Ideas and works that marked the time of the most powerful changes on Earth

RAISED SPIRIT AT THE EDGE OF A VOLCANO

20th century has a special place in human history. No other period has changed the face of the Earth leaving so many open wounds and unfinished undertakings as this one, which we like to call ours. Human history that lied dormant in the riverbeds of Egypt and Babylon, of India and China for millenniums has suddenly been raised by fatal human creative work. Has Janus Pannonius foretold the destiny of humanity in his Tree that dies away burdened with his fruit? Who can stop the games of our contemporary politicians? There is no more a good-natured genie, and the masters of the Earth go on having fun at the edge of the volcano.

Galilei and da Vinci; a draw for inquisition

It all started so innocently. Following Leonardo da Vinci's steps, Galileo measured the time of the free fall from the leaning tower of Pisa. But something was missing. A shrewd eye and arithmetic. The integration of mathematics and experiment proved a miracle. Roger Bacon, a 13th century Franciscan, taught that only research would give the man power over nature. Himself a doctor mirabilis, he astonished students with his lectures on astrology and alchemistry, which of course brought him anathemas twice in his life. Though astrology and alchemistry were pointed to be Devil's work, they did turn human thinking away from mystic verbalism to the stars and chemical elements. Roger Bacon can be in his own right considered the father of empirical thinking.

Neither interdictions nor prisons stopped the curious spirit. Some years ago a pool in the U.S. asked if the inquisition should have burned Galileo and his followers, the physicians. Its result was a draw.

20th century cannot be grasped without taking into consideration huge steps in creativity and its influence on ideologies.

Renaissance - the swift rising of sciences

Renaissance doesn't only restore Old Greece mathematics and physics; its combination in theory and practice gives human research a swift lift-off. The discovery of the differential and integral calculus by Newton and later on by Leibnitz enables adequate expression of the laws of nature. This will later on serve the classic French encyclopaedists (D'Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace) to elevate classic machinery to be the queen of sciences. Now our solar system becomes the battle place, where "machinists of the sky" do not only work out the paths of the known planets, but also foresee the existence of the new bodies in the space on the bases of incongruity of their mathematical expectations and observations. The greatest triumph of Newton's "machinery" is that his mathematical results were later on validated through observation. The new idea that mathematical equations should foresee the new and be validated by observations becomes the main criterion for their authenticity.

Newton's Law of gravitation came out of his Law of movement according to which acceleration is caused by force. However, magnetic forces were always present, and it took Faraday and Maxwell to confirm and describe their field and deduct their conclusions about transversal waves, out of which Tesla and Marcon send these waves on greater distances, thus opening the new era of radio, television and laser.

Space has opened

The discovery of electromagnetic field opened regions beyond our senses. At the same time man opened micro cosmos. The old Greek atomic hypothesis whether matter can be divided indefinitely, cursed by Christian learning, came to be answered in 20th century. Atom became unavoidable hypothesis explaining chemical proceses. Starting with Lavoisier via Dalton and Mendeljejev, man came to develop new, chemical industry to produce new materials for the new age..

Energy started the storm of capitalism The use of the steam machine brought about the Industrial revolution of 19th century which, bringing railway and new sea transport, helped Great Britain and other western European countries become the leading ones in spreading their culture around the world, thus exploiting their colonies further and more profound. Electricity changes our picture of the world even more than the steam machine. Starting the beginning of 20 century, electrical power suddenly becomes the main driving force of most of the things that surround us.

Physics left its traditional materialistic form for theoretical in a few steps, starting in 1900 with Max Planck and his quantum hypothesys, A. Einstein's theory of relativity and Bohr's connecting of light and electrons.

The progress of chemistry

Modern physics with its conceptions and precise instruments has helped develop chemistry. High degree of development of physics and chemistry helped us to understand life processes. Mendel's laws pointed to genes. It was logical to suppose that genes are nothing but large moleculae and their mutations take place in quantum leaps. So we get molecular biology to attract scientists just as atomic phisycs did at the turn of the century. Logically, quantum theory becames basic for understanding natural processes. This also makes it possible what scientists dreamt of for centuries - to have a unique science or theory that would could explain everything, just as scientists tried to do it with classical mechanics.