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Hi, welcome to Pods with Nick and James. I'm your co-host, James.
Today we're going to be looking at the history of science and scientific thought and inquiry.
My name is James and we're joined today by the producer and main host of the show, Nick.
Hello everybody, how are you doing?
And our special guest, special slash return guest, Adam.
Hello everyone.
All right, so I've done a fair amount of research into this and just to start with a couple of shout outs.
First off, thank you very much to the Secret Santa of my old group of school friends who very kindly got me a microphone.
I've set it up and unfortunately I had some technical issues with it, but I've got that on me and I'm hoping to use that in the next episode when I can get it working properly.
And I just to give a couple of references.
So the information that I've gathered for this has been taken from the great, the great courses set of books, specifically the ones to do with the history of science from antiquity to 1700 by Professor Lawrence M principle, and the history of science from 17 to 1900 by
Frederick Gregory, both of which are amazing, charismatic public speakers and know their stuff.
I really wish I could suck in more information, but I haven't been able to do that so I guess we'll just kick this off.
Gentlemen, what are your definitions of science or actually wait, shall I direct this to an Indian.
Tell you what, Nick, if you want to go first, what's your definition of science.
I mean, anytime thought and process have to be understood, I suppose, so there is a science in to my understanding anyway there's a science in anything. If you think about even in the way way back when Neanderthals were were creating fire by banging to flints together and like this science in that.
So, the definition of, to me the definition of science is any any kind of process that requires for in order to execute.
That's really interesting because that's almost like anything that requires the, the effort, the effort of observation in cause and effect.
Yeah, seems to be okay that's interesting.
Adam, how would you define it.
It's long the similar veins of Nick really you know you get anything science nowadays social science and sort of science science and biology chemistry.
Everything has some sort of scientific merit behind it matter how big or small.
You know, there was probably some sort of science implemented when the first sander was implemented and created.
So it's for me it's more of the case of logging facts and you know experimentation and being able to prove and hypothesize.
Well that's, that's interesting because, um, what if I was to tell both of you that the word science didn't exist.
Science or scientist, specifically didn't exist before 1834.
So before then.
What exactly, exactly so my magic probably.
No, no, no, no, but this is this is the whole, this is the whole thing.
So previous to previous to scientists being called scientists, they were called natural philosophers.
And it's weird Nick that what you described there about kind of like craft and about observing things is just logic.
And logic has existed, and in thought and in philosophy for thousands upon thousands of years, like so science doesn't necessarily have the monopoly on logic and reason, but is more a methodology born from logic and reason.
And the Oxford dictionary defines it as the intellectual and practical activities, accompanying the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment, which is kind of similar to what what you both said there.
It's interesting that logic and reason, and people observing things has existed for thousands of years, but it's only recently that that has been called science.
I tell you what, like, the, I'll just give you guys a quick information dump.
The first in the person who coined the phrase was an Englishman called William Huell, who coined the term scientist in 1833.
In a, in a mag well, a lack of a better way of putting it a magazine publication to review the work of somebody called Mary Somerville.
Yeah.
On her work to do with the physical sciences.
The way he put it was that when saying how to describe people is art requires an artist.
Yeah.
So if he so if art requires an artist, then science requires a scientist.
The work of Mary Somerville was what it's interesting that so arguably the first scientist was a woman.
And, yeah, her works included like a whole range of things but most mostly mathematics.
So I guess.
What
1834 is quite late in the history of man.
Yeah, it's fairly recent isn't it.
Yeah, so, can you think of anybody who we now think of as scientists who lived before them.
Yes, quite a few people, I should imagine.
Who was the, the, the, there was a car never was if he was called a shaman or if he was a it was a nose a priest, one of the Egyptian priests who designed the pyramids and a load of sculptures and, and, and everything else.
You could even say Michelangelo.
Well, yes, you can argue a lot of the Renaissance artists in their own ways were very practical hands on natural philosophy was it Da Vinci that did the Sistine Chapel.
It was Michelangelo.
Da Vinci did a lot of anatomical drawings which arguably are used as could have been used as science texts.
