Einstein overthrew Newtonian physics but like Newton he still believed that physical events have definite causes. Then Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, joined others in describing a strange new world of uncertainty and mystery. Quantum mechanics has intrigued and confounded many by joining keen insights with apparent contradictions and indeterminacy. Quantum theory also was later used to create semiconductors, the technology of the computer revolution.

The Science and Discovery Series recreates one of history’s most successful journeys—four thousand years of scientific efforts to better understand and control the physical world. Science has often challenged and upset conventional wisdom or accepted practices; this is a story of vested interests and independent thinkers, experiments and theories, change and progress. Aristotle, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and many others are featured.

We think of science as a way of discovering certainty in an unpredictable world; experiments are designed to objectivity measure cause and effect. Yet science often produces more new questions than answers, and all scientific theories can change with new and better observations. Scientific philosophers say that “objective” observations actually depend heavily on the observer’s intuition and point of view. This audio presentation explores the power and limitations of this special type of knowledge called science.

The Science and Discovery Series recreates one of history’s most successful journeys: four thousand years of scientific efforts to better understand and control the physical world. Science has often challenged and upset conventional wisdom or accepted practices; this is a story of vested interests and independent thinkers, experiments and theories, change and progress. Aristotle, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and many others are featured.

Isaac Newton’s world had operated in a fixed, rigid, “absolute” framework of space and time. Yet discoveries about electromagnetism in the late nineteenth century created new and troubling inconsistencies. In 1905, Einstein’s name became synonymous with “genius” when his Special Theory of Relativity challenged old concepts in physics. Hertz, Lorentz, Mach, Poincare, and others illustrated the ideas that so captivated Albert Einstein and shook our conventional ideas about space and time.

The Science and Discovery Series recreates one of history’s most successful journeys—four thousand years of scientific efforts to better understand and control the physical world. Science has often challenged and upset conventional wisdom or accepted practices; this is a story of vested interests and independent thinkers, experiments and theories, change and progress. Aristotle, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and many others are featured.