Science and society

Women in science

Main article: Women in science

Marie Curie was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes, Physics in 1903 and Chemistry in 1911^[58]

Science has historically been a male-dominated field, with some notable exceptions.^{[nb 14]} Women faced considerable discrimination in science, much as they did in other areas of male-dominated societies, such as frequently being passed over for job opportunities and denied credit for their work.^{[nb 15]} For example, Christine Ladd (1847–1930) was able to enter a PhD program as "C. Ladd"; Christine "Kitty" Ladd completed the requirements in 1882, but was awarded her degree only in 1926, after a career which spanned the algebra of logic (see truth table), color vision, and psychology. Her work preceded notable researchers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Charles Sanders Peirce. The achievements of women in science have been attributed to their defiance of their traditional role as laborers within the domestic sphere.^[59]
In the late 20th century, active recruitment of women and elimination of institutional discrimination on the basis of sex greatly increased the number of women scientists, but large gender disparities remain in some fields; over half of new biologists are female, while 80% of PhDs in physics are given to men.^{[citation needed]} Feminists claim this is the result of culture rather than an innate difference between the sexes, and some experiments have shown that parents challenge and explain more to boys than girls, asking them to reflect more deeply and logically.^{[60]: 258–261.} In the early part of the 21st century, in America, women earned 50.3% bachelor's degrees, 45.6% master's degrees, and 40.7% of PhDs in science and engineering fields with women earning more than half of the degrees in three fields: Psychology (about 70%), Social Sciences (about 50%), and Biology (about 50-60%). However, when it comes to the Physical Sciences, Geosciences, Math, Engineering, and Computer Science, women earned less than half the degrees.^[61] However, lifestyle choice also plays a major role in female engagement in science; women with young children are 28% less likely to take tenure-track positions due to work-life balance issues,^[62] and female graduate students' interest in careers in research declines dramatically over the course of graduate school, whereas that of their male colleagues remains unchanged.^[63]

Science policy

Main articles: Science policy, History of science policy, Funding of science, and Economics of science

President Clinton meets the 1998 U.S. Nobel Prize winners in the White House

Science policy is an area of public policy concerned with the policies that affect the conduct of the scientific enterprise, including research funding, often in pursuance of other national policy goals such as technological innovation to promote commercial product development, weapons development, health care and environmental monitoring. Science policy also refers to the act of applying scientific knowledge and consensus to the development of public policies. Science policy thus deals with the entire domain of issues that involve the natural sciences. In accordance with public policy being concerned about the well-being of its citizens, science policy's goal is to consider how science and technology can best serve the public.
State policy has influenced the funding of public works and science for thousands of years, dating at least from the time of the Mohists, who inspired the study of logic during the period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, and the study of defensive fortifications during the Warring States period in China. In Great Britain, governmental approval of the Royal Society in the 17th century recognized a scientific community which exists to this day. The professionalization of science, begun in the 19th century, was partly enabled by the creation of scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and state funding of universities of their respective nations. Public policy can directly affect the funding of capital equipment and intellectual infrastructure for industrial research by providing tax incentives to those organizations that fund research. Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development for the United States government, the forerunner of the National Science Foundation, wrote in July 1945 that "Science is a proper concern of government."^[64]
Science and technology research is often funded through a competitive process in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding. Such processes, which are run by government, corporations, or foundations, allocate scarce funds. Total research funding in most developed countries is between 1.5% and 3% of GDP.^[65] In the OECD, around two-thirds of research and development in scientific and technical fields is carried out by industry, and 20% and 10% respectively by universities and government. The government funding proportion in certain industries is higher, and it dominates research in social science and humanities. Similarly, with some exceptions (e.g. biotechnology) government provides the bulk of the funds for basic scientific research. In commercial research and development, all but the most research-oriented corporations focus more heavily on near-term commercialisation possibilities rather than "blue-sky" ideas or technologies (such as nuclear fusion).

Media perspectives

The mass media face a number of pressures that can prevent them from accurately depicting competing scientific claims in terms of their credibility within the scientific community as a whole. Determining how much weight to give different sides in a scientific debate may require considerable expertise regarding the matter.^[66] Few journalists have real scientific knowledge, and even beat reporters who know a great deal about certain scientific issues may be ignorant about other scientific issues that they are suddenly asked to cover.^[67][68]

Scientific community

The scientific community is the group of all interacting scientists. It includes many sub-communities working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are also significant.

Branches and fields

Main article: Branches of science

The somatosensory system is located throughout our bodies but is integrated in the brain.