He did the Sistine Chapel, he could not paint. Get out of town. So what he did when he was grafted in to do the Sistine Chapel roof was he started. This is one of my favorite stories about the Sistine Chapel. He started the furthest point away from the Pope, as he possibly could be in the hopes that by the time he got to where the Pope would be standing, he'd be able to draw.
That's amazing. So he used corners of scrap paper. Absolutely.
I, when I go to the 15th Chapel I'm now going to check the corners. Yeah. I mean you can't tell the difference the bloke was incredible from the get go but I think it was a difference in.
I think there was a reason he was drafted in for it. He was a mathematician. He wasn't an artist he was a mathematician, originally. But this is the thing there seems to be the way that we categorize knowledge.
Nowadays, just did not exist.
The way that or no it didn't know it's not that it didn't exist.
The way we true choose to draw the lines of what subjects are, or how to separate subjects is completely separate.
So for example, nowadays.
Somebody tells you they're into astrology.
You assume
they read their papers they get out crystal balls they believe, perhaps a lot of things that you don't believe, and there's not a lot of respect for it.
In the ancient times, if somebody told you they were an astrologer, or had a knowledge of astrology, you normally would actually be quite respectful to them, if not backing the backing away as astrology in modern terms is just predicting people's futures
and coming out with little fluff pieces for the paper in ancient times, it contained astronomy mathematics, and anybody who studied it could look at the night sky and be able to tell the time to within 15 minutes, just by the position of the stars and like just using their
eyes to figure things out.
Such a loss.
No. I tell you what, um, can you guess where, based on our past recordings.
Can you guys guess where the first natural philosopher was from
first natural philosopher.
Yes, now specifically, I'll give you guys one clue. It's not Socrates, as they don't classify Socrates as a natural philosopher, because he didn't ask the same sorts of questions that scientists ask now.
But again it's massively blurred between philosophy, natural philosophy, if a philosopher just looks at theology and ethics, then they don't count but if they look at the creation of the world.
The production of a of a system.
You know what, I'll bring some other facts in in a moment.
But the first natural philosopher the first person who looked at the world and try to create
understanding theories, yeah, yeah, theories which didn't require mythos or anthropomorphized gods in order to explain the cosmos.
I mean you probably if you think about it you probably, your mind immediately goes to like you know, ancient Greece, let you think about Aristotle and Plato, but it's probably someone a lot, a lot closer.
That in time that you probably think of, whether or not you think of like, I don't know, like Karl Marx or like Ren Descartes or something that's that's probably documented as one of the earliest natural philosophers, rather than sort of a generalized philosopher.
Well, it's okay so the the first natural philosopher is from the same place as the first king.
So Sumeria, that's what I was going to say.
Yeah, ancient Mesopotamia or Babylon inspired the great thinkers of Egypt and Greece and the first natural the first person is of the first person who is recorded as being a natural philosopher because of their, their views on the formation of the universe and the way that they did things is a gentleman called
Phales of Mylita. Mylita was a, was a town in ancient Greece which the ancient Greek Empire used to be known as kind of known as the area of Ionia.
So, modern day Greece is not quite the same but you get the idea of the area.
Mylita, at the time. So this is about 600 to about between 600 and 500 BC.
And the fact is that this occurred 200 years ago, money had just kind of started in the world and started spreading through the area through the city of Lydia had started that and then when King Cyrus defeated the Lydians, he then said, oh, these people are using coins, that's a good idea and then spread it throughout the
area. And Mylita was, oh sorry Mylita was the richest city of the time.
And there was a bloke there called Phales, who was an astronomer, was a philosopher and was a natural philosopher because he tried to come up with ideas on what the world was made out of, how the world worked.
And he is down as the first natural philosopher in recorded history.
I'd be interested to find out how much of his philosophies were true.
Okay, so you're absolutely right. He didn't get it bang on he didn't come up with M theory back in 600 BC.
So his, his idea was that everything is water. Everything is, and Aristotle when critiquing his work said that, well I think he believed that because all natural things require water and are filled with water.
