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This is a list of important landmarks in the history of systematic philosophical inquiry and scientific analysis of phenomena. The list seeks to highlight important stages in the development of thoughts and analysis towards conceptualizing and understanding phenomena. This list seeks to include all major landmarks in systematic analysis of phenomena across disciplines that seeks to implement formal methods and systematic formal analysis of phenomena. Thus it seeks to list major landmarks across all scientific philosophy and methodological sciences including physical sciences, scientific philosophy, formal disciplines or pure sciences, behavioural sciences, social sciences, biological sciences, life sciences and other related disciplines.
chronological period | Scientific thought | notes |
---|---|---|
approximately 3.3 million BCE [1] | Kenya [1] (place) stone tools | technology |
4000 BCE [2] [3] | Uruk (city) [4] [5] separation from nature in an artificial environment allows the perception of nature as a separate subject (c.f. Fowler (11th citation) Thales, for example), construction technique | technology |
4000 BCE [6] | Mesopotamia [6] counting records [6] Sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system originated with the ancient Sumerians [6] | Mediterranean Levantine Philosophy economics mathematics accounting [6] |
after 3000 BCE [7] | Assyria [8] hypothetic causation suggestion for therapeutic alleviation of dreams with evil content [8] | human sciences |
after 2000 BCE [9] | Enuma Anu Enlil (divinatory omen texts) [10] | |
possibly Dec 2 1878 BC [9] | Enuma Anu Enlil Tablets 50 & 51 [9] observation of solar eclipse [9] | astronomy |
approximately 585 BC [11] | (Greek) Thales [11] discovery of nature [11] | |
400 BCE [12] | Hippocrates [12] tekhnē [13] [14] realization of extension in time from technology of [12] approximately 3.3 million years before, [1] description of the scalpel [12] | medicine |
4th century BCE | Axiomatic science based on the logico-deductive method is founded owing to Euclid's Elements Publication which is at the root of formal system. | Ancient Greek Philosophy |
3rd century BCE | Eratosthenes: calculated the size of the earth and its distance to the sun and to the moon | ancient Greek Philosophy |
150s BCE | Seleucus of Seleucia: discovery of tides being caused by the moon | ancient Greek Philosophy |
5th century CE | Hindu-Arabic numeral system (decimal) begins to be used [15] [16] | Arabic and Indian Philosophy |
630 | Abiyun al-Bitriq : Early astronomical instruments | Arabic Astronomy |
776-869 | Al-Jahiz : Very first scientist to discuss on natural selection in his "Book of Animal" | Arabic Science |
780-850 | Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi : Foundation of modern Algebra and Algorithm | Arabic Science |
806 | Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Fazārī : Invented first astrolabe for navigation | Arabic Geography and Mathematics |
801-873 | Al-Kindi : Father of cryptography, cryptanalysis and frequency analysis | Arabic Mathematics |
850-950 | Influential writings on chemistry attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan | Arabic Chemistry |
858-929 | Al-Battani : Produced many Trigonometric formulas, Calculation of the values for the precession of the equinoxes (54.5" per year, or 1° in 66 years) and the obliquity of the ecliptic (23° 35') | Arabic Mathematics and Astronomy |
859 | Fatima al-Fihri : Founded world's first & oldest degree granting university- "University of al-Qarawiyyin" | Arabic Education |
973-1050 | Al-Beruni : Foundation of Chronology and Indology | Arabic Science and History |
10th century CE | Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes): refutation of Aristotelian classical elements and Galenic humorism; and discovery of measles and smallpox, and kerosene and distilled petroleum | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
1021 | Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics : First accurate vision theory, Father of scientific method | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
1020s | Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine : Standard medical textbook in Europe for 600 years | Persian medicine & Philosophy |
1027s | Avicenna's Book of Healing :First accurate description of Newton's First Law of Motion | Persian medicine & Philosophy |
1048-1131 | Omar Khayyam : Geometric Algebra, a precursor to Descartes' Analytic Geometry; Solution of cubic equations | Arabic Mathematics |
1058-1111 | Al-Ghazali : Logic, Philosophy, Business Ethics | Arabic Philosophy |
1121 | Al-Khazini: variation of gravitation and gravitational potential energy at a distance; the decrease of air density with altitude | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
1135-1213 | Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī : Invented linear Astrolabe; First to propose the idea of a mathematical function | Arabic Mathematics |
