South 고등학교 2학년 History and Culture of Science
Chapters: 3
1. Birth and integration of science and civilisation
Science in early civilisations · Greek scientific thought · Medieval Europe and the Islamic world · Renaissance and Scientific Revolution · Scientists and knowledge building
- History of Science: How Our Ideas About Nature Changed – Science grew slowly over 5,000 years. Early civilisations watched the sky to make calendars. Greek thinkers asked why things happen and used reason. Indian and Islamic scholars gave us zero, algebra and careful experiments. In the Scientific Revolution, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton replaced the Earth-centred model with a Sun-centred one and tested ideas by experiment. Modern science brought atoms, evolution, relativity and quantum theory. Each step shows the same lesson: good evidence can overturn old ideas.
- The Scientific Revolution: How Science Learned to Test Ideas – Between about 1540 and 1700, thinkers in Europe changed how people study nature. Copernicus put the Sun at the centre, Galileo used a telescope to collect evidence, Kepler found that orbits are ellipses, and Newton explained the sky and the Earth with one law of gravity. Bacon and Descartes described a new method based on observation, experiment, reason and maths. This is the Scientific Revolution.
- Nature of Science: How Scientific Knowledge Is Built and Changed – Science is a way of knowing that rests on evidence anyone can check. Scientists observe, infer, test ideas that could be proved wrong, and let other experts check their work. Laws describe what happens; theories explain why. Scientific knowledge is reliable but always open to change, and sometimes a whole way of seeing (a paradigm) is replaced.
2. Changing science and world
Relativity and modern science · Society and modern science · Science in art and architecture · Epidemics in history · Science and transport · Technology since the Industrial Revolution
- History of Science: How Our Ideas About Nature Changed – Science grew slowly over 5,000 years. Early civilisations watched the sky to make calendars. Greek thinkers asked why things happen and used reason. Indian and Islamic scholars gave us zero, algebra and careful experiments. In the Scientific Revolution, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton replaced the Earth-centred model with a Sun-centred one and tested ideas by experiment. Modern science brought atoms, evolution, relativity and quantum theory. Each step shows the same lesson: good evidence can overturn old ideas.
- Science, Technology and Society: How Discoveries Change Our Lives – Science finds out how nature works; technology uses that knowledge to make tools and solve problems. Society shapes science too, by asking questions, paying for research and making rules. Big changes such as the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, vaccines and the internet changed how people work, live and think. Every technology has benefits and risks. To decide wisely we look at evidence, weigh benefits against risks, ask who gains and who loses, think about ethics and the future, and use safety rules.
- Art and Technology: How New Inventions Change Art – New technology has changed art again and again. The printing press (about 1450) let one image be copied many times, so art reached ordinary people. Paint in metal tubes (1841) let painters work outdoors. Photography (1839) took over the job of copying reality, so painting turned to colour, feeling and new ways of seeing. Cinema (1895) added time and motion. Computers (from the 1960s, common after 1980) made digital, internet and now AI art, where copies are free and works can react to viewers. Artists also use science: perspective (geometry), colour theory (light and the prism), new materials, and today 'artistic research' where art and science investigate together. Each new tool raises questions: what is original, who is the author, and what is art for?
- Science in Art and Art in Science – Art and science help each other. Science gives art ideas like ratio, symmetry, perspective, fractal patterns and the chemistry of colour. Art helps science by drawing and showing what is hard to see, from the body to the tiny world. Today pixels, AI and virtual reality (VR) make a new kind of art where an image is a set of numbers.
- Public Health – Public health is the work of keeping whole communities healthy: preventing disease, promoting healthy living and making sure everyone can get care. Infectious diseases spread through air, water, food, touch and insects; hygiene, clean water, sanitation and vaccination break the chain. When enough people are immune, herd immunity protects the rest. Health systems work in levels (primary, secondary, tertiary) and use surveillance data to spot outbreaks early.
