Intro to History of Science: Crash Course History of Science #1

Summary

Crash Course: History of Science, hosted by Hank Green, explores humanity's quest to uncover the universe's truths and the technological advancements that followed. The series delves into the evolution of scientific thought, from ancient philosophers to modern physicists, and the impact of these discoveries on society. It emphasizes the importance of questioning, reproducibility, and the ongoing pursuit of knowledge, highlighting the history's diverse contributors and the ethical implications of scientific progress.

Takeaways

• 🌟 The series 'Crash Course: History of Science' is introduced by Hank Green, who expresses his fascination with humanity's quest for understanding the universe and its translation into technological advancements.
• 🔍 The script highlights the dual nature of scientific discovery: reducing human suffering while simultaneously introducing new problems, emphasizing the ongoing and fascinating journey of scientific inquiry.
• 🏰 The script takes the audience through a historical journey, mentioning various eras and places, such as Aristotle's thinking, the Song Dynasty's canals, medieval Turkey's robot musicians, and the electrical war in New York City.
• 🧬 The history of science is portrayed as an evolving narrative, moving from ignorance to knowledge, but also acknowledging that modern science still grapples with fundamental questions like the nature of 'stuff' and the existence of quarks.
• 🔬 Science is defined as both a body of knowledge and the methods used to create that knowledge, emphasizing observation and experimentation as key practices in generating new insights.
• 📚 The importance of the 'reproducible experiment' is underscored, with the motto 'NULLIUS IN VERBA' ('on no one’s word') from the Royal Society, advocating for skepticism and independent verification of scientific claims.
• 🕊️ The term 'scientist' is revealed to be a relatively recent coinage, highlighting that the history of systematic knowledge extends beyond the confines of what we traditionally consider 'science'.
• 🌐 The script calls for a broader perspective on the history of science, including diverse systems of understanding from around the world, rather than focusing solely on Western contributions.
• 🤔 The series aims to explore five big questions that humanity still seeks answers to, such as the nature of 'stuff,' the definition of life, our place in the universe, the scale of time, and the reliability of knowledge.
• 🌱 The script suggests that understanding the history of science can illuminate our current knowledge systems, showing them as historical constructs that are still evolving and not yet complete.
• 🌳 The final theme ties the history of science to the study of religion, touching on the human search for ultimate truth, and the ethical responsibilities that come with scientific knowledge and technological power.

Q & A

What is the main theme of the 'Crash Course: History of Science' series?

The main theme of the series is to explore the fascinating process of how humanity has uncovered truths about the universe and converted these into technological advancements, while also discussing the ongoing journey from ignorance to knowledge and the evolution of scientific thought.

Who is the host of the 'Crash Course: History of Science' series?

Hank Green is the host of the series, who has been eager to produce this course for years due to his obsession with the uncovering of universal truths.

What is the significance of the phrase 'NULLIUS IN VERBA' in the context of the series?

'NULLIUS IN VERBA' is the motto of the Royal Society, emphasizing the importance of not accepting claims at face value and instead verifying each hypothesis through reproducible experiments.

What does the series aim to highlight regarding the history of science?

The series aims to highlight that the history of science is not just about the progression from ignorance to knowledge but also about the diverse systems of understanding the world and their social and historical contexts.

What are the two main practices that systematically generate knowledge in the scientific method?

The two main practices are observation, where one studies specific aspects of the world, and experimentation, where one conducts tests to answer questions about the world.

Why was the word 'scientist' only coined in the 1830s?

The term 'scientist' was coined by William Whewell in the 1830s to describe those who engaged in systematic knowledge-making, as the role and the term itself were relatively recent historical developments.

What is the importance of the Large Hadron Collider mentioned in the script?

The Large Hadron Collider is mentioned as an example of a modern 'tower' for testing theories in physics, highlighting the evolution and scale of experimental practices in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

What is the role of the Royal Society in the history of science?

The Royal Society, founded in 1660, played a crucial role as a platform for debating new ideas about nature, conducting experiments, and publishing theories in one of the world's oldest peer-reviewed scientific journals.

What are the five big questions that the series will focus on?

The five big questions are: 1) What is stuff? 2) What is life? 3) Where are we? 4) When are we? 5) How can we agree on what we know?

How does the series plan to approach the study of the history of science?

The series plans to approach the study by considering different knowledge systems on their own terms, exploring various cultures and their contributions to scientific understanding, and examining the impact of values and ethics on science and technology.

What is the significance of the historical context in understanding the evolution of scientific thought?

The historical context is significant as it provides insights into the development of scientific ideas, the social norms of knowledge-making, and the influence of different cultures on the understanding of natural phenomena.