12th century | Ibn Bajjah (Avempace): discovery of reaction (precursor to Newton's third law of motion) | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
12th century | Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi (Nathanel): relationship between force and acceleration (a vague foreshadowing of a fundamental law of classical mechanics and a precursor to Newton's second law of motion) | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
1206 | Ismail al-Jazari Inventor of classic Automata, Segmental Gear, Crankshaft, Camshaft that drives modern world | Arabic Engineering |
12th century | Averroes: relationship between force, work and kinetic energy | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
1220–1235 | Robert Grosseteste: rudimentals of the scientific method (see also: Roger Bacon) | European Philosophy |
1242 | Ibn al-Nafis: pulmonary circulation and circulatory system | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
1247 | Nasir al-Din al-Tusi: Invention of famous Tusi Couple | medieval Mediterranean-Arabic physics & Philosophy |
13th Century | Ibn al-Shatir: Production of a new lunar model | Arabic Astronomy |
13th century | Theodoric of Freiberg: Correct explanation of rainbow phenomenon | European Philosophy |
13th century | William of Saint-Cloud: pioneering use of camera obscura to view solar eclipses | European Philosophy [17] |
Before 1327 | William of Ockham: Occam's Razor | European Philosophy |
1332-1406 | Ibn Khaldun Pioneer of histeriography, sociology, demography and economics | |
1429 | Ulugh Beg : astronomy-related mathematics, trigonometry and spherical geometry | Arabic Astronomy |
1460 | Ali Qushji : Development of astronomical physics | Arabic Astronomy |
1494 | Luca Pacioli: first codification of the Double-entry bookkeeping system, which slowly developed in previous centuries | European philosophy [18] |
1430-1500 | Ahmad ibn Mājid : Navigator and Cartographer; Guided Vasco da Gama to complete the first all water trade route between Europe and India | Arabic Geography |
1543 | Copernicus: heliocentric model | astronomy & Philosophy |
1550 | Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf : Invented steam turbine -today known as Steam Jacks | Arabic Engineering |
1570s | Tycho Brahe: detailed astronomical observations | astronomy, mathematics and philosophy |
1600 | William Gilbert: Earth's magnetic field | astronomy & Philosophy |
1609 | – Johannes Kepler: first two laws of planetary motion | Astronomy, Mathematics & Philosophy |
1610 | Galileo Galilei: Sidereus Nuncius : telescopic observations | philosophy, astronomy & mathematics |
1614 | John Napier: use of logarithms for calculation | mathematical philosophy [19] |
1628 | William Harvey: Blood circulation | anatomy, medicine & philosophy |
17th century | René Descartes creates Cartesian coordinate system — allowing reference to a point in space as a set of numbers, and allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system (and conversely, shapes to be described as equations). | philosophy |
17th Century | Baruch Spinoza – opposed Cartesian mind body dualism. He considered the nature of reality of physical and mental worlds to be the same. Spinoza was determinist and believed that even human behaviour is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know and accept that we are determined. | Philosophy |
1665 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first peer reviewed scientific journal published. | Philosophy |
1669 | Nicholas Steno: Proposes that fossils are organic remains embedded in layers of sediment, basis of stratigraphy | Geology, Paleontology & Philosophy |
1675 | Anton van Leeuwenhoek: Observes Microorganisms by Microscope | Philosophy & beginning of modern life sciences |
1675 | Leibniz developed Infinitesimal calculus and its widely used mathematical notation. Later he presented the theory of Monads and developed the Binary number system which is elemental for modern digital computing. His Law of Continuity and Transcendental Law of Homogeneity found mathematical implementation only in the 20th century. | Mathematical philosophy, Mathematical logic, Philosophy |
1687 | Newton: Laws of motion, law of universal gravitation, basis for classical physics | Physics & Philosophy |
1735 | Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of his major work Systema Naturae. The tenth edition of this book is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature. [20] In 1753 he published Species Plantarum which is the primary starting point of plant nomenclature as it exists today. | Botany, Zoology, Philosophy, Biology |
1763 | Bayes' theorem named for Thomas Bayes who first suggested using the theorem to update beliefs was significantly edited and updated by Richard Price after the death of Thomas Bayes and read at the Royal Society. This would later serve as foundation of Bayesian inference in statistics | Philosophy & statistics |
