What does the word “revolution” actually mean?
In its original sense, it actually means a turning, a rotation. In the scientific world, this word was used in the title of the book on the movement of celestial bodies written by Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, mathematician, lawyer, physician and economist, and the first scientist to formulate the heliocentric model of the universe.
With Copernicus leading this scientific procession, our guests, Dr. Igor Salom from the Group for Gravitation, Particles and Fields at the Institute of Physics in Belgrade, and Aleksandar Ostojić, a philosopher who studies the Copernican Revolution and Renaissance science, from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad, took the audience on a historical journey through scientific revolutions, while our well known moderators from the Science Through Stories portal, Slobodan Bubnjević and Marija Vudragović, served as guides along the way.
From Aristotle and his view of knowledge, through the entry into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Aleksandar Ostojić spoke about important figures from various scientific revolutions across Europe and the world, and about whether and how they were remembered, or whether the scientific revolutions swallowed them up and consigned them to oblivion.
From the perspective of the natural sciences, and physics in particular, Dr. Igor Salom said that “above all, we need to dispel the illusion that scientific revolutions stay within the bounds of science itself. They actually have a very deep impact on the whole of civilization and on our everyday lives.”
While we wait to once again remember that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, in October, as part of the Science at Home talk series, we will be looking at the evolution of those who live on that very same planet, and the topic will be: How was man born?
You can find the registration for the event HERE.