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crankyoldmanAlright, I just remembered why technological history kicked some major ass. Also why science villains are kind of awesome.
Alright, I'm sure that if you haven't really gotten into the history of science and technology, your best exposure to what these dudes were like is in like "DID YOU KNOW?" type boxes in the margins of your science books. Or even more irritatingly, your math books. They usually say glowing things about how hardworking they are, or how much of a revolutionary they were and the like.
Well, a lot of that is true, but up until the science academies started up (and sometimes because of) and institutionalized the practice of science (and later engineering) pretty much all science was MAD SCIENCE.
No, really. It was.
Nowadays we are sort of overexposed to the mad scientist, and I'll admit, I like it. "Mwhahahaha" and all. But oftentimes on the good side, there's usually a mechanic or an inventor of some kind that is just as kooky, only they feel bad if someone gets hurt (well, usually). So, before I go any further, I'm not justifying unethical practices. But there was a time that ethics wasn't so... clearly regulated.
First off, most major scientists basically took their ideas from other people. The compound lens telescope? Lens grinders had played with it already. Basic astronomy? Sailors. Even Copernicus might have gotten the heliocentric view of the solar system from someone else. The only distinguishing factor that the famous dudes have is that they came up with logical ways to explain it. Or had better publishers, in the case of the discovery of Oxygen.
As I'm learning, often there was a practical solution already being used, just those people were typically craftsmen and didn't, say, know how to read. Newton distinguished himself because not only did he get math, he got how to make his own experimental tools (though, he still might have taken some ideas from contemporaries, like the debate involving Hooke). Lavoisier was an organization freak (he came up with Nomenclature, the bane of when I took chemistry, among other things). Kepler got stuck with a crappy crappy job of sorting out numbers and went from saying orbits were pretty symmetrical shapes to ellipses.
And I haven't even gotten to Edison yet. Oy.
In a world where science is rather tamed (and even that is debatable) in institutions, it's easy to write off the singularly driven types of scientists as mad. And hell, some of them were, most likely. It takes a strange mind to take common sense and make it make sense in terms that smart people get. XD Ironically, most really standout villains of any variety are based on some kind of ambition gone wrong. Ambition that exceeds the standards of law and morality.
I mean, in Western religions, the worst sin is the sin of pride, right? Ambition and pride are like a vicious cycle. Again, I'm not condoning doing crazy things, but sometimes it takes a crazy thing to make sense of the world. Take for instance blood circulation. William Harvey used to bleed out animals and take notes on their heartrate to prove that blood wasn't just goo that held our shape, that it had a flow. Nowadays such a practice would be appalling, but without a basis, without someone to say, "hey look, blood is like this" was he really that off base?
It's a fine line, for sure. Which is why I'm glad I'm not a scientist. Engineers had it easier in history, unless something broke. Then it was pitchfork time.
Also, I would like to put to rest the idea that science and religion are polar opposites. Most early science was based on proving beliefs they already had (unless you're Descartes, but that was a time of unrest and that man had FAR too much time to think). For the longest time inertia was explained as the result of a "prime mover" (you know, GOD?). With each more complete scientific theory they felt more confident that God existed, they just had to adjust how they worshiped. The Science Academies were based on rival Protestant factions.
Really, I think the type of religion helps beget the type of science. Is it any small wonder that in a society where atheism is a sign of intelligence that things like Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory came about? For atheism is its own kind of religion, you have to admit. It takes a lot of energy to tell a good portion of the world they're delusional (not a jab at any of you atheists, mind you).
It's kind of interesting that despite the various Churches locking up scientists that it was a Dominican monk that made the ideas of a pagan Greek the basis of science for quite a long time (by the way, that's St. Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle). Sure, those ideas were later disproved, but that a religion would embrace a science and a philosophy that did not make the usual nods to a supreme being like they did was something. That despite the purity of the scientific method in our minds, we first have conclusions and then work to prove them. It's human nature.
God, I love technical history. It's so... there's really no right answers, but patterns. Such great patterns. Anyway, I'll stop here before I go crazy. Time for some green tea.
~Cendri
P.S. My quotes for today rock.
