Merit Ptah -was an early physician in ancient Egypt. She is most notable for being the first woman known by name in the history of the field of medicine, and possibly the first named woman in all of science as well. Her picture can be seen on a tomb in the necropolis near the step pyramid of Saqqara. Her son, who was a High Priest, described her as "the Chief Physician."
Aglaonike -also known as Aganice of Thessaly is cited as the first female astronomer in ancient Greece. She is mentioned in the writings of Plutarch and Apollonuis of Rhodes as the daughter of Hegetor of Thesally. She was regarded as a sorceress for her ability to make the moon disappear from the sky, which has been taken to mean she could predict the time and general area where a lunar eclipse would occur.
Theano -was a Pythagorean philosopher. She was said by many to have been the wife of Pythagoras although others made her the wife of Brontinus. A few fragments and letters ascribed to her have survived which are of uncertain authorship. She is believed by some historians to have been a student of Pythagoras and later a teacher in the Pythagorean school, which had 28 female Pythagoreans participating in it
Maria the Jewess -or Maria Prophetissima, Maria Prophetissa, Mary Prophetissa, Miriam the Prophetess is estimated to have lived anywhere between the first and third centuries A.D. She is attributed with the invention of several chemical apparatus, is considered to be the first non fictitious alchemist in the Western world, an early pioneer in chemistry (or alchemy), and one of the most famed women in science ever.
Hypatia-born between AD 350 and 370; died March 415 was a Greek scholar from Alexandria, Egypt. Considered the first notable woman in mathematics who also taught philosophy and astronomy.
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Margaret Cavendish- Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Grounds of Natural Philosophy.
Maria Winkelmann- A German astronomer, Maria was taught by her father and uncle, who believed that she deserved the equivalent education bestowed upon boys. Her interest in astronomy was nurtured and she studied with self-taught astronomer and farmer Christopher Arnold, for whom she eventually worked. Through Arnold, Maria developed a relationship with renowned astronomer and mathematician Gottfried Kirch. Despite being 30 years her senior, they married and raised four children who all grew up to study astronomy with their parents.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet- (17 December 1706, Paris – 10 September 1749, Luneville) was a French mathematician, physician and author during the Age of Enlightenment. Her crowning achievement is considered to be her translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica published in 1759, ten years after her death, hers is still the standard translation in French.
Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze- was a French chemist. She is most commonly known as the spouse of Antoine Lavoisier (Madame Lavoisier) but many do not know of her accomplishments in the field of chemistry: she acted as the laboratory assistant of her spouse and contributed to his work.
Caroline Lucretia Herschel - (16 March 1750 – 9 January 1848) was a British astronomer the sister of astronomer Sir Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel with whom she worked throughout both of their careers. Her most significant contribution to astronomy was the discovery of several comets and in particular the periodic comet 35P/Herschel-Rigollet, which bears her name. At the age of ten, Caroline was struck with Typhus, a bacterial disease spread by lice or fleas. This disease stunted Caroline’s growth and she never grew past four foot three. Due to this deformation, her family assumed that she would never marry and that it was best for her to remain a house servant, which her mother trained her to do until her father’s passing. Her father, Isaac believed that she was not pretty enough to ever marry and that was true, however she accomplished much more in life than marriage and bearing children.
19TH cANTURY
Mary Fairfax Somerville- (26 December 1780 – 28 November 1872) was a Scottish science writer and polymath, at a time when women's participation in science was discouraged. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was the second woman scientist to receive recognition in the United Kingdom after Caroline Herschel.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace- (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), bornAugusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; as such she is regarded as the world's first computer programmer.
Catherine Elizabeth Benson- was the first woman to earn a college bachelor's degree.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin- (May 10, 1900 – December 7, 1979) was an English-American astronomer who in 1925 was first to show that the Sun is mainly composed of hydrogen contradicting accepted wisdom at the time.Payne then studied stars of high luminosity in order to understand the structure of the Milky way. Later, with her husband, she surveyed all the stars brighter than the tenth magnitude. She then studied variable stars, making over 1,250,000 observations with her assistants. This work later was extended to the Magellanic Clouds, adding a further 2,000,000 observations of variable stars. This data was used to determine the paths of stellar evolution.
Medicine-the science of diagnosing and treating or preventing disease and damage the body or mind.
Medical Advancement
HPV Vaccine-The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine may prevent infection with certain species of human papillomavirus associated with the development of cervical cancer, genital warts and some less common cancers.
