Technikatörténeti szemle 22. (1996)
Papers from the Second International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Eger, Hungary, 16–19 August, 1995) - Inczédy, János: Science and Information
The resolution of our visual organ in the frequency domain, and the accessible range of the power of light are extremely high. With good eyesight it is possible to aware 5-10 nm wave length differences, and to distinct 1 cm objects from 1 km distance. The illumination range is between 0,1 and ca 5000 lux. Our hearing organ is also of remarkable quality. The accessible frequency range is ca 20 - 20 000 Hz. The available range of sounds (and noises) gives a very wide place for the most different compositions, voices, tolkings, tones and melodies. With good ears very small frequency differences of 5-10 Hz, and hardly different tone colours can be distinguished. The enjoyable volume of the sound is quite high (10-100 dB). While the eyes serve in first place to receive information on objects in space, the ears serve more for information forming in time. Our smelling organ is also quite sensitive also in certain respect. The strongly poisonous H 2 S gas can be observed in the air by our nose in such a low concentration, which can be detected today only by the most powerful, expensive instruments. Nevertheless, the smelling, testing and touch abilities present also indispensable contributions to the reception of information. In spite of the fact, that our sensing organs are of high performance, and by means of our sensing abilities tremendous amount of physical properties of objects, facts and processes can be observed, and by the observations immense amount of information can be collected, accessible dimensions of the observations are limited. There are many such objects, events and processes, which of origin and composition are hidden, i.e. not directly accessible. Many efforts have been made from the very beginning of the human history to extend the accessible range of the direct recognition. The historical development of the natural sciences follows very closely the accessible range of information and knowledge, which was time to time extended by various artificial devices and instruments during the whole history of the mankind. Int the Table one can see the dominating science fields in the past, from the ancient time until tuday. The order of the dominating fields follows nicely the order of the power of the available instruments and measurement techniques, which extended our knowledge into such areas, which were not directly accessible by our sens organs alone. Maybe it is surprising that theology was also included into the list, being not a field of natural sciences. According to the authors opinion however, the principles of the theology had significant influence on the development of western thinking. At the development of the astronomy in the ancient time of the history, it was sufficient to look the sky, and to observe the motion of the stars in function of the time. The time was measured by counting the days, months or years.