1767 | James Denham-Steuart: used the term supply and demand in his on economics in Inquiry into the Principles of Political economy, published in 1767. Later, Adam Smith used it in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations , and David Ricardo titled one chapter of his 1817 work Principles of Political Economy and Taxation "On the Influence of Demand and Supply on Price". [21] | Economics, philosophy, sociology |
1778 | Antoine Lavoisier (and Joseph Priestley): discovery of oxygen leading to end of Phlogiston theory | Chemistry & Philosophy |
1796 | Georges Cuvier: Establishes extinction as a fact | biology, paleontology & philosophy |
1800 | Alessandro Volta: discovers electrochemical series and invents the battery | chemistry |
1805 | John Dalton: Atomic Theory in (Chemistry) | chemistry & philosophy |
1859 | Charles Darwin published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his book On the Origin of Species | Philosophy, biology, beginning of evolutionary sciences |
1866 | Gregor Mendel published his work which demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. | Philosophy, biology, beginning of Genetics |
1869 | Dmitri Mendeleev: Periodic table | Chemistry & philosophy |
1877 | Ludwig Boltzmann: Statistical definition of entropy | Physics & Philosophy |
1887 | Michelson–Morley experiment was performed in 1887 by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley to detect the relative motion of matter through the stationary luminiferous aether ("aether wind"). | Philosophy & Physics |
1890s | Santiago Ramón y Cajal discovered the axonal growth cone, and provided the definitive evidence for what would later be known as "neuron theory", experimentally demonstrating that the relationship between nerve cells was not one of continuity, but rather of contiguity. "Neuron theory" stands as the foundation of modern neuroscience. | Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Cognitive Science |
1899–1900 | Sigmund Freud developed his theory of the unconscious mind and began his works on psychodynamic theory and psychosexual development of human organism. He proposed that human thought and behavior is complex process of unconscious processes in the mind | Philosophy & Psychology |
1900 | Max Planck: Planck's law of black body radiation, basis for quantum theory | Physics & philosophy |
1905 | Albert Einstein: theory of special relativity, explanation of Brownian motion, and photoelectric effect | Philosophy & Physics |
1906 | Walther Nernst: Third law of thermodynamics | Physics & philosophy |
1911 | Ernest Rutherford: Atomic nucleus | Physics & Philosophy |
1911 | Oskar Heinroth rediscovered the phenomenon of psychological Imprinting, reported by Douglas Spalding in 1877. It was extensively worked on in the 20th century by Nikolaas Tinbergen, Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz who demonstrated a "critical period" and other aspects concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals, earning them a Nobel prize in 1973. [22] | Ethology, Psychology, Cognitive sciences, Zoology, Philosophy, Biology |
1915 | Albert Einstein: theory of general relativity | Physics & Philosophy |
1924 | Wolfgang Pauli: quantum Pauli exclusion principle | Physics & Philosophy |
1925 | – Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger equation (Quantum mechanics) | Physics & Philosophy |
1927 | – Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle (Quantum mechanics) | Physics & Philosophy |
1927 | Georges Lemaître: Theory of the Big Bang | Physics, Philosophy & Cosmology |
1928 | Paul Dirac: Dirac equation (Quantum mechanics) | Physics & Philosophy |
1929 | – Edwin Hubble: Hubble's law of the expanding universe | Physics, Cosmology & Philosophy |
1930s | Keynes introduced Keynesian revolution, overturning neoclassical economics that held free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment, as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. Keynes instead argued that aggregate demand determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. | Economics, Sociology, Philosophy |
1931 | Friedrich Hayek elaborated the "Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle". He argued that the business cycle resulted from the central bank's inflationary credit expansion and its transmission over time, leading to a capital misallocation caused by the artificially low interest rates. | Economics, Sociology, Philosophy |
1931 | Kurt Gödel stated the incompleteness theorem which states that for any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (for example Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the naturals that cannot be proved from the axioms. | Philosophy, Mathematics, Logic |
1934 | James Chadwick: Discovery of the neutron | Physics & Philosophy |
1934 | Karl Popper emphasized the idea of falsifiability as the criterion demarcating science from non-science. | Philosophy & Science |
1937 | Alan Turing: Introduced the mathematical concept of a Turing machine | Philosophy, mathematics, psychology & computer science |
