Miss Buddha

by Ulf Wolf

However, just like the Egyptians and Mesopotamians—and unlike the Greeks, who prized knowledge as an end in itself—the Chinese took a very pragmatic view of science and put their discoveries to use.

  The list of China’s early discoveries does dazzle. It includes the compass, which her curious pragmatists invented in about 270 CE; woodblock printing, designed around 700; gunpowder apparently clocked in around the year 1000; as did movable type.

  The Chinese were also competent mathematicians and astronomers. In mathematics, they had calculated the value of pi to within seven decimal places by the year 600; while in astronomy, one of their most celebrated observations was that of the supernova, or stellar explosion, that took place in the Crab Nebula in 1054.

  China is also the source of the world’s oldest portable star map, dating from about 940.

  Islamic Science

  Meanwhile, closer to Europe, but during the same dark ages, the Islamic world—which in medieval times extended as far west as Spain and as far east as India—also made some significant scientific breakthroughs.

  Apparently picking through whatever scraps of ancient knowledge remained after the Muslim conquest of India razed most Hindu and Buddhist temples and libraries, the Arab mathematician Muhammad al-Khwarizmi discovered and then introduced Hindu numerals to Europe—many centuries after they had been formulated in southern Asia.

  Unlike the numerals used by the Romans, the Hindu numerals included the very useful concept and symbol of zero which as a mathematical device was unknown to Europe at the time.

  Astronomy-wise, Arab stargazers charted the heavens, giving many of the brightest stars the names we still use today, such as Aldebaran, Altair, and Deneb. Arab scientists also explored chemistry, and they developed methods to manufacture metallic alloys and to test the quality and purity of metals.

  Arab scientists were also active in optics. Early in the 11th century, Alhazen, one of the most famous Egyptian physicists, published a tract on the principles of lenses, mirrors, and other optical devices. In this work, he rejected the then-prevailing idea that eyes give out light rays. Instead, he deduced that eyes work when light rays enter them from outside.

  Europe Stirs Again

  European historians often attribute the rebirth of its science to a political event—the capture of Constantinople (now İstanbul) by the Turks in 1453.

  At the time of capture, Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire and a major seat of learning. Its downfall led to a westward exodus of Greek scholars, and in the period that followed, many scientific works, including those originally from the never sleeping Arab world, were translated into European languages and then, through the Western invention of the movable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, made widely available.

  16th Century

  Unfortunately, this resurrection of Western European science was rather short-lived. The recurring outbreak of bubonic plague that began in 1347, and which was to last for over two centuries—what we know as the Black Death—was to thwart broad progress until well into the 16th century when two books were published which were to have a profound impact.

  Curiously, they were both published in the year1543.

  Vesalius

  The first of these was De Corporis Humani Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body, 7 volumes, 1543), by the Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius.

  Vesalius had studied anatomy in Italy, and his masterpiece, which was illustrated by superb woodcuts, corrected errors and misapprehensions about the body that had persisted since the time of Galen—in other words, for over 1,300 years.

  Unlike Islamic physicians, whose religion prohibited them from dissecting human cadavers, Vesalius—curiosity personified—dissected and investigated the human body in minute detail. As a result, he set new standards in anatomical science and created a brilliant reference work.

  Copernicus

  The second book was Nicolaus Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). In it, the Polish astronomer—following in the footsteps made by Pythagoras almost two thousand years earlier—rejected the idea that Earth was the center of the universe, as proposed by Ptolemy in the 1st century BCE, and as maintained by the Holy Roman Empire ever since.

  Rather, Copernicus set out to prove that Earth, together with the other planets, follows orbits around the Sun.

  Other astronomers of his time opposed Copernicus’s ideas, and more ominously, so, naturally, did the Roman Catholic Church (which by now had attained serious political power and was not about to have divine revelations contradicted by Polish upstarts).

  In the early 1600s, the Catholic Church placed Copernicus’ book on a list of forbidden works, where it was to remain for a good two centuries.

  Despite this ban and despite the book’s inaccuracies (Copernicus, for instance, believed that Earth’s orbit was circular rather than elliptical), De Revolutionibus remained a momentous achievement. It also marked the beginning of a conflict between science and religion that has dogged Western thought ever since.

  17th Century

  In the first decade of the 17th century, Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei put a new device—the telescope—to good use. In fact, with the help of this new invention, he provided independent evidence to support Copernicus’s views on the sun and the planets.

  Galileo Galilei was also the first person to observe satellites circling Jupiter, the first to make detailed drawings of the surface of the moon, and the first to see how Venus waxes and wanes as it circles the sun.

  His observation and plotting of Venus’ path convinced Galileo that Copernicus’ sun-centered view of the universe was in fact correct, but he was obviously also smart enough to realize the political (not to mention personal) danger of supporting such heretical views. His dilemma was this: how to communicate his findings in such a way that they tell the truth while not rubbing Rome the wrong way.

