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The history of science

From earliest times, people have been curious about the world around them. Thousands of years before civilization began, people learned to count and tried to explain the rising and setting of the sun and the phases of the moon. They studied the habits of the animals they hunted, learned that some plants could be used as drugs, and acquired other basic knowledge about nature. These achievements marked the beginnings of science. They were among the first attempts to understand and control nature. In general, mathematics and medicine were the first sciences to develop, followed by the physical sciences, life sciences, and social sciences.

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Early civilizations. The sciences developed by the peoples of the first civilizations dealt chiefly with practical matters. For example, mathematics was used for basic business and government transactions. Astronomy provided the basis for keeping time and determining when to plant and harvest crops. As early as 3000 B.C., the Egyptians studied the heavens to forecast the arrival of the seasons and to predict when the annual flooding of the Nile River would occur. The Egyptians used geometry to establish property lines and to make the measurements needed to build huge pyramids. They also learned some anatomy, physiology, and surgery through embalming their dead.

In ancient Babylonia, the people used a system of counting in units of 60, which is the basis of the 360-degree circle and the 60-minute hour. They understood fractions, squares, and square roots. They also developed complicated mathematical models of the motions of the planets and other heavenly bodies. Their detailed observations of the sky enabled them to predict solar and lunar eclipses and other astronomical events.

The Chinese and Indian civilizations developed a little later than the Egyptian and Babylonian cultures. By the 300's B.C., the Chinese had mapped the major stars in the heavens and, like the Babylonians, succeeded in predicting eclipses. The ancient Chinese had their own system of mathematics. They also developed acupuncture and other medical practices that have been handed down almost unchanged to the present. Medicine in ancient India dealt with the prevention as well as the treatment of illness. Indian surgeons performed many kinds of operations, including amputations and plastic surgery. Early Indian mathematicians invented the Hindu-Arabic numerals that we use today.

The earliest advanced cultures in the Americas also had a working knowledge of astronomy and mathematics. One of the first major civilizations was that of the Olmec Indians of Mexico, who developed a counting system and a calendar between 1200 and 100 B.C. By about A.D. 250, the Maya of Central America and Mexico were studying the motions of the sun, moon, stars, and planets from observatories. They used their astronomical knowledge to develop religious and civil calendars. The Maya also had an advanced mathematical system. During the 1400's, the Aztec Indians of Mexico and the Inca Indians of Peru ruled powerful empires. Carvings on a famous "Sun Stone" left behind by the Aztec represent the regular motions of the heavenly bodies, as well as religious symbols and symbols for the days of the month. The Inca used mathematics in constructing buildings and roads.

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Ancient Greece. The Greeks left the greatest scientific heritage of all the ancient peoples. The Greeks stressed the development of general theories about the workings of the world. The Greeks were the first to begin a systematic separation of scientific ideas from superstition.

About 400 B.C., a Greek physician named Hippocrates taught that diseases have natural causes and that the body can repair itself. He was the first physician known to consider medicine as a science apart from religion. During the 300's B.C., Aristotle, one of the greatest Greek philosophers, studied many areas of science. Aristotle gathered vast amounts of information about the variety, structure, and behavior of animals and plants. He showed the need for classifying knowledge and recognized the importance of observation. He also developed deductive logic as a means of reaching conclusions.

Greek mathematics was more advanced than that of any other ancient culture. The Greeks became the first people to separate mathematics from purely practical uses and to develop systematic methods of reasoning to prove the truth of mathematical statements. By 300 B.C., Thales, Pythagoras, Euclid, and other Greek mathematicians had perfected geometry as a single logical system. The Greeks believed that the study of mathematics could yield absolutely certain and eternal knowledge. For example, once a principle of geometry was proved, it remained true for all time.

Some Greek scientists had an interest in practical affairs. During the 200's B.C., for instance, the Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes invented the compound pulley. The pulley made possible the construction of machines that could easily move heavy loads.