And additionally, although he was already moving away from any creation myths, both the Old Testament and the Babylonian creation stories start with the start with water, or with the idea of God's Spirit or the God's spirits kind of having this,
this expanse of water to work with. Originally, you can understand the theory.
You can understand the basis for the theory.
Obviously, water is so vital to any kind of life and its sustenance. You think the planet itself is 70% water, our bodies are 70% water,
and life itself begun in the water through microbiology with algae and what not else. As a matter of fact, without the algae that started the atmosphere, we wouldn't even be on the planet right now.
Well, that's it. Interestingly, a number of ancient philosophers kind of rather okay so nowadays we use physics to explain biology.
In ancient times, because they didn't necessarily have the wealth of experimentation which now exists, they'd often use biology to explain physics.
Aristotle was kind of down as doing that a whole bunch of times.
Phelous of Byletus was the first natural philosopher. He said that everything was water. He looked at things changing. Just out of interest, can you guys guess how much of his work we actually have or how many of his writings we have?
I shouldn't imagine too much has managed to survive.
I don't know if I can withstand the test of time. Either that or it's every single one has kept pristine in a museum somewhere. It's gonna be either or.
Okay, well again you guys are a bang on the money. We have nothing. We've got Buggerel.
The only way we know about him and his theories is through Aristotle, who talks about him. So Phelous of Byletus is down as one of the seven sages of ancient Greece, but we don't actually have any of his writings.
So kind of on the same basis as to how we first heard about Atlantis through word of mouth, because everything was word of mouth before it was, I mean I feel like I'm saying one of the most ridiculous comments ever. Of course everything was word of mouth before it was written down, idiots.
But you get what I mean. It would have been passed on from generation to generation or through conversation.
Through legend or folklore or something.
Yeah, well, this is the thing like Phelous became a near mythic figure in his own time.
One time he is, he is down, he is recorded as, or there are the stories about him are, there are three main stories that are covered with him. He measured the Great Pyramids of Giza by using an ancient measurement tool called a Gormon, which is the, it's like this little stick he put in the ground, then you use the shadows to record things.
Yeah.
Weirdly enough it is literally the same bit that's used in a sundial but there is an official tool.
He, so he measured the Great Pyramids in order to try and figure that out as, I don't know, that's apparently so at some point the records have been lost.
He also, when he was being mocked for being a poor man, he used his, his abilities in astrology to predict a, apparently predict a amazing olive crop, which would occur the next year.
So he used what money he did have and bought the olive presses, and then made a load of money that way. Interestingly, that's actually one of the reasons why Aristotle and Plato didn't like him very much because both Aristotle and Plato's believed that a true philosopher
wouldn't use their abilities for personal gain. So they discounted a lot of what he said simply based on that fact.
Because they were jealous.
Oh, they had their own, they had their own theories. But yeah, that is something that they did.
So the bloke made millions off of a guess that he got the crop date right. So you'd be jealous. I mean I'm theorizing, I'm completely like paraphrasing here but
maybe, but he's also down as a really, a really stupid story which is almost a nothing story but it kind of shows that stereotypes existed. The stereotype so he was both the first natural philosopher and the first absent minded professor.
He's also reported to at one point he was stargazing and figuring things out and having a walk along at night and he was looking up at the stars and it was night he didn't look where he was going, and he fell in a ditch.
And he was mocked by a slave girl who got him out of the ditch and said, Faelis, Faelis, you know everything about the heavens, but you don't even know where your own feet are standing.
So yeah, fair, fair I think I would have made the same comment.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly, exactly.
Yeah, so a lot of, but it's interesting that he's down as the first natural philosopher, but before then, Nick what you described as science of formation of counting of consideration existed in ancient Babylon and existed in ancient Egypt way before Faelis.
It's just that there was no. It's really weird there was no, how was the world created with both Egyptian and Babylon.
Their form of science or their, their engineering feats were always incredibly practical.
There was always, there wasn't necessarily the understanding behind the or the questioning of why things work the way they work. It was just, well this works so do it this way.
Yeah, but I suppose it being the first.
