• Question: How did human started to realise the importance of science?

    Asked by anon-187764 to Miriam, David on 8 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: David Ho

      David Ho answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      I personally think that science has been around for as long as people have. Science is about recognising patterns and trying to make predictions about what will happen in the future. A simple pattern that early humans probably realised was that if big black clouds appear in the sky, it’s probably going to rain soon. They could use this knowledge to improve their lives (by getting under shelter when clouds come).

      Modern-day scientists do the same thing. We just find patterns that are much harder to see, and make predictions that are much more precise. In order to do that we need to use clever tools, like mathematical equations and supercomputers. But we can only do that because we build on thousands of years of science that other people have done before us. That’s one of the beautiful things about science, how everything builds up from something so small.

    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      I think humans have always known, but we didn’t always have a name for it.

      Imagine early humans like cave people, they used spears or rocks to hunt. If they throw weapons like that they are applying the physics of gravity, air resistance, and other movement equations! But they probably didn’t realise, they just tried different things and found what worked and what didn’t. They may have realised if it was windy that they needed to throw harder or in a slightly different direction but changing your actions based on whats going on around you is also science!

      In its most basic form, science would have been looking at the world around them and trying to figure out why things are happening. Thinking about the world eventually got a name in the Greek times: ‘Philosophy’. Anyone that thought about the world and tried to figure out things were called philosophers. Gradually over time we started to separate into names based on the kind of things they are. Biology (living things), Chemistry (rocks, reactions), Physics (space).

      So I think its always been important, we just don’t always realise we’re doing science!

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