KADUNA STATE UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
COURSE CODE
SOC 116

COURSE TITLE
Element of Scientific Thought
ASSIGNMENT
Discuss the origin of science.

COURSE CO-ORDINATOR
Dr. Anthonia Badugu

COMPILED BY
KASU/20/SOC/1008

SUBMITTED ON
27TH JANUARY, 2022.
INTRODUCTION

The term science is a Latin word for "knowledge" derived from the word "scientia". Science

was referred to as natural philosophy or pre-modern until the 1840's . Science in a broad sense

existed before the modern era and in many historical civilization.

THE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE

The route of science can be traced to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 300-120BCE.

Although the words and the concepts of science's and nature were not part of the conceptual

land space at that time. The ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia made contributions that would

later find a place in Greek and medieval science, mathematics, astronomy and medicine started

in around 300BCE. The ancient Egyptians develoed a numbering system that was decimal in

character and had oriented their knowledge of geometry to solving practical problems such as

those of surveyors and builders. They even developed an official calender that contains 30 days

each and five days at the end of the year. Based on medical writings in the 2500 to 1200BCE the

ancient Egyptians believed that disease was mainly caused by the inversion of bodies by evil
forces or spirit. Thus, in addition to drug treatment, healing or therapies would even be prayer,

incantations and rituals.

Many cultures like ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Chinese had collected observations

and facts but had not tried to use those fact to develop explanation of the world around them.

Historically, the first true scientist were ancient Greeks between 600BC and 500AD.

SCIENTIST THAT PLAYED A VITAL ROLE IN THE EMERGENCE OF SCIENCE (600BC-500AD)

There are scientist who prompted or made immense contributions to the evolution of science.

They include; Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Leucippus, Aristotle, Archimedes, and

Ptolemy.

Thales

He studied the heavens and made effort to give an explanation for the movement of the

heavenly bodies. These bodies are referred to as the planets and stars. He was able to correctly

predict the "short term disappearance of the sun" known as solar eclipse. Solar eclipse is an

event in which the moon moves between the earth and the sun, mostly blocking the sun view.

Anaximander
He was the first scientist who tried to explain the origin of the human race without reference to

a creator. He explained that all life began in the sea. He said that human were actually some

sort of fish but Charles Darwin later restated the idea which is now know as evolution.

Anaximenes

He believed that air was the most basic substance in nature. His belief was that all things were

constructed of air. His thinking is that when air is thinned out it grows warm and becomes fire

and that when it thickens, it condesces into liquid and solid matter, but these ideas were found

to be wrong. Nevertheless, his attempts to explain all things in nature as been made a singles

substance led to the concept of atoms.

Leucippus

Leucippus is another ancient Greek scientist who built on the concept of Anaximenes. He

proposed that all matter is composed of little units called "atoms". He is know as the father of

atomic theory.

Aristotle

His great work was in the study of living things. He was the first to make a large-scale attempt

at the classification of plants and animals. He was known for a great number of wonderful

advances in the sciences but was also responsible for a great deal of nonsense that hampered

science for many years. He believed that certain living things spontaneouy formed from non-

living substance and this idea was called spontaneous generation. The idea is that living

organism can be spontaneously formed from non-living substance.

Archimedes

He was best known for his work with fluids. He showed how one can could predict whether or

not an object could float in a liquid.

Ptolemy

He studied heavens and assumed that the earth was the centre of the universe, that the planets

and stars orbited about the earth in a series of circles and this system is called Geocentric

system and in this system, the earth sits at the centre of the universe and does not move. This

system was considered the correct explanation for the agreement of planets and stars in space

until the 1700's.

Dark ages (500AD -1000AD)

The development of science was hampered during this period of the influence of Roman empire

which was the superpower of the period. During this period a lot of people made observations

and explanations for example both the Arabs and the Chinese were making careful study of the

heavens but those study were more detailed and precise than those of the Greek scientist

before them (600BC -500AD). However, there were only few attempts to explain what the data

meant. The data were collected and were used by scientist to arrive at a concluding end about

the world around them.

 CONCLUSION

The desire for improvement in the standard of living gave rise to the technical attainment of

man covering the use of fire, shaping of tools, clothing and domestication of animals and so on

triggered the emergence of science.

 REFERENCES

History and Philosophy of Science . Modules for Students of Kaduna State University, Kaduna.

2019.p1-3.