The Greeks mapped the stars and measured the size of Earth with surprising accuracy. The astronomers used the circle, which they considered the perfect mathematical form, as their model for the heavens. They worked out various mathematical models and mechanical systems that explained the motions of the planets in terms of circular paths. In the A.D. 100's, Ptolemy, one of the greatest astronomers of ancient times, presented his ideas and summarized those of earlier Greek astronomers in the Almagest. In this work, Ptolemy stated that the sun and the planets moved around Earth in circular orbits. Astronomers accepted versions of Ptolemy's geocentric (earth-centered) theory of the universe for more than 1,400 years.

Although the ancient Greeks made many important scientific advances, their approach to science had limitations. Believing mathematics to be eternally true, unchanging knowledge, the Greeks never saw that it could be used to analyze the physics of motion and other constantly changing properties of nature. Nor did the Greeks discover the importance of testing their observations systematically. Many of their conclusions were false because they were founded on "common sense" instead of experiments. For example, Aristotle mistakenly thought, on the basis of common sense, that heavier objects fall to Earth faster than lighter ones.

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Ancient Rome. By the A.D. 100's, the city of Rome had conquered much of the known world, including the areas of Greek civilization. The Romans were excellent architects, engineers, and builders. But they contributed little to theoretical science. Under Roman rule, scholars continued to accept the scientific knowledge of the Greeks. Many Roman physicians came from the Greek-speaking world, and the Romans employed Greek tutors or sent their children to Athens and other centers of Greek learning for advanced education.

Although the Romans themselves made few scientific discoveries, vast encyclopedias of scientific knowledge were written under Roman rule. In a 37-volume work called Natural History, the Roman author Pliny the Elder gathered the scientific learning of his day. A Greek geographer and historian named Strabo described all parts of the known world in his 17-volume Geography.

The Greek physician Galen, who practiced medicine in Rome during the A.D. 100's, developed the first medical theories based on scientific experiments. Galen dissected animal corpses for study and greatly advanced the knowledge of anatomy. However, he had many false notions about how the human body works.

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The Middle Ages was a 1,000-year period in European history that began in the A.D. 400's. For hundreds of years after this period began, little scientific investigation took place in Europe. Most scholars were more interested in theology, the study of God, than in the study of nature. They relied on Greek and Roman writings for scientific information and saw no need to make observations of their own. Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, and Ptolemy were considered the authorities on science. But many of the ancient works used by European scholars of the Middle Ages were poorly preserved. Errors were introduced as copies were made, and the contents of the works were often inaccurately summarized.

Meanwhile, Arabs in the Middle East preserved much of the science of ancient Greece and Rome. They carefully translated many Greek and Roman texts into Arabic. Through their conquests, they came into contact with Persian astronomy, history, and medicine and with the Indian system of numbers and decimal numeral system.

Arabic scientists also made important contributions of their own in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, optics, and other sciences. An Arab mathematician named al-Khwarizmi organized and expanded algebra in the early 800's. Avicenna, a Muslim physician of the late 900's and early 1000's, produced a vast medical encyclopedia titled the Canon of Medicine. It summed up the medical knowledge of the day and accurately described meningitis, tetanus, and many other diseases. During the early 1000's, the Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham, also known as Alhazen, recognized that vision is caused by the reflection of light from objects into our eyes. In spite of their many scientific achievements, the Arabs did not use experimental methods or develop the instruments or applied mathematical techniques that were necessary to the development of modern science.

During the 1000's, European scholars began to show a renewed interest in science. Many major Arabic scientific works were introduced into Europe and translated into Latin, the language of learning in the West. The Hindu-Arabic number system also spread to Europe, where it stimulated the development of mathematics and began to be used in business. Some theologians of the 1100's and 1200's, such as Peter Abelard of France and Thomas Aquinas of Italy, started systematic efforts to bring Christian teachings into harmony with rediscovered scientific ideas. During the 1100's, the first European universities were established. In time, universities were to play a vital role in the growth of science.

Relatively few medical advances occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages. Physicians relied on the teachings of Galen, rather than make new discoveries based on their own observations and studies. Epidemics frequently swept across Europe. In the 1300's, for example, a terrible epidemic of plague, now known as the Black Death, killed from one-fourth to one-half of Europe's population. To treat or prevent diseases, many people continued to depend on magic and superstition.

