10 February 2000

1
Lecture 10

• 10 February 2000

Connections - Chapter Five Wheel of Fortune
Bronowski - Chapter 4
2
The Wheel of Fortune

• Computers Prediction of future, Power
• Bit - an on/off switch
• Byte 8 bits

3
Computers

• Binary Representations Addition
• 0
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

1 1 2
2 3 5
4
Computer Speed

• Hertz (Hz) 1 cycle per second
• Megahertz (MHz) 1 million cycles per second

5
Contribution of Arabs

• Caliph Al Mansur
• Medicine - Monastery Jundi Shapur
• Where Greek knowledge was saved
• Introduced Greek knowledge to Arab world
• Astronomy Prediction Moon ----tides,
  Sun---Seasons, Eclipses
• Astrology See into the future-12 Zodiac gives
  power over some aspect of life. Exact knowledge
  of celestial mechanics.

6
Contribution of Arabs

• Medicine-Rule of Health-Hygiene, Nutrition,
  Anatomy, Pharmacology. "get up at dawn, wash your
  face and hands, Comb the hair, brush your teeth,
  Eat a hearty lunch but a light supper, Get six
  hours of sleep.
• Humours blood -hot -summer, phlegm-cold
  -winter, yellow bile -dry-spring, black
  bile-wet-fall

7
Contribution of Arabs

• Instruments- Improved Astrolabe Graduated Scale
• Knowledge
• Crusades Reintroduce Greek and Arab knowledge
  into Western Culture.
• Fall of Toledo in Span to Christians in 1105.
  West acquires Greek and Arab knowledge.

8
Time Measurements

• Candle, sundials, water- spring- pendulum-Verge
  and Foliate
• 14th Century Clock Towers in Cities.
• 15th Century Nuremberg Egg-Pocket watch
• Huygens - Pendulum clock

9
Navigation

• Problems
• New Clocks not accurate-1 min. Inaccuracies of
  15 miles.
• Pendulum wont work in pitching boat.
• Speed/Accuracy varies due to changing temperature
  and humidity.
• British - 20,000 pounds prize for accurate
  longitude location on ocean.
• John Harrison - a few seconds/six weeks

10
Telescope

• Lens in 14th Century for scribes. Telescope in 17
  Century to observe cannon fire.
• In many cases there are times which an invention
  is technologically possible, but without a
  market the idea will not sell... (Burke pg.135)

11
Precision Instruments

• Huntsman New type of crucible from glass
  manufacturing furnace.
• Allows steel for clock spring
• Handley-Sextant -Precision Tools-need new steel
  to etch metal.
• Maudslay Lathe-Mass Production Line (Block and
  Tackle) Huntsman steel, edge to cut metal very
  precisely -Industrial Revolution.

12
America

• Small population-Unskilled nature of workers
• Lots of water power.
• Machines were specialized, workers were not.
• Guns with interchangeable parts.
• United States becomes Industrial Power at the end
  of 19th century

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14
Bronowski Chapter 4

• 18th Century and the Idea of order

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The 18th Century and the Idea of Order

• Newtons achievement is a compact symbol of the
  whole Scientific Revolution
• Newtons great work was over before the
  beginning of the 18th century.
• Royal Society changed for political reasons.
• The century settled down into literary and
  scientific culture,
• it was the beginning of the mistaken opposition
  between them from which we suffer today...

16
Reasons for the unexpected reversal?

• Reason 1-
• Class society Scientists were wealthy.
• Seafaring, manufacturing, cottage industries.
• Technology was performed by common laborers.
• Reason 2- Newton's Success-
• From a puzzle of observation and rules was
  produced single system of order based on a few
  axioms.
• Mathematics methods was the model for the
  universe.

17
Reason 3

• A science that orders its thought too early is
  stifled
• Until a science has passed through a long stage
  of observation and trial, it cannot develop a
  system of ordering its observation. page 46

18
New order after Newton-

• Botany- The notion of order cannot be defined on
  any ground except its success.
• Linnaeus
• Family, Genus species
• Botanists-their method of ordering was free form
  theoretical prejudices of mathematical methods.

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First important step in every Science

• make first approximation of order which holds to
  the experimental facts known.
• Sickness-unbalance humors-fire, air, water,earth
• Fever- typhus, malaria, influenza

20
Importance of Scientific Revolution 1660-1800

• Not the discovering of means of machine (steam
  engine), but in preparing the climate for them.
  They no longer thought of the world either as
  settled or as well taken care of. They saw the
  work as man-made and ordered by man, and they saw
  the machine in every part of it page 55