When Science Was Born

Thomas Henry Huxley, the eminent British zoologist of the nineteenth century once wrote: “For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day.” This realization beautifully connects us with ancient minds. It is the same world which puzzles us now, even though we observe it to distances of billions of light years with modern telescopes on Earth and in space, and we penetrate into the incredibly small microworld using microscopes and particle accelerators. These observations and our current knowledge of the workings of the universe are the fruition of a long chain of scientific enquiry extending back into prehistoric times-when the only instrument was the naked eye and the world was fresh.