As seen in Science through time: Stone Age to Scientific Revolution, science has changed in many ways across the world and throughout history.
As you read through this article, see if you can identify the tenets of the nature of science.
Early Polynesian sailing canoes
Early Polynesian sailing canoes were built for seafaring voyages. Waka hourua built since the 1990s were designed in a similar way to explore the Pacific Ocean in the manner of the ancestors.
Engraving ‘Priests travelling across Kealakekua Bay’, by John Webber (1752–1793), artist aboard Cook’s ship.
Archaeological records in Africa and China show traces of the knowledge and practices we would come to associate with science. The beginnings of Western science can be traced to ancient Greece, where philosophers like Plato and his pupils established the roots of scientific thought as many understand it today. While the first Pacific explorers were using sophisticated knowledge to navigate our part of the world, travelling scholars were spreading scientific thought throughout Europe as well. The European Renaissance that followed the Middle Ages saw the Scientific Revolution in Europe, sparking advances in scientific thought and practice that led to a period often called the Age of Enlightenment or Age of Reason.
Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution
This time was characterised by a faith in the tools of science and reason to reveal the truth – empowering those who had access to those tools. The domain of science was expanded to include subjects like economics, history and sociology – areas that the Scottish philosopher David Hume called ‘the science of man’.
Descartes’ compound microscope
Illustration of a compound microscope from René Descartes’ La Dioptrique. Descartes’ contributions to scientific thought include the formula ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am) and the separation of mind and body, known as Cartesian dualism.
Chemistry underwent modernisation in this time, documented in works like Antoine Lavoisier’s Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique (Method of Chemical Naming) and Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry). Chemists like Lavoisier used new technology and meticulous record keeping to transform the esoteric subjectivity of alchemy (for which the word ‘pseudoscience’ was first coined in the late 1700s) into an objective scientific practice whose findings could be scrutinised and replicated.
Universities continued to function as centres of learning, increasingly providing examples and demonstrations alongside the traditional lectures and reading lists. The mantle of research and discovery was also taken up by organisations like the Royal Society of London, Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society and the Parisian Académie Royale des Sciences.
These societies facilitated research and collaboration and provided their expertise to citizens and governments. They were also where the first recorded examples of scholarly peer review took place. The procedure of submitting one’s findings to the scientific community for scrutiny and proof (or disproof) would become a cornerstone of science as practised today.
Nature of Science
Scientific advances are often contextualised within existing knowledge and research – building upon previous discoveries and creating deeper understanding. Peer review is an important collaborative step in refining scientific ideas.
The scientific community evolved in less formal ways as well. British coffee houses became urban meeting places for scientists and philosophers to compare ideas and share their expertise. Here, anyone could pursue up-to-the-minute scientific knowledge for the price of a cup of coffee.
The electric boy
In this once popular demonstration, a child suspended by insulated cords was charged with static electricity to attract objects and generate sparks.
Scientists also gave public lectures and discussions for a wide general audience. If these demonstrations were sometimes showy, they were also another example of science playing an increasingly public role in society.
In Britain, North America and Western Europe, the systematising powers of science and automation drove a radical shift from rural agrarianism to mechanised urban production: the Industrial Revolution. Many resisted this change, and the modern term ‘Luddite’ comes from an organised labour movement aimed at destroying the machines seen to be stealing human jobs.
The Industrial Revolution
Detail from Manchester from Kersal Moor by William Wyld shows how the Industrial Revolution transformed the English countryside.
Another effect of the Industrial Revolution was to lower the costs of goods and food, allowing many people the time and means to cultivate newfound educational curiosity. Scientific texts were republished outside the customary Latin, allowing access by a wider, non-academic audience.
Newton’s Principia, English-language edition
An English-language edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The translation of many scientific works from Latin to English allowed them to reach a far wider readership.
The first technical and encyclopedic dictionaries were published in the 1700s, and the form quickly came to resemble the encyclopedia as popularly understood today. These newly alphabetised publications were another way for people without specialist training to access scientific knowledge.
Alongside such publications, an enthusiastic public consumed stories like Frankenstein, Faust and The Sandman, in which the notion of science gone mad became a source of increasing concern in the popular imagination.
The modern scientific era
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word ‘scientist’ to the 1830s, reflecting an increasing public awareness of figures like Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin. Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, tracing evolutionary theory back to before Aristotle.
Darwin’s theory lampooned
“Man is but a worm” is a Punch magazine caricature of Charles Darwin from 1882, mocking his theory of evolution.
Darwin’s rigorous scientific inquiry implied that humans were fundamentally like any other animal fighting for biological survival. For many, this was as hard to reconcile as the notion that our Earth was not the centre of the universe but just another planet floating in space. The perceived affront to established knowledge was expressed in books like History of the Conflict between Religion and Science and The Warfare of Science. While since debunked academically, this notion would inform popular discourse in the coming century.
