7. Natural Sciences

Scientific endeavour is a way of examining phenomena, submitting evidence for competing theories and putting rival interpretations forward for international debate. Doubt is at the heart of it. In 1966, during a speech entitled “What is Science?”, given by Richard Feynman, at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, he said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”. Scientific progress is made when scientists argue with one another—at their symposia and through their publications—and refinements to prevailing theories result. Robert Boyle lived in an age called the ‘period of scientific revolution’. Scientific understanding progressed radically, revealing some of Nature’s secrets, helping to unlock the mysteries of matter. Boyle is most famous for his work on gases and particularly Boyle’s Law. He demonstrated that sound is propagated through air and not a vacuum, whereas light and magnetic forces do travel through a vacuum. He showed that a portion of atmospheric air supports combustion. He put chemistry on a scientific footing, calling for controlled, methodical, experimental procedures, before reaching factual conclusions. Contrary to the practice of alchemists, he encouraged the reporting of results publicly so that other researchers could assess their reproducibility. Joseph Priestley was a maverick theologian who possessed originality of thought, as well as the courage to promote unpopular views. He observed that plants have the capacity to restore to air, that which burning candles and breathing animals remove. Effectively, he had identified oxygen as an end-product of photosynthesis and established that oxygen was required for respiration. In the eighteenth century, with his experimental skills and ability to design ingenious apparatus, he discovered or co-discovered as many as nine gaseous compounds, more than any other scientist. He helped repudiate the Greek theory of the four elements of creation, held to be air, earth, fire and water. He was the first to produce carbonated (soda) water. At the age of 22, William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, was appointed professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow University, where he established the first physical science laboratory for both teaching and research purposes. He brought together disparate areas of physics, synthesizing a view that many physical changes were energy-related phenomena. He was well versed in thermodynamics, electrostatics and magnetostatics. With Faraday’s empirical evidence, he introduced the concept of an electromagnetic field and made substantive steps in mathematizing electric and magnetic phenomena, providing the groundwork for Maxwell’s dynamical theory of electromagnetic field. By combining scientific understanding with engineering skills, his contribution to the success of the 1866 trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was one of the outstanding applications of science to technology. He helped to develop the second law of thermodynamics, and particularly, the explanation of irreversible processes. He formulated an absolute zero of temperature, when molecules would stop moving, and a hypothetical ideal gas has zero volume. The “kelvin” is one of the seven base SI units, being the unit of thermodynamic temperature.