LEARNING TASK

MR. SCIENCE’S
JOURNEY
TO HIS
DEVELOPMENT

TIME MAJOR DISCOVERIES OR DEVELOPMENTS

3500 BCE Toothbrush before in the Middle East was called Miswak which refers to  a twig used
for cleaning one’s mouth and teeth. It’s said the practice was used thousands of years
ago by ancient empires from the Babylonians, the Greek, the Romans and the
Egyptian civilization.
2640 BCE According to Chinese legend, silk was discovered by the third wife of China's third
Emperor when she was having tea underneath a mulberry tree in the garden. A small
cocoon fell from the tree into her cup of hot tea which made the cocoon to unravel,
revealing a long delicate thread which is the silk.
1500 BCE Rulers made from Ivory were in use by the Indus Valley Civilization in what today is
Pakistan and some parts of Western India prior to 1500 BCE. Excavations at Lothal
have yielded one such ruler calibrated to about 1/16 of an inch—less than 2
millimeters.
800 BCE Highly developed musical cultures entirely devoted to religious worship flourished in
ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Each was distinguished by a well-organized ritual, a
rich hymnody, numerous musical instruments, and an established musical theory. 

500 BCE Indians came up with a system of different symbols for every number from one to
nine. This notation system was adopted by the Arabs who called it the hind numerals
which was adapted by western worlds who called it as Arabic Numerals for Arab
traders introduced it to them.
320 BCE During India’s Golden Age, Indian methods of healing shook off age-old trappings of
superstition and acquired a clarity, depth of reasoning, and profound philosophical
basis that have characterized Ayurveda since then and from that awakening of
empiricism and reason, the texts of Ayurveda which was authored by Charak Samhita
and Sushrut Samhita exist.
202 BCE A boat rudder is a control surface used to steer a boat. It was first invented in China.

200 BCE Fibonacci Sequence first appeared in Indian mathematics as mātrāmeru which was
mentioned by Pingala in relation to the Sanskrit tradition of prosody. The methods for
the formation of these numbers were given by mathematicians Virahanka, Gopala
and Hemacandra before the Italian mathematician Fibonacci could even introduce
the fascinating sequence to Western World.
 200 BCE Paper was first invented in China by Ts’ai Lun by mixing finely chopped mulberry bark
and hemp rags with water, mashing it flat, and then pressing out the water and
letting it dry in the sun. In 105 AD, under the Han Dynasty emperor Ho-Ti, a
government official in China named Ts’ai Lun was the first to start a paper-making
industry.
20 BCE The compass was invented in China during the Han Dynasty  where it was called the
"south-governor." At first, it was not used for navigation, but
for geomancy and fortune-telling by the Chinese.

132 CE A chinese astronomer Zhang Heng created a very first seismometer, a device that
detects the ground's movement during an earthquake. His seismometer, the first
known instrument built to detect earthquakes, was important, because devastating
quakes happened in many remote regions of China.

2nd Century The discovery of Binary in India came from a text of music by Pingala named
"Chhandahshastra" meaning science of meters. This text falls under the category of
CE "Sutra" or aphorismic statements. Binary basically refers to a set of two numbers, 1
and 0, the combinations of which are called bits and bytes.

3rd Century Indians discovered the mathematical benefits of the decimal value system from the
Chinese merchants traveling through India.
CE

300 CE Vulcanization or combining of rubber with other materials for improved durability
was discovered by Maya during a religious ritual in which they combined the rubber
tree and the morning-glory plant.

300 CE Maya created a complex understanding of astronomy. They also learned how to farm,
to build cities, communication through first written languages and how to measure
time through the use of the calendars they invented as well.

499 CE In India, the Indian astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata, in his magnum opus

Aryabhatiya, propounded a heliocentric model in which the Earth was taken to be
spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to a
stationary Sun.
5th Century In Southern India, a crucible steel characterized by a pattern of bands and high carbon
content called Wootz steel was invented. These bands are formed by sheets of
CE microscopic carbides within a tempered martensite or pearlite matrix in
higher carbon steel, or by ferrite and pearlite banding in lower carbon steels.

