Although the history of physics as an independent science began only in the 17th century, its origins date back to the most ancient times, when people began to systematize their first knowledge of the world around them. Until modern times, they belonged to natural philosophy and included information about mechanics, astronomy, and physiology. The real story of physics began thanks to the experiments of Galileo and his students. Also, the foundation of this discipline was laid by Newton.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, key concepts appeared: energy, mass, atoms, momentum, etc. In the 20th century, the limitations of classical physics became clear (in addition to it, quantum physics, the theory of relativity, the theory of microparticles, etc.) were born. Natural science knowledge is being supplemented today, since researchers are faced with many unresolved problems and questions about the nature of our world and the entire universe.
Antiquity
Many pagan religions of the Ancient world were based on astrology and the knowledge of astrologers. Thanks to their studies of the night sky, the emergence of optics has occurred. The accumulation of astronomical knowledge could not but affect the development of mathematics. However, the ancients could not theoretically explain the causes of natural phenomena. Priests attributed lightning and solar eclipses to divine wrath, which had nothing to do with science.
At the same time, ancient Egypt learned to measure length, weight and angle. This knowledge was necessary for architects in the construction of monumental pyramids and temples. Applied mechanics developed. The Babylonians were also strong in it. They, based on their astronomical knowledge, began to use the day to measure time.
The ancient Chinese history of physics began in the 7th century BC. e. The accumulated experience in crafts and construction was subjected to scientific analysis, the results of which were presented in philosophical works. The most famous author is Mo-tzu, who lived in the IV century BC. e. He made the first attempt to formulate the fundamental law of inertia. Even then, the Chinese were the first to invent the compass. They discovered the laws of geometric optics and knew about the existence of a pinhole camera. In the Celestial Empire, the beginnings of the theory of music and acoustics appeared, which for a long time had not been suspected in the West.
Antiquity
The ancient history of physics is best known thanks to Greek philosophers. Their research was based on geometric and algebraic knowledge. For example, the Pythagoreans were the first to announce that nature obeys the universal laws of mathematics. The Greeks saw this pattern in optics, astronomy, music, mechanics and other disciplines.
The history of the development of physics is hardly represented without the works of Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, Lucretius Cara and Heron. Their works have survived to our times in a fairly holistic way. Greek philosophers differed from contemporaries from other countries in that they explained physical laws not by mythical concepts, but strictly from a scientific point of view. At the same time, the Greeks also made major mistakes. These include the mechanics of Aristotle. The history of the development of physics as a science owes much to the thinkers of Hellas, even if only because their natural philosophy remained the basis of international science until the 17th century.
Contribution of the Alexandrian Greeks
Democritus formulated the theory of atoms, according to which all bodies are composed of indivisible and tiny particles. Empedocles proposed the law of conservation of matter. Archimedes laid the foundations of hydrostatics and mechanics, setting forth the theory of leverage and calculating the magnitude of the buoyancy force of a liquid. He also became the author of the term "center of gravity."
The Alexandrian Greek Heron is considered one of the greatest engineers in human history. He created a steam turbine, summarized knowledge about the elasticity of air and the compressibility of gases. The history of the development of physics and optics continued thanks to Euclid, who investigated the theory of mirrors and the laws of perspective.
Middle Ages
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the collapse of ancient civilization came. Many knowledge was forgotten. Europe has stopped its scientific development for almost a thousand years. The temples of knowledge were Christian monasteries, which managed to preserve some of the writings of the past. However, progress was hindered by the church itself. She subjugated philosophy to the theological doctrine. Thinkers who tried to go beyond it were declared heretics and severely punished by the Inquisition.
Against this background, the primacy in the natural sciences passed to Muslims. The history of the appearance of physics among Arabs is associated with the translation into their language of the works of ancient Greek scientists. On their basis, thinkers of the east made several important discoveries of their own. For example, the inventor of Al-Jaziri described the first crankshaft.
European stagnation lasted until the Renaissance. Over the Middle Ages, glasses were invented in the Old World and explained the occurrence of a rainbow. The 15th-century German philosopher Nikolai Kuzansky was the first to suggest that the universe is infinite, and thus far ahead of its time. After several decades, Leonardo da Vinci became the pioneer of the phenomenon of capillarity and the law of friction. He also tried to create a perpetual motion machine, but unable to cope with this task, he began to theoretically prove the impracticability of such a project.
Renaissance
In 1543, the Polish astronomer Nikolai Copernicus published the main work of his whole life “On the rotation of celestial bodies”. In this book, for the first time in the Christian Old World, an attempt was made to protect the heliocentric model of the world, according to which the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not vice versa, as the geocentric model of Ptolemy assumed by the church. Many physicists and their discoveries claim to be great, but the appearance of the book On the Rotation of Celestial Bodies is considered the beginning of a scientific revolution, followed by the emergence of not only modern physics, but modern science as a whole.
Another famous New Age scientist, Galileo Galilei, was most famous for the invention of the telescope (he also owns the invention of the thermometer). In addition, he formulated the law of inertia and the principle of relativity. Thanks to the discoveries of Galileo, a completely new mechanics was born. Without it, the history of the study of physics would have stalled for a long time. Galileo, like many of his contemporary thinkers, had to resist the pressure of the church, which was trying to defend the old order with all its might.
