SCIENCE Its HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT for warmth and cooking Fire was a natural phe nomenon they instinctively had feared for a very long time Ever so gradually science advanced Prehistoric men and women learned to cul tivate crops in addition to foraging for wild plants and hunting game They developed wheels most likely inspired by rolling logs and adapted them for transporting heavy loads They learned to count They cut and shaped copper tin and other metals for many practi cal purposes from coins to armor They began to understand better ways to take advantage of and survive in the changing seasons They learned that certain plant foods were nutri tious and curative others poisonous Dates and circumstances of the earliest scientific developments are unknown because the people who made them had no system of writing What they learned was passed down to younger generations by word of mouth Their findings were not entirely unrecorded however Prehistoric drawings in different parts of the world indicate how people lived They show that certain early cultures had fairly advanced understandings of agriculture celestial objects and other complexities of the natural world 10
INTRODUCTION With the advent of writing experiment ers and scribes began recording the history of scientific development We know much for example of the work of ancient Chinese astronomer Zhang Heng who studied the stars and invented a seismometer to detect earthquakes We know that the mathemati cian Archimedes demonstrated the powers of the lever in classical Greece We benefit from the extensive teachings of brilliant sci entists of the Renaissance and more recent eras Each step forward in modern times has been well chronicled Today we read regularly of breaking discoveries from microbiology to deep space Exciting research is constantly underway New fields of science have emerged as a result of new tools The invention of the com pound microscope in the late 16th century led to minute studies of organisms and substances In recent years advances in digital technology have provided far greater access to informa tion and faster modes of communication In this book we will trace the progression of science through its transition from his tory to current events 11
CHAPTER 1 SCIENCE IN OUR WORLD umans incessantly explore experiment create and examine the world The active process by which physical biological and social phe nomena are studied is known as science Individuals involved in science called OOrone Hale watche Latest status 4 tonewatch gsc nasa gov Q AND National Aeronautics and Space Administration ASA Goddard Space Flight Center Ozone Hole Watchtmages data and information for the Southern Hemisphere Ozone Maps Meteorology Ozone Facts Multimedia Education 2 March 2014 View the latest status of the ozone layer over the Antarctic with a focus on the ozone hole Satellite instruments monitor the ozone layer and we use their data to create the images that depict the amount of ozone Click any map image to bring up a new page with a high resolution image ot Mar Latest news The largest ozone hole 24 September 2008 High resolution TIFF 26 Feb Animations 360x240 720x486 1280x720 Daily 2013 27 Feb mpimpimpi mpg mpg mp4 mp4 mph mpg mpg March 1979 2014 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA keeps a close watch on the ozone layer in our atmosphere via satellite imagery which it then color codes In this March 2014 view of the Antarctic pole blue shows areas with the least ozone NASA Ozone Watch 12
SCIENCE IN OUR WORLD scientists often spend their entire lives in pursuit of answers to probing questions This ongoing process often leads to new areas of scientific inquiry Although many areas of scientific inquiry are interrelated specific scientific disciplines or divisions have been established The sci ences can be broadly divided into two main areas the natural sciences and the social sci ences The natural sciences comprise the physical sciences earth and space sciences and life sciences the social sciences encom pass disciplines that deal with social and cultural aspects of human behavior such as economics sociology and psychology Some scientists are driven by little more than the desire to learn They may study to gain knowledge for its own sake These sci entists are engaged in basic or pure science Their projects may or may not have any rel evance to everyday life Scientists working in applied science on the other hand usually have a specific goal in mind This goal may involve a product process business or other human need An applied scientist often uses information recently gathered by other scien tists as well as the cumulative knowledge of the pure sciences 13