The hypothetical first nation to have an abundance of crop and therefore an abundance of idle minds. They would have been giving birth to the thought processes and therefore started with well this works, as opposed to well how does this work that definitely seems like the second thought in the chain as it were.
Yeah, that's it.
Well, just as a another bit which I came across in my research.
The Babylonians, their numerical system.
There is several elements of their numerical system that we still use today.
Their numerical system has a base of 60.
Yep.
So both are measurements in both are recording of time and are recording of direction is down to them so when it comes to measuring time and space.
We still use the Babylonian method.
It's easy to think about. Absolutely. Now I knew how we got like the compass cereal.
The alignment, like as in the minutes and seconds I knew that was derived from the clock I didn't know how the day was broken up into minutes and hours how that became 60 instead of 100 it didn't make any sense to my head.
I mean it's because we're trying to use Arabic numerals from. I think it's something it's like, you know what I can't remember exactly when it is but it's like thousands of years later, and then interacting them with a system which was, which is several hundred if not thousands
of years older than that so it's again this this mixtures of different times different knowledge different systems, you try and put them all together, and you get in a bit of a mess and that's why.
Yeah, that's why timings are the way they were.
I mean, I, well, although I think maybe I've done a bit too much research on this again I'll ask you guys the next question here.
When was the theory of the atom first invented.
That's a good question. I mean, my mind immediately goes towards Einstein.
However, I feel like Einstein's science was based off of materials that he not not fraudulated developed upon by from materials that existed before.
So, I don't know exactly.
I'm gonna say Einstein.
Okay.
And it's probably a bit newer than that isn't it when was Einstein about.
So I'm so I'm saying is second world is second world war he's a little bit older than Mary Curie, and actually did his best to support her when she was struggling with the death of her husband, and when she got caught up in an
affair, Einstein sent her a number of letters.
Basically just saying, look, don't listen to the papers, you're an amazing person. Keep doing what you're doing.
He was born in 1879 and died in 1955.
Okay, because digging into the repository that is my GCSE chemistry.
I think Niels Bohr, who had the, the planetary model of an atom was like 1910 ish.
So, but that's a fairly, you know, in depth, we're going to be going to positrons electrons and that sort of thing.
So it's probably about 100 years before.
Okay, so the, the original philosophical concepts of the atom.
Again goes back to ancient Greece.
Really, really, and possibly before that existed in ancient India.
Sadly, I only have stuff on ancient Greece but there was the word atom comes from the Greek word atomous, which means indivisible, we now know that the atom is split able hence nuclear fusion and nuclear bombs and all of that lot.
But the original idea of everything being made up of both the void and stuff can be dated back to ancient Greece by in the fifth century BCE, so someone called.
It's annoying in ancient philosophy they refer to everybody who wasn't Socrates, Plato or Aristotle.
But from around that time they call pre Socrates, even if they weren't before if they were at the same time but not Socrates I just called pre Socrates, but I'm the guy's name was Democritus.
And he proposed that matter consists of indestructible indivisible units called atoms.
Crazy, that they thought that I mean I presumed it was a case of things were made up of things.
And that's as complex as it got.
Two things you know if you put two things together hard enough they stick together. So things make up things, and that let's go about our day. I wouldn't have anticipated it be, you know, that in depth the knowledge.
Well it's it's it's crazy to think that even back then people were thinking of this.
So this is going to be this is going to be a bit of a possibly going to be a pretentious question, but I'll ask it. Why do you think nobody listened to him.
Because they have better things to worry about.
That's also very true they probably were struggling with starving starvation plague war.
Was there some kind of ridicule that led to him being like disregarded almost like a fable or a conspiracy theorist kind of thing.
Or was he just not as famous as Socrates, so people just didn't care.
Well, no, the thing is people people did care.
But it's because.
Well, okay so again, I, I haven't been given exact information on this, but it's because, although, Democritus who's the second person to come up with it there was a person before him but I can't remember his name and there's not nearly enough information about him.
So, Democritus was came up with this idea, and he came up with this idea, but he then also went several steps further and said that there are no gods.
There is there is no ethics.
There.
