History and Evolution of Physics

Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force.

Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest.

Ancient civilizations dating back before 3000 BCE, such as the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, and the Indus Valley Civilisation, had a predictive knowledge and a basic awareness of the motions of the Sun, Moon, and stars.

According to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy.

Egyptian astronomers left monuments showing knowledge of the constellations and the motions of the celestial bodies, while Greek poet Homer wrote of various celestial objects in his Iliad and Odyssey; later Greek astronomers provided names, which are still used today, for most constellations visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

Natural philosophy has its origins in Greece during the Archaic period (650 BCE – 480 BCE), when pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales rejected non-naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena and proclaimed that every event had a natural cause.

By contrast, the Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, and this resulted in a decline in intellectual pursuits in the western part of Europe.

However, the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire) survived and continued to produce great thinkers, such as Aristotle.

This decline in intellectual pursuits in the west led to the development of new sciences, such as astronomy, which could explain the observations made by earlier civilizations.

Aristotle's principles of physics was criticized, but it is important to identify his the evidence he based his views off of.

Aristotle's science was the backbone of the science we learn in schools today.

Aristotle published many biological works, including The Parts of Animals.

Aristotle's metaphysics is "first philosophy" and he characterized it as the study of "being as being".

Aristotle believed that motion is a continuum and that matter change in category and quality.

He devised his own laws of motion, including that heavier objects fall faster and that the speed of the object that is falling depends inversely on the density object it is falling through.

Aristotle also stated that, when it comes to violence, the cause is not always clear.

Classical physics is the physics that was taught in high school and most colleges before the 20th century.

The key innovations in classical physics include the development of the heliocentric model of the Solar System and the laws governing the motion of planetary bodies.

In the 20th century, physicists developed new laws to account for the behavior of very small objects and very high velocities.

Modern physics is the physics that is taught in universities today. It includes the theories of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Classical mechanics is the physics that describes the motion of objects on a large scale.

The theory was inaccurate for describing the motion of small objects and was corrected by the theory of relativity.

Quantum mechanics is the physics that describes the behavior of matter on a very small scale.

It was developed to account for the discrepancy between the predictions of classical mechanics and Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism.

The theory of quantum mechanics is accurate to a very small scale, but it does not account for the behavior of particles at a very large scale.

The theory of quantum mechanics is supplemented by the theory of special relativity which describes the behavior of fast-moving objects.

The theory of quantum mechanics is supplemented by the theory of quantum field theory which describes the behavior of particles in a more complex setting.

The theory of quantum mechanics has led to the development of the Standard Model of particle physics.

The philosophy of physics involves questions such as the nature of space and time, determinism, and metaphysical outlooks such as empiricism, naturalism, and realism.

Many physicists have written about the philosophical implications of their work.