Who was the first scientist?

0:00 Welcome to History's Not Boring by kidopoly.com. I'm Mira! And I'm Finn! Before we start, a big hello to Elise in Perth, Australia. She's the little sister of Lily, and they both love history. Elise was wondering who invented science, so this one is for you, Elise.

0:19 And a huge hello to seven-year-old Adam and his sister Sappha, who listen together in the car and love diving into history. We are so happy to have you listening along with us.

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0:35 Today we are answering Elise's question. We are travelling back in time to discover who invented science, and how humans went from blaming thunder on angry gods to actually testing how the universe works.

0:48 But Finn, did someone just wake up one day and invent science in a bright, shiny laboratory?

0:56 Nope. It started with ancient Greeks measuring shadows in the desert, and a genius in Egypt who faked being crazy just so he could sit in a dark room for ten years.

1:07 Faked being crazy? I need to hear this right now. So Finn, imagine living 3,000 years ago. If a massive lightning storm struck, or the ground shook violently, what would you think caused it?

1:21 Uh, maybe a giant underground monster, or super angry gods throwing lightning bolts from the clouds. Exactly!

1:30 Long ago, people used myths to explain everything. But then, around 600 BCE, in a bustling Greek port city called Miletus, a man named Thales decided to look for natural reasons instead. Who exactly was Thales? What did he do? He's often called the very first philosopher. Thales once travelled down to Egypt and stood before the Great Pyramid of Giza.

1:58 It was 481 feet tall, which is the height of a modern 40-story building. No one knew exactly how to measure it without climbing up its slippery sides.

2:10 How do you measure a 40-story building without a giant tape measure or a helicopter?

2:16 He used shadows. Thales waited for the exact time of day when his own shadow on the sand was exactly as long as he was tall. Then he quickly measured the pyramid's massive shadow, knowing the shadow's length would perfectly match the pyramid's 481 foot height. Whoa, that is a genius math trick. Did he do anything else?

2:41 It gets even better! Fast forward to May 28, 585 BCE. Two huge armies, the Lydians and the Medes, were fighting a terrible bloody war near the Hallis River. They had been fighting constantly for five whole years.

3:01 Five years of battle? That's forever. Did Thales try to stop them?

3:06 He did it by accident. Thales had carefully studied the stars and calculated that a solar eclipse was coming. Right in the middle of a fierce battle, the sky went completely black during the middle of the day. The soldiers were so terrified by the sudden darkness that they dropped their swords and instantly agreed to a peace treaty.

3:29 Wait, you're telling me he stopped a five-year war using astronomy? That is the coolest thing ever.

3:35 Fales proved that if you carefully observe nature, you can actually understand it. About 250 years later, around 350 BCE, another famous Greek thinker named Aristotle took this a huge step further.

3:51 I've heard of Aristotle. What did he do?

3:54 He basically became the father of biology. Instead of just sitting in a room thinking about the world, Aristotle travelled to the Greek island of Lesbos. He spent hours every single day crawling around beaches and muddy swamps, just staring at animals.

4:12 Just staring at frogs and bugs in the mud. That sounds like a messy job.

4:18 It was, but it was worth it. He carefully examined over 500 different species of animals. He cut open fish to see their organs, studied how bird eggs hatch day by day, and wrote down detailed motes on everything he saw. He was the very first person to group animals into categories based on their blood and how they reproduced.

4:41 Over 500 species? That's like charting a whole zoo by yourself. Exactly. And because he looked so closely, he noticed something incredible about dolphins. Back then, everyone just assumed dolphins were fish because they swam in the ocean. But dolphins aren't fish, they're mammals, right? Right, and Aristotle figured that out over 2,000 years ago.

5:07 He observed that dolphins breathe air through a blowhole, not gills. He also saw that they give birth to live babies instead of laying eggs, so he correctly grouped them with other live-bearing, air-breathing animals instead of fish. It was a massive breakthrough in observation. Wow! He figured that out just by watching them carefully.

5:29 Yes, but there was one big problem with the ancient Greeks. They were amazing at observing things, but they rarely tested their ideas to see if they were actually right.

5:39 Wait, what do you mean? If you observe something and it makes sense, isn't it right?

5:45 Not always. For example, Aristotle thought heavier objects fall faster than light ones, just because it seemed that way in his head. He never actually dropped a heavy rock and a light rock at the same time to test it. Because he was so famous, people believed his untested ideas for over a thousand years, and many of them were completely wrong.

6:07 Oh no! So when did people finally start testing things with real experiments?

6:12 That brings us to the Islamic Golden Age. The year is 1011 CE in the bustling city of Cairo, Egypt. Meet a brilliant scholar named Ibn Al-Haytham. He is widely celebrated as the world's first true scientist. Is this the guy you mentioned earlier? The one who faked being crazy? Yes. Ibn al-Haytham was a math genius.