Everything he basically so like although nihilism is down as coming from Frederick niche.
This guy Democritus seems to be the original nihilist.
And, unfortunately,
a number of people after him.
Called themselves like followers of Democritus, and we're just massive dicks.
Like, they, they, it doesn't go into exactly but they behaved in such ways that the theory of the atom was lost.
I don't know, almost like they
muddied the waters. Yeah, they muddied the waters and just no one cared.
They muddied the water with their actions to the point where when anybody thought of the theory of the atom.
They fought about these. Yeah, they fought about.
Yeah, some not nice people who claimed to be atomists, several hundred years later. Not only that, but it must have been incredibly difficult for a lot of people to hear the concept that there was no God.
I mean, even now people really struggle with the concept of their not being a god.
And they're being a mere
light switch moment that kind of created the universe instead of there being this divine intervention.
So you go back to when that was the norm and that was the majority and that was the basis of most like lifestyle.
Like somebody turning around and saying, no, this isn't actually how things go.
Yeah, the Greeks were fairly hot on gods and the mythology, weren't they?
They would end up almost triggering an existential crisis. Yeah.
And the fear of that would be enough to have people poopoo the comments, I suppose.
But that's exactly it. Like, although it's interesting that Athens is seen as this the home of wisdom.
It was Athens that killed Socrates.
It was Athens that quite often did put a number of these philosophers to death.
And a number of these philosophers aren't from most of the pre-Socrates or most pre-Socratites aren't from Athens.
They visited Athens at some point, for sure.
But they're all from the outskirts of the Greek Empire. Yeah, but a lot of them.
I think we covered this in an earlier episode. A lot of them were not a lot of them.
Some of the earlier people before Socrates, like the bigger minds that Socrates kind of learned from, Plato learned from, etc.
Like they were educated in Egypt in the through the Library of Alexandria.
Well, weirdly enough. So.
OK, so you are thinking along the right lines, although again, the research I've done here has put another light on that.
The library in Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great was a pupil and died one year before Aristotle.
Aristotle came after Socrates.
If that makes sense. So a lot of these people, you're right, they were trained in Egypt and they were trained in Babylon,
but not necessarily in that particular, unless there was already a library there.
I can't say there wasn't already a library there.
But as the history books say that Alexander the Great founded Alexandria,
weirdly enough, he also founded six other cities and named them Alexandria.
It's just the one in Egypt, the only one that's left.
And even that was destroyed by the Romans. Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Bit up himself, wouldn't he?
Well, it is interesting. He was called Alexander the Great, I suppose.
Well, he wasn't at that point.
And it is interesting that he learned from somebody who said you should never use your knowledge for personal gain.
And yet the person who told him you shouldn't use knowledge for personal gain also told him, yeah, go, go, go invade these countries.
You'll be fine.
You'll be fine. Spread your light across the world.
Was it seen as liberation and not invasion?
Yes, you see, that's a classic thing, isn't it? We're moving.
That's a one for another. Here we go on our tangent train once again.
Exactly, exactly.
But it's also weird that that mistake of thought also existed.
So the first scientist, Mary Somerville, held some of that and a number of the colonial views held by Darwin were also held by Mary Somerville.
And although they were great people and amazing minds, they themselves thought that at their times that the British Empire was spreading its light across the world
and that the ways of darkness and ignorance would be erased by colonialism, which is obviously false.
But that is what honestly what a lot of people believed, even as late as 1834 and quite a lot a little bit after then as well.
OK, so I've covered a couple of things there.
We'll move on to the ideas, to some of the ideas.
So the term scientist was coined in 1830.
Well, it was written in 1833. It was published in 1834.
And it wasn't commonly used until 1840s is when it was used.
The term natural philosopher, alchemist, crank, a number of things were used to describe scientists before then.
How do you guys think the shift from philosophy to science took place?
Like, how do you think that went?
I mean, there's a couple of potential.
There was either a transitional phase where people went from thinking and hypothesizing to proving or disproving.
Or it was almost polar opposites and came about as almost anti philosophy.
Yeah, it's probably where science took on board and could prove things that the philosophers were saying.