Scientific fields are commonly divided into two major groups: natural sciences, which study natural phenomena (including biological life), and social sciences, which study human behavior and societies. These are both empirical sciences, which means their knowledge must be based on observable phenomena and capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions.^[44] There are also related disciplines that are grouped into interdisciplinary applied sciences, such as engineering and medicine. Within these categories are specialized scientific fields that can include parts of other scientific disciplines but often possess their own nomenclature and expertise.^[45]
Mathematics, which is classified as a formal science,^[46][47] has both similarities and differences with the empirical sciences (the natural and social sciences). It is similar to empirical sciences in that it involves an objective, careful and systematic study of an area of knowledge; it is different because of its method of verifying its knowledge, using a priori rather than empirical methods.^[48] The formal sciences, which also include statistics and logic, are vital to the empirical sciences. Major advances in formal science have often led to major advances in the empirical sciences. The formal sciences are essential in the formation of hypotheses, theories, and laws,^[49] both in discovering and describing how things work (natural sciences) and how people think and act (social sciences).
Apart from its broad meaning, the word "science" sometimes may specifically refer to fundamental sciences (maths and natural sciences) alone. Science schools or faculties within many institutions are separate from those for medicine or engineering, each of which is an applied science.

Institutions

Learned societies for the communication and promotion of scientific thought and experimentation have existed since the Renaissance period.^[50] The oldest surviving institution is the Italian Accademia dei Lincei which was established in 1603.^[51] The respective National Academies of Science are distinguished institutions that exist in a number of countries, beginning with the British Royal Society in 1660^[52] and the French Académie des Sciences in 1666.^[53]
International scientific organizations, such as the International Council for Science, have since been formed to promote cooperation between the scientific communities of different nations. Many governments have dedicated agencies to support scientific research. Prominent scientific organizations include the National Science Foundation in the U.S., the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina, CSIRO in Australia, Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France, the Max Planck Society and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in Germany, and CSIC in Spain.

Literature

Main article: Scientific literature

An enormous range of scientific literature is published.^[54] Scientific journals communicate and document the results of research carried out in universities and various other research institutions, serving as an archival record of science. The first scientific journals, Journal des Sçavans followed by the Philosophical Transactions, began publication in 1665. Since that time the total number of active periodicals has steadily increased. In 1981, one estimate for the number of scientific and technical journals in publication was 11,500.^[55] The United States National Library of Medicine currently indexes 5,516 journals that contain articles on topics related to the life sciences. Although the journals are in 39 languages, 91 percent of the indexed articles are published in English.^[56]
Most scientific journals cover a single scientific field and publish the research within that field; the research is normally expressed in the form of a scientific paper. Science has become so pervasive in modern societies that it is generally considered necessary to communicate the achievements, news, and ambitions of scientists to a wider populace.
Science magazines such as New Scientist, Science & Vie, and Scientific American cater to the needs of a much wider readership and provide a non-technical summary of popular areas of research, including notable discoveries and advances in certain fields of research. Science books engage the interest of many more people. Tangentially, the science fiction genre, primarily fantastic in nature, engages the public imagination and transmits the ideas, if not the methods, of science.
Recent efforts to intensify or develop links between science and non-scientific disciplines such as literature or more specifically, poetry, include the Creative Writing Science resource developed through the Royal Literary Fund.^[57]

Mathematics and formal sciences

Mathematics is essential to the sciences. One important function of mathematics in science is the role it plays in the expression of scientific models. Observing and collecting measurements, as well as hypothesizing and predicting, often require extensive use of mathematics. For example, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus are all essential to physics. Virtually every branch of mathematics has applications in science, including "pure" areas such as number theory and topology.
Statistical methods, which are mathematical techniques for summarizing and analyzing data, allow scientists to assess the level of reliability and the range of variation in experimental results. Statistical analysis plays a fundamental role in many areas of both the natural sciences and social sciences.
Computational science applies computing power to simulate real-world situations, enabling a better understanding of scientific problems than formal mathematics alone can achieve. According to the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, computation is now as important as theory and experiment in advancing scientific knowledge.^[42]
Whether mathematics itself is properly classified as science has been a matter of some debate. Some thinkers see mathematicians as scientists, regarding physical experiments as inessential or mathematical proofs as equivalent to experiments. Others do not see mathematics as a science because it does not require an experimental test of its theories and hypotheses. Mathematical theorems and formulas are obtained by logical derivations which presume axiomatic systems, rather than the combination of empirical observation and logical reasoning that has come to be known as the scientific method. In general, mathematics is classified as formal science, while natural and social sciences are classified as empirical sciences.^[43]