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The rebirth of science in Europe began in 1543 with the publication of two books that broke scientific tradition. One book was written by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, and the second by Andreas Vesalius, an anatomist born in what is now Belgium.

Copernicus's book, called On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, challenged Ptolemy's view that Earth was the center of the universe. Ptolemy's geocentric theory required a complicated series of circular motions to account for astronomers' observations of how the planets appeared to move. Copernicus realized that if Earth and other planets traveled around the sun, he could explain the observed motions of the planets without some of the elements of Ptolemy's system. But Copernicus's heliocentric (sun-centered) theory still did not accurately predict the motions of all the planets.

During the 1500's, a Danish astronomer named Tycho Brahe observed the motions of the planets far more precisely than they had ever been observed before. Tycho's work enabled Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer and mathematician, to lend new support to the heliocentric theory in 1609. Kepler used intricate calculations to show that the theory could explain the movements of the planets if the planets orbited the sun in elliptical (oval) paths rather than circular ones. The elliptical shape of the orbits would also make it easier to account for the movements of the planets. Kepler's work marked the start of modern astronomy.

The second tradition-breaking book published in 1543 was Vesalius' On the Structure of the Human Body. In this work, Vesalius laid out in detail the most precise anatomical knowledge of the day. He based the book on observations he made in dissecting human corpses. His book gradually replaced those of Galen and Avicenna.

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The scientific revolution. During the late 1500's and early 1600's, scholars and scientists increasingly realized the importance of experimentation and mathematics to scientific advances. This realization helped bring about a revolution in science. The great Italian scientist Galileo stressed the need for carefully controlled experiments. In his research, Galileo used observation and mathematical analysis as he looked for cause and effect relationships among natural events. He recognized that experimentation could lead to the discovery of new principles. For example, Aristotle had taught that the heavier an object is, the faster it falls to the ground. Galileo questioned that idea. He set up experiments to find the true laws of falling bodies and proved that Aristotle was wrong. Through experimentation, Galileo discovered many basic principles of mechanics.

Galileo also saw the need to extend the range and power of the human senses with scientific instruments. He improved such instruments as the clock and telescope. With the telescope, Galileo found convincing evidence supporting Copernicus' heliocentric theory.

Another remarkable scientist of the 1600's was Sir Isaac Newton of England. Newton used the findings of others to develop a unified view of the forces of the universe. In his book Principia (1687), he formulated a law of universal gravitation and showed that both objects on Earth and the heavenly bodies obey this law. Newton's studies of lenses and prisms laid the foundation for the modern study of optics. Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German philosopher, independently developed a new system of mathematics, calculus.

The scientific revolution also extended to many other areas of science. Modern physiology began in the early 1600's with the work of William Harvey, an English physician. Harvey performed careful experiments and used simple mathematics to show how blood circulates through the human body. In the mid-1600's, an English scientist named Robert Hooke pioneered in the use of the microscope to study the fine structures of plants and animals and uncovered a new world of cells. Also in the mid-1600's, Robert Boyle, an Irish scientist, helped establish the experimental method in chemistry. Boyle introduced many new ways of identifying the chemical composition of substances.

In addition to scientific discoveries, new ideas about the philosophy and methods of science arose during the 1600's. The French philosopher Rene Descartes proposed that mathematics was the model all other sciences should follow. He believed mathematics yielded absolutely certain conclusions because the mathematical process started with simple, self-evident truths and then used logic to move, step by step, to other truths.

The English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon viewed experience as the most important source of knowledge. He thought that by collecting all the observable facts of nature, a person could discover the laws which govern the universe. In his book New Atlantis (1627), Bacon described a research institution equipped with many tools of modern science, including laboratories, libraries, and printing presses. Bacon's ideas inspired the creation of the Royal Society in London in 1660 and of the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1666. These societies were among the first institutions whose chief aim was to promote science.

