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Period: 624 BCE to 548 BCE
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus (624-548 BC) was the first. Thales, observing nature, predicted well in advance a great harvest of olives and monopolized crushers, becoming rich. This introduces one of the aspects of science: the ability to make predictions.
Despite its ability to make predictions, he died of a sunstroke, for being obliged to remain without a hat in the sun, during the Olympic Games. -
Period: 384 BCE to 322 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle laid the foundation of formal logic identifying in syllogism the typical form of the deductive process. -
Period: 287 BCE to 212 BCE
Archimedes
The study of his works committed scholars of the early modern age, including Galileo himself, and was an important stimulus for modern scientific renaissance. -
Period: Mar 9, 1214 to Mar 9, 1274
Roger Bacon
Our knowledge arise from our intellect does not receive inductively from experience.
Roger Bacon, re-evaluated the importance of experimentation against tradition. -
Period: Mar 9, 1225 to 1274 BCE
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas, gave a further contribution to the scientific method of formulating a conception of truth as correspondence between the intellect and the object:
According to Thomas, must not be determined by subjective factors; the truth is true in itself, it is absolute and does not depend on anything else.
These features of the truth are recognized as such by our reason, that does not learn from the outside world, subject to the changes of temporality, but finds them already within itself. -
Period: Mar 9, 1452 to Mar 9, 1519
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo anticipated some aspects of the methodology that was later conceived in 1600 by Galilei: for example in his engineering projects, his machines, his drawings of the human body, the studies on perspective.
In particular, Leonardo stated the importance of two factors:
empirical testing: you must put concept and ideas to the test;
mathematical proof, as a logical rigor guarantee.
According to Leonardo, in fact, every phenomenon in nature occurs according to rational laws. -
Period: to
Kant
The late eighteenth century was the central role of Kant: according to Kant our knowledge comes not from experience, but is a priori.
In nostrointelletto there are some categories that are activated only when they receive information to be processed, and justify the character of universality, necessity, and objectivity that we give to science; conversely, without these features, you do not have true knowledge. -
Period: to
Einstein
The early twentieth century, Einstein revolutionized the scientific method.
He formulated the theory of relativity, starting from experiments or empirical observations, but based on mathematical reasoning and rational analysis made at the table.
The predictions made by the theory were not contradicted by measurements of Arthur Eddington during a solar eclipse in 1919, which confirmed as the light emanating from a star was deflected by the Sun's gravity when it passed close to it. -
Period: to
Karl Popper
The same criterion has been repeatedly adopted in the discovery of particles predicted theoretically, and not subsequently denied by various scientific experiments.
Following the theories of Einstein, philosophers have sought new arguments and an important contribution came from Karl Popper. Popper rejects the inductive approach of logical positivism, says that a scientific method, to be such, must be strictly deductive, and reiterates that knowledge is an essentially critical process. -
Period: to
Francis Bacon
Contemporary of Galileo was Francis Bacon. Bacon tried to build a rigorous method (the Organum) by which to avoid bias (the idols) that hinder the real perception of the phenomena of nature.