At that point, that's the differentiation where the philosophers were hypothesizing,
whereas the scientists or people who weren't previously known as scientists,
but they could prove and test those theories against evidence and provide that evidence.
That's absolutely right.
This is where although the term scientist was coined in 1833,
the idea of scientific theory has always seems to have existed across history,
but grew in popularity in the 1600s, at least in Western Europe.
I can't speak across all history in all times, but that is when our idea of modern science started to take hold.
So what you guys were saying about provable evidence...
So before, I guess during the time of the late Renaissance, as we start to enter the Enlightenment,
a number of people started meeting and discussing their ideas and what they could show, what they could prove.
Unfortunately, it was mostly the rich of this time who had time to talk and to think and to meet.
They started to meet in the salons in France and Germany in the 17th century, or no, sorry, not 17th century, 16th century.
There was a thing called the King's Garden in France, which was also a sub of scientific inquiry,
and a number of advancements were made in France and Germany before the foundation of the Royal Society of Natural Philosophy was founded in England,
which then later became the Royal Society of Science.
That was founded in 1660 by... well, I don't have the right person here, I'm very sorry about that.
But that was founded in 1660 and it has a very specific term, which is on its crest still today,
but it kind of really sums up what the place was about.
The term is in Latin, as a lot of these things are, and it's nilius in verbal, or nilius on verba,
which is a Latin phrase which means takes nobody's word for it, or on no one's word, which is a way of...
So this was kind of like the first institution which says, prove it yourself, figure it out, and that's, in my mind,
is an amazing step forward for science or for the formation of scientific inquiry.
Yeah, I mean, I like the definitive nature of the comment. I think based on, if you think back to the podcast we last released,
there comes a point where prove it yourself or take nobody's word for it actually restrains how you can research.
So I think the two need to go hand in hand. I think philosophy itself is the thought outside the box,
and then the development on that thought is not taking someone's word for it, but trying to develop into it some kind of relative proof.
So everything is someone else's word, in a way, because someone else has already figured it out. So it's how did they figure it out, because I don't believe them.
Okay, well then how did the person that figured that out, figure it out? And it comes a point where it becomes knowledge that this is correct,
no matter how many times you look into it and try and figure out who figured out what, on whose word are we believing.
This is just correct. Well, that's exactly it. Although you're right, you shouldn't.
The basis of scientific theory is that you could be able to observe and should be able to provide proofs yourself.
This is why, actually, this is another reason why, sorry, a second reason that the theory of the atom was considered to be disproved is because
they didn't have the technological means to look into the nature of stuff. So it was a natural philosophy which turned out to be, at least concerning the material nature of things, partly correct, rather than a provable thing.
But then we're going to, we'll probably start stepping upon first-hand, second-hand knowledge versus subjective and objective reality at this point. So I don't want to go too far into that.
I mean, just a thought based on that itself. There is a culture in, oh, I can't remember exactly where in the world, but it was untouched by human hands, undeveloped, unevolved, shall we say, and remained these hunter-gatherer kind of people that we were talking about in the last podcast.
Much into the late 19th, 20th century, right? However, when investigated by a scientist or when examined by a scientist, they had record of Sirius A as being part of a binary star system.
As a matter of fact, they said that Sirius, like the star system, or the star Sirius, was actually part of a tertiary star system. And they, like they had no way of proving it, but they knew hands down that it was a tertiary star system.
Given the fact that you can only see Sirius A from the naked eye, Sirius B was only discovered in, I think, the early 20th century, and Sirius B was only discovered in the early 2000s.
And yet these people knew and didn't need to prove it, but knew that was the way that things were for literally decades, or generations and generations.
Kind of, I mean, you got my thought process in the last podcast, as I said. Sometimes you just kind of have to go, sometimes people just know, and you don't need, you don't, sometimes you just have to go, okay, if you know and there's no reason why you would be lying, then I'm going to listen to you.
Be aware of the grey area, but also, I don't know enough to disprove you, therefore I am not going to tell you you are wrong.