Some theologians of the 1600's supported science because they believed that it helped reveal the wonders of God's creation. They also felt that scientific discoveries could be used to improve the quality of human life. But many other theologians were deeply upset by the development of scientific laws that seemed to govern the physical world without divine assistance. They opposed the heliocentric theory and condemned other scientific ideas that they believed contradicted traditional beliefs about human beings and their place in the universe.

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The Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, was a philosophical movement that greatly affected the development of science during the late 1600's and the 1700's. The leaders of the movement insisted that the use of reason was the best way to determine truth. They felt that everything in the universe behaved according to a few simple laws, which could be expressed mathematically. The philosophers of the Enlightenment developed many rules of scientific study that are still used.

Great efforts were made during the Enlightenment to circulate the results of the scientific research of the times. Many scholars gathered, organized, and published this knowledge. The most famous reference work was the 28-volume Encyclopedie (1751-1772) edited by two French authors, Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert. The Encyclopedie contained reports on much of the science and technology of the day. See Enlightenment.

One of the major scientific achievements of the 1700's was the creation of modern chemistry. Scientists developed the techniques necessary for isolating and studying gases in their pure forms. They discovered many chemical substances, including chlorine, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. Oxygen was discovered by the Swedish chemist Carl Scheele in the early 1770's and independently by the English chemist Joseph Priestley in 1774. By 1777, Antoine Lavoisier of France had discovered the nature of combustion (burning). He showed that combustion results from the rapid union of the burning material with oxygen. Lavoisier also developed the law of the conservation of matter. This law stated that matter cannot be created or destroyed but only chemically changed in form. Lavoisier also helped work out the present-day system of chemical names.

Major advances occurred in biology during the 1700's. A Swedish naturalist and botanist named Carolus Linnaeus devised a systematic method for naming and classifying plants and animals in the mid-1700's. His method, with many alterations, is still used. Two French naturalists, Comte de Buffon and Georges Cuvier, made great advances in the study of fossils and of comparative anatomy and did much to prepare the way for the scientific investigation of evolution.

In 1776, the Scottish economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, the earliest formulation of classical economics. The first systematic studies of electricity were conducted during the 1700's. In the American Colonies, Benjamin Franklin proved in 1752 that lightning is electricity. In the late 1700's, two Italian scientists, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, made some of the first experiments with electric current.

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Scientific advances of the 1800's. Scientific expeditions traveled to all parts of the world during the 1800's. Their purpose was to expand geographical knowledge and to study the plants and animals they found. From 1831 to 1836, Charles Darwin worked as a naturalist with a British expedition aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. The Beagle visited places throughout the world, and Darwin studied plants and animals everywhere it went. While on the voyage, Darwin read the works of a British geologist named Charles Lyell. Lyell believed that Earth had been changed slowly and gradually by natural processes over long periods of time. Darwin began to wonder whether life on Earth had also evolved through natural processes.

Darwin set forth his theories of evolution in The Origin of Species (1859). In this book, Darwin gave abundant evidence that plants and animals had changed their characteristics through the ages. He explained how these changes might have occurred through natural selection. In this process, the organisms best suited to their environment are the ones most likely to survive and leave descendants. Darwin's ideas helped explain the basic similarities—or unity—among all living organisms because they evolved from common ancestors. The theory of evolution became one of the most intensely debated scientific issues of the late 1800's. The theory aroused especially fiery opposition among religious leaders who believed that it conflicted with the Biblical account of the Creation. See Evolution.

Another important unifying idea in the biological sciences was the theory that all living things are made up of cells. The theory was proposed by two German scientists, Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, in the 1830's. Their idea had been influenced by a German philosophical movement called Naturphilosophie. This movement emphasized the unity of all things in nature and of all forces in the universe.

Physical scientists of the 1800's also tried to produce a unified, complete view of the laws of nature. The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev helped systematize the study of chemistry when he published his periodic table in 1869. In the 1840's, James P. Joule, an English physicist, showed that heat is a form of energy. He was also one of several scientists to advance the law of the conservation of energy. This law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed but only changed in form.