1937 | Kurt Lewin: on the basis of Herbert Blumer's interactionist perspective, suggested that neither nature (inborn tendencies) nor nurture (how experiences in life shape individuals) alone can account for individuals' behavior and personalities, but rather that both nature and nurture interact to shape each person. This is expressed as Lewin's Equation for behavior B=ƒ(P,E). [23] Earlier he coined the notion of genidentity, [24] | Psychology, philosophy, sociology, management, organizational behavior |
1940s | Benjamin Lee Whorf brought focus to the Principle of linguistic relativity [25] which implies that the structure of a language affects the weltanschauung or worldview of the speakers of the language and their cognition of the world. [25] [26] Whorf's works tried to show that there is relationship between language and thought. The idea was introduced earlier by Humboldt and then worked on by Edward Sapir in the 1920s. | Cognitive science, Psychology, Anthropology, Philosophy |
1942 | Joseph Schumpeter introduced the idea creative destruction, sometimes known as "Schumpeter's gale" in his work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), where in he described the way in which capitalist economic development arises out of the destruction of some prior economic order. | Economics, Sociology, Philosophy |
1943 | Oswald Avery proves that DNA is the genetic material of the chromosome | Biology, Genetics & Life sciences |
1943 | Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch wrote the seminal paper entitled "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" (1943) and proposed the first mathematical model of a neural network. Their work also presented ideas drawn upon the work of Leibniz with later implications for cellular automata. | Philosophy, Cognitive science, Artificial Intelligence & Psychology |
1944 | John von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam: introduced the mathematical idea of a cellular automata. This set the foundations for the later discipline of complexity science and agent based modeling | Philosophy, Mathematics, psychology, dynamical systems, computer science |
1944 | John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern: wrote the seminal book Theory of games and economic behavior and began the interdisciplinary research field of game theory | Philosophy, Mathematics, psychology, economics |
1947 | William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invent the first transistor | electronics & electrical engineering |
1948 | Claude Elwood Shannon & Warren Weaver: 'A mathematical theory of communication' a seminal paper in Information theory. | Information Theory, Mathematics & Cognitive sciences |
1948 | Norbert Wiener: introduced the concept of Cybernetics in his work Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. | Mathematical philosophy, artificial intelligence and beginning of cybernetics |
1948 | Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics | Physics & Philosophy |
1950 | Ludwig von Bertalanffy began General systems theory with his publication "An Outline of General System Theory" in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Vol. 1 (No. 2) | Systems science, Cybernetics, Mathematics & Cognitive sciences |
1950s | Kenneth Arrow, Gérard Debreu and Lionel W. McKenzie introduced the modern conception of general equilibrium in economics. Gerard Debreu presents this model in Theory of Value (1959). Though an earlier form of general equilibrium was presented by Leon Walras in 1874. | Economics, Sociology, Philosophy |
1950s | Leon Festinger developed the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and Social Comparison Theory, and discovered nature of the role of propinquity in the formation of social ties while also making other contributions to the study of social networks, psychological social psychology and sociological social psychology. | Psychology, sociology, Philosophy |
1951 | John Bowlby developed attachment theory which states that human individuals, especially as children, needs to develop a stable and long lasting relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Relationships later in life are built on this primary foundation. The theory states that in human evolution, attachment behaviour increased the chances of survival. | Psychology, Human development, sociology, philosophy, cognitive sciences |
1952 | Jonas Salk: developed and tested first polio vaccine | medicine, biology and vaccination |
1953 | Crick and Watson: helical structure of DNA, basis for molecular biology | Biology, Genetics, Life sciences and Philosophy |
1953 | Anatol Rapoport introduced mathematical models in the study of information transmission in human interaction and for the management of conflict and cooperation in human life [27] | Systems science, Cybernetics, & Cognitive sciences, peace and conflict studies |
1953 | Ludwig Wittgenstein: wrote his seminal work Philosophical Investigations in which he stated that conceptual confusions surrounding language use are at the root of most philosophical problems. | Philosophy, Philosophy of science, language, mathematics and psychology |
