A Glance History of Physical Science
Adib Rifqi Setiawan · 2019
Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation nor experimentation. It can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. The main branch of life science is biology, while physical science is subdivided into four branches: astronomy, physics, geology, and chemistry. These branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized fields. However, the distinctions between the natural science disciplines are not always sharp, and they share a number of cross-discipline fields. Physics plays a significant role in the other natural sciences, as represented by astrophysics, geophysics, chemical physics, and biophysics. But Biology gives important impact to human activities, as represented by ecology and neuroscience. Based this matter of fact, I can safely say that Physics is the king of science nor Biology is the queen of science as well. The empirical evidence from observation or experimentation use tools from formal sciences that is Mathematics to convert information about nature into measurements which can be explained as clear statements of the laws of nature. In short, both of life and physical science have a servant, called Mathematics. Like female, however, the servant act like temptress to the king, and try to carry out a coup d'etat the real queen. The focus of this essay is the history of physical science mostly nowadays in branch physics, from early period beginning in the 7th century, when Thales of Miletus proclaimed that every event had a natural cause. Historians face several problems that physicists do not share. The data of history, that is: the materials historians use to reconstruct lives, events, and eras; differ markedly from the data of physics. Physicists may conduct a laboratory experiment, observe behavior of nature, and calculate the statistical correlation between two variables. In using these methods, physicist scientists have a measure of control over the situations or events they choose to study. Usually those events can be reconstructed or replicated by other physicists at other times and places. Thus, the data can be verified later by establishing conditions similar to those of the original study and repeating the observations. In contrast, the data of history cannot be reconstructed or replicated. Each situation occurred at some time in the past, perhaps centuries ago, and historians might not have bothered to record the particulars of the event at the time or even to record the details accurately. Although historians cannot repeat a situation to generate pertinent data, they still have significant information to consider. The data of past events are available to us as fragments, descriptions written by participants or witnesses, letters and diaries, photographs and pieces of laboratory equipment, interviews, and other official accounts. It is from these sources, these data fragments that historians try to recreate the events and experiences of the past.