The physicists Michael Faraday of England and Joseph Henry of the United States found independently in the early 1830's that a moving magnet can produce an electric current. In the 1860's, James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish mathematician and physicist, worked out the mathematical equations for the laws of electricity and magnetism. His electromagnetic theory stated that visible light consists of waves of electric and magnetic forces. It also proposed the existence of invisible waves made of the same forces. In the late 1880's, Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist, produced electromagnetic waves that fitted Maxwell's theory. His work led to the development of radio, radar, and television.

During the late 1800's, several important scientific discoveries began to reveal a new picture of the physical universe. In the 1700's, the idea that matter consists of small particles that cannot be divided began to gain acceptance. In 1803, an English chemist named John Dalton had used the idea of indivisible particles, or atoms, to explain the way elements combine and form compounds. But in the 1890's, the picture of atoms as solid objects began to fade. Scientists discovered electrons and natural radioactivity. These discoveries suggested that atoms have some kind of internal structure.

Several new sciences had their beginnings in the 1800's. In the 1830's, the French philosopher Auguste Comte started the study of sociology. Comte developed the theory of positivism, which held that social behavior and events could be observed and measured scientifically. In the mid-1800's, Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, discovered the basic statistical laws of heredity that laid the foundation for the science of genetics. The French chemist Louis Pasteur started modern microbiology in the mid-1800's with his studies of fermentation and disease. He found that certain microscopic organisms can produce disease in people and other animals.

Many scientists of the 1800's studied the relationship between the physiology of the nervous system and human behavior. In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt, a German philosopher, founded one of the first laboratories of experimental psychology in Leipzig, Germany. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud established the field of psychoanalysis by introducing the idea that mental illness could be understood in terms of competing, unbalanced forces in the unconscious mind.

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Science in the early 1900's. Revolutionary advances in physics marked the beginning of the 1900's as scientists continued to challenge existing ideas. In 1900, Max Planck, a German physicist, advanced his quantum theory to explain the spectrum of light emitted by certain heated objects (see Quantum mechanics). The theory states that energy is not given off continuously, but only in separate units called quanta.

In 1905, another German physicist, Albert Einstein, showed that light may be regarded as consisting of individual energy units. He later suggested that these units are particles, now called photons. That same year, Einstein published his special theory of relativity. His theory revised many of the ideas of Newtonian physics and offered scientists new ways of thinking about space and time. See Relativity.

Research into the structure of the atom expanded rapidly. In 1911, the New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford theorized that the mass of an atom is concentrated in a tiny nucleus, which is surrounded by electrons traveling at tremendous speeds. But his theory did not deal with the arrangement of electrons. In 1913, a description of electron structure was proposed by Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist. Bohr suggested that electrons could travel only in a set of definite orbits around the nucleus.

Bohr's original picture of the atom soon proved to be inadequate, though many of the ideas behind it were correct. By 1928, a complete description of the arrangement of electrons had been obtained with the help of other physicists, especially Erwin Schrodinger and Wolfgang Pauli of Austria, Paul Dirac of England, and Max Born and Werner Heisenberg of Germany. The discovery of the neutron and other atomic particles followed this early work. Chemists used the new information about atoms to improve their ideas about chemical bonds. They produced many new compounds and developed a variety of plastics and synthetic fibers.

Great progress was also made by social scientists of the early 1900's, as they began to rely more heavily on statistical analysis and scientific research methods. In the biological sciences, a number of physician-scientists showed the importance of vitamins in the human diet. Their achievements helped conquer such nutritional diseases as beriberi and scurvy. The German physician and chemist Paul Ehrlich founded the field of chemotherapy, in which diseases are treated with chemicals. In 1928, Alexander Fleming, a British bacteriologist, discovered penicillin, the first of many antibiotics.

