History of Science OnlineCourse Info: HSCI 3013 - section 995 - Fall 2008 |
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Timeline: Some Important Dates to Remember
For this history course you will not need to memorize dates. Far more important than actual dates are relative sequences, such as Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle who taught Alexander... not vice-versa. However, to develop a general perspective of the temporal sequencing of events, it is very handy to familiarize yourself with several well-chosen landmark dates or ranges of dates. A few such dates can serve as a helpful frame of reference and anchor the relative sequences at some point. In this course, which covers the history of science from antiquity through the early modern period, we shall adopt the following dates as an arbitrary frame of reference. Familiarize yourself with them by referring to this page often (using the Timeline link, above), and take heart that no dates need be memorized. Approximate dates are represented by circa or ca., which means “around.”
The Three Periods covered in HSCI 3013: Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern
| Periods |
Highlights |
Description |
Date |
| "Ancient” before 529 A.D. |
3rd
millennium BC |
Egyptian Pyramids Mesopotamian city-states |
3000-2000
BC |
| 2nd
millennium BC |
Babylonian
astronomy: Venus tablets, Mul Apin |
2000-1000
BC |
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| Hellenic
(early Greek): Presocratics through Aristotle |
6th
& 5th centuries: Presocratic philosophers (Thales, Pythagoras, Empedokles, et al.) |
600-401
BC |
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| 4th
century BC: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, Kidinnu |
400-301
BC |
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| Hellenistic
(later Greek): Greek science after Alexander |
death
of Alexander the Great |
323
BC |
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| death
of Aristotle |
322
BC |
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| Hipparchos
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150
BC
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| Roman (science in the Latin west) |
Cicero, Lucretius, Ovid, Seneca, Pliny | 100 BC - 100 AD | |
| Galen and Ptolemy | 150
AD |
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| Justinian
closed the Academy at Athens |
529
AD* |
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| “Middle
Ages” or 529–ca. 1400 A.D. |
Early
Middle Ages |
Benedict
founded monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy |
529
AD* |
| Abbasid
dynasty, Baghdad |
750–1258 756–1031 909–1072 |
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| Celtic scholarship (Book of Kells ca. 800) | 700s |
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| Carolingian reforms | 800s |
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| 12th century Renaissance | Founding
of cathedral schools, and Universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford |
1100s |
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| High Middle Ages | Albertus
Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, al-Tusi |
1200s |
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| Nicole
Oresme, Jean Buridan, William Ockham |
1300s |
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| Early
Modern |
15th
century |
"Quattrocento,"
Renaissance |
1400s |
| Fall
of Constantinople, capital of Byzantine empire, to Turks (westward influx
of Greeks) |
1453 |
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| Gutenberg
printed Bible with movable type |
ca.
1454 |
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| 16th
century |
Reformation |
1500s |
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| Luther's
95 theses |
1517 |
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| Copernicus,
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres |
1543 |
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| 17th
century |
"Scientific
Revolution" |
1600s |
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| Death
of Galileo, birth of Newton |
1642** |
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| Newton,
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy |
1687 |
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| Modern (covered in HSCI 3023) |
18th
century |
Enlightenment |
1700s |
| 19th
century |
professionalization
of science |
1800s |
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| Darwin,
Origin of Species |
1859 |
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| 20th
century |
Big
science, big technology |
1900s |
* The sixth century A.D. may be taken as the end of antiquity and the beginning
of the Middle Ages. The year 529 A.D. is chosen arbitrarily, but it does have
symbolic value representing both the end of ancient learning (Justinian closed
the Academy at Athens) and the beginning of medieval culture (Benedict founded
his monastery at Monte Casino in Italy).
** Since the lives of Galileo and Newton together span what is often called the “Scientific Revolution,” 1642 is a convenient symbol, though strictly speaking a problematic date. At that time England and continental Europe used different calendars, ten days out of phase. On the continent—where Galileo died on 9 January 1642—Newton’s birth would have been reckoned as 4 January 1643, though by England’s calendar he was born on Christmas day, 1642. Thus the symbolic date holds only by the conflation of two unsynchronized calendars!
"We are puny dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants." Bernard of Chartres, 12th century
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HSCI 3013. History
of Science to 17th century
Many thanks to Mythology
and Folklore and other online courses developed by Laura Gibbs.
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