  His attempt at this, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, published in 1632, was carefully crafted to avoid such life-threatening controversy. But no such luck. He was indeed, and in short order, summoned before the Inquisition and, under threat of torture, he—unlike Giordano Bruno, who did not back down—did in fact recant. The Bible and the Church was right, Copernicus (and Galileo) wrong. End of story (if you relish your life).

  During the 17th century, European scientists did, however, make good progress in areas less hazardous to your health. For one, as mentioned earlier, Galileo himself investigated the laws governing falling objects, and also discovered that the duration of a pendulum’s swing is constant for any given length. Galileo then explored the possibility of using this phenomenon to control a clock, an idea that his son later—records show 1641—put into practice.

  Two years later, in 1643, another Italian, the mathematician and physicist Evangelista Torricelli, built the first barometer. In the process he also discovered atmospheric pressure (which, of course, is what the barometer measures) and also constructed the first artificial vacuum known to science.

  17th century Europe also saw major advances in the life sciences, including William Harvey’s discovery of the circulatory system and the Dutch microscope maker Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microorganisms.

  Later than century, Robert Boyle, an Irishman who settled in England to avoid the turmoil over Irish colonization efforts made by English protestants, established modern chemistry as a full-fledged science; while in France, the philosopher and scientist René Descartes made significant headway in mathematics, as well as advancing the case for rationalism—the theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response—in scientific research (frowned upon, naturally, by Rome).

  This century’s greatest achievements, however, came in 1665, when Isaac Newton left Cambridge for his rural birthplace in Woolsthorpe to escape an epidemic of the plague. There, in peace and q
uiet, and in the course of a single year, he not only developed new theories about the nature of light and gravitation, but he also developed calculus, if for no other reason than to document and prove that the force of gravity extends throughout the universe and that all objects attract each other with a precisely defined and predictable force.

  Gravity, he pointed out, is what holds the moon in its orbit around the Earth and is also the principal cause of the Earth’s tides. This discovery revolutionized the view of the universe and it, more than any other single event, is what marked the birth of modern science.

  Age of Enlightenment

  What Newton demonstrated above all else was that nature is governed by basic laws that, if you look hard and well enough, and if you apply a rational scientific method to it, can be identified, isolated, and stated.

  This new approach to observing nature—and again, much to Rome’s dismay—liberated 18th-century scientists from passively accepting the untested and unproven wisdom of ancient writings or religious authorities.

  And so, in what was to become known as the Age of Reason, or the Age of Enlightenment, the curious began to actively apply rational thought, careful observation, and experimentation to solve a variety of problems (rather than consulting the Bible or their local priests).

  Advances in biology, for example, saw the gradual erosion and eventual demise of the theory of spontaneous generation—the long-held notion that life could spring from nonliving matter.

  This new freedom also brought the beginning of scientific classification as pioneered by Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, who isolated and recorded close to 12,000 living plants and animals into a systematic arrangement that, in many aspects, is still in use today.

  Also, by the year 1700 the first steam engine had been built, while improvements in the telescope enabled German-born British astronomer Sir William Herschel to discover the planet Uranus in 1781.

  Throughout the 18th century, science played an increasingly important role in everyday life; new manufacturing processes revolutionized the way that products were made, heralding what we now term the Industrial Revolution.

  The 19th Century

  As the scope of scientific discoveries grew, and with knowledge building upon prior knowledge to grow this edifice ever higher, science—by necessity, since the volume of data was growing far too great for any one person to now embrace—began to split, and scientists began to specialize in particular fields.

  This specialization, however, did not mean that the discoveries made were limited to particular fields, for from the 19th century onward, research began to unearth principles that applied to, and united, the universe as a whole.

  Chemistry

  In chemistry, one of these universal discoveries was a conceptual one: the notion that all matter is made of atoms. This, of course, was not a new thought. As I mention above, Leucippus and Democritus proposed the atom some two thousand years earlier.

  The man who eventually came to revisit this notion—and this happened in 1803—was the English chemist John Dalton, who then managed to provide clear and convincing chemical proof that these little particles did in fact exist.

  Dalton also discovered that each atom has a characteristic mass and that atoms remain unchanged when they combine with other atoms to form compound substances. He went on to use this atomic theory to explain why substances always combine in fixed proportions—a field of study known as quantitative chemistry.

  In 1869 Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev, building upon Dalton’s discoveries about atoms and their behavior, drew up his periodic table of the elements, a monumental breakthrough which is still in use today.

