Physics' History

Natural philosophy has its origins in Greece during the Archaic period, (650 BCE – 480 BCE), when Pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales refused supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural phenomena and proclaimed that every event had a natural cause.[8] They proposed ideas verified by reason and observation and many of their hypotheses proved successful in experiment, [9] for example atomism.



Natural science was developed in China, India and in Islamic caliphates, between the 4th and 10th century BCE. Quantitative descriptions became popular among physicists and astronomers, for example Archimedes in the domains of mechanics, statics and hydrostatics. Experimental physics had its debuts with experimentation concerning statics by medieval Muslim physicists like al-Biruni and Alhazen.[10][11]



Classical physics
became a separate science when early modern Europeans used these experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics.[12] [13] Kepler, Galileo and more specifically Newton discovered and unified the different laws of motion.[14] During the industrial revolution, as energy needs increased, so did research, which led to the discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry and electromagnetics.
Modern physics started with the works of Einstein both in relativity and quantum physics.