Wolfgang Korsus
Dipl.Ing. NT , Astrophysiker
Klingenberg 40
25451 Quickborn
TEL.: +49 4106 69295
Handy: +49 162 5680456
Website : wolfgang.korsus.net
The next journey is about to begin, and I have named it:
FROM SCIENCE TO TECHNOLOGY AND TO THE “ECONOMY” ⁉
We are in the 18th century, yes dear readers, it is the time of the Enlightenment! HURRA… The process takes place in “diversifying” and “specializing”… and who does it? Of course the sciences, they are thus becoming more and more exact, because until then the study of nature, whether theoretical or experimental, was always only philosophy.
Even Newton called his great work
“Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”
There was the philosophy of the elements. For branches of science such as biology, geology, chemistry or paleontology (science of the creatures of past geological eras), there were still no terms of their own, and in fact there was no physics either!!!
But note that only medicine was already an “independent field”.
Without wishing to sound disparaging, I should say that the other individual sciences only emerged during the 18th century.
Here are a few examples……
- Scientists began to study the properties of liquids, gases and solids.
- The old division of elements had not yet been questioned, but it was Robert Boyle who first conceived of the concept of elements as building blocks of matter.
- It was discovered that there are molecules, which in turn are made up of atoms.
- Elements were found that could not be destroyed, that remained as they were.
- The first ideas emerged about how substances change.
- What happens during oxidation, i.e. the reaction with oxygen?
- And what happens during the opposite process, reduction?
The scientific branch of chemistry is slowly taking on a scientific character and is no longer being conducted according to the principles of “alchemy”. It is being understood that the atoms of the elements combine with each other and the various properties of the new compounds are being understood. However, this path of knowledge extends well into the 19th century. The 18th century can also be described as the time of systematizations. I will definitely do it!
To put it in somewhat more detail,
information flows together from different areas, it is categorized and linked. I mentioned earlier that there were scientific societies that collected this information and then published it in journals. Extremely important:… Now it was a matter of creating a first rough sketch of the world.
- In chemistry, Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier was particularly prominent.
- In biology, it was Carl von Linné who promoted systematization.
- The aim was also to explore the highly complex phenomenon of life. In the 19th century, Charles Darwin put forward his theory of evolution.
- While it was still thought in the 18th century that life comes from an egg, the cell was later the crux of the matter. The elementary building blocks of life were the basis for a remarkable development.
- Fossils in rock finds that did not directly have anything to do with rock were revealed to be fossilized bones, i.e. the remains of animals from earlier times.
- This is how paleontology came about.
The first ideas emerged that everything must have originated at some point. Unfortunately, this only corresponded to the theological view of Christianity as it is written in the Bible: “Let there be light”. … laugh, laugh
Everything pointed to a linear development. The lovable creator threw the universe into existence. I can only smile about it… From then on, a new film played out. The ideas of 18th-century science were basically not that far removed from this line of thinking. There may have been a beginning and the whole thing then developed, including the Earth itself. But how old was it, really? Please just smile slightly… the story follows…
A bishop then made the amusing mistake of taking the Bible, the Book of Books, all too literally and calculating the age of the Earth from it. He came up with only a few thousand years, around 5-6,000 years.
Now the natural scientists had a real problem. Again, I say:
The “church” should have just kept out of it, because it is not capable of measuring and calculating, of course, except for church taxes. It is all the more astonishing that the “church” took the fairy tale book “Bible” literally, because what it says does not correspond to a single word of the spiritual “dwarves” it depicts.
A new example follows: It was clear, for example, that the formation of a gorge by a river digging into its bed is an incredibly slow process. The idea that the laws of nature have always been valid in the same form led to very “simple” calculations: If a river deepens its bed by one centimeter in one year, how long will it take to form a 1,000-meter-deep gorge? This is easy to calculate. One meter has 100 centimeters. So it doesn’t take long to arrive at 100,000 years. It was therefore suspected that nature could not be understood in this way.
Today we have the feeling that in the 18th century theology desperately tried to assert its position. Its self-generated God is degraded to a “stopgap”.
‼ With every new discovery, science is where its God is not.
One should have been more precise and should have said: Science is where your God is not yet. ‼
It happens, the concept of God literally shrinks.
But unfortunately, even today, I still see a huge contradiction between empirical science on the one hand and religion as an existential, philosophical approach on the other, but only a few bang on the table and shout it to the world’s face !!!!!!!!!!
Both are quite different worlds to begin with. Here the world of the object, objectively measurable – there the world of the subject, the inner world of the individual; that is what I call it.
