Through the Past Lightly

He goes on to explain: "The differentiation of science into its specialties is...an artificial and man-made state of affairs." In the late nineteenth century, this process really started getting out of hand. Sub-categories began to emerge, such as astrophysics (chemical constitution and physical structure of stars), geophysics (related to earthquakes), physical chemistry, and molecular biology. As for mathematics, "...it became nearly impossible to differentiate between the 'pure mathematician' and the 'theoretical physicist.'" That could get ugly at a dinner party! Well, so much for the West.

There were great thinkers in Eastern cultures, as well, however, not to mention the Real West, i.e. South America and Mexico, represented by the Aztecs and Mayans. There, too, the lines between religion, philosophy and science were blurred. Then, East met West and the rest is, well, you know.

Long, Long Ago, in a Land Far, Far Away...

So how about some of those great moments in science? After all, this is supposed to be a history article. Here's a few that caught my eye from The Timeline Book of Science:

2500 B.C. - Glass ornaments appear in Egypt.

2296 B.C. - The Chinese record the first known sighting of a comet.

1000 B.C. - The Chinese burn coal for fuel.

763 B.C. - The Babylonians are the first to record a solar eclipse.

700 B.C. - The Assyrians introduce the aqueduct.

585 B.C. - Greek mathematician Thales of Miletus studies magnetism.

352 B.C. - The Chinese report the first recorded supernova.

250 B.C. - The Chinese book Mo Ching, written by followers of the philosopher Mo-tzu, contains a statement of the first law of motion that will be stated in 1687 by Isaac Newton in his Principia: a body continues in a state of rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by outside forces. (Sounds like the first report of a couch potato to me.)

60 B.C. - In the poem On the Nature of Things, the Roman philosopher Lucretius speculates, as had Democritus (440 B.C.), that matter is made of atoms.

100s B.C. - The Chinese note that a magnetic sliver, allowed to turn freely, always points north-south. (English scholar Alexander Neckam was the first European to do so in 1180 A.D.)

August 29, 284 - The Coptic calendar is introduced in Egypt and Ethiopia.

400 A.D. - The Chinese invent the wheelbarrow.

770 A.D. - Iron horseshoes come into widespread use in Europe.

850 A.D. - The astrolabe, used for

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