1954 | Jean Piaget: elaborated on Genetic epistemology and the theory of cognitive development in his work "La construction du réel chez l'enfant" (The construction of reality in the child). | Psychology, Philosophy, Cognitive sciences |
1956 | Frank Harary and Dorwin Cartwright mathematically formalized generalizations of Fritz Heider's psychological theory of cognitive balance to give formalization of interpersonal network patterns. This laid the foundations for micro level social network analysis and small group research and group dynamics research in sociology and sociological social psychology [28] | Philosophy, sociological social psychology, mathematical sociology |
1957 | Noam Chomsky: wrote Syntactic Structures which laid the foundation for the idea of transformational grammar. He also introduced the idea of poverty of the stimulus which states that natural language grammar is unlearnable given the relatively limited data available to children learning a language, and therefore that this knowledge is supplemented with some sort of innate linguistic capacity. A tenet of generative grammar. | Philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, computer science, psychology |
1957 | Herbert Simon: coined the term Bounded rationality in psychology as an alternative basis for the mathematical modeling of decision making, as used in economics and related disciplines which views rationality as a maximization process as described in rational choice theory. Instead, "bounded rationality" views rationality as a Satisficing process. [29] He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978. | Psychology, Management, Behavioral economics, Cognitive sciences, Philosophy |
1958 | William Phillips, introduced Phillips curve in economic theory. He described the observation of an inverse relationship between money wage changes and unemployment in the British economy over the period examined. In 1960 Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow took Phillips' work and made explicit the link between inflation and unemployment: when inflation was high, unemployment was low, and vice versa. | Economic theory, economics, sociology, philosophy |
1960s | Paul Ekman conducted seminal research on the specific biological correlates of specific emotions, demonstrating the universality and discreteness of emotions in a Darwinian approach. [30] This served as one of the basis for E. O. Wilson's works on Sociobiology in the 1970s and later helped in the emergence of the approach of Evolutionary Psychology in the 1990s through the work of Leda Cosmides and John Tooby | Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Biology, Philosophy |
1962 | Thomas Kuhn stated that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in continuous way; which open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would never have considered valid before; and that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria but is defined by a consensus of a scientific community | Philosophy & Science |
1963 | Stanley Milgram first published a series of experiments now known as Milgram experiment which demonstrated how people showed obedience to orders in a social system when the orders were given by authority figures even when people were asked to perform actions against their wish and conscience. [31] The studies were done in order to explain conformity and obedience in society as seen during the Holocaust. [32] | Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Social Psych, Cognitive Sciences |
1963 | Lawrence Morley, Fred Vine, and Drummond Matthews: Paleomagnetic stripes in ocean crust as evidence of plate tectonics (Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis). | Geology |
1964 | Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: postulate quarks leading to the standard model | Physics & Philosophy |
1968 | Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson 1968 [33] [34] experimentally demonstrated Self fulfilling prophecy in social relationships through their field experiment which showed that if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from some children, then those children did indeed show that enhancement. This is also known as Late bloomers effect | Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy |
1968–1970 | Terry Winograd made the artificial intelligence and natural language processing program SHRDLU that was concerned with the problem of providing a computer with sufficient "understanding" to be able to use natural language. | Computer science, artificial intelligence, Psychology, Cognitive science |
1969 | German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse published his book Calculating Space, proposing that the physical laws of the universe are discrete by nature, and that the entire universe is the output of a deterministic computation on a single cellular automaton; "Zuse's Theory" became the foundation of the field of study called digital physics | Mathematics, Cognitive sciences, complexity theory, digital philosophy |