Outlines

00:00

🔬 Introduction to the History of Science

The script introduces the new series 'Crash Course: History of Science' hosted by Hank Green. It emphasizes the fascination with humanity's journey from ignorance to knowledge, and the conversion of scientific truths into technological advancements. Hank discusses the ongoing nature of scientific inquiry, the current state of scientific knowledge, and the history of science as a dynamic field that evolves with new discoveries. The script also introduces the concept of 'science' as both a body of knowledge and a method of inquiry, highlighting observation and experimentation as key practices. It mentions the importance of reproducible experiments and the motto 'NULLIUS IN VERBA' from the Royal Society, which encourages skepticism and independent verification of scientific claims.

05:01

🌐 The Evolution and Diversity of Scientific Thought

This paragraph delves into the historical and social construct of 'science', noting that it has changed over time and varies across cultures. It discusses the term 'scientist' as a recent coinage by William Whewell and the predominantly male and English composition of the Royal Society. The script argues for the importance of considering diverse knowledge systems throughout history, such as Greco-Latin-Jewish-Arabic medicine, ayurvedic knowledge, traditional Chinese medicine, and Incan knowledge systems. It stresses the need to understand these systems on their own terms and to recognize the intelligent efforts of people in the past to make sense of their world, despite our current perspective on their theories.

10:05

🌟 The Impact of Science on Society and the Pursuit of Truth

The final paragraph of the script discusses the role of science in shaping society and the reciprocal influence of society on science and technology. It calls for a citizen's responsibility to understand these dynamics and to act accordingly. The script touches on the transformative power of knowledge and the ethical considerations that come with it. It also outlines five big questions that have persisted throughout history and continue to drive scientific inquiry today: the nature of 'stuff', the definition of life, our place in the universe, the scale of time, and the challenge of consensus on knowledge. The script concludes by emphasizing the importance of studying the history of science to navigate the future and ends with a call to action for the audience to join the journey through past knowledge worlds.

Keywords

💡Science

Science, as discussed in the video, refers to the systematic study of the natural world through observation and experimentation. It is a process that has evolved over time and has been instrumental in transforming human understanding and technological capabilities. The video emphasizes the dynamic nature of science, highlighting how it has progressed from ignorance to knowledge, and how it continues to grapple with unanswered questions. The script mentions how science has turned gadgets of science fiction into reality and how it has decreased human suffering while also creating new problems.

💡Scientific Inquiry

Scientific inquiry is the process of asking questions and conducting investigations to uncover truths about the universe. The video script describes it as a fascinating journey that has led to significant technological advancements and a deeper understanding of the world. It also points out that scientific inquiry is ongoing, with scientists still seeking answers to fundamental questions like 'what is stuff?' and grappling with the unknown, such as the nature of quarks and the prevalence of dark matter.

💡Observation

Observation in the context of the video is one of the systematic practices used to generate knowledge in science. It involves closely watching and recording aspects of the world to identify patterns and draw conclusions. The script uses Charles Darwin's meticulous study of barnacles and other organisms as an example of how observation can lead to significant scientific theories, such as the theory of evolution.

💡Experiment

An experiment, as mentioned in the video, is a controlled procedure carried out to test a hypothesis or answer a question about the natural world. The video gives the example of Galileo's (or rather Simon Stevin and Jan Cornets de Groot's) experiment with balls of different masses to demonstrate the principles of gravity, illustrating how experiments can challenge and refine scientific understanding.

💡Reproducible Experiment

A reproducible experiment is one that can be independently conducted by others to verify the results, ensuring the reliability of scientific findings. The video emphasizes the importance of this concept through the motto 'NULLIUS IN VERBA' of the Royal Society, which translates to 'on no one's word,' advocating for individual verification of scientific claims. This principle is crucial for maintaining the integrity and objectivity of scientific knowledge.

💡Natural Philosophy

Natural philosophy, as used in the video, refers to an early system of understanding the natural world that predates the modern concept of science. It was a pursuit of knowledge that combined elements of what we now consider separate disciplines such as science, mathematics, and philosophy. The video notes that early practitioners of natural philosophy, who were often well-off alchemists and medical doctors, laid the groundwork for the scientific method and the scientific community.

💡Scientific Method

The scientific method is a systematic approach to investigating and acquiring knowledge about the natural world, as described in the video. It involves making observations, formulating hypotheses, and conducting experiments to test these hypotheses. The video mentions that the founding members of the Royal Society were influenced by Francis Bacon's ideas, which would later be associated with the scientific method, highlighting the method's historical development and significance.

