The education is the fundamental engine of Scientific advances. Ancient Greece, where the birth of the scientific contributions of Western civilization took place, gave great importance to training for development, thought from a military point of view.
However, at the time of Renaissance Scientific innovation was also motivated by some Academies that were claimed to be in charge of promoting the study of these disciplines: the Royal Society of London, or the Academy of Sciences of Paris are examples of this.
In the centuries that followed, the evolution of science pursued a growing dynamic. The main causes were the progressive extensions of the freedom of innovation, and the structuring of science in different disciplines. The birth of democracies and free political systems fostered this purpose.
At the same time, the methods of science were perfected and are increasingly functional to the ideas of researchers, although the root is always in the creativity and imagination of new answers to questions.
The analysis of the history of science is a discipline in itself, and it must be said that within it there is a piece that stands out among all the others: ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, by Thomas Kühn, explained how the advancement of science in general took place.
He explained that in most periods, there are certain consensus in the scientific community on some questions, but also on some ways of acting and exploiting the conclusions reached: this was recognized as a paradigm, and it is affirmed to be more successful than its competitors but once affirmed it restricts what should be observed and scrutinize.
Scientific discovery, in the words of Kühn, it can occur within the same paradigm or it can generate the appearance of a new paradigm, in what it calls Scientific Revolution: it is common for this to generate a certain crisis in the scientific field, and for many academics to resist change.
The following list chronologically orders some examples of scientific discoveries from the history of mankind:
| Number 0 (Approximately 50 AD) | Dynamite (1867) |
| Paper (200) | Sterilization method (1870) |
| Chess (600) | Rabies Vaccine (1885) |
| The Compass (1100) | Television set (1926) |
| The Telescope (1608) | Aircraft (1927) |
| The Law of Gravitation (1687) | Structure of DNA (1928) |
| The Steam Engine (1712) | Nuclear reactor (1942) |
| The Power Loom (1785) | Solar Battery (1954) |
| Atomic theory (1803) | Penicillin (1943) |
| Theory | First living being cloned (1997) |
| Darwinian on the Origin of Species (1859) |
The evolution of technology is closely linked to that of science, but refers specifically to the history of the invention of techniques and tools with a practical purpose, that is, with a function that simplifies some task for people.
While science gives the kick to know what area can be explored to satisfy needs, technology simplifies and brings new products for consumption but also for the optimization of production tasks.
The feedback of technological advances made evolution in the last decades take a much more exponential and accelerated race than it had been pursuing until then. The following list shows some examples of technological advancements:
| Remote control | Anticonceptive pill |
| Cable TV | Industrial robots |
| Microwave | Cell phone |
| Digital photo camera | Optical fiber |
| Discman | Wifi |
| PlayStation | Barcode |
| Fax | Cordless tools |
| Laser printers | Communications satellite |
| Gps | Led technology |
| Digital video recorder | Drone aerial vehicles |