Question: How much has the world changed since science was invented?

David Pyle answered on 21 Mar 2011:

The origins of modern science probably date back to the 1600’s, when the first Learned Societies and Academies were formed, and the idea of using experiments to test theories took hold. There have been huge changes in many things since then – but it is interesting that the way that science is done hasn’t neccessarily changed all that much: we still make careful observations of the natural world; develop theories to explain it; build equipment to do more experiments to test our theories, and write scientific papers that are published in academic journals – sometimes the same ones that were around 350 years ago. One thing that has changed within science is that it is now a professional occupation (rather than simply a pastime for the wealthy or obsessive); and of course there are many more brilliant women scientists working in science than there were even as little as 100 years ago.

I haven’t really answered your question – but there’s plenty of entertaining books on the topic. I particularly enjoyed Lisa Jardine’s ‘Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution’, which is the human story of the origins of organised science in Britain.