859 CE The first university was opened by princess Fatima al-Firhi in Fez in Morocco. The al-
Qarawiyyin university was first educational facility which granted degrees and still
operates as a higher education institution today teaching Islamic sciences and law.
 867 CE In early at Middle East, at the age of 70, Ibn Firnas made the world's first ever flying
machine from silk and eagle feathers and jumped from a mountain while strapped
into it.

868 CE Wood block printing was invented in China. It works by carving words or pictures onto
a large block of wood. Once carved ink is then spread across the block and then
sheets of paper are pressed against it.

9TH Century The first hospital which was called Ahmad Ibn Tulun Hospital was created and
founded in 872 in Cairo and it was entirely free to use.

9th Century The number zero (0) was issued and its inscriptions were made in Guaryo, Central
India. Indians or Hindus believe that the universe came from nothing and that
CE humanity will lead to nothingness which makes it important to them.

9th Century In the Middle East, the Persian Mathematician Al Khwarizmi created algebra. He
introduced the fundamental algebraic methods of “reduction” and “balancing” and
provided an exhaustive account of solving polynomial equations up to the second
degree.

904 CE Gunpowder was originally developed by the Taoists for medicinal purposes,
gunpowder was first used for warfare. It is considered as one of the Four Great
Inventions, and spread throughout most parts of Eurasia by the end of the 13th
century
1000 CE Abu Qasim Khalaf Ibn Abbas Al Zahrawi, known in the West as Albucasis or Zahravius
wrote his famous book “Al Tasreef Liman ‘Ajaz ‘Aan Al-Taleef”, (The Clearance of
Medical Science For Those Who Can Not Compile It) which contains a summation of
about fifty years of medical education, training, practice and experience. The thirty
volumes of the medical encyclopedia covered various aspects of medical knowledge.
In addition to sections on medicine and surgery, there were sections on midwifery,
pharmacology, therapeutics, dietitics, psychotherapy, weighs and measures, and
medical chemistry.
11th It was an Ethiopian shepherd named Kaldi who first discovered coffee from the
effects of it when his herd of goats became significantly more energetic after eating a
Century certain berry.  It was then transported to Yemen where it was used by Sufi Muslims to
increase their concentration while they prayed.

11th Alhazen or Ibn al-Haytham wrote the Book of Optics or Kitab al-manazir in which he
explored reflection and refraction and proposed a new system for explaining vision
Century and light based on observation and experiment.
 1136 Ismail al-Jazari who was an Engineer in Modern Day Turkey invented the crankshaft, a
device which converts rotation into linear movement. It is the basis for much of the
machinery in the modern world, including the bicycle.

12th Smelting zinc was considered one of the important contributions of India to science. It
is made by the distillation process, an advanced technique derived from a long
Century CE experience of ancient alchemy.

1589 CE The rediscovery of seamless celestial globe which was first invented in Kashmir by Ali
Kashmiri ibn Luqman and has been considered one of the most famous discovery in
the field of metallurgy changed the perception of people the year 1980s that creation
of metal globes without seams is impossible.
628th In India, Chakravala method which is used in obtaining integer solutions was
developed by Brahmagupta. Another mathematician, Jayadeva then generalized this
Century CE method for a wider range of equations which was further improved by Bhāskara II in
his Bijaganita treatise.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

1. How did society shape science and how did science shape society?

Science is defined as the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and

theoretical explanation of phenomena. These phenomena happened to commonly affect the
society and these effects trigger people to do Science to figure out what it is, to learn, to provide
solutions and other things that they can come up with from it. Society then shapes science by
means of the creation of phenomena that lets people undergo through its process and provide
outcomes that will provide improvement and changes to it. On the other hand, science shapes
society by means of providing explanations, solutions, products and knowledge from a certain
phenomena that happened in the society which provides ease and improvement to the lives of
people, changes and effects from the things that resulted by science.

2. How do the political and cultural landscapes of the society affect the development of
scientific culture, science activities, and science literacy?

