Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is science?
An endeavor dedicated to the accumulation and classification of observable facts in order to formulate general laws about the natural world.
What was the ancient Egyptian, Imhotep, known for?
He was renown for his knowledge of medicine.
What is papyrus?
An ancient form of paper, made from a plant of the same name.
What was the Greek scientist Thales known for?
Thales studied the heavens and tried to develop a unifying theme that would explain the movement of the heavenly bodies (the planets and stars).
What was the Greek scientist Anaximander known for?
Anaximander, who was a pupil of Thales, is known for trying to explain the origin of the human race without reference to a Creator. He thought that all life began in the sea.
What was the Greek scientist Anaximenes known for?
Anaximenes was an associate of Anaximander who believed air was the most basic substance in nature. His attempt to explain things led to the concept of atoms.
What was the Greek scientist Leucippus known for?
He expanded the concepts of Anaximenes and proposed that all matter is composed of units called atoms. He is known as the father of atomic theory.
What was the Greek scientist Democritus known for?
Democritus used the illustration of sand to explain the concept of atoms.
What is density?
A measure of how tightly packed the matter in a substance is.
What was the Greek scientist Aristotle known for?
Philosophy, mathematics, logic, and physics. He also attempted to classify plants and animals.
What is spontaneous generation and who proposed the idea?
Spontaneous generation is the idea that living organisms can be spontaneously formed from non-living substances proposed by Aristotle..
What was the Greek scientist Archimedes known for?
Archimedes is known for his work with fluids. He noticed that solid items displace an equal volume of water.
What was the Greek scientist Ptolemy known for?
Ptolemy studies the heavens and attempted to describe the planets and stars. He proposed the geocentric system.
What is the geocentric system?
A belief that the earth was at the center of the universe.
What is alchemy?
“Science” during the Dark Ages in which people looked for a means by which lead could be changed into gold.
What is a chemical reaction?
A reaction in which one or more substances interact to form one or more new substances.
Who are responsible for the first encyclopedias?
Roman Catholic Monks who preserved vast amounts of scientific knowledge.
What two things does scientific progress depend upon?
Scientific progress depends not only on scientists, but it also depends on government and culture. Science progresses by building on the work of previous scientists.
What was Robert Grosseteste known for?
Robert Grosseteste was a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1200s A.D., and he was deeply committed to the idea that the secrets of the natural world could be learned by discovering the laws that God had set in motion. Sometimes called the father of the Scientific Method.
What was Dietrich Von Freiberg known for?
Dietrich Von Freiberg, built on Grosseteste’s work and was able to offer an explanation for why a rainbow appears in the sky.
What was Roger Bacon known for?
Bacon, a Roman Catholic theologian, had a strong belief that science could be used to support the reality of Christianity.
What was Thomas Bradwardine known for?
Bradwardine was a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church and a theologian who questioned much of the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings. Bradwardine was one of the first scientists to examine many of Aristotle’s ideas critically.
What was Nicholas of Cusa known for?
Cusa, a Roman Catholic Priest, was particularly interested in the idea that God was infinite. He studied the planets and stars thinking they were the oldest things in the universe.
What was Nicolaus Copernicus known for?
Copernicus placed the sun at the center of everything and assumed that the planets (including the earth) traveled around the sun. This view was called the heliocentric ( system, because Helios is the Greek god of the sun.