- Transport Technology: Moving People and Goods – Transport technology moves people and goods from place to place. Every transport system has five parts: a vehicle, a way (road, rail, sea lane, air route), terminals (stations, ports, airports), a power source and a control system. Land vehicles push on the ground using friction. Ships float because water pushes up (buoyancy). Planes fly when lift beats weight and thrust beats drag. Rockets push gas backwards and are pushed forwards. Engines turn fuel or electricity into motion; electric motors waste less energy. Safety depends on stopping distance = thinking distance + braking distance. Future transport aims to be cleaner, safer and smarter: electric and hydrogen vehicles, maglev trains, drones and self-driving cars.
- The Age of Industrialisation – Before factories, merchants gave raw material to peasant families who spun and wove at home (proto-industrialisation). From the 1760s Britain built cotton mills, machines like the spinning jenny and James Watt's improved steam engine. Change was slow: hand labour stayed cheap and common. In India, weavers once supplied world markets; the East India Company controlled them through gomasthas, and Manchester cloth later flooded India. From 1854 Indian mills grew in Bombay and elsewhere, and small workshops also grew. Makers sold goods through labels, calendars and adverts, and swadeshi adverts appealed to national pride.
3. Science and the human future
New fields from technology · Science in media and daily language · Technology and music · Connecting humans and machines · VR and AR · Collective decisions on science
- Science Inside Advanced Technology – Advanced technology is ordinary science used in clever ways. Sensors turn touch, light and motion into electric signals. Chips are made of silicon. New materials such as graphene get their power from how atoms are arranged. New medicines are designed to fit a target like a key fits a lock. When biology, information and nano-science meet, new fields appear.
- Science Communication: Sharing and Judging Scientific Results – Science communication means sharing findings clearly and honestly, and judging what others claim. Fit the message to the audience without changing the facts. Reports and posters follow an order: question, method, results, conclusion with limits, references. Graphs need titles, labelled axes and units. In demonstrations and exhibitions, show the idea in action and invite questions. In the media, claims often grow bigger than the evidence, and everyday words like theory mean something different in science. Check the source, the evidence, the sample size and whether others confirmed it.
- Art and Technology: How New Inventions Change Art – New technology has changed art again and again. The printing press (about 1450) let one image be copied many times, so art reached ordinary people. Paint in metal tubes (1841) let painters work outdoors. Photography (1839) took over the job of copying reality, so painting turned to colour, feeling and new ways of seeing. Cinema (1895) added time and motion. Computers (from the 1960s, common after 1980) made digital, internet and now AI art, where copies are free and works can react to viewers. Artists also use science: perspective (geometry), colour theory (light and the prism), new materials, and today 'artistic research' where art and science investigate together. Each new tool raises questions: what is original, who is the author, and what is art for?
- Science in Art and Art in Science – Art and science help each other. Science gives art ideas like ratio, symmetry, perspective, fractal patterns and the chemistry of colour. Art helps science by drawing and showing what is hard to see, from the body to the tiny world. Today pixels, AI and virtual reality (VR) make a new kind of art where an image is a set of numbers.
- Internet of Things (IoT) – The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of everyday objects that have sensors, a small computer and a network connection, so they can collect data, share it over the internet and act on it. A sensor turns a physical change into data, a microcontroller processes it, the network (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, 4G/5G, LoRa) carries it to a cloud server or app, and an actuator turns commands into action. IoT is described in three layers: perception, network and application. It brings convenience and saves energy, but needs strong privacy and security.
- Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: How They Work – Virtual reality (VR) puts you inside a world made by a computer: a headset shows each eye a slightly different picture, lenses make the screens look far away, and sensors track your head so the picture moves as you look around. Augmented reality (AR) keeps the real world and adds computer objects on top, using a camera to find surfaces or markers. Mixed reality (MR) lets virtual and real objects interact. They are used in games, training, medicine, design and education.
- Ethics in Science and Technology – Science and technology give great power, so we also ask "should we?" and not only "can we?". Science ethics means weighing benefit against risk, keeping people, animals and nature safe, being honest with data, taking responsibility for how results are used, and letting citizens share in big decisions about science.