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intellectual property.
Any reproduction or use requires explicit
written permission by the author:
Dr. Martin E. Hansen
1857 Prairie Lane
Muscatine IA 52761
DrMartinHansen@netins.net
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Why Science?
– The human evolutionary advantage
• Modern humans are the only species to create science
• “big brain” put humans on path to top of food chain
– Abstract thought involves selectively coding and recalling
symbolic information for the purpose of acquiring “knowledge”
– identifying patterns increases likelihood of survival/reproduction
» Familiarity and Novelty
» Similarity and Difference
» Cause and Effect [or?] Meaning and Purpose
– Symbolic communication of experiences and patterns within and
between social groups creates social structures of knowledge
» Independent of particular individuals
» Removes knowledge from limits of firsthand experience
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Why Science?
– humans “need to know”
• Huge evolutionary advantage over nature + other competitors
• Impose order on otherwise chaotic and unpredictable world
• Attach meaning, importance, purpose to existence
– humans also seek to “know how”
• Only species to create and use complex technology
– Human technology is second important evolutionary advantage
– Removes limits of relying on genetic adaptations to environment
– Adapt environment to us instead of waiting for natural selection
• Abstract thought and technical “know how” combine and result
in complex human systems including technological systems
and socio-cultural systems (and their interdependencies)
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Why Science?
– Were we “destined” for a scientific worldview due to our evolution?
– Constructing various socio-cultural systems and worldviews
• A few examples of historically competing socio-cultural worldviews
– Animism: there are “forces” and “wills” inside all objects that “cause”
them to display particular characteristics or behaviors
– Theism: there are supernatural [i.e., above nature] beings or gods that
“cause” and/or influence natural and human events
– Idealism: there are ultimate “truths” and “forms” which determine reality
and can be “known” only through the conscious reflexive mind -- the
senses are unreliable and misleading sources of knowledge
– Empiricism: an objective reality consisting of “real” patterns and
processes exists independent of our subjective perceptions, but can only
be pursued and “known” by means of our five senses
– Positivism: there are universal and immutable “laws of nature” that result
in all causes having effects and all effects having causes which can be
observed, measured, and “known” with complete certainty
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Needing to Know and Knowing How
– Foundations for modern science (Mason, 1962)
• “[Modern] Science, as we know it today, was a
comparatively late product of the general
development of human civilization” (p. 11)
• Modern Science: two pre-modern traditions or roots
– Natural philosophy framed by ontology, metaphysics, and
epistemology -- the “need to know”
– Craft tradition framed by practical “know how”
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Needing to Know and Knowing How
– Specific individuals have always made keen
observations, produced fresh insights, and practiced
new and novel ways of doing things
• (these things define what it means to be human)
– The larger question is “how do these things become
part of a larger socio-cultural worldview?”
• As social groups face collective problems and pursue answers
to persistent questions facing the group, social structures
(cultural, political, economic, ideological/religious, etc.) emerge
to address those challenges and problems, reflecting:
– how the questions are framed and who frames and asks them
– the degree that ideas, processes, products, and outcomes
(cost/benefit) are owned and shared by all people in the group
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Key questions: how do we create and maintain social
identity, cohesion, order, control, and security
• Who are we (and who are “they”)
• Why are we here
• Why do [good/bad] things happen
• How can we predict/assure food, shelter, clothing, and safety
• How can we assure the next generation will carry on
– For 99% of human history (hunting and gathering) this could all be
accomplished informally within the family or clan
• Oral histories, myth, ritual, symbols, totems, song, dance
– More complex worldviews and social structures are unnecessary
until we become sedentary, acquire a surplus of goods that allows
a division of labor, and create civilizations
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Seeds of Science in the First Civilizations (Sumeria, Babylonia,
Egypt (~4000-1000BC; also China, India; later in the Americas)
• Knowing How
– Control over nature by domesticating plants and animals
– Ability to produce, maintain, and store a surplus using simple tools,
wheels, levers, pulleys; metal smelting/forging; kilns; architecture
• Needing to Know
– How to predict rains, floods, seasons, cycles of nature
– How to count, calculate, and record surplus and labor
• Emerging scientific principles
– Calendar and Astronomy
– Writing and written language
– Mathematics; uniform weights, units, and measurements
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– scribes and priests; separate from craftsmen; commoners excluded
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Ancient Greece: Natural Philosophy and the “stuff” of reality
• Knowing How
– Casting iron, alphabet and writing, geometry; boats, navigation, crafts
– Sophisticated agriculture allowing huge surplus and social class system
• Needing to Know
– What is the fundamental “substance” of things (matter and/or form)?
– What is the “natural order” of things (classification+causation) + social?
