The Discovery of New Science
Scientific discoveries in all scientific disciplines are hardly rare, but they can be difficult to appreciate in full. Most discoveries are not on the scale of the discovery of gravity, for example, but they build upon those major discoveries.
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Scientific Method
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The scientific method calls for hypotheses. These are ideas proven through repetition, and they become accepted theories. The theories become core knowledge in the scientific field.
Theories
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DNA was a significant discovery, and fairly clear. Five examples of theories are the discovery of the earth's magnetic field (1600), Newton's law of gravity (1687), extinction theory (1796), the electron (1897) and DNA (1953).
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Obscurity
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Even the most exciting discoveries in particle physics are baffling to most people. Alongside those discoveries were such exclusive discoveries as the law of conservation of mass (1789), synthesis of urea (1828) and the definition of the atomic number (1913). These were significant advances in the fields of chemistry and physics. Yet, as a whole, only scientists understood the importance.
Incrementalism
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Viruses were discovered around 1020; the discovery of the HIV virus was an incremental discovery. Most scientific discoveries are described as incremental. The broad strokes are well established. An example of an incremental discovery would be the discovery of a new chemical element or of an unknown species of fish.
New Discoveries
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Incremental discoveries are still quite significant. For example, the Laetoli footprints discovered in Tanzania in 1978 established that humans walked upright as long as 3.5 million years ago. Viruses were described in 1020, but the the discovery of the HIV virus in the 1980s was a significant discovery.
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References
- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Kevin Dooley Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Michael Knowles Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Niels Heidenreich Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Everett