Robot doing surgeries-increased the ability of cancer surgeons to get clean margins and good magnification of the sutures.
Face transplant surgeries-People with faces disfigured by trauma, burns, disease, or birth defects might benefit from the procedure.
MRI & rTMS-
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), is primarily a noninvasive medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize detailed internal structure and limited function of the body. MRI provides much greater contrast between the different soft tissues of the body than computed tomography (CT) does, making it especially useful in neurological (brain), musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, and oncological (cancer) imaging.
repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), has been tested as a treatment tool for various neurological and psychiatric disorders including migraines,strokes, Parkinson's disease, dystonia, tinnitus, depression and auditory hallucinations.
New drugs treating for cancer:
Herceptin
Gleevec
Stem cell research -
Stem cells are cells found in all multi cellular organisms. They are characterized by the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and differentiate into a diverse range of specialized cell types.
human embryonic stem cells
IT among Dr's. and patients-made life safer for the patients and physicians have answers in a matter of seconds.
Human genome discoveries - genes can now be use in screening diseases.
Radioactive Isotopes- atoms in an unstable for:
Breast cancer - brachytheraphy
Liver cancer - microsphere brachytheraphy
Alzheimer's disease by:
SPECT-Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT, or less commonly, SPET) is a nuclear medicine tomographic imaging technique using gamma rays. It is very similar to conventional nuclear medicine planar imaging using a gamma camera. However, it is able to provide true 3D information. This information is typically presented as cross-sectional slices through the patient, but can be freely reformatted or manipulated as required.
PET(Positron Emission Tomography)is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which produces a three-dimensional image or picture of functional processes in the body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide(tracer), which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule. Images of tracer concentration in 3-dimensional or 4-dimensional space (the 4th dimension being time) within the body are then reconstructed by computer analysis. In modern scanners, this reconstruction is often accomplished with the aid of a CT X-ray scan performed on the patient during the same session, in the same machine.
HIV-Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (a member of the retrovirus family) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS),[1][2] a condition in humans in which theimmune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections. Infection with HIV occurs by the transfer of blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculate, or breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells. The four major routes of transmission are unsafe sex, contaminated needles, breast milk, and transmission from an infected mother to her baby at birth (perinatal transmission). Screening of blood products for HIV has largely eliminated transmission through blood transfusions or infected blood products in the developed world.
1900-1910-power of experimentation was demonstrated 1928- antibacterial agent was discovered Gregor Mendel- proposed the Law of heredity X-ray crystallography- method of determining the arrangement of an atom within the crystal
Chemistry – is the science of the nature of the matter and its transformation. It is also the science of matter that deals with the composition structure and prosperities of substances and the transformations that they undergo.
Branches
Organic chemistry – scientific study of the structures, properties, compositions, reactions and preparations of carbon-based compounds, hydrocarbons and their derivatives.
Inorganic chemistry – concerned with the properties and behavior of inorganic compounds.
Biochemistry – study of chemical processes in living organisms.
Electrochemistry – study of chemical reactions which takes place in a conductor with involves electron transfer.
Geochemistry – study of chemical changes on the Earth.
Analytical chemistry – is the study of preparation, identification and quantification of the chemical components of natural and artificial materials.
Discoveries
Fire – a mystical force that could transform one substance into another while producing heat and fire. A chemical reaction which is first use in chemical manner.
Metallurgy – methods of purification of metals.
Gold – known in early Egypt as early as 2600 B.C. it becomes a precious metal.
Alloy – heralded the Bronze Age. Become a better armor and weapons.
Alchemy - change base metals into gold, investigating the preparation of the "elixir of longevity", and achieving ultimate wisdom, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties.
Atomism: Atom is the most indivisible part of matter.
Periodic table - is a tabular display of the chemical elements. Its invention is generally credited to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. The periodic table is now ubiquitous within the academic discipline of chemistry providing a useful framework to classify, systematize, and compare all of the many different forms of chemical behavior. The table has found many applications in chemistry,physics, biology and engineering, especially chemical engineering. The current standard table contains 118 elements to date. (elements 1 - 118)
Scientific Method- refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
Contributors:
Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr – atomic structure
Marie and Pierre Curie – radioactivity
James Watson and Francis Crick – DNA model
Rosalind Franklin – x ray diffraction
George de Hevesy – first to use radioactive atoms
Chemical Industry
extracting metals from ores
making pottery and glazes
fermenting beer and wine
making pigments for cosmetics and painting
extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume
The 20th century has been a remarkable period for astronomers with no signs that they have stopped making fascinating new discoveries or that they yet solved all the universe many puzzle.
