It’s All In The Science

Travel has always been a big desire of mine and having the opportunity to study abroad was one I will never forget. If someone would have come up to me and said in one year you will be traveling through the United Kingdom I would have simply laughed and told them how funny they were. Little did I know that my hopes of going overseas would actually come true this year. I looked at every possible trip, yet nothing could help me academically. I even went and looked at other IU study abroad trips just so I could go on an adventure of my own. However, with all the trips dwindling down to not meeting the criteria I needed the London/Edinburgh trip was published. As soon as I saw it offered an English class in a 300 level, I was in. Nothing was going to stop me from getting into this program. This trip has taught me so much about the 16-1800’s but the one thing that stuck out the most to me was the scientific breakthroughs. Now, let’s go back in time and look at all the scientific discoveries that were being unraveled right before the eyes of humanity. Like any form of structure, the number one thing it needs in order to succeed is a great foundation. A foundation that has had many trial and error phases, or a foundation that is so strong not even the worst or worse storms could take it down. The 1600’s to 1800’s was defiantly years of trial and error, but the trial an error have formed the foundation of basic knowledge humanity needs today in order to succeed. 

This is the Surgeon’s Hall museums representation of an anatomy theater. During the 1500’s this would have been much larger

Starting in the early 1500’s the medical experimentations were being created. Findlen discusses the idea of anatomy theaters, and she goes over the structure of the theater which is a cadaver in the center of the building with a scientist performing in front of a crowed that has been circled around by a colosseum of seats. Findlen describes how she preserves this concept is anatomizing by stating “the idea of creating a special, enclosed space in which to study nature emerged at a very early stage in the realm of human anatomy”. This gave many people the opportunity to come and utilize the information being given, and the medical community would be able to grow with this standard use of medical knowledge.  After the fact of creating theses theaters medical knowledge was really only lectured about, and never experimented with. However, the 1700’s role around and the medical discoveries were in the making, and the scientist would not stop at anything to get results to create the face of medicine. During the 1800’s there was not much to go off of because up until that point they only had the information from people who had never seen a real open body before. Therefore, they had to make scientific guesses with the information they had provided. Up until the first human body was opened up, they believed the human body was the same as an animal body. However, when the first human body was cut open, they came to discover the appendix which in fact was not accounted for. Still using anatomy theater, we can only imagine the feeling in which the scientist was going through to find out the discoveries they thought were accurate were in fact disproved. So, how much was actually accurate and how much was false information? Well traveling to the 1820’s John Knox was developing his medical world. There were very little medical discoveries in the world at this time that had hard scientific evidence to back it up. So, Knox took it in his hands to make new findings by actually opening up dead humans to make his scientific findings. Knox was one of the most successful during this period when it came to develop new medical practice. In fact, he was the most successful in Scotland if not in all of Britain. All of his findings can be found in the Surgeon’s Hall Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland. Along with going to the Surgeons Hall Museum you will make many discoveries about the medical world itself.

This is a picture of a grave that is enclosed by a cage to keep people from robbing the dead bodies from the graves.

For starters, in order to make new discoveries you needed bodies, and to get bodies you needed someone to die. However, during this time period people believe that if your full body was not intact when buried your soul could not reach haven. So, grave robbing became the norm for years, and people would pay up to 10 pounds in order to fulfil getting their dead bodies. Of course, pay depended on the freshness of the body the newer the death the more money. This was all so scientists could experiment to make new discoveries. However, people did not agree with this and bodies began to be buried with a cage over the top of them so they would not be taken. Knox was a big buyer in this market, because he wanted his discoveries to be the greatest. From something as basic anesthetic to an amputation it all needed to be discovered. Yet, even when one thing was done correctly something would backfire, and then what they felt was successful turned out to be unsuccessful after a couple weeks. Scientists did not understand what was happening because nothing smelled bad, and there was no physical evidence of anything going wrong. People believe that if something smelled bad then it was bad, and if there was no smell then everything was still okay. Yet, they did not understand the concept of bacteria being microscopic and unseen. However, once they realized that if they cleaned their surgical instruments, they had less fatalities they began to discover something new. It took trial and error, and many different theories to discover what they needed in order to move forward.