The work of numerous scientists began to establish the importance of genetics as a separate branch of biology. About 1901, a Dutch scientist named Hugo de Vries extensively described mutations—changes in hereditary material of cells. About 1910, Thomas Hunt Morgan, an American biologist, and his associates proved that genes are the units of heredity and that genes are arranged in an exact order along the length of cell structures called chromosomes. Morgan mapped the location of genes on the chromosomes of fruit flies and identified the genes responsible for such specific traits as eye color and wing shape. In the mid-1920's, an American geneticist named Hermann J. Muller discovered that mutations could be produced by treating an organism with X rays.

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Achievements of the mid-1900's. Science continued to make great strides in all fields during the mid-1900's. One of the most important breakthroughs in nuclear physics occurred in the late 1930's, when Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann of Germany and Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch of Austria discovered the possibility of releasing energy by splitting atoms of uranium. The Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi and his co-workers achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in 1942 at the University of Chicago. Intensive research during World War II (1939-1945) led to the use of nuclear energy in weapons.

Physicists discovered new elementary particles in the mid-1900's. They also established the existence of antiparticles, which have electric charges or other properties that are the reverse of ordinary atomic particles (see Antimatter). Chemists expanded the periodic table through the creation of new radioactive elements (see Transuranium element). Anthropologists made new discoveries about the distant past of human beings. Geologists explained many of the changes that occur in Earth's crust with their theory of plate tectonics (see Plate tectonics). Medical science developed the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines and introduced organ and tissue transplants and other new surgical techniques. Two biologists, James D. Watson of the United States and Francis H. C. Crick of the United Kingdom, proposed a model of the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the substance that carries genetic information.

The space age began in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite to circle Earth. In 1969, two U.S. astronauts became the first human beings to walk on the moon (see Space exploration). Astronomers also greatly expanded their knowledge of the size, structure, and history of the universe with the use of radio telescopes to collect and measure radio waves given off by objects in space. Using radio telescopes, astronomers discovered pulsars, quasars, and other previously unknown objects in space (see Pulsar; Quasar). Radio astronomers also found evidence to support the theory that the universe began with an explosion called the big bang (see Cosmology [Microwave radiation]).

Science also made important contributions to technology during the mid-1900's. Physicists invented the transistor, which revolutionized the electronics industry and enabled manufacturers to produce portable battery-powered radios and TV sets, pocket-sized calculators, and high-speed computers. Similarly, the invention of lasers promised great advances in communications, electronics, and medicine (see Laser).

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Recent developments. In the late 1900's, science began to advance more rapidly than ever before. This progress was reflected not only by the many discoveries made each year but also by the thousands of scientists involved in research and by the vast sums of money spent on scientific work. As the number of scientists grew, cooperation and communication among them became increasingly important. Many achievements resulted from scientists working in research teams. Hundreds of scientific journals, professional societies, and computerized information systems made it possible for scientists to exchange information quickly and easily.

Increasingly powerful and advanced equipment helped scientists in many different fields. For example, improvements in computers enabled mathematicians to solve problems at previously unheard of speeds. Computer simulations helped scientists perform experiments and test their theories. Particle accelerators, which speed up the movement of the particles that make up atoms, enabled physicists to create and study quarks and other basic units of matter (see Particle accelerator; Quark). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other advanced techniques produced images of tissues inside the body and helped identify certain diseases and injuries (see Magnetic resonance imaging). New telescopes, satellites, orbiting observatories, and space probes provided astronomers with information about distant reaches of the universe.

A process called genetic engineering became a valuable tool in genetics research. In this process, an organism's hereditary makeup is altered. Geneticists have engineered bacteria to produce human insulin, a hormone that is used in the treatment of diabetes. See Genetic engineering.

In 2000, scientists announced that they had analyzed essentially all the chemical instructions, encoded in DNA, that control heredity in human beings. One complete set of those instructions is called a genome  «(JEE nohm).» See Human Genome Project.

The science of today and tomorrow promises to continue to improve our understanding of the universe and to give us ever greater control over nature. But at the same time, serious debates have arisen over such science-related issues as whether it is moral to interfere in the genetic makeup of human beings or to use lasers for destructive purposes. In the future, scientists and nonscientists alike will have an increasing responsibility to ensure that the best possible uses are made of knowledge from scientific research.

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