Scientific method

he scientific method seeks to explain the events of nature in a reproducible way.^{[nb 11]} An explanatory thought experiment or hypothesis is put forward as explanation using principles such as parsimony (also known as "Occam's Razor") and are generally expected to seek consilience—fitting well with other accepted facts related to the phenomena.^[1] This new explanation is used to make falsifiable predictions that are testable by experiment or observation. The predictions are to be posted before a confirming experiment or observation is sought, as proof that no tampering has occurred. Disproof of a prediction is evidence of progress.^{[nb 12][nb 13]} This is done partly through observation of natural phenomena, but also through experimentation that tries to simulate natural events under controlled conditions as appropriate to the discipline (in the observational sciences, such as astronomy or geology, a predicted observation might take the place of a controlled experiment). Experimentation is especially important in science to help establish causal relationships (to avoid the correlation fallacy).
When a hypothesis proves unsatisfactory, it is either modified or discarded.^[34] If the hypothesis survived testing, it may become adopted into the framework of a scientific theory, a logically reasoned, self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of certain natural phenomena. A theory typically describes the behavior of much broader sets of phenomena than a hypothesis; commonly, a large number of hypotheses can be logically bound together by a single theory. Thus a theory is a hypothesis explaining various other hypotheses. In that vein, theories are formulated according to most of the same scientific principles as hypotheses. In addition to testing hypotheses, scientists may also generate a model, an attempt to describe or depict the phenomenon in terms of a logical, physical or mathematical representation and to generate new hypotheses that can be tested, based on observable phenomena.^[35]
While performing experiments to test hypotheses, scientists may have a preference for one outcome over another, and so it is important to ensure that science as a whole can eliminate this bias.^[36][37] This can be achieved by careful experimental design, transparency, and a thorough peer review process of the experimental results as well as any conclusions.^[38][39] After the results of an experiment are announced or published, it is normal practice for independent researchers to double-check how the research was performed, and to follow up by performing similar experiments to determine how dependable the results might be.^[40] Taken in its entirety, the scientific method allows for highly creative problem solving while minimizing any effects of subjective bias on the part of its users (especially the confirmation bias).^[41]

Age of Enlightenment

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the project of modernity, as had been promoted by Bacon and Descartes, led to rapid scientific advance and the successful development of a new type of natural science, mathematical, methodically experimental, and deliberately innovative. Newton and Leibniz succeeded in developing a new physics, now referred to as classical mechanics, which could be confirmed by experiment and explained using mathematics. Leibniz also incorporated terms from Aristotelian physics, but now being used in a new non-teleological way, for example, "energy" and "potential" (modern versions of Aristotelian "energeia and potentia"). In the style of Bacon, he assumed that different types of things all work according to the same general laws of nature, with no special formal or final causes for each type of thing. It is during this period that the word "science" gradually became more commonly used to refer to a type of pursuit of a type of knowledge, especially knowledge of nature — coming close in meaning to the old term "natural philosophy."

19th century

Charles Darwin in 1854, by then working towards publication of On the Origin of Species

Both John Herschel and William Whewell systematized methodology: the latter coined the term scientist.^[33] When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species he established evolution as the prevailing explanation of biological complexity. His theory of natural selection provided a natural explanation of how species originated, but this only gained wide acceptance a century later. John Dalton developed the idea of atoms. The laws of thermodynamics and the electromagnetic theory were also established in the 19th century, which raised new questions which could not easily be answered using Newton's framework. The phenomena that would allow the deconstruction of the atom were discovered in the last decade of the 19th century: the discovery of X-rays inspired the discovery of radioactivity. In the next year came the discovery of the first subatomic particle, the electron.

Combustion and chemical reactions were studied by Michael Faraday and reported in his lectures before the Royal Institution: The Chemical History of a Candle, 1861

20th century and beyond

A simulated event in the CMS detector of the Large Hadron Collider, featuring a possible appearance of the Higgs boson

Einstein's theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics led to the replacement of classical mechanics with a new physics which contains two parts that describe different types of events in nature.
In the first half of the century, the development of artificial fertilizer made global human population growth possible. At the same time, the structure of the atom and its nucleus was discovered, leading to the release of "atomic energy" (nuclear power). In addition, the extensive use of scientific innovation stimulated by the wars of this century led to antibiotics and increased life expectancy, revolutions in transportation (automobiles and aircraft), the development of ICBMs, a space race, and a nuclear arms race, all giving a widespread public appreciation of the importance of modern science.
Widespread use of integrated circuits in the last quarter of the 20th century combined with communications satellites led to a revolution in information technology and the rise of the global internet and mobile computing, including smartphones.
More recently, it has been argued that the ultimate purpose of science is to make sense of human beings and our nature. For example, in his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson said: "The human condition is the most important frontier of the natural sciences." ^[1]:334