Now, medical discoveries were not the only foundation that was being created. The mathematical components of different experiments were starting to align too. Mathematics was taken very serious during this time, and sometimes it was taken too seriously. They broke everything down into shapes such as triangles, circles, parallelograms, and all other geometric shapes that they had no ability to comprehend other ideas. Jonathan swift writes in Gulliver’s travels about when he went and saw their houses. He mentions “they are so ill built the walls bevil without one right angle in the entire house”. However, as time went on scientist started to realize there was more to mathematics then just gematrical shapes. The people had to realize there was other things that needed to be accountable for such as the area something takes up, or the amount of space given to make something fit.

This was Harrisons first model of a clock that would keep time while at sea it was accurate but not as accurate as he needed it to be.

Moving forward on the mathematical spectrum a couple more discoveries were made during this era. One of the big issues during the 1700’s was that sailors were unable to keep time while away. Thus, a device a device that could keep time while sailors were at sea, and the concept of longitude that could be used in order to tell time from any point in time was created. John Harrison was the scientist behind each device created in hopes it would tell time while at sea. Harrison create three different mechanisms, but only changing a few minor things in order to get the results he desired; however, all three failed and he was back to the drawing board. It was not until the fourth design and many years later that Harrison was able to create a device that would work the most accurately at sea. His four different mechanisms can be seen at the Royal Observatory in London, England. All four on display too, look at all the trial and errors that Harrison had. Now, he was not only trying to determine a way to tell time at sea, but he was also trying to pin down longitude. So, let’s think about longitude for a moment. Mentioned on a placard in the royal observatory it states “the earth makes a 360 degree turn each day. If we divide the rotation into twenty-four hours, each hour-long division of time represents fifteen-degree segments of longitude (east-west). Every degree of longitude gives four minutes of local time difference”. This was a major discovery, because now it did not matter where you were at on earth if you knew the time of day then you knew what time it was back home based off of the longitudinal position. However, if you did not know the time back home it was also possible to use the sky as your clock. People could look at the positioning of the sun, moon, and stars to calculate the time anywhere. Understanding the solar system was also another scientific breakthrough. Once the solar system was understood scientists could start creating a method of navigation. We can look up to the sky and know what direction we are headed based off of the stars and the way the sun rises and sets. Once they discovered the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the planets, they were able to see the breakthrough.

This was Harrisons fourth Model of a time keeper and this was the most accurate one that could keep time while at sea. It also has gone down a lot in size.

Both places played a big role in the foundations in science, and without the one there would not be the other. While several different concepts of science were discussed without one there would not be the there. Much like if there was not one discovery in London there might not have been a different one in Scotland. The sciatic world feeds off one another to create a better science of knowledge.

Now, in today’s world we use landmarks to associate ourselves with where we are at. In Edinburgh we could use the royal mile as a landmark or the castle of Edinburgh to determine what direction we needed to go. In London it was much harder because it is so large. In fact, while in London I got lost much more because their streets are not uniformed, and they have random alleyways to get to different places. This is a big difference between the two places. After the London fire everything was destroyed, therefore they wanted to give London a more uniformed plan, but because of the cost and the time it would take to create a new layout of the city they decided to go with what they had and mange to make it work. London is also a very gloomy city and it is hard to look up to the stars to see what direction you are headed in so when navigating through London you have to rely on a map, and tube stations you have associated your destination with. However, the scientist to this day have still given us the foundation to go off of in order to get to where we want to go if we have to use the sky. 

Trial and error created a world that allows people to disprove one another and make scientific discoveries all the time. Each day a doctor is getting closer to a medical breakthrough, and engineers are getting closer to mathematical breakthroughs. We have to give credit to the people that started the scientific research for us. The scientists in London and the scientist in Scotland have shared that for everyone around the world. In order to get somewhere you have to start somewhere. The only thing you really need is to ask a question and then go on and discover it. 

This is a photo of me discovering a “new world” A place that I could seek to find more knowledge in culture, and understand new meaning for myself. Here is to questioning so I can discover.