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Here we take a brief look at the history of the laboratory to help give perspective about why they're important to modern life.
Laboratories: A historical perspective
Introduction
Origins of the laboratory
Among the earliest known organized scientific study was that under the rule of the early Ptolomies of Alexandria in the third century B.C. While little to no evidence seems to exist for public or organized laboratories during this time period, researchers and historians widely accept the idea that at least organized and individual research (meaning "direct personal contact with the objects of study, and by the aid of such appliances as were then available"[1]) into anatomy, physiology, and medicine took place.[2][3][1][4] Dissections and experiments took place, but certainly not in an organized teaching or research laboratory setting like today. Early twentieth-century philosopher of science Edgar Zilsel suggests that scientific endeavor was non-collaborative in this early era, and the laboratory as a collaborative environment simply didn't exist[2]:
No publications, no astronomical or geographical investigation which are the work of several collaborating scientists are known. Even the learned compendia of the Roman period (Varro, Pliny, Celsus) and the encyclopedias of late antiquity (Boëthius) were composed by single polyhistors. There is no evidence that the Alexandrian Museum conjointly carried out investigations. Laboratories, the birth places of scientific co-operation in the modern era, existed neither in the Alexandrian Museum, nor in the Academy, nor in the Lyceum. As far as the fellow scholars of the museum did not work each for himself they might have contented themselves with dinners and debates. And of course, there were in antiquity no scientific periodicals in which new findings could have been discussed.
With scientific advancement and discovery still largely a personal (i.e, prestigious) goal, even through the the Renaissance humanists of the fourteenth through sixteenth century A.D.[2], it would take quite some time for both the private and public laboratory to evolve. To be certain, private laboratories surely existed, from Aristotle (third century B.C.) [1] to the anatomical laboratories that began to take hold in the late thirteenth to early fourteenth century.[5]
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century laboratories
Modern laboratories and their importance
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Welch, William Henry (1920). "The Evolution of Modern Scientific Laboratories". Papers and Addresses by William Henry Welch. 3. The Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 200–211. http://books.google.com/books?id=utc0AQAAMAAJ&pg=200.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Zilsel, E. (2003). "The Genesis of the Concept of Scientific Progress and Cooperation". In Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W.. The Social Origins of Modern Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 130–171. ISBN 1402013590.
- ↑ Martin, H.N. (1895). "Some Thoughts About Laboratories". Physiological Papers. The John Hopkins Press. pp. 256–264. https://books.google.com/books?id=Raw-AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA256.
- ↑ Serageldin, I. (2013). "Ancient Alexandria and the dawn of medical science". Global Cardiology Science & Practice 2013 (4): 395–404. doi:10.5339/gcsp.2013.47. PMC PMC3991212. PMID 24749113. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3991212.
- ↑ Walker, H.K. (1990). "Chapter 1: The Origins of the History and Physical Examination". In Walker, H.K.; Hall, W.D.; Hurst, J.W.. Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations (3rd ed.). Butterworths. ISBN 040990077X. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201/.