The driving force behind the development of science in the West in the 18th century is still the spread of the European spirit in the slipstream of the “swarming ships” that dominate the world’s oceans. For me, it is the age of the beginning of “colonialism”. … with all its reprehensible consequences.
Increasingly large parts of other continents are being made usable: raw materials, plantation economy and? … murder along with the slave trade.
In Europe, an accelerated form of evolution is taking place, driven by culture. In nature, this is regulated by genes. This happens very slowly.
However, information within cultures spreads, unfortunately much faster than it does between genes. The keyword here is actually speed, speed, speed. ‼……Skin in until your lungs burst.
The steam engine fits well into the restless picture, “James Watt” did not invent it, only improved it. However, “Thomas Newcomen” released the first steam in 1712.
Holla, the forest snail creeps, my “original formula enters the scene hesitantly and also full of expectation for the ‘first time’. For me, the big bang is the absolute first effect, the cause of which is …….⁉….my next, first project, I will report on this in detail soon!
I am sure that many a cosmologist will be amazed, while they calmly “time” towards the end of their lives (i.e. they move).
On to the past: our knowledge of cause and effect, which is becoming more and more accessible to science, is gradually becoming more complete. For this reason, physics and mechanics can be more easily transformed into technology every year. A brief note: thermodynamics, the knowledge of movement through heat and cooling, is the “fundamental” science behind the steam engine. Suddenly questions arise about efficiency, or rather how much energy do you put in and how much comes out at the end?
Is it therefore possible to increase efficiency?……Can I possibly optimize a machine? Pressure and volume also have a certain relationship.
Energy turns out to be a way of doing work, which also enters consciousness. During this time, a completely different form of energy is also discovered. Yes really, suddenly the frog’s legs twitch and lightning is being researched – this is done by Benjamin Franklin, among others. Alessandro Volta and André-Marie Ampère also delve into the research. As expected, electrical energy emerges.
⌚ Man is amazed, researches and finds – as so often – but does not immediately find the right words. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that physics was able to formulate the first general laws of electricity.
✳ An almost inevitable process began, because now the new sciences also came into the focus of those who wanted to make money from the technology. ✳
Manual labor is thus mechanized. Clattering looms replace the busy hands of diligent weavers. As a result, many lose their jobs. The topic now is that machines are better, faster, produce cheaper and even work around the clock, more and more often including Saturdays and Sundays.
They just need to be oiled and supplied with the necessary raw materials. ‼
A process that began in Great Britain in the 18th century. Watch out!
Something is emerging that I will call:
The complete economization of all areas of life is emerging, and with it the EXTERMINATION of a great many jobs.
One thing will be important to everyone in society: you have to react to new techniques! Science together with technology are now the starting point for social and economic changes that will then trigger dramatic upheavals in the period that follows. You, dear readers, I am sure you know the upheavals…………
……….uprisings, revolutions and deadly wars will be started; you also know the so-called rulers (or better, those in power) !?
But, I say: behind it all, the spiritual movement of enlightenment and the rule of the eternally mentally handicapped is looming ‼ ‼
Kant said: “Have the courage to use your own mind”. ……only those who don’t have it can’t do it! Enlightenment as a way out of self-imposed immaturity. In reality, it is a movement of very few, but nevertheless purposefully changing the West……among other things, through an idea: there should be books in which the knowledge of the time is collected and accessible to every woman and every man.
‼ Encyclopedias appear. Denis Diderot and D’Alembert are just two representatives of them. A large number of others follow, in France, and later in Great Britain?, in other European countries and of course in North America. ‼
From now on, a reference book, a “lexicon of knowledge”, belongs in a middle-class household. The Enlightenment philosophers believed that knowledge should be available to everyone. However, as you can imagine, the powerful were not particularly enthusiastic about this. The rulers would not tolerate it. They wanted education to be and remain “elitist”. After all, this secured their own sinecures and their power over the eternally stupid people.
I am convinced that the 18th century was only a transitional phase in which the developments of the following century were already emerging and could be foreseen. By the way, in 1749 Goethe was born, 25 years later he will be in Weimar. I see the development of the irrepressible storm and stress in LITERATURE.
Occasionally, a “smart” counter-development appears on the scene. (Romanticism?) Apparently there are minds that want nothing to do with the increasing “mechanization” and “scientification” of life. They want to preserve the old conditions, “to be one with nature”. One of them was Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his call: “Back to nature.”
Some of them even believed that these scientific machines were dangerous, exotic inventions. But that people would soon be sitting in machines that would race along rails at more than 100 kilometers per hour or fly in shiny, supersonic “metal birds” was unimaginable to people, at least in the 18th century. Or, what do you, as a returning reader, have to say about this? ………
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..….Thank you from me.