1969 | Invention of Internet [35] | Information theory, Computer science, electrical engineering |
1970 | George Akerlof elaborated the idea of economic activity under asymmetric information. He described information asymmetry, which occurs when the seller knows more about a product than the buyer. Later, Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz jointly received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001 for their work on economic behavior under asymmetric information. | Economics, Cognitive economics, economic psychology, Philosophy |
1970 | John Horton Conway made the computer program Game of Life, also known simply as Life, a cellular automaton in which its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. The game of life simulates the rise, fall and alterations of a society of living organisms. | Mathematics, Computer science, agent based modeling, cognitive sciences, Philosophy |
1970s | Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman published series of discoveries on the psychology of human judgment and decision making describing the pervasive nature of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk in everyday life. [36] [37] [38] | Psychology, Cognitive sciences, Philosophy |
1972 | Paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published a landmark paper developing this theory and called it punctuated equilibria | Paleontology, Philosophy, Biology, genetics & evolutionary sciences |
1972 | Michael D. Cohen, James G. March and Johan Olsen proposed the Garbage can model of organizational decision making. They published the model along with a computer code. [39] Earlier James G. March presented the Behavioral theory of the firm in 1963 [40] and made a compendium of basic Organizational studies, Management science, and organizational behavior in his edition "A Handbook of Organizations" (1965). [41] | Organization Theory & science, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy |
1973 | Mark Granovetter published his seminal work in modern sociology and social network theory on the spread of information in social networks known as "The Strength of Weak Ties" describing how weak ties enable reaching populations and audiences that are not accessible via strong ties. [42] | Sociology, Sociological Social Psychology, Philosophy [42] |
1977 | Voyager program launched two unmanned space missions, the probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to study planetary systems | Cosmology, astronomy, Physics & Philosophy |
1981–1984 | Robert Axelrod and W. D. Hamilton described the evolution of cooperation between cognitive entities and gave a mathematical and computational model describing the phenomena | Political science, Psychology, Computer science |
1986 | David Rumelhart and James McClelland described the idea of Parallel Distributed Processing in modeling human cognition in psychology. They made mathematical and computational models of psychological information processing and described computer simulations of perception, giving testable models of neural information processing and introducing Connectionism. [43] | Psychology, Cognitive science, computer science, artificial intelligence |
1987 | John C. Turner and Michael Hogg along with other colleagues developed the Self categorization theory which gives a psychological theory for dynamics in group processes. It states that the self is not the foundational aspect of cognition, rather the self is a product of cognitive processes that occur in social processes. Earlier John Turner worked with Henri Tajfel (1979) on the precursor theory Social identity theory. | Psychology, social psychology, Sociology, Philosophy |
1988 | The concept of a Quantum cellular automata was introduced thus advancing quantum computation and quantum computer [44] | Cellular automata, Computer science & Mathematics |
1970s–1988 | Marvin Minsky & Seymour Papert started developing what came to be called The Society of Mind theory. They state how intelligence could be a product of the interaction of non-intelligent parts. Minsky says that the biggest source of ideas about the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a video camera, and a computer to build with children's blocks. | Philosophy, Artificial intelligence, Cognitive science, Psychology Computer Sc |
1988 | Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza reconstructed human evolution and migration patterns in human history in his work in population genetics. He claimed to show a strong association between language families and genetic trees of the same populations, proposing for genetic–linguistic coevolution. [45] | Population genetics, anthropology, linguistics |
1989–1990 | Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989, [46] and on 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet. [47] | Computer science, Information theory |