– Materialism/idealism; order/change; deduction/induction
• Emerging scientific principles
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Astronomy; geometry; classification of forms, “matter” and crude physics
Dualism (separation of mind and matter)
Deterministic natural laws, mechanisms, processes independent of Gods
Emphasis on logic and empiricism as methods of inquiry
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– Strict separation of philosophy and “techne” (manual arts and crafts)
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– From Athens to Alexandria, Rome, and into the Darkness
• Knowing How
– Surveying, geography, mapmaking, roads, hydraulics; new calendar
– Military applications of “crafts“ (metallurgy; simple machines)
– Surgery and basic medicine
• Needing to Know
– Questions turned to practical problems of political administration (order)
– Basic ontological issue would become “this worldly” vs. “other worldly”
• Emerging scientific principles
– Refinements in astronomy; measurement; chemistry (alchemy)
– Advances in biology, physiology, and anatomy
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– Engineers w/growing separation of natural philosophy and craft traditions
– Masses remained illiterate; intellectuals lacked power and authority
– Fall of Rome (~450AD) turned “knowledge production” over to church
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Faith vs. Reason -- Science in the Dark Ages
• In the west, after the fall of the Roman Empire (~450AD), and the rise
of the Holy Roman Church, the question was how to maintain order
– Questioning in and of itself was seen as a threat to order
– St. Augustine extended the mind-body dualism of the Greeks to a
dualistic universe -- “this worldly hedonism” vs. “other worldly salvation”
– In the west the church silenced all metaphysical questioning
• After the burning of the library at Alexandria (~389AD), the remaining
written works of Greek science migrated to the Middle East
– Ironically, Islamic traditions did not pit faith against reason so “this
worldly” knowledge and secular scholars flourished in the Middle East
– Many Greek works were translated into Arabic, including those of Euclid
(geometry), Ptolemy (astronomy), Galen (medicine), and the alchemists
• In the Far East a long separate history of science and technology can
be traced through various Chinese Emperor’s financial supports for
alchemy and the search for an elixir of eternal youth
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Reconciling Faith and Reason -- The Scholastics
• Peter Abelard, Catholic monk and theologian from Paris, wrote
extensively on the uses of logic and reason to understand faith
• The presence of Arab scholars in Byzantium and Toledo, Spain,
introduced Greek scientific works to the Catholic Church (~1200AD)
– Albertus Magnus, a Dominican monk at the University of Paris, wrote
extensively on how to “Christianize” and correct Greek natural philosophy
– Thomas Aquinas proposed that the cosmology of Aristotle required a
“prime mover” an thus proved the existence of God
• The scholastics were not concerned with practical matters or
“knowing how”; natural philosophy and crafts remained separate
– Scholasticism augments the rise of the first universities (1100-1300AD)
• Throughout the medieval era, craft guilds maintained strict
memberships and apprentices, closely guarding the “knowing how”
which bestowed significant power in the face of church authority
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Institutionalizing Needing to Know: The First Universities
• The cathedral school at Chartres (~1170AD) was the first to separate
science and “natural inquiry” from the confines of catholic theology
• The first universities were modeled on guilds with “masters” as
teachers and “apprentices” as students
– Origins in Greece Lyceum; medieval cathedral and monastic schools
• Three general types of universities emerged in 11th-13th centuries
– Ecclesiastical foundations: students and masters form a legal/church sanctioned corporate guild
under a chancellor (Paris, Oxford, Cambridge)
– Civic Universities: public institutions created by students who elected a rector and developed their
own curriculum (Bologna, Padua)
– State Universities: created by a monarch by papal decree to serve needs of church, state, and
constituents (Naples, Salamanca)
• Curriculum included law, medicine, theology, and natural philosophy:
– grammar, logic, rhetoric; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory
• Roger Bacon (1214-94), Franciscan theologian at Oxford, proposed
that all knowledge must come by direct observation and experiment
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Renaissance, Revolution, & a Radical New World View
• Radical shift in socio-cultural worldviews from other-worldly
idealism to this-worldly aestheticism, individualism, and
secular humanism
• Revolutionary unification of natural philosophy, engineering,
and the craft traditions in people like DaVinci, Brunelleschi,
and Galileo
– Mechanics of DaVinci and Galileo established the empirical
scientific method as the shortest and clearest path to knowledge
• Protestant reformation; the printing press, rise of independent
German and Italian City States, age of discovery, trade and
commerce all weakened the infallibility of church doctrine and
control, setting the stage for a new socio-cultural worldview
with science as the dominant “way of knowing” the world
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Renaissance, Revolution, & a Radical New World View
• Copernicus (1543) proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system,
challenging the millennium-old church doctrine that the earth [and mankind]
was the center of the universe
• William Gilbert saw himself as coming out of the craft tradition and in
Concerning the Magnet (1600) contended that “knowledge is not in books but
in [the] things themselves”, concluding that “knowing how” marks the path to