XVII century
The growing interest in science, which has gained momentum, continued in the 17th century. The German mechanic and mathematician Johannes Kepler became the discoverer of the laws of planetary motion in the solar system (Kepler's laws). He outlined his views in the book "New Astronomy", published in 1609. Kepler opposed Ptolemy, concluding that the planets move in ellipses, and not in circles, as was believed in antiquity. The same scientist made a significant contribution to the development of optics. He investigated farsightedness and myopia, finding out the physiological functions of the lens of the eye. Kepler introduced the concepts of the optical axis and focus, formulated the theory of lenses.
The Frenchman Rene Descartes created a new scientific discipline - analytical geometry. He also proposed the law of refraction of light. The main work of Descartes was the book "Principles of Philosophy", published in 1644.
Few physicists and their discoveries are known as the Englishman Isaac Newton. In 1687, he wrote a revolutionary book, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. In it, the researcher outlined the law of gravity and the three laws of mechanics (also known as Newton's laws). This scientist worked on color theory, optics, integral and differential calculus. The history of physics, the history of the laws of mechanics - all this is closely connected with Newton's discoveries.
New frontiers
The 18th century gave science a lot of outstanding names. Leonard Euler stands out among them. This Swiss mechanic and mathematician wrote more than 800 works on physics and topics such as mathematical analysis, celestial mechanics, optics, music theory, ballistics, etc. The Petersburg Academy of Sciences recognized him as his academician, which is why Euler spent a significant part of his life in Russia. It was this researcher who laid the foundation for analytical mechanics.
It is interesting that the history of the subject of physics has developed as we know it, thanks not only to professional scientists, but also to amateur researchers, much better known in a completely different capacity. The most striking example of such self-taught was the American politician Benjamin Franklin. He invented the lightning rod, made a great contribution to the study of electricity and made an assumption about its connection with the phenomenon of magnetism.
At the end of the 18th century, the Italian Alessandro Volta created the “Volta Pillar”. His invention was the first electric battery in the history of mankind. This century was also marked by the advent of a mercury thermometer, created by Gabriel Fahrenheit. Another important event of the invention was the invention of the steam engine, which occurred in 1784. It spawned new means of production and the restructuring of industry.
Applied Discoveries
If the history of the beginning of physics developed on the basis that science should explain the cause of natural phenomena, then in the 19th century the situation changed significantly. Now she has a new vocation. Physicists began to demand the control of natural forces. In this connection, not only experimental, but also applied physics began to develop rapidly. “Newton Electricity” Andre-Marie Ampère introduced a new concept of electric current. Michael Faraday worked in the same field. He discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction, the laws of electrolysis, diamagnetism, and became the author of terms such as anode, cathode, dielectric, electrolyte, paramagnetism, diamagnetism, etc.
New sections of science have developed. Thermodynamics, elasticity theory, statistical mechanics, statistical physics, radiophysics, elasticity theory, seismology, meteorology - all of them formed a single modern picture of the world.
In the XIX century, new scientific models and concepts arose. Thomas Jung substantiated the law of conservation of energy, James Clerk Maxwell proposed his own electromagnetic theory. Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev became the author of a significant influence on the entire physics of the periodic system of elements. In the second half of the century, electrical engineering and an internal combustion engine appeared. They became the fruits of applied physics, focused on solving certain technological problems.
Rethinking Science
In the 20th century, the history of physics, in short, has passed to the stage when the crisis of already established classical theoretical models arrived. Old scientific formulas began to contradict new data. For example, the researchers found that the speed of light does not depend on a seemingly unshakable reference frame. At the turn of the century, phenomena requiring a detailed explanation were discovered: electrons, radioactivity, x-rays.
Due to the accumulated puzzles, a revision of the old classical physics took place. The key event in this next scientific revolution was the substantiation of the theory of relativity. Its author was Albert Einstein, who first told the world about the deep connection of space and time. A new branch of theoretical physics has arisen - quantum physics. Several world-famous scientists took part in its formation at once: Max Planck, Max Bon, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Ehrenfest and others.
Modern challenges
In the second half of the 20th century, the history of the development of physics, the chronology of which continues today, has moved to a fundamentally new stage. This period was marked by the heyday of space exploration. Astrophysics made an unprecedented leap. Space telescopes, interplanetary probes, extraterrestrial radiation detectors have appeared. A detailed study of the physical data of various bodies of the solar planet has begun. Using modern technology, scientists have discovered exoplanets and new luminaries, including radio galaxies, pulsars and quasars.
Space continues to be fraught with many unsolved mysteries. We study gravitational waves, dark energy, dark matter, the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe and its structure. The theory of the Big Bang is supplemented. The data that can be obtained in terrestrial conditions are disproportionately small compared to how much work scientists have in space.
The key problems facing physicists today include several fundamental challenges: the development of a quantum version of the gravitational theory, the generalization of quantum mechanics, the unification of all known forces of interaction into a single theory, the search for the “fine tuning of the Universe”, as well as the exact definition of the phenomenon of dark energy and dark matter.