Yeah. I think that's the beautiful thing about science, is that people who are quite literally remote and don't have any outside influence, nine times out of ten, well I say that's probably a bit high, but they will come to the same conclusion on things, and they can figure things out, and you think, oh wait a minute, they figured that out as well.
And you know, if there's the constants in science, you know, they might have, you know, thought different things when it comes to religion, and different things when it comes to topography and geography and outside people and this, that and the other, but when the brass tacks of it is that science is a constant.
Yeah, science and mathematics I think are the two constants in any society.
Whether or not they use like a, you know, like a generic, standard, well what we would call a standard base, you know, a base ten mathematical system, or if not they had their own base system, you know, but...
The numbers in sequence are the same though, so you might have a base thirteen, but like thirteen, fourteen is going to be thirteen and one, to a base thirteen, whereas it's fourteen to a base ten. So it's still relative isn't it? It doesn't matter, it's almost like writing in a different language, numbers will be the same no matter what. And science is the same no matter where you are.
Yeah, exactly. It just did go about different ways to proving that.
I see science as the methodology, I see like, proof. Science is a way of uncovering truth. I don't think, I think science is a way of getting to the answer of the how, and possibly the why. I don't necessarily see like, when a car hits me, sorry, if a car hits me, and I get injured.
Like, I don't say, oh well, that's science for you, although I understand that science can be used to explain the physical forces that caused my injuries, you know?
Yeah.
I'll tell you what, right, we're getting towards the end here so I'll just ask you guys this.
Who is your favorite scientist and why, and I'll go last with mine.
Go on, Adam.
You caught me on the spot, James.
I'm sorry, I should, yeah.
I don't have a collective list of my favorite scientists.
Well, I guess name one that you've liked or admired or...
I enjoyed reading the works of Charles Darwin, whether or not you cast him as a scientist.
I do.
Yeah, like a...
He's very much a scientist. He was after, he was after 18th, I'm pretty sure he was...
I think he was, he was around that sort of time.
Before coming out here.
He was formally given the title of scientist or whether or not he was retrospectively given it.
Yeah, I think the work that he's done on evolution, natural selection was profound.
There hasn't really been anything since that people, it seems to have covered a lot of ground.
There was always going to be improvements and people who add to, but I think he's understood
and got down a lot of the ground works that we still understand and use today, be it 150 years later.
No, that's fair enough.
He's a good scientist and he was on... Is he still on the back of the £10 note?
Yes.
Has it changed it?
I don't look at paper money anymore.
Yeah, I can't remember the last time I had... As a matter of fact, I think I've got a £10 note in me wallet.
I'll look at that whilst I tell you mine.
So, there's a couple for me, I think.
Einstein, because of the many different things that he, and I use inverted commas here, got wrong
and then was later proven right, I love that.
There's so many things that he's... like the presence of dark matter, for example.
He called it Einstein's greatest blunder and then scientists went and proved him right, to some degree, in later life.
It's like, how can you be so smart that you work out something that is so fundamental in space
and then go, no, I've got to be a complete bloody moron to think that that's true.
So, yeah, he definitely gets an honourable mention from me, but for concept and for the science that they were investigating,
my favourite, I think, is possibly Nikolaus Tesla.
Now, to be fair, I've forgotten a lot about Nikolaus Tesla. What can you tell me about him?
He was developing a means to draw energy from the universe itself and not need power stations and electrical power grids
to distribute that power around the world.
Unfortunately, his funding was stopped because the bloke that he was getting funding from
was actually the biggest provider of copper wire in America
and he realised that Tesla was about to put the bloke out of business, so he pulled his funding.
That's a massive shame, but that's...
That's why Edison got the funding, because Edison's methods were farmable and profitable,
whereas Nikolaus Tesla just put one of his machines in everybody's house and that's it, free power for everyone.
Do you think also that it's the current financial investment in the systems that we have which has stopped Tesla's works from being picked up again?
Yeah, I mean that and the fact that they destroyed his tower and they destroyed his works.
Trump's family was actually one of the families that ended up with a lot of Tesla's paperwork after his laboratories were raided, I want to say.
Obviously I used the term loosely.