6:38 The ruler of Egypt, a powerful caliph, hired him to build a giant dam across the mighty Nile River to control its annual flooding. But when Ibn al-Haytham rode out to inspect the river, he realised it was way too huge and fast. With the technology of the year 1011, it was a completely impossible job.

6:58 Uh-oh.

6:59 What happens when you tell a super powerful, angry ruler that you can't do the job he ordered you to do?

7:05 The caliph was known to be very cruel and dangerous. To save his own life, Ibn al-Haytham came up with a wild plan. He pretended he had completely lost his mind. He acted so crazy and erratic that the caliph decided not to execute him and instead locked him in his house under strict house arrest. He was locked up in his own house.

7:27 For how long? For ten whole years. From 1011 all the way to 1021, he couldn't leave. But being locked in a dark room was actually the best thing that could have ever happened for the history of science.

7:41 How does sitting in the dark for 10 years help science? I would just go crazy for real.

7:46 He started studying light. One day, he noticed light shining through a tiny dust-filled hole in his wooden window shutters. The light travelled across the dark room and projected a perfect upside-down image of the busy street outside right onto his wall. He had accidentally created the world's first camera obscura, which means dark room in Latin.

8:10 No way. He basically invented a movie projector in his bedroom.

8:15 He did! But here's why he is the first scientist. He didn't just look at it and guess how it worked. He tested it. He set up lamps and measured the rays, proving for the first time ever that light travels in straight lines. He wrote a massive, seven-volume masterpiece called the Book of Optics. Most importantly, he wrote that you must prove every single idea with a physical experiment.

8:42 So he literally invented the scientific method. Hypothesis, experiment, and proof. Exactly!

8:48 Ibn al-Haytham said, you should never just blindly trust what you read in a book. Not even the books written by famous ancient thinkers like Aristotle. You have to test the facts yourself. This exact idea changed human history forever.

9:05 Sure, what happened to his massive seven-volume book after he got out of house arrest?

9:11 The book of optics was translated into Latin and spread all across European universities. Hundreds of years later, some of the most famous scientists in history, like Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, read his book and used his exact methods of testing and experimenting to study gravity and the planets.

9:32 Wait, you're telling me that without Ibn al-Haytham sitting in that dark room in Egypt, we might not have modern science?

9:39 Probably not. The scientific method, the careful process of measuring, testing, and proving things, led to everything we have in our modern world. It gave us modern medicine, rockets that go to space, electricity, smartphones, and even the microphone we're talking into right now.

10:00 That is an unbelievable impact. Do you have any weird fun fact about these early thinkers?

10:06 Oh, I definitely do. Remember Thales, the ancient Greek who stopped the war with the sonar eclipse? Well, some people in his town used to tease him constantly. They said his philosophy was useless because he was poor. And if he was so smart, he should have more money.

10:24 Hey, that's not nice. Knowledge is way more important than money.

10:29 Well, Thales decided to get his revenge. Using his scientific knowledge of weather patterns and astronomy, he predicted that there was going to be a massive, record-breaking olive crop the following winter. While everyone else was ignoring the weather, he went around and secretly rented out all the olive presses in town for a very cheap price.

10:51 Wait, so when the olives grew?

10:54 When a huge harvest came, everyone desperately needed a press to make olive oil. And Thales was the only one who had them. They had to pay him whatever he asked. He made an absolute fortune in one season, just to prove to them that science could make you rich if you wanted it to.

11:14 That is the most epic revenge ever. Science for the win! Alright, then, time for the quiz! Are you ready? Okay, I'm ready. Hit me with those facts.

11:25 First question. In what year did Thales predict the solar eclipse that stopped a five-year war? Next one. About how many species of animals did Aristotle carefully observe and categorize? Question three. What was the name of the brilliant scholar who faked losing his mind in Cairo? Here's number four.

11:57 What optical invention did Ibn al-Haytham create while under house arrest? Last question. How many volumes or books were in Ibn al-Haytham's famous book of optics? Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is he predicted the eclipse in the year 585 BCE. For question 2, Aristotle categorised over 500 species of animals.

12:31 Number 3. The answer is his name was Ibn Al Haytham. Question 4. He created the world's first camera obscura. And the final answer is, the book of optics had seven volumes. I still can't believe Ibn Al-Haytham sat in a room for ten years and figured out how light works.

12:53 I know. And Thales measuring a 40-story pyramid with just a shadow. Science is basically a superpower.

13:01 It really is. Hey listeners, if you loved learning about Ibn Al-Haytham's darkroom experiments, please scroll down and leave us a five-star review.

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13:32 See you next time on History's Not Boring. Bye everyone.