A Historical Background On Science And Mathematics

Time and again, when referring to a historical background of a topic in science or math, we have been exposed to only a handful of key figures and even fewer notable events without any social or cultural context behind it. Such details are often overlooked and taught without the perspective of the era and why it occurred at the time. There maybe several reasons for such dismissal. Within the STEAM subjects, especially science and mathematics, the content strives to be empirical and concrete without influence of culture, race, gender or era in time. It maybe useful to only highlight few historical figures and events to maximize time in knowledge content. However, often times, the analysis of historical context and how or why the events†¦show more content†¦By exploring the interactions of Newton with his colleagues about his ideas and Darwin’s letters to Lyell and his grandfather’s influence in theory of evolution, this essay will attempt to demonstrate that lon e geniuses in science history are illusions to make up for a good story to tell to engage students in class. Even during his time, Isaac Newton was recognized and greatly respected by people within various scholarly fields. Alexander Pope claimed Newton as the light to the dark and mysteriousness laws of nature in his poem. (1 Pg. 161) However, it is rarely glorified that Newton was not a distinguished scholar when he was younger, except in mathematics, and as an adult, he had diverse interests, such as alchemy, and theology. As a scientist, Newton’s ideas were discussed, criticized and appreciated constantly within the scientific societies of the time. Edmund Halley, the discover of comet and Newton’s colleague, communicated about elliptical orbits and angular momentum of planets with Newton (Pg137). This made Newton questions his own theories about planetary motion and thus eventually lead him to publish ‘Philosophiae Nauturalis Principia Mathematica†. In the book, he structured his argument to disprove Descartes’ theory and referred to Galileo’s work to explain universal gravitation. The incorporation of previous