OK.
And on the back of a £10 note is actually...
I know it was Darwin at least 10 years ago.
Jane Austen is on the back of a £10 note.
OK.
Hmm.
I preferred it being Darwin, but oh well.
But that's just my prejudice.
Oh, sorry.
Right, how to be...
OK, my...
They say pride comes before a fall.
Yeah, always, always.
My favourite scientist is Marie Curie because, well, she's the...
Her and her husband figured out a lot of stuff to do with radiation.
And I guess the reason why she's my favourite scientist is because she went from a time...
So she had the hypothesis for how radiation worked.
So she kind of worked with people on that.
She then also experimented and refined raw materials which produced...
Like she took this substance called pitch and refined it into uranium.
She then worked and experimented with uranium and turned it into something which was 400 times more radioactive called poladium.
And then she continued to research more and more into it and to develop things more and more.
And then produced something called radium which is another 400 times more radioactive than poladium.
And so in the course of her lifetime, she took raw materials, refined them into something which is still used today,
then made something 400 times stronger than that and then made something another 400 times more radioactive than that.
To the point where radium is an incredibly rare element that's difficult to use.
Well, you know, it's horribly deadly as well, but it's...
She did that.
Additionally, it's the way she used her findings.
So she did the whole... So she discovered... So she created radium.
She also started radiology as a medical practice.
So the whole reason why we have x-rays is because of Marie Curie's work in radiology.
But she didn't just come up with these theories.
She practically put it into practice.
During the First World War, French soldiers had access to x-ray technology, whereas English soldiers and German soldiers didn't.
As a result, millions... Well, sorry, thousands upon thousands at least of French lives were saved through bullets being removed from wounds,
which previously couldn't have been done because of the x-ray...
I know it's going to sound ridiculous, but there were pop-up x-ray kind of tents and vans, which was all put into place by...
They used to be called little Curies because she put that into place,
organized with people and then created something which saved thousands of lives.
So that's why she's my favorite scientist, because she took a theory, she put in the graph, she created a positive practical application and then put that into physical practication.
So over the course of her lifetime, they went from a place of complete ignorance to having a technology which relied on the same person's work.
I don't know, just over the course of a lifetime, being able to oversee all of that is amazing.
I also love the fact that her own remains, because she worked with unshielded radioactive material, her remains are so radioactive that she's in a lead coffin.
Yeah, she had to be buried twice, didn't she?
Yeah, quite possibly, because it would be doing it.
And if you're reading any of Marie Curie's original notes, those are also radioactive, so you have to sign a waiver before you can even touch them, because she was incredibly irradiated.
I guess that's another reason why I like... she worked with radioactive material, yet still lived into her 60s.
She died because of the radioactive work she did as well, didn't she?
That's the... the jig isn't up on there, but I'm going to be honest with you, it probably didn't help.
Yeah.
Well, the radioactive stuff she was around, it's probably killed her.
Yeah, I don't think it was cancer that killed her, I think she had some kind of anemia or something.
She did have another disease. Unfortunately, her husband, was it Peter Curie, died of a completely not radioactive thing. He was literally hit by a horse and cart.
Pierre, was it?
Pierre, that's it. Yep.
Cool.
If he was living in Clapham, he'd probably be Peter.
You're right. Well, they were living in Paris, but Marie Curie is Polish. Hence the reason why she called the first refinement of uranium that she invented called Palladium after Poland.
Interesting fact about Palladium, it's used as the triggering mechanism in a number of nuclear bombs. So she invented something and put it to good use.
Oppenheimer twisted it and turned it into something destructive.
Exactly. Exactly.
All right.
So science create lessons for suffering of humanity in loads of ways, but if like with all things can be used for evil. And on that bombshell, I wish you all good night.
Take care guys. I am very happy. That is wonderful research again. Thank you so much for all the time you've put in, James. Thank you, Adam, for coming along.
Thanks for having me.
No problem. It's always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Thank you, listeners, for continuing your presence on these podcasts. We massively appreciate you taking part in listening.
So goodbye from me and goodbye from the guys.
Thank you.