“needing to know” and ultimate knowledge via observation and experiment
• Francis Bacon suggested that science could and should serve humanitarian
ends and first outlined the “experimental method” in his work The
Advancement of Learning (1605)
• Harvey (1628) used experiments to arrive at his theory of blood circulation and
Boyle (1660) experimented with mechanical pneumatic devices, which
eventually led to the creation of the field of chemistry
• Galileo published Discourse on the Two New Sciences (1632) offering
empirical support for the new Copernican worldview
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Renaissance, Revolution, & a Radical New World View
• Rene Descartes in his Discourse on Method (1637)
rejected empirical paths to knowledge in favor of
analytical deduction and the use of mathematical
models and a strict separation of the objective and
subjective world(s)
– Cartesian rationalism: assumes the senses are unreliable,
making empiricism an unreliable means to knowledge; the only
reliable knowledge is a priori knowledge accessible only through
analytical reasoning
– The universe and all in it are strictly mechanical and can be
represented mathematically in the same way we can represent
the concept of time by the mathematical workings, formulas, and
functions of a clock
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Summary of Science in the Renaissance
• Knowing How
– Technical manuals printed by guilds on mining, metallurgy, pyrotechnics
– Magnetism relating to compass, geography, metals, and axis of earth
– Complex precision measuring instruments; “mechanics” of engineering
• Needing to Know
– What are the principles and causes behind the everyday physical world
– How do we best observe and/or understand the way the world works
• Emerging scientific principles
– Heliocentric universe
– Scientific method; “primary” qualities/measures; mathematical models
– Mechanical principles of physical world (e.g., optics, magnetism, motion)
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– Most renaissance science was “sponsored” by wealthy individuals
– First universities, printing, more literacy gave commoners limited access
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Enlightenment and a Revolutionary World View
• Newton’s publication of the Principia (1687) completely transformed
our understanding of the universe and our place in it
• Several other huge social transformations occurred during this “age
of discovery” (~1687-1790) that contributed to a radically different
socio-cultural worldview
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Wedding of natural philosophy and craft in professional engineering
Shift from faith to science and reason as dominant “way of knowing”
Political revolutions that removed old order and established “self-rule”
World travel, trade, discovery of other cultures and worldviews
Rise of business class, commerce, wealth independent of owning land
Demographic shift from rural to urban centers
Engineering and trade combine to fuel emerging industrial revolution
• Generally, the enlightenment worldview reflected the idea that we
could use science, reason, and our powers of observation to take
control of our own destinies politically, socially, and economically
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Newton, Enlightenment, and the Creation of Normal Science
• Knowing How
– Widespread unification and overlap of craft and philosophic traditions
– Combining theory, math, precision measures, testing, experiment
• Needing to Know
– Ontological questions shifted from matter and form to processes, forces, and
universal laws
» “All the difficulty of [natural] philosophy leads to this: from the phenomenon of motions to
investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other
phenomenon” (Newton, 1687)
• Emerging scientific principles
– Laws of motion, thermodynamics and energy, gravity, applied optics
– Blood circulation, medicine, chemistry, elements, biological classification
– Positivism? Scientism? Progress? (transformations in “scientific” worldview)
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– Proliferation of private elite scientific societies; salons and elite sponsors
– University positions and programs; most science still privately funded and elitist
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Science as the Engine of Industry
• Knowing How
– Machines to supplant human energy+motion (applying Newton’s Laws)
– Inventions to support trade and transport; empire building and military
• Needing to Know
– How can laws of nature and physics be harnessed for human benefit
– Classification -- larger patterns in new/old plants, animals, humans, etc?
– How can scientific laws be applied to social world?
• Emerging scientific principles
– Transformation of energy: heat, mechanical; chemical; electromagnetic
– Divergence of formal natural science fields (chemistry, biology, etc.)
– Social sciences; evolution; classifying humans, animals, plants
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– Formal university training and licensing in engineering; polytechniques
– Widespread proliferation of formal and lay “scientific societies”
– Commodification of science -- increasingly means to economic and political ends
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– The State, War, Science, and Uncertainty
• Knowing How
– Civil Engineering: Mass transport + communication + infrastructure
– Mass production, precision jigs, fixtures; self monitor, measure, feedback, adjust
– See/measure “invisible” forces and use them to do work (w/ military applications)
• Needing to Know
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How can laws of nature and physics be harnessed to assure human security?
What are the invisible forces at work in the physical world?
How can scientific laws be applied to assure economic+political growth/stability?
Newtonian mechanics vs. Quantum uncertainty/probabilities?