💡Peer Review

Peer review is the process by which scientific research is evaluated by other experts in the same field before it is published. The video references the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, one of the world's oldest peer-reviewed scientific journals, to illustrate how peer review helps maintain the quality and credibility of scientific research. This process is crucial for ensuring that scientific knowledge is rigorously tested and validated.

💡Scientific Revolution

A scientific revolution, as alluded to in the video, is a period of significant and rapid change in scientific understanding, often triggered by the accumulation of new evidence or ideas that challenge existing paradigms. The video suggests that it will explore moments of scientific revolution, indicating how such periods of upheaval have shaped the development of scientific disciplines and our overall knowledge of the world.

💡Technology

Technology, in the context of the video, refers to the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, leading to the invention of tools, machines, and systems that enhance human capabilities and improve quality of life. The video script mentions how scientific discoveries have been converted into technological wonders, transforming the world and illustrating the interplay between science and technology.

💡Ethics in Science

Ethics in science pertains to the moral principles and values that guide scientific research and its applications. The video touches on the responsibility of scientists and engineers to consider the ethical implications of their work, shaping our world in ways that are both beneficial and responsible. It suggests that understanding the ethical dimensions of science is crucial for citizens to make informed decisions about the use of scientific knowledge and technology.

Highlights

Introduction to the series 'Crash Course: History of Science' by Hank Green, focusing on the uncovering of truths about the universe and the technological advancements that have resulted.

Emphasis on the ongoing nature of scientific inquiry and the idea that we are still ignorant about many aspects of the universe, such as the existence of quarks and the matter-antimatter imbalance.

The history of science as a collective movement from ignorance to knowledge, with the acknowledgment that the journey is far from complete.

The concept of 'science' as both a body of knowledge and the methods used to create that knowledge, including observation and experimentation.

The importance of the reproducible experiment and the motto 'NULLIUS IN VERBA' ('on no one’s word') of the Royal Society, encouraging skepticism and independent verification of scientific claims.

The historical evolution of the term 'scientist', which was only coined in the 1830s and became popular in the 1840s, highlighting the fluidity of scientific identity.

The founding of the Royal Society in 1660 as a platform for debating new ideas about nature and the significance of its journal, Philosophical Transactions, as one of the world's oldest peer-reviewed scientific journals.

The early scientists of the Royal Society, who were not 'scientists' in the modern sense but rather alchemists and medical doctors, and their self-identification as 'Natural Philosophers'.

The diversity of the history of science, which includes various systems of understanding the world beyond the traditional Euroamerican narrative.

The examination of different knowledge systems, such as Greco-Latin-Jewish-Arabic medicine, ayurvedic knowledge, traditional Chinese medicine, and Incan knowledge, to understand the global system of science.

The recognition that past knowledge systems should be viewed as valid in their own right, rather than as 'bad' science, and the importance of understanding them on their own terms.

The impact of incremental questions and scientific revolutions on the development of scientific disciplines and societies, as influenced by philosophers like Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault.

The five big questions that the series will explore, which are still without complete answers: what is stuff, what is life, where are we, when are we, and how can we agree on what we know.

The role of values and ethics in shaping the world of science and technology, and the reciprocal influence of science and technology on the societies that produce them.

The responsibility of citizens to understand the history of science to navigate the challenges of the future, including ecological catastrophes and the development of new technologies.

The final theme of the series, which ties the study of science to the study of religion, by examining the human search for ultimate Truth.

A call to action for viewers to support Crash Course on Patreon to keep the educational content free for everyone, highlighting the collaborative nature of the production.

Transcripts

Hello, and welcome to our new series—Crash Course: History of Science.

My name is Hank Green, and I’ve wanted to produce this course for years.

I’m obsessed with how people throughout the ages have uncovered truths about the universe

and converted these into a wealth of technological wonders.

This process has decreased the suffering of millions of humans—even as it’s sparked

entirely new problems.

Regardless of the outcomes of scientific inquiry, the process itself is fascinating.

The world you inhabit today is full of gadgets that once belonged to science fiction.

We can model what the earth looked like millions of years ago, or zoom in and observe the atoms

that make up our own bodies.

We are going to tell that inspiring story: we’ll be thinking about thinking with Aristotle,

digging canals in Song Dynasty China,

listening to robot musicians in medieval Turkey,

fighting an electrical war in New York City,

and discovering the shape of DNA in Cold War England.

But the history of science is not only a story of humanity’s collective movement from ignorance

to knowledge, for two different reasons.

