How does modern science differ from what people believed long ago?

Answer 1

It depends how far back you go. In the most general terms, it went something like this. In the earliest days of human existence, we were low on technology and hands-on explanations for a lot of things, but we weren't at zero. We knew how to manipulate and use many different materials for our benefit. When the questions came up for which we had no hands-on answers, we tended to attribute causes and answers to the gods or to some powers from an unseen realm. As history progressed, items from the mystery list tended to migrate to the hands-on world. Especially around the time of the Enlightenment, many things were seen to be explorable, even if they were not yet fully explainable. That is pretty much where we are, and may very well remain for as long as we exist. We will explore and sometimes explain anything and everything that can reasonably fall under the heading of 'objectively observable'. The spiritual realms still, from time to time, yield some mystery or other to the purview of science, but the Big Questions about the purpose and meaning of life, and the nature of the afterlife, will always be the proper study of theology. Studies of theology and philosophy also inform us about the nature, purpose and application of things like ethics and social interaction. So there is now a healthy tension between the world of scientific research, and views on how and if that research should be done and how it should be applied.