Henry Norris Russell
Showed that all the stars are going through a life cycle of birth, maturity and old age.
Harlow Shapley
Used variable stars as yardstick to give the first good estimate of the enormous size of our own galaxy, the milky way.
Edwin Powell Hubble
Showed the same nebulas faint and cloudy spots visible through telescope are actually extremely distant "island universe".
Abbe George Lamaitre
Has theorized that the big bang theory is the origin of the universe.
Hans Bethe
Proposed the existence of series of nuclear reaction that takes place in the sun and in many other stars.
RADIO ASTRONOMY
New field of science opened up the Karl Iansky and Grote Reber.
RADIO SIGNALS
Received from distant stars and galaxies and from mysterious object called Quasars.
RADIO WAVES
A type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum longer than infrared light.
20th century technology developed rapidly communication technology transportation technology, broad teaching and implementation of scientific method and increase research spending all contributed to the advancement of modern science and technology.
20th Century's most contributors
Pierre Duhem
Hydrodynamics - is the study of liquid in motion specifically it looks at the ways different effect the movements of liquid.
Thermodynamics - physics with the relationship and conversion between heat and other forms of energy.
Rudolf Carnap
Logic
Analysis
Theory of probability
Karl Popper
Falsifiability - is the logical possibility than an assertion could be shown false for the particular observation or physical experiments.
Scientific method
Tomas Kuhn
Paradigm Shifs or "Revolutionary Science" - is the term used by influential book " The structure Of Scientific Revolution " describe a change in basis assumption within the ruling theory of Science.
Werner Hiesenberg
Quantum Mechanics - is the set of scientific principles describing the known behavior of energy and matter that predominate at the atomic and sub-atomic scales.
20th Century Timeline
1900 Zeppeline - invented by Thomas Suillivan Neon Light - George Claude E=mc2 - Albert Einstein Radio - !st radio Receiver
1910 Crossword - invented puzzle by Wyne Pop-up toaster - by strite Gas mask - Morgon
1920 Robot - artificial life Penicillin - Flemming Begin
The last half of the nineteenth century was a period which experienced rapid progress in science and technology.
There were important breakthroughs in:
iron and steel technology,
electricity,
weapons,
physics and chemistry
sociology, psychology and biology
There were numerous applications such as:
ocean liners with steel hulls,
skyscrapers, suspension bridges,
electric trolley cars, the first subway, central power stations
In the study of physics, there was a much improved understanding of the nature of matter :
Dalton, an English schoolmaster, postulated a theory in which the atom was conceived as being a tiny billiard ball. Material of the same atom were elements. Material combining different elements were compounds. Dalton theorized that elements always combined in fixed ratios into compounds, as for example, in water, two atoms of hydrogen always combined with one atom of oxygen. Atoms were the smallest indestructible parts of matter.
Mendeleev began to develop the table of elements which helped in the discovery of new elements.
In the last decade of the century, the discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie, and the electron by Becquerel as well as observation of radioactivity in the laboratory, challenged Dalton's theory.
Einstein produced the theory of the conversion of mass into energy, E=mC(2), which was confirmed by laboratory observations.
A new theory of the atom was devised by the English physicist Rutherford in 1913. He conceived of the atom as consisting of a hard nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons.
The theoretical foundations for a whole host of new inventions in electronics and nuclear power was laid. In the field of social sciences, the study of Sociology was conceived by Auguste Comte, who wrote of a heirarchy of knowledge:
Each level of knowledge was said to be more sophisticated than the preceding level.
In Psychology, Sigmund Freud looked for explanations for individual human behavior beyond the rational level. He understood people to be motivated by a superego (a conscience), an ego (the rational mind), and an id (subconscious motivation). In Biology, Charles Darwin developed his Theory of evolution. Traveling on a long voyage on the Beagle, he had the opportunity to observe great varieties of different species of life, some of which did not exist in England. He kept voluminous records which he later used to develop his theory.
During the Renaissance, great advances occurred in geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, math, manufacturing, and engineering. The rediscovery of ancient scientific texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention of printing which would democratize learning and allow a faster propagation of new ideas. But, at least in its initial period, some see the Renaissance as one of scientific backwardness. Historians like George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have criticized how the Renaissance affected science, arguing that progress was slowed for some amount of time. Humanists favored human-centered subjects like politics and history over study of natural philosophy or applied mathematics. Others have focused on the positive influence of the Renaissance, pointing to factors like the rediscovery of lost or obscure texts and the increased emphasis on the study of language and the correct reading of texts.