Scientific cultures refer to the product of humans’ activities while scientific activities simply refer
to social activities and science literacy, on the other hand, refers to the understanding of the
different aspect of science like its process, observations, theories and the likes. Political and
cultural landscapes of the society affect the development of the three by means of establishing
thinking patterns, values, norms and traditions where people commonly stick to. These
established ones were formed in one’s life before they could even learn what science actually is
and because of this, some find it hard to accept or make science a part of their system. One
 example of this is the Law of Three Stages by Auguste Comte where the first stage is the
theological stage or the fictitious which refers to spiritual beliefs or superstitions and then
seconded by the metaphysical stage or abstract which is somehow connected to theological
stage but different for in this stage, people believe in supernatural force instead of supernatural
being or God. The last stage is the scientific or positive stage which is new to the people for it’s
far way more different than the first two stages. This stage introduced people to the idea that all
phenomena are seen as subject to the natural laws that can be investigated by observations,
experiments and other scientific processes.

3. How do social and human issues influence science?

Phenomena are defined as observable facts or events. These are objects or aspects known not
by the thoughts or intuition but by the senses. Both social and human issues are observable events and
some are facts and they are known by the senses like through hearing, reading and such. From this,
social and human issues influence science as how the way phenomena that happen in a society or any
place influence it which is by means of triggering people to provide understanding, knowledge,
solutions, products and any outcomes from it that will help people have ease when it comes to dealing
with it in different ways.

References:

Esfandiari, s. (2020 January 30). 15 everyday things you didn't know were invented in the Middle East.
Insider. Retrieved from: https://www.insider.com/15-everyday-things-you-didnt-know-were-from-
middle-east-2019-12

Shiloah, A. (1987). Music: Music And Religion In The Middle East. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved from:
https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/music-
music-and-religion-middle-east

Shata, D. (2013 July 31). Miswak: First toothbrush in history. Arab News. Retrieved from:
https://www.arabnews.com/news/459712

Bardon, A. (2019). International Year of Light: Ibn al Haytham, pioneer of modern optics celebrated at
UNESCO. UNESCO. Retrieved from: https://en.unesco.org/news/international-year-light-ibn-al-haytham-
pioneer-modern-optics-celebrated-unesco

Amr, S. S., & Tbakhi, A. (2007). Abu Al Qasim Al Zahrawi (Albucasis): pioneer of modern surgery. Annals
of Saudi medicine, 27(3), 220–221. https://doi.org/10.5144/0256-4947.2007.220

Carr, K. (2017 July 27). Who invented paper? Ancient China and the history of paper. Quatr.us. Retrieved
from: https://quatr.us/china/invented-paper-ancient-china.htm#:~:text=Paper%20was%20invented
%20around%20100,start%20a%20paper%2Dmaking%20industry.

Smitakshi, S. (N.D.). Invention Of Seamless Celestial Globe. Bharat Stories. Retrieved from:
https://bharatstories.com/invention-of-seamless-celestial-globe/
B. van Nooten, "Binary Numbers in Indian Antiquity", Journal of Indian Studies, Volume 21, 1993, pp. 31-
50

Santhu, S. (2012 March 17). Ruler – We measured first !!!. Heritage of India. Retrieved from:
https://heritageofindia.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/ruler-we-measured-first/

T. G. (2016 May 19). The Heliocentric Theory. GyanPro. Retrieved from: https://gyanpro.com/blog/the-
heliocentric-theory/#:~:text=The%20ancient%20India%20were%20aware,This%20is%20Heliocentric
%20Model.&text=To%20anyone%20who%20stands%20and,around%20the%20earth%20every%20day.

H. N. (N.D.). History of Ayurveda. National Ayurvedic Medical Association. Retrieved from:

https://www.ayurvedanama.org/history-of-ayurveda#:~:text=The%20origins%20of%20Ayurveda
%20stretch,Indus%20Valley%20in%20today's%20Pakistan.&text=From%20this%20awakening%20of
%20empiricism,Samhita%20and%20Sushrut%20Samhita%2C%20arose.