Nature of Science (History)

Plato (429 BC – 347 BC)

400 BCE

Plato believed that reality is divided into two parts: the ideal and the phenomena. The ideal is the perfect reality of existence. The phenomena are the physical world that we experience; it is a flawed echo of the perfect, ideal model that exists outside of space and time.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

335 BCE

Aristotle's philosophy stresses biology, instead of mathematics like Plato. He believed the world was made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each individual has built-in patterns of development, which help it grow toward becoming a fully developed individual of its kind.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

1514

Nicolaus Copernicus was a mathematician and astronomer who proposed that the sun was stationary in the center of the universe and the earth revolved around it.
The Copernicus's heliocentric idea is considered the first revolution in human consciousness.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

1595

Johannes Kepler is best known for his three laws of planetary motion. These laws are: Planets move in orbits shaped like an ellipse. A line between a planet and the Sun covers equal areas in equal times.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

1600

Francis Bacon strove to create a new outline for the sciences, with a focus on empirical scientific methods—methods that depended on tangible proof—while developing the basis of applied science. Unlike the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato, Bacon's approach placed an emphasis on experimentation and interaction, culminating in "the commerce of the mind with things."

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

1633

In 1633, the Inquisition forced Galileo Galilei to recant his theories. Unless he recanted, he would be tried with death. He then told everyone publicly that the Earth stood motionless at the center of the universe. He was required to have house arrest for the remainder of his life.

René Descartes (1596-1650)

1644

Descartes' dualism of mind and matter implied a concept of human beings. A human was, according to Descartes, a composite entity of mind and body. Descartes gave priority to the mind and argued that the mind could exist without the body, but the body could not exist without the mind.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

1670

Spinoza's most famous and provocative idea is that God is not the creator of the world, but that the world is part of God. This is often identified as pantheism, the doctrine that God and the world are the same thing – which conflicts with both Jewish and Christian teachings.

Issac Newton (1643-1727)

1687

In 1687, Issac Newton published the Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It explained the law of gravity and other workings of the universe. It was one of the most important events during the Scientific Revolution, and it remains as the basis of astronomy and modern times physics.

John Locke (1632-1704)

1690

In 1690, John Locke published the Two Treatises of Government. In this book, Locke established a form of government with limited power. He and Thomas Hobbes set forth ideas that were very important during this age.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

1751

In 1751, Denis Diderot began publication on his work Encyclopédie. Although critics and the government were not happy about this, and tried to stop him. When it was later translated into different languages, it really helped spread Enlightenment ideas.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

1762

In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote The Social Contract. He wrote his ideas about government and society. Rousseau influenced many types of thinkers throughout the years.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

1788

"Critique of Practical Reason" is about moral philosophy and is considered one of the most influential pieces about the subject.It is the groundwork of his thoughts on metaphysical laws governing moral experience. The book is Kant's fundamental philosophical work, which brought scientist reputation as one of the outstanding thinkers of the XVIII century and has had a huge impact on the further development of world philosophy

Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

1800

At the core of Hegel's social and political thought are the concepts of freedom, reason, self-consciousness, and recognition.
Hegel believed that we do not perceive the world or anything in it directly and that all our minds have access to is ideas of the world—images, perceptions, concepts.
Hegel's "speculative identity thesis," inherited from Schelling, is the core of Hegel's philosophical method and identifies a fundamental relationship between life and self-consciousness.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

1859

Charles Darwin proposed the theory of biological evolution by natural selection. Darwin defined evolution as "descent with modification," the idea that species change over time, give rise to new species, and share a common ancestor.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

1905

Sigmund Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind, and a primary assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs behavior to a greater degree than people suspect. Indeed, the goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious.

Alan Turing (1912-1954)

1936

Turing devised a machine to compute using real numbers that were not necessarily computable, and in so doing provided a model for computation relative to embodied information.

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)

1950

“Life cannot wait until the sciences may have explained the universe scientifically. We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, "here and now" without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.”

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

1960

Piaget believed that children develop through a continuous drive to learn and adapt schemas, which are mental templates that help them understand things. His ideas still have a considerable impact on child psychology and approaches to education.

Michael Polanyi (1891-1976)

1966

Central to Michael Polanyi’s thinking was the belief that creative acts (especially acts of discovery) are shot-through or charged with strong personal feelings and commitments (hence the title of his most famous work Personal Knowledge). Arguing against the then dominant position that science was somehow value-free, Michael Polanyi sought to bring into creative tension a concern with reasoned and critical interrogation with other, more ‘tacit’, forms of knowing.

Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

1980

Image result for Seymour Papert the main ideas briefly Papert built on Piaget's theory of constructivism with a learning theory of his own: constructionism. It proposed that the best way to ensure that knowledge is built in the learner is through actively constructing something shareable — a poem, program, model, or idea.

Don Ihde (Born: 1934)

1997

Don Ihde developed a new perspective on technology: a perspective that wants to get closer into contact with concrete technologies. Classical philosophy of technology tended to reify 'Technology', treating it as a monolithic force.

Bruno Latour (1947-2022)

2020

French sociologist and anthropologist is known for his innovative and iconoclastic work in the study of science and technology in society.
Latour believed that if scientists were transparent about how science really functions — as a process in which people, politics, institutions, peer review, and so forth all play their parts — they would be in a stronger position to convince people of their claims.