Scientific method

Renaissance and early modern science

Medieval science carried on the views of the Hellenist civilization of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as shown by Alhazen's lost work A Book in which I have Summarized the Science of Optics from the Two Books of Euclid and Ptolemy, to which I have added the Notions of the First Discourse which is Missing from Ptolemy's Book from Ibn Abi Usaibia's catalog, as cited in (Smith 2001).^{:91(vol.1),p.xv} Alhazen conclusively disproved Ptolemy's theory of vision, but he retained Aristotle's ontology; Roger Bacon, Vitello, and John Peckham each built up a scholastic ontology upon Alhazen's Book of Optics, a causal chain beginning with sensation, perception, and finally apperception of the individual and universal forms of Aristotle.^[28] This model of vision became known as Perspectivism, which was exploited and studied by the artists of the Renaissance.

Galileo Galilei, father of modern science.^{[29]: Vol. 24, No. 1, p. 36}

A. Mark Smith points out the perspectivist theory of vision, which pivots on three of Aristotle's four causes, formal, material, and final, "is remarkably economical, reasonable, and coherent."^[30] Although Alhacen knew that a scene imaged through an aperture is inverted, he argued that vision is about perception. This was overturned by Kepler,^[31]:p.102 who modelled the eye as a water-filled glass sphere with an aperture in front of it to model the entrance pupil. He found that all the light from a single point of the scene was imaged at a single point at the back of the glass sphere. The optical chain ends on the retina at the back of the eye and the image is inverted.^{[nb 10]}
Copernicus formulated a heliocentric model of the solar system unlike the geocentric model of Ptolemy's Almagest.
Galileo made innovative use of experiment and mathematics. However, he became persecuted after Pope Urban VIII blessed Galileo to write about the Copernican system. Galileo had used arguments from the Pope and put them in the voice of the simpleton in the work "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems," which greatly offended him.^[32]
In Northern Europe, the new technology of the printing press was widely used to publish many arguments, including some that disagreed widely with contemporary ideas of nature. René Descartes and Francis Bacon published philosophical arguments in favor of a new type of non-Aristotelian science. Descartes argued that mathematics could be used in order to study nature, as Galileo had done, and Bacon emphasized the importance of experiment over contemplation. Bacon questioned the Aristotelian concepts of formal cause and final cause, and promoted the idea that science should study the laws of "simple" natures, such as heat, rather than assuming that there is any specific nature, or "formal cause," of each complex type of thing. This new modern science began to see itself as describing "laws of nature." This updated approach to studies in nature was seen as mechanistic. Bacon also argued that science should aim for the first time at practical inventions for the improvement of all human life.

Medieval science

De potentiis anime sensitive, Gregor Reisch (1504) Margarita philosophica. Medieval science postulated a ventricle of the brain as the location for our common sense,^[22] where the forms from our sensory systems commingled.

Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), 965–1039 Basra, Buyid Emirate. The Muslim scholar who is considered by some to be the father of modern scientific methodology due to his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of its results.^{[23][nb 6]}

During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the Aristotelian approach to inquiries on natural phenomena was used. Some ancient knowledge was lost, or in some cases kept in obscurity, during the fall of the Roman Empire and periodic political struggles. However, the general fields of science (or "natural philosophy" as it was called) and much of the general knowledge from the ancient world remained preserved through the works of the early Latin encyclopedists like Isidore of Seville. In the Byzantine empire, many Greek science texts were preserved in Syriac translations done by groups such as the Nestorians and Monophysites.^[24] Many of these were later on translated into Arabic under the Caliphate, during which many types of classical learning were preserved and in some cases improved upon.^{[24][nb 7]}
The House of Wisdom was established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq.^[25] It is considered to have been a major intellectual center during the Islamic Golden Age, where Muslim scholars such as al-Kindi and Ibn Sahl in Baghdad and Ibn al-Haytham in Cairo flourished from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries until the Mongol sack of Baghdad. Ibn al-Haytham, known later to the West as Alhazen, furthered the Aristotelian viewpoint^[26] by emphasizing experimental data.^{[nb 8][27]}
In the later medieval period, as demand for translations grew (for example, from the Toledo School of Translators), western Europeans began collecting texts written not only in Latin, but also Latin translations from Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew. In particular, the texts of Aristotle, Ptolemy,^{[nb 9]} and Euclid, preserved in the Houses of Wisdom, were sought amongst Catholic scholars. In Europe, the Latin translation of Alhazen's Book of Optics directly influenced Roger Bacon (13th century) in England, who argued for more experimental science as demonstrated by Alhazen. By the late Middle Ages, a synthesis of Catholicism and Aristotelianism known as Scholasticism was flourishing in western Europe, which had become a new geographic center of science, but all aspects of scholasticism were criticized in the 15th and 16th centuries.