Science Marches On!

The Real History of Science

Science has been the most spectacular success story of human endeavour. It is the most reliable way of gaining an increasingly accurate view of our physical universe. Science has led us from the darkness of fear and superstition into the sunshine of testable knowledge. Look how far we have come. What wonders await us in the future?

Science, like everything else, began with the Greeks who were very selfish and wanted to invent everything before relaxing for three thousand years. I don’t blame them. They must have been exhausted. Shortly after Democritus created the universe by inventing atoms, they were off. Pythagoras invented the triangle which came in handy for the Egyptians and their pyramid projects. Before Pythagoras, Egyptian ‘pyramids’ were mostly shapeless heaps of stones piled with abandon one upon another. Eratosthenes demonstrated the Earth was round by measuring shadows down a well. He even calculated a surprisingly accurate circumference. Map makers, who could only draw on flat papyrus sheets naturally objected and the knowledge was hidden and then lost as the pants it was hidden in were inadvertently sent to the dry cleaners. Aristotle invented everything else although most of it was wrong.

After the Greeks, Science took a few hundred years off to recuperate. Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and replaced it with the sun. Of course, this made lots of people angry since they had to reprint all their stationery with new addresses. Galileo used the newly discovered telescope, which up to that point had only been used to peek into ladies’ dressing rooms, to gaze at the sky. He discovered the moons of Jupiter and craters on the moon. For some reason, this convinced him Copernicus was right. The Pope disagreed and in the spirit of polite intellectual discourse threatened Galileo with torture and had him confined to house arrest for the rest of his life. Six hundred years later another Pope apologised to Galileo but Galileo was unimpressed and busy as he was with being dead.

Then came Isaac Newton who invented everything else worthwhile and used up all the science for the next four hundred years. Among his inventions were light, gravity, apples, waves, calculus and rainbows. He also invented his three laws of motion of which most people vaguely remember one.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, scientists were despondent believing that Newton had ruined everything by discovering all there was to know. Albert Einstein happily showed Newton to be incorrect about some things and the game was on again. Einstein discovered that time was elastic and depended on whether you were at the dentist or the movies. Einstein discovered twins could be tricky and should never be separated on rocket voyages. Black holes showed up but nobody is really sure when since they were invisible.

Meanwhile, Charles Darwin invented apes and discovered that we belonged to that family of creatures and were nothing special. The other apes were not amused by this and demonstrated their displeasure by becoming extinct whenever they could.

Now, scientists continue to be busy at work, inventing and discovering, and pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge by publishing papers in journals nobody reads and teaching undergraduates who want to know how this will help them become millionaires.

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