TOPIC 1: HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The history of science can really be called the history of curiosity, survival, problems and more.

ANCIENT AGE

➢ Sumerian

 Ancient Wheel. People from ancient civilizations used animals for transportation long before the invention
of the wheel. No one knows exactly who invented the wheel and when. There is, however, a general
agreement that the ancient wheel grew out of mechanical device called the potter’s wheel- a heavy flat
disk made of hardened clay which was spun horizontally on an axis. It is believed that the Sumerians
invented the potter’s wheel shortly about 3500 BC.

 Sailboats

 Cuneiform

 Lunar Calendar

 Plow

 Established 12 months based on their lunar calendar

➢ Babylonians

 Excellent at math particularly algebra but poor in geometry.

 Astronomy – Moon oriented especially about eclipses

 Medicine and surgery – empirical later used astrology

➢ Africans
 Metallurgy, engineering, textile production, medicine
 Bow (verha or uta)
 Arrows (matlhari or miseve)
 Knives (mukwanga or banga)

➢ Indians
 early application of city planning and sanitation technologies.
 Cites in the Indus valley offer some of the first examples of closed gutters, public baths, and communal
granaries.
 forefront of seafaring technology - ship construction
 construction and architecture suggest an understanding of materials engineering, hydrology, and
sanitation.
 pioneering in the use of vegetable dyes.
 The use of perfumes demonstrates some knowledge of chemistry, particularly distillation and purification
processes.
 Cataract Surgery and plastic surgery
➢ Egyptians

 Excellent at Geometry but poor in arithmetic and math.

 Astronomy – primitive but excellent calendars trying to reconcile solar and lunar cycles, established 365
days year and 24 hours day.

 invented and used many simple machines, such as the ramp to aid construction processes.

 first to extract gold by large-scale mining using fire-setting, and the first recognizable map.

 Egyptian paper, made from papyrus, and pottery

 Shadoof
  Wig and cosmetics

 Great sphinx

 Established 365 days, with 5 or 6 extra “epagomenal” days added at the end.

➢ Chinese

 early seismological detectors, Four Great Inventions of China

 matches, paper,  compass,
 gunpowder,
 the wheelbarrow,
 papermaking
 the suspension bridge,  printing

 the parachute,

 natural gas as fuel,

 the propeller,

 the crossbow,

 the paddle wheel boat,

 Porcelain

 Silk

 Abacus

 Acupuncture

➢ Ancient Rome
 Roads
 Bridges
 Concrete
 Aqua Appia ( an aqueduct built by Appius Claudius Caecus)
 Colosseum
 Pantheon
 Ballista

➢ Aegean /Greeks
 DEMOCRITUS OF ABDERA(AROUND 460-370 BC.)
- Student of Leucippus who developed five major points that their atomic theory was based upon.

Point #1 - All matter is made up of undividable particles called atoms.

Point #2 - There is a void, which is empty space between atoms.

Point #3 - Atoms are completely solid.

Point #4 - Atoms are homogeneous, with no internal structure.

Point #5 - Atoms vary in sizes.

 ARISTOTLE
- Contradicted the idea of Leucippus and Democritus and supported the concept of Empedocles with an
additional concept of “qualities” – heat, cold, dryness, moisture – as basic elements (Element Theory)
- Emphasized natural philosophy based on observation & systematic logic.
- Disproved Earth was flat
- Materials Are made of the same materials but of varying amounts.
- System of classification of living things based on their share features

Some of the Ideas of Aristotle corrected in later time.

 Copernicus and Kepler established that the earth orbits the sun – Aristotle was wrong when he said the sun
orbits the earth.
  Galileo discovered satellites orbiting Jupiter, proving that everything in the heavens does not orbit the earth –
Aristotle was wrong when he said everything in the heavens orbits the earth.
 Galileo’s telescope clearly showed mountains and craters on the moon, proving that the moon is far from perfect
– Aristotle was wrong when he said the heavens were perfect.
 Galileo’s experiments proved that the rate at which something falls to earth does not depend on its mass –
Aristotle was wrong when he said heavier objects fell to the earth faster than lighter ones.
 Galileo discovered that things keep moving in a straight line at uniform speed unless a force causes them to do
otherwise. Aristotle was wrong when he said things only keep moving if you keep applying a force to them.

 PTOLEMY
- Created a better Geocentric Model
- Wrote the almagest (Astronomy book)
- Religion and Aristotle’s physics are guesswork: only mathematical proof provides certainty.
- The earth is stationary

Science stagnated during the Middle Ages

 Middle Ages (Dark Ages in Europe) – 478 AD – 1400 AD (Renaissance)
 Greek decline cutting off Greek Philosophical and scientific roots
 Scientific inquires based incomplete sources
 Monastic/cathedral school centered on the Bible
 1200, Latin translations of Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Archimedes and Galen
 1348 – Black Death ended one – third of the population in Europe.
 Inventions were trebuchet, dane axe, nedieval compass, crossbow

RENAISSANCE
The Scientific Revolution develops as an offshoot of the Renaissance. The same questioning spirit that fueled the
Renaissance led scientists to question traditional beliefs and the Church about the workings of the universe. It was a new
way of thinking about the natural world.