First, as much as scientists today may not like to admit it, we are still pretty ignorant…

And we don’t agree on what it would mean to reach the ultimate Truth, capital T.

Take a big question that we've been asking for a long time like “what is stuff”:

While modern physicists will tell you that

stuff is made of atoms, and atoms are made of quarks and leptons, we still don’t know

why quarks exist.

Or why there appears to be far more matter in the universe than we can account for.

Even something as basic as “stuff” needs a lot more sciencing!

Second, and more importantly for historians, “science” isn’t a stable or single idea.

That’s why, in this episode, we’re going to be thinking about some ways to answer a deceptively

simple question:

what is the history of science the history of?

[intro music plays]

Today, “science” can mean both our body of knowledge about the world as well as the

methods we use to create that knowledge, or how we know the stuff that we know.

Within that “how,” there are two main practices—things that we do—that systematically

generate knowledge:

One: observe some specific aspect of the world.

For example, Darwin spent decades obsessively observing the subtle variations in different

kinds of barnacles, orchids, turtles, birds, and other living things.

This led him to theorize how they had changed over time.

My dude loved barnacles!

Two: conduct an experiment to answer some question about the world.

Did Galileo drop two metal balls of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to

show that they fall at the same rate and disprove Aristotle’s theory of gravity?

Probably not.

But Dutch thinkers Simon Stevin and Jan Cornets de Groot did conduct that experiment soon after.

Today, we have much bigger “towers” for testing theories in physics: the Large Hadron

Collider is seventeen miles long!

Finally, when I said systematically, I meant that there are rules about observing or experimenting—rules

that anyone can follow.

That notion of anyone being able to be a scientist is super important.

In fact, a lot of contemporary scientists have three Latin words tattooed on their arms:

“NULLIUS IN VERBA”—“on no one’s word…”

Let’s explore this phrase because it's important.

In this series, The Thoughtbubble is going to bring to life different wonders from the

history of science.

Today, our wonder is pretty abstract: the wonder of the reproducible experiment.

“NULLIUS IN VERBA” is the motto of the Royal Society.

This group of knowledge-makers was founded in 1660 as a “College for the Promoting

of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning” and re-founded in 1663 as “the Royal Society

of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge.”

And it’s still around today!

The Society was started as a place to debate new ideas about nature.

Its members demonstrated experiments in front of each other—“witnessing” the proofs

behind their theories.

They wrote up these theories in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions, one of the world’s

oldest peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Influenced by Francis Bacon’s ideas, which would eventually become associated with the

“scientific method,” the founding members of the Royal Society chose a motto with an

unambiguous meaning:

don’t believe something just because someone tells you it’s true.

Test out each new hypothesis, or educated guess, yourself.

In other words: your individual proof of how some natural phenomenon works should be something

that anyone can reproduce.

This idea had an enormous impact on the history of science.

Later members of the Royal Society included stars such as Ike Newton, Ben Franklin, Mike

Faraday, Chuck Darwin, and even Big Al Einstein, who was about as British as sauerkraut.

In fact—plot twist!—the early scientists who adopted the creed “NULLIUS IN VERBA”

were not actually “scientists.”

They were well-off alchemists and medical doctors,

and they called themselves Natural Philosophers.

Or, "People who loved truths concerning the world around them."

Natural philosophy in seventeenth-century England was sort of like the contemporary

natural sciences mashed up with medicine, mathematics, some philosophy–philosophy,

and a whiff of religion.

The word “scientist” was only coined recently, in historical terms, in the 1830s, and caught

on around 1840.

It was made up by an English scientist named William Whewell who was also a historian of

science and a priest.

So if we only cared about the history of people called “scientists,” our job would be

easy: there aren’t any until around 1840!

And most people called scientists, or natural philosophers, looked suspiciously similar

to one another.

Take the Royal Society: its members have been, until recently, almost exclusively rich English

men.

Even though their ranks have included many incredibly clever scientists, they haven’t

represented anything like all knowledge makers.

The sixty-second President of the Royal Society, biophysicist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, is

the group’s first non-white leader.

And there has never been a female President.

But the history of systematically knowing stuff goes back much further than the Royal

Society and includes more types of people than English blokes.

Thus “science” is a historical and social concept—not one that’s existed forever,

in the same way for all people.

Because the history of science includes many systems of understanding the world, we have

to consider these systems on their own terms.

It may seem simpler to focus on the “winners” of history.

But hearing only the big Euroamerican names—Plato, Einstein—doesn’t teach us as much about

our global system of science today.

Taking the time to highlight different knowledge worlds will help us see our own as relatively

recent, not entirely unified, and evolving.