Historians often speak of a Golden Age of Invention from the mid-late 19th to mid-20th centuries – also known as the second phase of the Industrial Revolution. Small and large teams of scientists and engineers applied practical science to the creation of technologies like the telephone, phonograph and electric lightbulb. Such scientific advances quickly became commonplace in many parts of the world.
Edison light bulb
This is the patent document for the light bulb developed at Thomas Edison’s laboratory. Edison’s inventions were possible thanks to a diverse and ingenious team of scientists he called “the Muckers”.
Following World War II, science played a visible role in post-war life, and many of our popular scientific images come from this time. Popular imaginations were captured by the Space Race and Moon landing. Everyday life was shaped by additional scientific advances like plastics and broadcast television.
Science and society
At the same time, Western science and knowledge was being used against indigenous and disenfranchised peoples worldwide such as in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Tohunga Suppression Act, the ‘Indian’ residential boarding schools of Canada and the United States and fields like eugenics.
Scientific inquiry was extending into fields like political science and psychology, changing the way people viewed everything from the economy to the human mind. A widespread protest movement in the early 20th century against vivisection reflected growing distrust of scientific ethics.
In the World Wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945, chemical warfare, atomic weaponry and industrialised extermination had devastating effects not just in warfare but on people’s certainties about the world and society. Further shock and outrage would follow the discovery of scientific testing on non-consenting human subjects in World War II, the Cold War and programmes like the Tuskegee Experiment.
It was also in the mid-20th century that scientists like Friedrich Hayek started speaking of scientism to describe work that imitates the work and language of science. Its purpose is to undermine competing knowledge claims by declaring them unscientific.
While the work of science continued in universities and scientific societies, research was also pursued within corporations and privately funded research institutes. One use of the latter was to produce science studies that contradicted the link between tobacco use and cancer.
This type of disinformation continues to affect public knowledge and undermine trust in science – as seen in issues ranging from climate change to vaccinations.
Citizen science restoration project
Citizen scientists are volunteers. Many citizen science projects are aimed at gathering environmental data and preserving te taiao.
On a positive note, the late 20th century saw the growth of citizen science. In the late 1980s, community-based laboratories used volunteer research to conduct inquiries into environmental hazards and the climate.
Science in the 21st century
The growth of the internet saw citizen science increase exponentially to explore the challenges facing humanity in the new millennium.
Research also continued to indicate that humans are making the Earth’s atmosphere and climate warmer. We’re gaining a better understanding of climate change’s impacts and how to mitigate them.
[Indigenous peoples] are still the first to know about changes in the environment, but ... the last to be consulted about how, when, and where developments should take place in order to assure continuing harmony.
One response to climate change research is increasing collaboration between scientists and indigenous communities. A 1987 United Nations report cited indigenous knowledge and practices as containing the potential to reverse environmental damage and to show the Western world how to work with reduced resources. Disciplines like ecosystem management and traditional ecological knowledge use indigenous practices and bodies of learning – for example, mātauranga Māori – to restore environmental balance and incorporate traditional knowledge into the scientific literature.
Science for a shared future
Revitalisation of the world’s First Nations cultures is helping to overturn issues like scientism.
Within te ao Māori – whether it’s the rivers, the rocks, the tuatara, the wētā, the insects – we are tuakana-teina to one another … but Western science itself was formed on the basis that we as humans are separate from the environment, that we’re separate from other species and that we sit as outside observers looking in.
Indigenous and non-Western knowledge and practices have gained increased visibility within the scientific sphere. This helps expand the domain and epistemic breadth of science. In Aotearoa, practices like the maramataka and marking of Matariki allow scientists and citizens to engage more deeply with te taiao and to notice and work to rectify the effects of climate change.
Collaborative kaitiakitanga
Scientists Andrew Swales and Raiha Tuahine work with Māori Development Officer Weno Iti to protect estuaries.
In Australia, land returned to First Nations peoples has seen the rebirth of traditional techniques for Outback fire management, significantly reducing carbon emissions. These techniques are now being spread and used in other countries, including Aotearoa. Traditional practices in India are being studied for their increased crop yield and reduced carbon output.
The hīkoi of science has been inextricably linked with that of all human civilisation and progress. The future of science – and of our species and planet – will depend on our openness to change in a changing world and on using the tools of science to increase awareness and equity.
Related content
The following resources provide background information about the changing role of science, and science and society over time:
Can mātauranga Māori help save New Zealand’s freshwater mussels?
Citizen science – our collection of articles and resources around citizen science
Useful links
Delve more deeply into the history of science with these resources:
Enlightenment – History
Industrial Revolution – History
Charles Darwin: Evolution and the story of our species – a timeline – BBC
Canada’s residential schools were a horror – Scientific American
The Moon landing – National Geographic Kids
How tobacco companies created the disinformation playbook – Union of Concerned Scientists
The 40 greatest scientific advancements of the 20th century – Futura Sciences