➢ Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)

 A mathematician who could read Greek and used Ptolemy’s data to plot the orbits.
 Declared “In the center of it all rests the Sun” – this overthrew the hierarchy of the ancient and medieval
Cosmos
 Proposed the heliocentric theory.
 He took as the basic starting points of his theory:
 • The earth is not the center of the universe.
• The center of the universe is near the sun.
• The Earth-Sun distance is negligible compared to the distance to the stars.
• Earth’s rotation accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars.
• The apparent annual cycle of movements of the sun is caused by the earth orbiting it.
• The apparent retrograde motion of the planets is caused by the motion of the Earth from which one
observes the planets.

➢ Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has
intended us to avoid their use.”
 Considered the father of experimental science
 Gravity accelerates all objects equally, whatever their mass.
 Discovered the principle of inertia
  Was the first person to study the sky with a telescope.
 Discovered Jupiter’s moon- Galilean Satellites
 Discovered that Venus has phases like the moon, ranging from a thin crescent to full.
 Discovered the rings of Saturn
 Discovered our moon has mountains.
 Discovered that the Milky Way is made up of stars
 Known to discover planet Neptune but thought it’s a star.

➢ Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

 Father of Modern Western Philosophy
 Promoted science grounded in observation and experiment
 Created a mechanistic view of nature
 Coined the term “Molecule”
 Never accept anything as true until all reasons for doubt can be ruled out.
 Divide problems into as many parts as possible and necessary to provide an adequate solution.
 Thoughts should be ordered, starting with the simplest and easiest to know, ascending little by little, and,
step by step, to more complex knowledge.
 Make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that nothing is omitted.
 Connected algebra and geometry

➢ Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727)

 Law of Universal Gravitation
 Laws of Motion
 Corpuscular Theory
 Calculus – the mathematics of change
 Wrote “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Matimatica
 built the world’s first working reflecting telescope.
 showed that the tides are caused by gravitational interactions between the earth, the moon and the sun.

➢ Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

 1844 - Proposed the theory of evolution (Origin of the Species)
 1858 – Darwin’s friends arranged for the simultaneous publication of Wallace and Darwin’s Natural
Selection
 1889 – Wallace published his book on natural selection which he called Darwinism.

Creationism Vs Darwin
 God is absolute creator of all  World due to evolution
 God is constantly involve in creation  Organism evolve from simpler
 6 days of creation forms
 Survival of the fittest

➢ Jean Baptiste Lamarck

 Lamarck started his scientific career as a botanist, but in 1793 he became one of the founding
professors of the Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle as an expert on invertebrates. His work on
classifying worms, spiders, molluscs, and other boneless creatures was far ahead of his time.

➢ Edwin Hubble (1889 – 1953)

 1925 discover galaxies through a telescope and change the way we look at our universe.
 Demonstrated that universe are expanding (one of the most cosmological discoveries ever made)
 Hubble’s Law – galaxies are moving away from the Milky Way at a speed directly proportional to
their distance from it.
➢ Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
 provided powerful evidence that atoms and molecules actually exist
 explained the photoelectric effect, proposing that light came in bundles. Bundles of light (he called
them quanta) with the correct amount of energy can eject electrons from metals.
 Proved that the measure of the speed of light to be 300 million meters per second in a vacuum.
This led to the strange new reality that time passes more slowly for people traveling at very high
speeds compared with people moving more slowly.
 E = mc2 - which showed that energy and matter can be converted into one another.
 rewrote the law of gravitation, which had been unchallenged since Isaac Newton published it in
1687. In his General Theory of Relativity, Einstein:
» showed that matter causes space to curve, which produces gravity.
» showed that the path of light follows the gravitational curve of space.
» showed that time passes more slowly when gravity becomes very strong.
FILIPINO SCIENTIST / INVENTORS

Alfredo C. Santos
- renowned Filipino chemist, researched on medicinal properties of chemicals found in indigenous
plants.
- Pioneer of phytochemistry
Julian A. Banzon
- Biochemist most noted for his work on renewable sources of chemicals and fuels from indigenous
products.
- He was first to document the derivation of ethyl esters from coconut and sugarcane as alternative
fuel sources.

Solita Camara-Besa
- Filipina Biochemist
- Focused her research on understanding the Filipino diet and nutrition patterns.
- Her research focused on the potassium and sodium contents of various Filipino foods to
formulate healthy dietary standards.
Baldomero M. Olivera
- Best known for his discovery of a snail toxin that can be used as a painkiller for patients who
become tolerant to morphine.
Abelardo Aguilar
- Discovered erythromycin that is currently used as an antibiotic for patients allergic to penicillin.
Eduardo San Juan
- Conceptualized the design of the Moon Buggy or Lunar Rover
Diosdado Banatao
- Best known for improving the speed at which computers work by introducing the single-chip
graphical user interface accelerator.
- He also helped develop the Ethernet controller chip that made the internet possible.

Give sample Philippine products using indigenous technologies

Fermented food
- Kesong puti, patis, banana catsup and fermented fish
Alcoholic Beverages
- Labanog, rice wine, tuba
Transportation vehicles
- Jeep, vinta, balangay, Delta Mini Cruiser
Medicine
- Medicinal plants (ampalaya, lagundi, and sagbong) and erythromycin
Weapons
- Balisong, marine scout sniper rifle, personal defense weapon