HOW SCIENCE CHANGED THE
WORLD AGAINST THE ODDS
Dr. Shirin Haque
Physics Department
University of the West Indies
St Augustine, Trinidad
Welcome!
When you think science...
Natural philosophy
• The philosophy of nature was the study of
nature and the physical universe that was
dominant before the development of modern
science.
• It is considered to be the precursor of natural
sciences such as physics.
The key to a world of opportunities
“The thinker”
See...but don’t touch
Our impressive capacity to comprehend that
which we cannot touch or directly measure –
by the subtlest of clues, and with a little help
from Mathematics and Physics – the universe
reveals its secrets and mysteries on the
grandest scales...the outer space.
A man travels the world over in search of
what he needs and returns home to find
it.
~George Moore
The human brain and genetics
The questions
and answers
come from
inner space….
How did we get here??
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Once upon a millenia…
out of Africa
50,000 year old Siberian girl
• replica of a tiny finger bone from Denisova
Cave yielded an entire genome.
1955
Nomads, hunters, gatherers
Changing times....
Millions of years
10,000 yr 100yr 20yr
Hunter-gatherers agricultural industrial informat.
The silk route
By land and sea
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is
the mysterious. It is the source of all true art
and all science." - Albert Einstein
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How and why did the universe begin?
Are we descended from apes?
Could a computer have a mind?
Are we alone in the universe?
Does philosophy or science have all the big
answers?
• Are we special?
The thinkers...
Copernican demotion
Science's habit of delivering humiliating
disappointment to those who think that our
planet is special.
It is not all about us!
Demotion continues…
• Anthropologists reported that apes could
make tools
• paleontologists told us that our brains are
possibly smaller than those of Neanderthals
• even within our own species, relative brain
size had been shrinking, not growing, over the
past 10,000 years.
No stopping…
When the genome was sequenced at the turn
of this century, and the genes counted, it
transpired that we have the same number of
genes as a ……...?
A Copernican promotion at last?
• More genes seem to be active in the human frontal
lobe, especially those involved in letting brain cells
link with each other, but that the extra complexity
clusters around certain "hub" genes.
• “hub gene” - FOXP2, a gene crucial to the
development of language.
• In apes, monkeys and mice, FOXP2, seems to have
fewer other genes at its beck and call than in human
beings.
Dark ages in Europe
Heresy is pretty much defined as "deliberately
disagreeing with the church."
The Inquisition
• In 1233 the inquisition was set up.
• People suspected of heresy had one month to
confess; those accused came before the Inquisition
until they confessed.
• They were punished by being whipped or sent to
prison, and in some cases…..
Major revolution - printing press
1440
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543)
• Catholic cleric born in Poland
• Studied Maths, Law and Medicine
• Considered starting point of modern
Astronomy- “Copernican Revolution”
• Would not publish his work for
fear of ridicule.
• Published on
death bed…
Giordano Bruno
1600 (February 17) Giordano Bruno after
some eight years of imprisonment is charged
with blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy
for challenging the official doctrine of the time
on the origin and structure of
the Universe.
On receiving the death sentence
"Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this
sentence against me with greater fear than I
receive it.“
Monument to Bruno where he was
burnt
“Diverse horrid opinions”
"There are innumerable suns and an infinite
number of planets which circle around their
suns as our seven planets circle around our Sun.
" We do not see planets revolving about other
stars because of their great distance or small
mass . . ."
Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
• Medicine and Mathematics
• Refined the telescope for astronomy.
Galileo inquisition
• Around 1611, Galileo ran into some trouble
with the official doctrine, which had embraced
the geocentric cosmology.
• In 1633, at age 70, he was convicted of heresy
and placed under house arrest for the rest of
his life (9 more years)
• recanted to avoid being burnt at stake
“Still, the Earth is moving”
Sorry Galileo...1992
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same
God who has endowed us with sense, reason,
and intellect has intended us to forgo their
use.
- Galileo
In questions of science, the authority of a
thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of
a single individual.
Galileo Galilei
Renaissance
• French for ‘rebirth’
• intellectual and economic changes that
occurred in Europe from the fourteenth
through the sixteenth centuries after decline
of middle ages
• an age in which artistic, social, scientific, and
political thought revolutionized.
• New era for Astronomy
Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630)
• First Astrophysicist and last scientific astrologer
Last words
"Ne frustra vixisse videar“
(May I not seemed to have lived in vain)
Self authored epitaph
I measured the skies,
now the shadows I measure
Skybound was the mind,
earthbound the body rests.
— Johannes Kepler
Darkness to enlightenment
Finally, centuries of mistreatment at the hands
of the leadership brought the citizens in Europe
to a breaking point, and the most intelligent and
vocal finally decided to speak out.
1650 onward…
Scientific revolution
Something happened...16th century onwards
–
We learnt to doubt. We learnt it was okay to
question and not to accept in faith.
Doubting and questioning led to the runaway
growth of science and technology we see
today.
Rational thinking cartoon
Theory guides. Experiment decides.
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is,
it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it
doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
Richard P. Feynman
Aristotle said heavier
Objects fall faster..
It took 1000 years (!!) for
Galileo to show this is
not true by
experimentation!!
Edwin Hubble (1889-1953)
"At the last dim horizon,
we search among ghostly errors
of observations for landmarks
that are scarcely more
substantial. The search will
continue. The urge is older than
history. It is not satisfied and it
will not be oppressed.“
Where are we now?
2012