Marie Boas Hall coined the term Scientific Renaissance to designate the early phase of the Scientific Revolution. More recently, Peter Dear has argued for a two-phase model of early modern science: a Scientific Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, focused on the restoration of the natural knowledge of the ancients; and a Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, when scientists shifted from recovery to innovation.
During and after the Renaissance of the 12th century, Europe experienced an intellectual revitalization, especially with regard to the investigation of the natural world. In the 14th century, however, a series of events that would come to be known as the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was underway. When the Black Death came, it brought a sudden end to the previous period of massive scientific change. The plague killed 25–50% of the people in Europe, especially in the crowded conditions of the towns, where the heart of innovations lay. Recurrences of the plague and other disasters caused a continuing decline of population for a century.
The Renaissance
The 14th century saw the beginning of the cultural movement of the Renaissance. The rediscovery of ancient texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople, in 1453, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West, particularly Italy. Also, the invention of printing was to have great effect on European society: the facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. But this initial period is usually seen as one of scientific backwardness. There were no new developments in physics or astronomy, and the reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion. At the same time, Humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation that was not governed by laws or mathematics. Science would only be revived later, with such figures as Copernicus, Francis Bacon, and Descartes.
Important developments
Alchemy Alchemy is the study of the transmutation of materials through obscure processes. It is sometimes described as an early form of chemistry. One of the main aims of alchemists was to find a method of transmuting lead to gold. A common belief of alchemists was that there is an essential substance from which all other substances formed, and that if you could reduce a substance to this original material, you could then construct it into another substance, like lead to gold. Medieval alchemists worked with two main elements, sulphur and mercury. Paracelsus was an alchemist and physician of the Renaissance. The Paracelsians added a third element, salt, to make a trinity of alchemical elements.
Astronomy
The astronomy of the late Middle Ages was based on the geocentric model described by Claudius Ptolemy in antiquity. Probably very few practicing astronomers or astrologers actually read Ptolemy's Almagest, which had been translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century. Instead they relied on introductions to the Ptolemaic system such as the De sphaera mundi of Johannes de Sacrobosco and the genre of textbooks known as Theorica planetarum. For the task of predicting planetary motions they turned to the Alfonsine Tables, a set of astronomical tables based on the Almagest models but incorporating some later modifications, mainly the trepidation model attributed to Thabit ibn Qurra. Contrary to popular belief, astronomers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance did not resort to "epicycles on epicycles" in order to correct the original Ptolemaic models—until one comes to Copernicus himself. Sometime around 1450, mathematician Georg Purbach (1423–1461) began a series of lectures on astronomy at the University of Vienna. Regiomontanus (1436–1476), who was then one of his students, collected his notes on the lecture and later published them as Theoricae novae planetarum in the 1470s. This "New Theorica" replaced the older theorica as the textbook of advanced astronomy. Purbach also began to prepare a summary and commentary on the Almagest. He died after completing only six books, however, and Regiomontanus continued the task, consulting a Greek manuscript brought from Constantinople by Cardinal Bessarion. When it was published in 1496, the Epitome of the Almagest made the highest levels of Ptolemaic astronomy widely accessible to many European astronomers for the first time. The last major event in Renaissance astronomy is the work of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). He was among the first generation of astronomers to be trained with the Theoricae novae and the Epitome. Shortly before 1514 he began to explore a shocking new idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He spent the rest of his life attempting a mathematical proof of heliocentrism. When De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was finally published in 1543, Copernicus was on his deathbed. A comparison of his work with the Almagest shows that Copernicus was in many ways a Renaissance scientist rather than a revolutionary, because he followed Ptolemy's methods and even his order of presentation. In astronomy, the Renaissance of science can be said to have ended with the truly novel works of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642).
Latin translation of the main works of ancient philosophers and thinkers
Grosseteste (oxford franciscan School)
Aristotle dual path of reasoning (resolution and comparison)
Late Medieval Age
William of Occam ( principle of parsimony)
Jean Buridan ( most brilliant art master of MA ), theory of Imperatus
Thomas Bradwardine ( Instantaneous Velocity )
Nicole Oresme ( optics )
FURTHER EXPLANATION ABOUT MIDDLE AGES
Scientific activities were carried on throughout the Middle Ages in areas as diverse as astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. Whereas the ancient cultures of the world (i.e. those prior to the fall of Rome and the dawn of Islam) had developed many of the foundations of science, it was during the Middle Ages that the scientific method was born. The historical term "Middle Ages" developed within the context of European historiography, yet the "Greco-Arabic-Latin" science and natural philosophy of the Middle Ages has been described as "a triumph of three civilizations."
