== Soviet Union ==== In the Soviet Union, political studies were carried out under the guise of some other disciplines like theory of state and law, area studies, international relations, studies of labor movement, "critique of bourgeois theories", etc. Soviet scholars were represented at the International Political Science Association (IPSA) since 1955 (since 1960 by the Soviet Association of Political and State Studies). In 1979, the 11th World Congress of IPSA took place in Moscow. Until the late years of the Soviet Union, political science


