An Introduction to the History of Science

Education is the oversight and guidance of the development of the immature with certain ethical and social ends in view. Pedagogy, therefore, is based partly on psychology--whic...

In the history of science war is no mere interruption, but a great stimulating influence, promoting directly or indirectly the liberties of the people, calling into play the ene...

Sir Charles Lyell, in his _Principles of Geology_, the first edition of which appeared in 1830-1833, says: "If it be true that delivery be the first, second, and third requisite...

Of the Fellows of the Royal Society, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is the most representative of that age of enlightenment which had its origin in Newton's _Principia_. Franklin...

No sooner did the Greeks turn their attention to the sciences which had originated in Egypt and Babylonia than the characteristic intellectual quality of the Hellenic genius rev...

In the middle of the eighteenth century, when Lambert and Kant were recognizing system and design in the heavens, little progress had been made toward discovering the constituti...

The period from 1637 to 1687 affords a good illustration of the value for the progress of science of the coöperation in the pursuit of truth of men of different creeds, national...

Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was born in Cornwall, a part of England known for its very mild climate and the combined beauty and majesty of its scenery. On either side of the penins...

Learning has very often and very aptly been compared to a torch passed from hand to hand. By the written sign or spoken word it is transmitted from one person to another. Very l...

If you consult encyclopedias and special works in reference to the early history of any one of the sciences,--astronomy, geology, geometry, physiology, logic, or political scien...

The previous chapter has given some indication of the range of the material which was demanding scientific investigation at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the sev...

The preceding chapter has shown that there is a continuity in the development of single sciences. The astronomy, or the chemistry, or the mathematics, of one period depends so d...

In his laudation of the nineteenth century Alfred Russel Wallace ventured to enumerate the chief inventions of that period: (1) Railways; (2) steam navigation; (3) electric tele...

Hutton had advanced the study of geology by concentrating attention on the observable phenomena of the earth's crust, and turning away from speculations about the origin of the...

Considering the value for clearness of thought of counting, measuring and weighing, it is not surprising to find that in the seventeenth century, and even at the end of the sixt...

Vitruvius was a cultured engineer and architect. He was employed in the service of the Roman State at the time of Augustus, shortly before the beginning of the Christian era. He...

Under this heading we have to consider a single illustration--the prediction, and the discovery, in 1846, of the planet Neptune. This event roused great enthusiasm among scienti...

The view expressed by Franklin regarding the existence of a fiery mass underlying the crust of the earth was not in his time universally accepted. In fact, it was a question ver...

Psychology, or the science of mental life as revealed in behavior, has been greatly indebted to physiologists and to students of medicine in general. Any attempt to catalogue th...

The untrained mind, reliant on so-called facts and distrustful of mere theory, inclines to think of truth as fixed rather than progressive, static rather than dynamic. It longs...