• Question: Where did the topic \'Science\' come from?

    Asked by bluebutterfly97 to timcraggs, Mark, Jo, Donna on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by georgia.
    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Science stemmed from philosophy (I think).
      Thinkers wondered what would happen if… then others came along and said let’s try it and see. These same people (and the philosophers) looked at what happended and interpretted the results. Basically that is still what we do today in research!

      Hypothesis – experiment- analyse results – new hypothesis – and so on…

    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Hiya Bluebutterfly97. Ah, now this was in a pub quiz a while back!

      It comes from the latin ‘scientia’ which means knowledge and understanding.

      I didn’t get the answer right in the quiz… but more importantly, I rememberd it for your question 🙂

    • Photo: Mark Lancaster

      Mark Lancaster answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      As a name and explicit field of study it was quite late – into the 1800s – prior to that e.g. Newton science was generally referred to as Natural or Experimental Philosophy. It was Kepler, Newton and Galileo that heralded in the scientific era but as a common term it’s probably only been around about 150 years.

    • Photo: Tim Craggs

      Tim Craggs answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      What a good question! The word science actually just means knowledge, and people have been in the pursuit of knowledge, well ever since there have been people! Even only as far back as Isaac Newton, scientists were known as Natural Philosophers – they tried to understand the world around them by testing it using experiments. But science of a sort is evident way before this. Alchemists tried to turn lead into gold (without much success it must be said). But the fist recorded genetic engineering (well breeding at least!) experiment was carried out in Old Testament times by Jacob the son of another Isaac who was the son of Abraham. (You’ll find it in the book Genesis!)

      SO science has been with us a very long time!

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