In the Middle Ages the Byzantine Empire, which had inherited the sophisticated science, mathematics, and medicine of classical antiquity and the Hellenistic era, soon fell behind the achievements of Western Europe and the Islamic world. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of ancient learning. However, a range of Christian clerics and scholars from Isidore and Bede to Buridan and Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry which would later lead to Europe's taking the lead in science during the Scientific Revolution.
Science, and particularly geometry and astronomy, was linked directly to the divine for most medieval scholars. Since God created the universe after geometric and harmonic principles, to seek these principles was therefore to seek and worship God.
As Roman imperial authority effectively ended in the West during the 5th century, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production dramatically. Most classical scientific treatises of classical antiquity written in Greek were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. Nonetheless, Roman and early medieval scientific texts were read and studied, contributing to the understanding of nature as a coherent system functioning under divinely established laws that could be comprehended in the light of reason. This study continued through the Early Middle Ages, and with the Renaissance of the 12th century, interest in this study was revitalized through the translation of Greek and Arabic scientific texts. Scientific study further developed within the emerging medieval universities, where these texts were studied and elaborated, leading to new insights into the phenomena of the universe. These advances are virtually unknown to the lay public of today, partly because most theories advanced in medieval science are today obsolete, and partly because of the caricature of Middle Ages as a supposedly "Dark Age" which placed "the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity."
Early Middle Ages (AD 476-1000)
In the ancient world, Greek had been the primary language of science. Even under the Roman Empire, Latin texts drew extensively on Greek work, some pre-Roman, some contemporary; while advanced scientific research and teaching continued to be carried on in the Hellenistic side of the empire, in Greek. Late Roman attempts to translate Greek writings into Latin had limited success.
As the knowledge of Greek declined during the transition to the Middle Ages, the Latin West found itself cut off from its Greek philosophical and scientific roots. Most scientific inquiry came to be based on information gleaned from sources which were often incomplete and posed serious problems of interpretation. Latin-speakers who wanted to learn about science only had access to books by such Roman writers as Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and later Latin encyclopedists. Much had to be gleaned from non-scientific sources: Roman surveying manuals were read for what geometry was included.
Deurbanization reduced the scope of education and by the sixth century teaching and learning moved to monastic and cathedral schools, with the center of education being the study of the Bible. Education of the laity survived modestly in Italy, Spain, and the southern part of Gaul, where Roman influences were most long-lasting. In the seventh century, learning began to emerge in Ireland and the Celtic lands, where Latin was a foreign language and Latin texts were eagerly studied and taught.
In the Early Middle Ages, scientific study was concentrated at monasteries
The leading scholars of the early centuries were clergymen for whom the study of nature was but a small part of their interest. They lived in an atmosphere which provided little institutional support for the disinterested study of natural phenomena. The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons than as an abstract inquiry: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs, [10] the need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars, the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach rudimentary mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon. Modern readers may find it disconcerting that sometimes the same works discuss both the technical details of natural phenomena and their symbolic significance. [13]
Around 800, Charles the Great, assisted by the English monk Alcuin of York, undertook what has become known as the Carolingian Renaissance, a program of cultural revitalization and educational reform. The chief scientific aspect of Charlemagne's educational reform concerned the study and teaching of astronomy, both as a practical art that clerics required to compute the date of Easter and as a theoretical discipline. [14] From the year 787 on, decrees were issued recommending the restoration of old schools and the founding of new ones throughout the empire. Institutionally, these new schools were either under the responsibility of a monastery, a cathedral or a noble court.
The scientific work of the period after Charlemagne was not so much concerned with original investigation as it was with the active study and investigation of ancient Roman scientific texts. This investigation paved the way for the later effort of Western scholars to recover and translate ancient Greek texts in philosophy and the sciences.
Beginning around the year 1050, European scholars built upon their existing knowledge by seeking out ancient learning in Greek and Arabic texts which they translated into Latin. They encountered a wide range of classical Greek texts, some of which had earlier been translated into Arabic, accompanied by commentaries and independent works by Islamic thinkers.