"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?" - James Thurber
"Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is." - Will Rogers
Alright, I'm sure that if you haven't really gotten into the history of science and technology, your best exposure to what these dudes were like is in like "DID YOU KNOW?" type boxes in the margins of your science books. Or even more irritatingly, your math books. They usually say glowing things about how hardworking they are, or how much of a revolutionary they were and the like.
Well, a lot of that is true, but up until the science academies started up (and sometimes because of) and institutionalized the practice of science (and later engineering) pretty much all science was MAD SCIENCE.
No, really. It was.
Nowadays we are sort of overexposed to the mad scientist, and I'll admit, I like it. "Mwhahahaha" and all. But oftentimes on the good side, there's usually a mechanic or an inventor of some kind that is just as kooky, only they feel bad if someone gets hurt (well, usually). So, before I go any further, I'm not justifying unethical practices. But there was a time that ethics wasn't so... clearly regulated.
First off, most major scientists basically took their ideas from other people. The compound lens telescope? Lens grinders had played with it already. Basic astronomy? Sailors. Even Copernicus might have gotten the heliocentric view of the solar system from someone else. The only distinguishing factor that the famous dudes have is that they came up with logical ways to explain it. Or had better publishers, in the case of the discovery of Oxygen.
As I'm learning, often there was a practical solution already being used, just those people were typically craftsmen and didn't, say, know how to read. Newton distinguished himself because not only did he get math, he got how to make his own experimental tools (though, he still might have taken some ideas from contemporaries, like the debate involving Hooke). Lavoisier was an organization freak (he came up with Nomenclature, the bane of when I took chemistry, among other things). Kepler got stuck with a crappy crappy job of sorting out numbers and went from saying orbits were pretty symmetrical shapes to ellipses.
And I haven't even gotten to Edison yet. Oy.
In a world where science is rather tamed (and even that is debatable) in institutions, it's easy to write off the singularly driven types of scientists as mad. And hell, some of them were, most likely. It takes a strange mind to take common sense and make it make sense in terms that smart people get. XD Ironically, most really standout villains of any variety are based on some kind of ambition gone wrong. Ambition that exceeds the standards of law and morality.
I mean, in Western religions, the worst sin is the sin of pride, right? Ambition and pride are like a vicious cycle. Again, I'm not condoning doing crazy things, but sometimes it takes a crazy thing to make sense of the world. Take for instance blood circulation. William Harvey used to bleed out animals and take notes on their heartrate to prove that blood wasn't just goo that held our shape, that it had a flow. Nowadays such a practice would be appalling, but without a basis, without someone to say, "hey look, blood is like this" was he really that off base?
It's a fine line, for sure. Which is why I'm glad I'm not a scientist. Engineers had it easier in history, unless something broke. Then it was pitchfork time.
Also, I would like to put to rest the idea that science and religion are polar opposites. Most early science was based on proving beliefs they already had (unless you're Descartes, but that was a time of unrest and that man had FAR too much time to think). For the longest time inertia was explained as the result of a "prime mover" (you know, GOD?). With each more complete scientific theory they felt more confident that God existed, they just had to adjust how they worshiped. The Science Academies were based on rival Protestant factions.
Really, I think the type of religion helps beget the type of science. Is it any small wonder that in a society where atheism is a sign of intelligence that things like Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory came about? For atheism is its own kind of religion, you have to admit. It takes a lot of energy to tell a good portion of the world they're delusional (not a jab at any of you atheists, mind you).
It's kind of interesting that despite the various Churches locking up scientists that it was a Dominican monk that made the ideas of a pagan Greek the basis of science for quite a long time (by the way, that's St. Thomas Aquinas on Aristotle). Sure, those ideas were later disproved, but that a religion would embrace a science and a philosophy that did not make the usual nods to a supreme being like they did was something. That despite the purity of the scientific method in our minds, we first have conclusions and then work to prove them. It's human nature.
God, I love technical history. It's so... there's really no right answers, but patterns. Such great patterns. Anyway, I'll stop here before I go crazy. Time for some green tea.
~Cendri
P.S. My quotes for today rock.
"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?" - James Thurber
"Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is." - Will Rogers