1996 | Joshua M. Epstein along with Robert Axtell developed the first large scale agent-based computational model, the Sugarscape, to explore the role of social phenomenon such as seasonal migrations, pollution, sexual reproduction, combat, and transmission of disease and even culture. With this work Epstein laid the foundation for what he later called as Generative social science [48] [49] | Generative science, Philosophy, Complexity science |
1997 | Roslin Institute: Dolly the sheep was cloned. | medicine, biology, genetics and cloning |
1998 | Gerson Goldhaber and Saul Perlmutter observed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating | Cosmology & Physics |
2000 | Alison Gopnik and Andrew N. Meltzoff and Patricia K. Kuhl stated that the same mechanisms used by scientists to develop scientific theories are used by children to develop causal models of their environment. [50] They state that the cognitive development of children in early life is made possible by three factors: innate knowledge, advanced learning ability, and the evolved ability of parents to teach their offspring. [50] | Psychology, child psychology, human development, philosophy |
2001 | The first draft of the human genome is completed. | Genetics, biology & Life sciences |
2002 | Ray Jackendoff published his theory of conceptual semantics a comprehensive theory on the foundations of language, in the monograph (2002): Foundations of Language. Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. Earlier he worked with Fred Lerdahl, on musical cognition, presenting a Generative theory of tonal music. | Linguistics, Music cognition, music, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy |
2002 | Daniel Wegner published his book stating that the experience of free will is an illusion. [51] Wegner conducted a series of experiments in which people experience an illusion of control, feeling that their free will shapes events when actually it were determined by someone else. [52] According to Wegner the fact that this illusion of free will can be created shows that it is an illusion [53] and that it is "the mind's best trick". [54] | Psychology, Cognitive Sciences, Philosophy |
2009 | The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Life Sciences Corporation completed making a draft sequencing of the genome of the closest human relative the Neanderthal | Anthropology, genetics, evolutionary sciences |
2010 | J. Craig Venter Institute creates the first synthetic bacterial cell. | Genetics, biology & life sciences |
2011 | a team led by Shinji Nishimoto made break through in Thought identification when they partially reconstructed visual images from only brain recordings of neural activity of volunteers who were seeing actual visual pictures or images. [55] | Neuroscience, Psychology, biology, Life sciences and philosophy [55] |
2012 | Higgs Boson is discovered at CERN (confirmed to 99.999% certainty) | Physics & Philosophy |
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups. Ψ is a Greek letter which is commonly associated with the science of psychology.
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.
A heuristic, or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal or approximation. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision.
Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions. In other words, humans' "preferences are determined by changes in outcomes relative to a certain reference level". in which lower reference level resulted in lower preferences of the outcome relative to higher and better reference level. When the decision was made, the outcome will be considered as “satisfied” or “rational” regardless whether the decision is optimal or not because the preferences was referred to it most peak level or the initial situation force the agent to do so. Due to this limitations, an agent would not possible to reach an optimum level of outcome from the decision making.
Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His empirical findings challenge the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory.
Amos Nathan Tversky was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk.
Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals and institutions and how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory.
Decision theory is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical consequences to the outcome.
The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty. It is one of a group of heuristics proposed by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1970s as "the degree to which [an event] (i) is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population, and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated". Heuristics are described as "judgmental shortcuts that generally get us where we need to go – and quickly – but at the cost of occasionally sending us off course." Heuristics are useful because they use effort-reduction and simplification in decision-making.
