Graziano & Raulin
Research Methods (9th edition)
II. EARLY SCIENCE
Science evolved over thousands of years, and many people contributed to the definition and practice of what has become modern science. Modern science is particularly indebted to the classical Greek civilizations. They developed the rationalism, empiricism, experimentation, and inductive-deductive theory-building that underlie modern science.
Today’s science is technologically more powerful than anything that Thales, Hippocrates, Strato, or Aristotle knew. Yet they would understand today's science, because the essence of science is its ways of thinking, its logical processes of asking and answering questions about natural phenomena, and those features have been in place for thousands of years.
The goal of modern science is to build models and theories that are descriptive, explanatory, and predictive. The underpinnings of scientific thought were developed early in human history. Scientific thought has fostered technology that has developed to extraordinary levels, particularly in the last 100 years, and the store of scientific knowledge is now overflowing. Nevertheless, the basic thought processes behind that technology and knowledge explosion were laid down long ago and have endured.
This section covers the people whose work was instrumental in the building of science, all of them long before the emergence of psychology. Many people contributed to the history of science, and out of necessity we have been selective in our coverage. For those wishing more complete discussions of these topics, there are several excellent books available.
The names in this historical period are listed alphabetically below. The vignettes, briefly describing the work of each person, are presented chronologically.