• Emerging scientific principles
– Electromagnetism; radioactivity; atomic power/energy; atomic medicine
– Quantum physics; Einstein and relativity; Heisenberg and uncertainty
• Ownership and control of knowledge
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Necessary funding through grants from government and philanthropic foundations
Findings and reporting guarded by formal professional associations
“Technical” training legitimized through secondary and higher ed
Space Race; Cold War; Political/Economic Ends; Pure/Applied? Can/Should?
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Corporate Science
• Since WWI and the Marshall Plan, and particularly since 1980, the dominant
organizing principle in the world has been economics
• Whether pure or applied, science requires economic support and funding
• Universities still fund some pure research but grant-supported applied
research increasingly dominates the university system as well as private
research centers and labs
• Liberal education trains students in general scientific principles and methods,
but the implication is that the purpose of scientific training is increased
employability
• Scientific innovation in the mid-late 20th century was harnessed by
corporations (often in collaboration with governments and military) to create
new products for new markets, with social science providing tools for creating
new needs, new wants, and new fears to increase demand for those products
• Our most recent attempt to foster more science and technology education
(STEM) has the explicit goal of increasing global economic competitiveness
• Science and technology are seen as THE primary means for international
development, “improving” lives, and solving the problems of the world
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Corporate Science
• Knowing How
– Real time CNC, CAM, CAD; SQC; SPC; workerless production
– Planned obsolescence; professional marketing + creation of artificial needs/wants
– Media+technology for opinion/market/political manipulation; big data, surveillance
• Needing to Know
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How can we use technology and science to eliminate human unpredictability?
How can science be used to generate corporate profit, growth, and dominance
How can we use science and technology to enhance surveillance and security
What processes and products can we patent to assure market dominance?
How can we commodify and market basic human needs to expand economy?
• Emerging scientific principles
– Biological and physiological components of consciousness and behavior
– Digital programming and microelectronics; nanotechnology
– Synthetic materials including artificial organs; genetic manipulation
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– Education, information; access/use/participation all on ability to pay
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Full Circle: The New Physics and a New Sense of Wonder
• Theoretical physics and our ability to compute extremely complex
mathematical models has resulted in many new questions and
theories about who we are, where we fit in the universe, why we are
here, and how we got here
• Several elite universities (e.g., Harvard, MIT, Stanford) still promote
pure and theoretical research for its own sake and encourage
professors and researchers to publish in academic journals as well as
the popular press.
• Rise of “popular science” and popular “science writers/journalists” has
resulted in a significant lay interest and fascination with physics,
astronomy, human origins; origins of the earth, solar system, and
universe; geology, evolution, space and time (even if the main result
is commercialization of science and production of profit for the media)
– Proliferation of popular lay books and periodicals on science and tech
– Other media, TV channels/series, blogs, etc., dedicated to science
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Framing Questions: Socio-Cultural Worldviews
– Full Circle: The New Physics and a New Sense of Wonder
• Knowing How
– Radiotelescopes, electron microscopes, ability to tap the very big, small, remote
– Huge capacity for computer modeling and statistical manipulation of variables
– Virtual experimentation, collaboration, and real-time reporting of results
• Needing to Know
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Is there a unifying theory of everything and, if so, how can we uncover/know it?
How deep does reality go (i.e., quantum) and how far (i.e., the universe)?
How can science observe and measure human consciousness?
What is life, where does it originate, and how should it be classified?
What are the limits, if any, of science and technology (practical, ecological, moral)?
• Emerging scientific principles
– Competing theories and models of the universe (scope/depth, big/small, etc.)
– Ongoing attempts to identify and establish laws and mathematical models of social,
psychological, political, economic, and cultural patterns/phenomenon (e.g., big data)
– Genetics, stem cells, GMOs, ability to create and manipulate life itself
• Ownership and control of knowledge
– Information and knowledge are legally recognized property+commodities
Looking, Asking, & Knowing: A Brief History of Science
• Summary: A Brief History of Science
– Science is a human construction that developed out of our collective need
for safety, security, predictability, and control over nature
– Science emerges out of two unique human capacities that no other
species has: “knowing how” and “needing to know”
– “Knowing how” and “needing to know” represent the two specific “ways of
knowing” that help us attach meaning and purpose to our lives,
respectively, empiricism and logic.
– Science, as a way of knowing and understanding the world, takes
different forms and has different objectives, reflecting yet influencing the
dominant socio-culture issues and questions asked at any particular time
– Since the enlightenment of the 18th century, science has been the
dominant socio-cultural worldview by which we ask and answer important
questions about ourselves and the world we live in
– Science, over time, has become institutionalized through education,
politics, military, and economy, and inevitably reflects and supports the
dominant organizing social institution(s) within which it operates