The greatest scientific invention of all time was the development of the scientific method itself--the system of inquiry that uses experiments to test hypotheses. The scientific method was developed by an Arab Muslim named Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham.
Born in Basra (located in what is now Iraq) in 965, Ibn al-Haytham—known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen—wrote more than 200 books and treatises on a wide range of subjects. He was the first person to apply algebra to geometry, founding the branch mathematics known as analytic geometry.
Ibn al-Haytham created discreet, verifiable experiments to test the validity of ideas. To test his hypothesis that “lights and colors do not blend in the air,” for example, Ibn al-Haytham devised the world's first camera obscura, observed what happened when light rays intersected at its aperture, and recorded the results. This is just one of dozens of “true demonstrations,” or experiments, contained in Kitāb al-Manāzir (Book of Optics).
Many people throughout history have studied nature without using the scientific method. Some of the best-known people to do so were the ancient Greeks. Scholars such as Aristotle attempted to explain natural phenomena, but they did not test their ideas with experiments. They based their findings on logic. As a result, they often erred. These mistakes were later discovered by scholars using the scientific method.
The Europeans did not invent the scientific method. They learned about it by reading Kitāb al-Manāzir. Kitāb al-Manāzir was translated into Latin as De aspectibus in the late thirteenth century in Spain. Copies of the book circulated throughout Europe. Roger Bacon wrote a summary of it entitled Perspectiva (Optics).
2007-08-10 05:25:45
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answer #1
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answered by Centaur 6
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Albert Einstein: Theory of Relativity
Pythagoras - Pythagoran Theorem
Archimedes - Archimedes' Pinciple for buoyancy
Issac Newton - Law of Gravitation
Fleming - Fleming right hand and left hand rules
John Dalton - Atomic theory
Van Der Waal - Real Gas equation
Raoult - Raoult's Law
2007-08-09 13:27:49
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answer #2
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answered by Darling 2
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Pythagoras: Pythagorean theorem
Archimedes: Compound pulley system
Zhang Heng: the world's first seismograph
Leonardo Da Vince:Hydrodynamics system
Albert Einstein: theory of relativity
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz: discover radio waves and unit Hertz.
Nikola Tesla: The Tesla coil transformer.
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen: first person to take x-ray photographs.
Dmitri Mendeleev: the periodic table.
William Thomson or Lord Kelvin : the Kelvin scale.
2007-08-09 10:44:35
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answer #3
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answered by Lone Wolf 3
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Let's add another Fleming and his penicillin, Mr. Banting and insulin, Mr. A. G. Bell and his telephone and Mr. Nobel and dynamite.
2007-08-09 20:28:41
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answer #4
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answered by Tom K 6
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