Background to the Scientific Revolution

Background to the Scientific Revolution

• Background to the Scientific Revolution

• Medieval Reliance on Classical Authority
• Contradictions
• Artists rely upon observation of nature and make accurate renderings
• Technological innovations
• Mathematics
• Magic

• Toward a New Heaven: A Revolution in Astronomy

• Claudius Ptolemy and Aristotle
• Geocentric Universe
• Christianized Ptolemaic Universe

Copernicus (1473-1543)

• Copernicus (1473-1543)
• On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
• Heliocentric Universe
• Retains Ptolemy’s epicycles
• Reaction of the Church
• Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
• Compromise with ideas of Copernicus and Ptolemy
• Uraniborg Castle
• Observations

Jonannes Kepler (2571-1630)

• Jonannes Kepler (2571-1630)
• “Music of the Spheres”
• Three Laws of Planetary Motion
• Orbits of planets elliptical
• Speed of planets
• Planets with large orbits revolve slower than those with smaller orbits
• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
• Telescope
• The Starry Messenger, 1610
• Trial before the Inquisition
• Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican, 1632
• Laws of Motion

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

• Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
• Invents calculus
• Principia
• Laws of Motion
• Mathematical proof of the law of gravity and that the universe operates according to universal laws

• Advances in Medicine

• Advances of Galen
• Animal dissection
• Four humors
• Disease an imbalance of humors

Paracelsus (1493-1541)

• Paracelsus (1493-1541)
• Medicine as chemistry
• “Like cures like”
• Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
• Human dissection
• On the Fabric of the Human Body, 1543
• Corrects Galen

• Women in the Origins of Modern Science

• Influence of humanism on female scholarship
• Informal education
• Exclusion from universities

Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)

• Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)
• Observations upon Experimental Philosophy
• Ground of Natural Philosophy
• Attacks rationalist and empiricist approaches to science
• Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717)
• Wonderful Metamorphosis and Special Nourishment of Caterpillars
• Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam
• Maria Winklemann (1670-1720)
• Astronomer
• Rejection of the Berlin Academy

Querelles de Femmes

• Querelles de Femmes
• Male perception of the inferiority of women
• Women reject the argument
• Science used to support old, traditional views on women

• Toward a New Earth: Descartes, Rationalism, and a New View

• René Descrtes (1596-1650)
• Discourse on Method
• Rejection of the senses
• “I think, therefore I am”
• Separation of mind and matter
• Rationalism

The Scientific Method

• The Scientific Method

• Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
• The Great Instauration
• Inductive Reasoning (empiricism)
• Practical rather than pure science
• René Descartes
• Deductive Reasoning
• Isaac Newton
• Synthesized Bacon’s empiricism with Descartes’ rationalism into the scientific method

Science and Religion in the Seventeenth Century

• Science and Religion in the Seventeenth Century

• Example of Galileo
• Split between Science and Religion
• New synthesis
• Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677)
• Excommunicated from Amsterdam Synagogue
• Panentheism (monism)
• All that is is in God, and nothing can be apart from God
• Using reason to find true happiness
• Blaise Pacal (1623-1662)
• Pensées (The Thoughts)
• Convert rationalists to Christianity
• Limits of science and reason

The Spread of Scientific Knowledge

• The Spread of Scientific Knowledge

• Scientific Societies
• The Royal Society of England
• The Royal Academy of France
• Scientific Journals
• Journal des Savants
• Philosophical Transactions
• Science and Society
• Acceptance through Practicality
• Science as a means of economic progress and social stability