  Other 19th-century discoveries in chemistry included the world’s first synthetic fertilizer, manufactured in England in 1842. In 1846 German chemist Christian Schoenbein accidentally developed the powerful and unstable explosive nitrocellulose. The discovery occurred after he had spilled a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids and then mopped it up with a cotton apron. After the apron had been hung up to dry, it exploded. He later learned that the cellulose in the cotton apron combined with the acids to form a highly flammable explosive.

  In 1828 the German chemist Friedrich Wohler discovered that you could create organic (containing carbon) compounds from inorganic ingredients, a breakthrough that opened up an entirely new field of research, and by the end of the 19th century, hundreds of organic compounds had been synthesized, including mauve, magenta, and other synthetic dyes, as well as aspirin, still one of the world’s most useful drugs.

  Physics

  In physics, the 19th century is remembered chiefly for research into electricity and magnetism, which were pioneered by physicists such as Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.

  In 1821 Faraday demonstrated that a moving magnet could set an electric current flowing in a conductor. This experiment and others he performed eventual led to electric motors and generators.

  While Faraday’s genius lay in discovery by experiment, Maxwell produced even greater theoretical breakthroughs. Maxwell’s famous equations, which first saw the light of day in 1864, deployed mathematics to explain the interactions between electric and magnetic fields and demonstrated the principles behind electromagnetic waves created when electric and magnetic fields oscillate simultaneously.

  While Maxwell realized that light was a form of electromagnetic energy, he also postulated that the complete electromagnetic spectrum must include many other forms of waves as well. In this, he was proven correct by Heinrich Hertz’s discovery of radio waves in 1888 and by Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays in 1895.

  More monumental still, in 1897, British physicist Sir Joseph J. Thomson discovered the electron, a subatomic particle with a negative charge. This breakthrough upset the long-held notion that atoms were the basic unit of matter.

  As with the discoveries in chemistry, these 19th-century discoveries in physics proved to have immense practical value, and no one proved more adept at harnessing these discoveries than the prolific Thomas Edison.

  Working from his laboratories in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison devised the carbon-granule microphone in 1877, which greatly improved the recently invented telephone. He also invented the phonograph, the electric light bulb, several kinds of batteries, and the electric meter.

  During his life, Edison was granted over one thousand patents, a phenomenal feat for a man of no formal schooling.

  Earth Sciences and Astronomy

  When it comes to the earth sciences, the 19th century was a time of controversy. Scientists were debating, and not always amicably, the Earth’s age. Estimates ranged from less than 100,000 years to several hundred million years.

  In astronomy, greatly improved optical instruments facilitated several important discoveries. For example, the first observation of an asteroid, Ceres, took place in 1801.

  Also, astronomers had long noticed that Uranus exhibited an unusual orbit. French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier now predicted that another planet nearby was the cause of this. By mathematical calculations, he narrowed down where in the sky such a planet would be located, and in 1846, with the help of German astronomer Johann Galle, Leverrier actually discovered Neptune.

  The Irish astronomer William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, became the first person to see the spiral form of galaxies beyond our own solar system. He did this with the Leviathan, a 183-cm (72-in) reflecting telescope, built on the grounds of his estate in Parsonstown (now Birr), Ireland, in the 1840s. His observations were hampered by Ireland’s damp and cloudy climate, but his gigantic telescope remained the world’s largest for over 70 years.

  Life Sciences

  During the 19th century, the study of microorganisms became increasingly important, particularly after French biologist Louis Pasteur revolutionized medicine by correctly deducing that some microorganisms are involved in disease.

  In the 1880s, Pasteur devised methods of immunizing people against diseases by deliberately treating them w
ith weakened forms of the disease-causing organisms themselves. Pasteur’s vaccine against rabies was a milestone in the field of immunization, and was one of the most effective forms, if not the most effective form, of preventive medicine the world had ever seen.

  In the area of industrial science, Pasteur also invented the process of pasteurization to help prevent the spread of disease through milk and other foods.

  Also in the 19th century, the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel laid the foundations of genetics, although his work, published in 1866, was not recognized until about forty years later.

  But when it comes to towering scientific giants of the 19th century, none towers higher than Charles Darwin. His publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 marked a major turning point for both biology and human thought.

  Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (independently and simultaneously developed by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace) initiated a violent controversy that has, in fact, yet to subside. Particularly controversial was Darwin’s theory that humans resulted from a long process of biological evolution from apelike ancestors.

  As might be expected, the greatest opposition to Darwin’s ideas came from those who believed that the Bible was an exact and literal statement of the origin of the world and of humans, and that science need look no further.

  Still, although the general public initially castigated Darwin’s ideas, by the late 1800s most biologists had accepted that evolution occurred pretty much along the lines proposed by Darwin.

  Modern Science

  Building upon the amazing progress of the 19th century, the 20th century saw continued and spectacular advances in all scientific fields, including genetics, medicine, social sciences, technology, and physics.