Question 2: Why is useful to think of 'Sciences' in the plural rather than of 'Science' as a singular enterprise?
Since the beginning of scientific inventions, a number of new scientific disciplines have emerged. These include disciplines like systems ecology. With an emergence of such disciplines, researchers have overwhelmingly been faced with highly complex issues that tend to defy the generalization of science as a single discipline (Ede and Cormack, 19). According to historical documentary analysis, science is a discipline that became diversified into different approaches since the beginning of 1950s. In many schools today, there are a number of departments where scholars deal with a specified branch of science. In addition, there has also been an emergence of a number of organizations and journals dedicated to a particular subject of science (Ede and Cormack, 19).
Question 11: What role has experimentation played in the development of science?
Thomas Kuhn, a prolific researcher and a scholar take his time to tell us much more about research. He developed an influential content on conceptual changes that an experiment has brought to the face of science. For every discipline, Kuhn developed a unique pattern of maturation (through experiment) for which validity and credibility of a finding would be based (page 19). The history of development of laboratory experiments was a gradual process that featured a number of personalities like Robert Boyle (Ede and Cormack, 21).
Question 10: What make Euclid's ELEMENTS more than a mere compendium of earlier mathematics?
Euclid’s elements are a geometric and mathematical treatise that consists of 13 books that was written by Euclid, a Greek mathematician, 300 B.C. The 13 books cover geometry and the number theory. In his reign, Euclid managed to develop a number of geometric devices that were used to explain celestial motions of the moon, sun and other known planets. His critical analysis on the elements makes them more than a mere compellation of ancient mathematics (Ede and Cormack, 8).
Question 12: According to Ede and Cormack, why did Archimedes come to represent the "image of the philosopher"?
In their book “History of Science in Society” Ede and Cormack state that Archimedes’ story greatly shaped the view of the philosophers, especially in cultural perspectives (Ede and Cormack, 24). He (Archimedes) determined the value of pi and used it in calculating the diameter, circumference and area of a circle. In addition to this, he also came up with Archimedes’ principle of floatation in hydrostatics.
Question 19: what distinction does Aristotle make between "natural" and "violent" motion?
In Aristotle’s theories of motion, he states that there can be no motion without a mover coming into contact with the body under study. In natural motion, the mover is internally located to the body for the violent motion, the mover is external (Molland, 113).
Question 30: How did Galen seek to make medicine more philosophical especially in regards to Aristotelian ideas?
Part of Ptolemy’s work lay in linking the traditional concepts of Greek geometrical astronomy and that of Babylonian numerical astronomy. His resulting innovation brought about the mathematical models that can be used to explain astronomical phenomena. To some extent, this provided a level of accuracy (Ede and Cormack, 9).
Works Cited
Andrew Ede, Lesley B. Cormack. (2012). History of Science in Society; From the Ancient Greeks to the Scientific Revolution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Molland, G. A. (1996). Aristotelian Science; In Companion to the History of Modern Science. New York: Routledge.
