ABSTRACT
There is no question that the development of the scientific world view has had a profound effect on human beings, both in the practical and intellectual sense. Looking back over our story, we can see at least three different ways to think about the role and impact of science. One is intellectual, dealing with the way science has changed and transformed humanity’s view of its own role in the universe. This way of looking at the history of science gets us into the fraught boundary between science and religion. A second point of view involves the way that scientific knowledge has changed the material conditions of human life. And finally, we can look at this history from the point of view of the internal requirements of science itself, viewing it as a purely intellectual exercise in the development of the scientific method. Let’s consider each of these points of view briefly.