For example, we’ll learn about the Greco-Latin-Jewish-Arabic medicine of the medieval Mediterranean world,

millennia of ayurvedic knowledge across the

Subcontinent, traditional Chinese medicine, and Incan “talking knots” and engineering—just

to name a few.

Each of these systems has its own social norms about what count as valid ways to make and

share knowledge.

We’ll look at modern scientific norms in a later episode.

And each of these can help us see the “otherness” of these past or different cultures as not

so other, after all.

We can see natural philosophers and other proto-scientists as smart people making sense

of their world, not as “bad” scientists.

They understood the world around them in the smartest way they could.

For example, according to medieval Mediterranean medicine, the organ in my head was for venting

waste heat, not thinking.

People in the past weren’t stupid: they knew that if your head was chopped off, that

was curtains for you.

They just weren’t sure what all this weird gray stuff did.

Even today—though we can see a neuron fire in high-resolution—we struggle to understand

what really goes on when it fires, that is, the role a single neuron plays in thinking…

much less answer the question, what is consciousness.

The history of science really gets even juicier when incremental, nagging questions about

the natural world add up and cause a scientific discipline, or an entire society, to change

in a “revolutionary” way.

Later in the series, we’ll look at moments of revolution within the sciences alongside

philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault, who... did not always agree.

They show that science isn’t only historical and social, but constructs entire worlds of

knowledge in which we all find ourselves trapped.

But don’t worry about that just yet.

By learning the history of science, we will automatically start to think about our own

knowledge world as historical—not finished, not capital-E enlightened.

Around the world, humans are still actively working to understand our universe… but

they don’t all agree on how to do it.

We may be able to make more accurate models of natural phenomena… but we may never find

the ultimate answers we seek.

At its limit, the history of science touches on the study of religion: the diverse and

changing nature of the never-ending human search for Truth, capital T.

Our path through past knowledge worlds is going to be a beautiful and powerful one.

There are many, many marvelous insights to celebrate.

To help us keep our footing as we jump across centuries and continents, we’re going to

keep our eyes on five big questions.

Questions that, to this day, we do not have complete answers to.

First: what is stuff?

From atoms to dark matter to spacetime: what are things made of?

“Things,” by the way, includes air, fire, and outer space:

if you think I’m going to sit here and not celebrate the death of phlogiston with you,

you’re sorely mistaken!

Number two: what is Life?

What’s the simplest way to define living things?

Are viruses alive?

Is the earth alive?

Where did life come from?

Where did current organisms come from?

How do we understand their interactions with each other and their world?

Three: where are we?

What is this place, the earth?

What is its place in the cosmos?

Is this the only universe?

Four: when are we?

More questions of scale: how long have we been around?

What about living things?

What about the whole universe?

What came before that?

And five: how can we agree on what we know?

And how can I convince more people that the stuff I know is accurate?

For example, how can I show anti-vaccers that vaccines are necessary!?

Regarding technology, how should we talk about what to do what our knowledge?

All of these questions have been considered by people as far back as records exist.

They also remain active areas of study today.

But the last theme is so important that it gets its the final section.

Humans have always tried to describe the world, for lots of reasons: in part because it’s

fascinating (“magnets—how do they work!?”), and in part to control it.

Knowledge, as they told us in grade school, really is power!

The power that knowing stuff gives the knower is exactly why we should study the history

of science.

Thus one goal of this course is to highlight how the values (beliefs about right and wrong) and ethics (acceptable behaviors)

of scientists and engineers shape our world.

And how, conversely, sciences and technologies are shaped by the societies that produce them.

We have a responsibility as citizens to understand

and to act accordingly.

Our world today looks radically dissimilar to that of three hundred years ago.

To quote Andy Weir, we’ve “scienced” the heck out of it.

We learned about stuff, made new technologies, and are currently scrambling to learn new

stuff to solve the problems that our old technologies created.

Facing an utterly unprecedented total ecological catastrophe, we may need to “science”

it even more, in one way or another.

We’ll talk more about this in future episodes.

Learning the history of science can help shine a light on this dark future.

Next time—pack your spanakopita: we’re heading to ancient Greece to invent natural

philosophy with the Presocratics.

Until then, this has been—“on no one’s word”—Crash Course: History of Science!

Crash Course History of Science is filmed in the Dr. Cheryl C. Kinney Studio in Missoula,

MT and It’s made with the help of all of these nice people.

And our animation team is Thought Cafe.

Crash Course is a Complexly production.

If you want to keep imagining the world complexly with us, check out some of our other channels

like Sexplanations, How To Adult, and Healthcare Triage.

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