Gerard of Cremona is a good example: an Italian who came to Spain to copy a single text, he stayed on to translate some seventy works. [16] His biography describes how he came to Toledo: "He was trained from childhood at centers of philosophical study and had come to a knowledge of all that was known to the Latins; but for love of the Almagest, which he could not find at all among the Latins, he went to Toledo; there, seeing the abundance of books in Arabic on every subject and regretting the poverty of the Latins in these things, he learned the Arabic language, in order to be able to translate."
This period also saw the birth of medieval universities, which benefited materially from the translated texts and provided a new infrastructure for scientific communities. Some of these new universities were registered as an institution of international excellence by the Holy Roman Empire, receiving the title of Studium Generale. Most of the early Studia Generali were found in Italy, France, England, and Spain, and these were considered the most prestigious places of learning in Europe. This list quickly grew as new universities were founded throughout Europe. As early as the 13th century, scholars from a Studium Generale were encouraged to give lecture courses at other institutes across Europe and to share documents, and this led to the current academic culture seen in modern European universities.
Scholastics believed in empiricism and supporting Roman Catholic doctrines through secular study, reason, and logic. The most famous was Thomas Aquinas (later declared a "Doctor of the Church"), who led the move away from the Platonic and Augustinian and towards Aristotelianism (although natural philosophy was not his main concern). Meanwhile, precursors of the modern scientific method can be seen already in Grosseteste's emphasis on mathematics as a way to understand nature and in the empirical approach admired by Roger Bacon.
Grosseteste was the founder of the famous Oxford franciscan school. He built his work on Aristotle's vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning. Concluding from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again: from universal laws to prediction of particulars. Grosseteste called this "resolution and composition". Further, Grosseteste said that both paths should be verified through experimentation in order to verify the principals. These ideas established a tradition that carried forward to Padua and Galileo Galilei in the 17th century.
Under the tuition of Grosseteste and inspired by the writings of Arab alchemists who had preserved and built upon Aristotle's portrait of induction, Bacon described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. He recorded the manner in which he conducted his experiments in precise detail so that others could reproduce and independently test his results - a cornerstone of the scientific method, and a continuation of the work of researchers like Al Battani.
Bacon and Grosseteste conducted investigations into optics, although much of it was similar to what was being done at the time by Arab scholars. Bacon did make a major contribution to the development of science in medieval Europe by writing to the Pope to encourage the study of natural science in university courses and compiling several volumes recording the state of scientific knowledge in many fields at the time. He described the possible construction of a telescope, but there is no strong evidence of his having made one.
Late Middle Ages (AD 1300-1500)
The first half of the 14th century saw the scientific work of great thinkers. The logic studies by William of Occam led him to postulate a specific formulation of the principle of parsimony, known today as Occam's Razor. This principle is one of the main heuristics used by modern science to select between two or more underdetermined theories.
As Western scholars became more aware (and more accepting) of controversial scientific treatises of the Byzantine and Islamic Empires these readings sparked new insights and speculation. The works of the early Byzantine scholar John Philoponus inspired Western scholars such as Jean Buridan to question the received wisdom of Aristotle's mechanics. Buridan developed the theory of impetus which was a step towards the modern concept of inertia. Buridan anticipated Isaac Newton when he wrote:
Galileo's demonstration of the law of the space traversed in case of uniformly varied motion. It's the same demonstration that Oresme had made centuries earlier.
...after leaving the arm of the thrower, the projectile would be moved by an impetus given to it by the thrower and would continue to be moved as long as the impetus remained stronger than the resistance, and would be of infinite duration were it not diminished and corrupted by a contrary force resisting it or by something inclining it to a contrary motion
Thomas Bradwardine and his partners, the Oxford Calculators of Merton College, Oxford, distinguished kinematics from dynamics, emphasizing kinematics, and investigating instantaneous velocity. They formulated the mean speed theorem: a body moving with constant velocity travels distance and time equal to an accelerated body whose velocity is half the final speed of the accelerated body. They also demonstrated this theorem—essence of "The Law of Falling Bodies" -- long before Galileo is credited with this.
In his turn, Nicole Oresme showed that the reasons proposed by the physics of Aristotle against the movement of the earth were not valid and adduced the argument of simplicity for the theory that the earth moves, and not the heavens. Despite this argument in favor of the Earth's motion Oresme, fell back on the commonly held opinion that "everyone maintains, and I think myself, that the heavens do move and not the earth."
The historian of science Ronald Numbers notes that the modern scientific assumption of methodological naturalism can be also traced back to the work of these medieval thinkers:
By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosopher’s search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us."
