values and ideals that had been generated by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, Reason, Science, and progress were still important words modern technology as electric lights, phonographs, and automobiles new view of the physical universe , an appeal to the irrational, alternative views of human nature, and radically innovative forms of literacy and artistic expression shattered old beliefs
Developments in the Sciences: The Emergence of a New Physics
Science, chief pillars supporting the optimistic and rationalistic view of the world that many Westerners shared hard facts and cold reason science offered a certainty of belief in the orderliness of nature traditional religious beliefs no longer had much meaning already known scientific laws= complete understanding of the physical world seriously questioned
French scientist Marie Curie and her husband Pierre- element radium gave off rays of radiation within the atom itself
Atoms= small worlds containing subatomic particles as electrons and protons random and inexplicable fashion^
Berlin physicist, Max Planck, a heated body radiates energy in a steady stream but maintained instead that energy is radiated discontinuously, in irregular packets that he called "quanta" quantum theory raised fundamental questions about the subatomic realm of the atom
Albert Einstein, German- born patent officer new theories of thermodynamics into new terrain
"The Electro- dynamics of Moving Bodies" special theory of relativity space and time are not absolute but relative to the observer, interwoven into what Einstein called a four- dimensional space- time continuum existence independent of human experience matter and energy reflected the relativity of time and space epochal formula E= mc2= each particle of matter is equivalent to its mass times the square of the velocity of light- explaining the vast energies contained within the