Thomas Dashiff Gilovich an American psychologist who is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He has conducted research in social psychology, decision making, behavioral economics, and has written popular books on these subjects. Gilovich has collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, Richard Nisbett, Lee Ross and Amos Tversky. His articles in peer-reviewed journals on subjects such as cognitive biases have been widely cited. In addition, Gilovich has been quoted in the media on subjects ranging from the effect of purchases on happiness to perception of judgment in social situations. Gilovich is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
The planning fallacy is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed. This phenomenon sometimes occurs regardless of the individual's knowledge that past tasks of a similar nature have taken longer to complete than generally planned. The bias affects predictions only about one's own tasks; when outside observers predict task completion times, they tend to exhibit a pessimistic bias, overestimating the time needed. The planning fallacy involves estimates of task completion times more optimistic than those encountered in similar projects in the past.
Mathematical psychology is an approach to psychological research that is based on mathematical modeling of perceptual, thought, cognitive and motor processes, and on the establishment of law-like rules that relate quantifiable stimulus characteristics with quantifiable behavior. The mathematical approach is used with the goal of deriving hypotheses that are more exact and thus yield stricter empirical validations. There are five major research areas in mathematical psychology: learning and memory, perception and psychophysics, choice and decision-making, language and thinking, and measurement and scaling.
The overconfidence effect is a well-established bias in which a person's subjective confidence in his or her judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high. Overconfidence is one example of a miscalibration of subjective probabilities. Throughout the research literature, overconfidence has been defined in three distinct ways: (1) overestimation of one's actual performance; (2) overplacement of one's performance relative to others; and (3) overprecision in expressing unwarranted certainty in the accuracy of one's beliefs.
Daniel Merton Wegner was an American social psychologist. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was known for applying experimental psychology to the topics of mental control and conscious will, and for originating the study of transactive memory and action identification. In The Illusion of Conscious Will and other works, he argued that the human sense of free will is an illusion.
In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people are cognitive misers.
Attribute substitution, also known as substitution bias, is a psychological process thought to underlie a number of cognitive biases and perceptual illusions. It occurs when an individual has to make a judgment that is computationally complex, and instead substitutes a more easily calculated heuristic attribute. This substitution is thought of as taking place in the automatic intuitive judgment system, rather than the more self-aware reflective system. Hence, when someone tries to answer a difficult question, they may actually answer a related but different question, without realizing that a substitution has taken place. This explains why individuals can be unaware of their own biases, and why biases persist even when the subject is made aware of them. It also explains why human judgments often fail to show regression toward the mean.
Heuristics is the process by which humans use mental short cuts to arrive at decisions. Heuristics are simple strategies that humans, animals, organizations, and even machines use to quickly form judgments, make decisions, and find solutions to complex problems. Often this involves focusing on the most relevant aspects of a problem or situation to formulate a solution. While heuristic processes are used to find the answers and solutions that are most likely to work or be correct, they are not always right or the most accurate. Judgments and decisions based on heuristics are simply good enough to satisfy a pressing need in situations of uncertainty, where information is incomplete. In that sense they can differ from answers given by logic and probability.
Thinking, Fast and Slow is a 2011 book by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
Duration neglect is the psychological observation that people's judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences. Multiple experiments have found that these judgments tend to be affected by two factors: the peak and how quickly the pain diminishes. If it diminishes more slowly, the experience is judged to be less painful. Hence, the term "peak–end rule" describes this process of evaluation.
They're the beginning of technology ... that would eventually result in cities, planes, bridges, cars, lunar rovers, artificial limbs, and computers ...Those stone tools also sent us on a path that would lead us to alter our environment ...
...it seems to have needed the city to appear first...The very first of them - Uruk, Ur, Girsi, Nippur, Eridu - were experiments...
With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE...
...It seems to me perfectly reasonable to apply the term empiricism in the characterization of Babylonian divination...(p.569)
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link).He wove the World Wide Web and created a mass medium for the 21st century. The World Wide Web is Berners-Lee's alone. He designed it. He loosed it on the world. And he more than anyone else has fought to keep it open, nonproprietary and free.