Lesson 1 - The Scientific Revolution
From scholasticism, through humanism to science.
From scholasticism, through humanism to science.
This a very long first lesson. It has no direct relevance to either the American or French revolution so you no not need to revise this for Matu exams. But it is still one of the most important lessons you will study.
The American and French revolutions were the political conclusions of new ways of thinking that dated back hundreds of years. Before we can really get to grips with the events of the late 18th century we need to go back to the end of the Middle Ages to understand the changes associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. This first lesson has some very difficult ideas by some very important thinkers. It doesn't matter if you don't understand them all but have a go. Read and re-read if necessary.
The American and French revolutions were the political conclusions of new ways of thinking that dated back hundreds of years. Before we can really get to grips with the events of the late 18th century we need to go back to the end of the Middle Ages to understand the changes associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. This first lesson has some very difficult ideas by some very important thinkers. It doesn't matter if you don't understand them all but have a go. Read and re-read if necessary.
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Scholasticism - Aquinas incorporates Aristotle
Medieval thought was restricted to thinking about issues raised by the study of Christian doctrine, especially after new Arabic translations of classical Greek texts began to appear and challenge Christianity after the Fall of Toledo in 1085. Medieval intellectuals could be concerned with complex problems and would employ highly rational thinking. This intellectual world restrained by the limits of Catholicism we call 'Scholasticism.' Thomas Aquinas |
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The greatest philosopher of the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas, explained what happened during the Eucharist, one of the seven Sacraments of the Catholic church. The problem to be solved was very practical. Why, during the Eucharist does the bread and wine not appear to change into the body and blood of Christ, after it is blessed?
To explain this Aquinas used the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle argued there are two qualities to every object: its outer appearance that our senses can detect, (smell, taste, hear etc.) and its inner nature or fundamental structure that we cannot simply detect. The outer appearance changes all the time. For example, a chair can be made of wood or metal, but this is not essential to its being a chair. It is still a chair regardless of the material from which it is made, these variations were called accidents.
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The fundamental property of all chairs, its inner essence - its ‘chairiness’ - Aristotle called its substance. The substance of an object cannot be detected by the senses, because to imagine a chair is to see a particular chair.
So how did Aquinas use this? What happens during the Eucharist is that the accidental properties of the bread and wine do not change, but the substance - its ‘breadiness’ - does change in to the body of Jesus: the substance is changed, it is ‘transubstantiated’. Voila. This process is what the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation. Logical, rational and very learned. Medieval minds were not less logical or intelligent than ours! |
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Humanism
Rather than learning methods and logic to explain and defend Christianity, Humanism, was concerned with knowledge itself and in particular, knowledge about humanity. That meant that humanists were interested in subjects like poetry, language (especially ancient Greek) and history. This is what we mean when we say we study the 'humanities' today. One of the most significant consequences of the Fall of Constantinople to Islam in 1453 had been the arrival not only of the books from the greatest libraries in Europe, but also teachers who were familiar with the Ancient Greek necessary to translate them. At almost the same time, because of the printing press it became possible to read and spread a new knowledge that was not controlled by the church; new knowledge became abundantly available. These books became a source of inspiration for those who didn't want to follow the rules of the church. The medieval church was concerned to explain and justify human suffering, the humanists were concerned to reduce human suffering and focus instead on human happiness.
Rather than learning methods and logic to explain and defend Christianity, Humanism, was concerned with knowledge itself and in particular, knowledge about humanity. That meant that humanists were interested in subjects like poetry, language (especially ancient Greek) and history. This is what we mean when we say we study the 'humanities' today. One of the most significant consequences of the Fall of Constantinople to Islam in 1453 had been the arrival not only of the books from the greatest libraries in Europe, but also teachers who were familiar with the Ancient Greek necessary to translate them. At almost the same time, because of the printing press it became possible to read and spread a new knowledge that was not controlled by the church; new knowledge became abundantly available. These books became a source of inspiration for those who didn't want to follow the rules of the church. The medieval church was concerned to explain and justify human suffering, the humanists were concerned to reduce human suffering and focus instead on human happiness.
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Humanism was the original rallying call to 'think outside of the box'. If the box was Catholic orthodoxy and Scholasticism was a thinking that fitted inside the box, humanism looked down at the box and laughed at how everything looked so square. A lot of what is remembered about humanism concerns how humanists made fun of the church. Humanists were often university academics who laughed at the ignorance of the priests and the strange superstitions of church ritual. The most famous of them, Erasmus, made fun of how the priests 'brayed like donkeys in church, repeating the words of psalms they don't understand'.
A more recent example that makes fun of medieval scholasticism is provided by Monty Python. |
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'Paradigm shift' in science
For centuries, scientists and philosophers had accepted the work of Ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, which they interpreted in the light of Christian belief. (Scholasticism) But now Renaissance astronomers used the new scientific methods of experimenting and observation to study the skies. It was their sensational discoveries which shook European beliefs about the world. American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) described this process as a 'paradigm shift'. By 'paradigm' he means the scientific assumptions (and methods) that underlie what (and how) we know the world. The scholastic paradigm assumed that the ultimate truth was found in uncovering God's perspective as outlined in the Bible. This was replaced by a humanist perspective that suggested that the truth was to be uncovered by human observation of the natural world.
The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c.570-495 BC) proved that the Earth was round and Aristarchus suggested that the Earth and planets revolved around the Sun. However, these ideas were replaced by Ptolemy's theories of the universe written in about AD100. Ptolemy was an Egyptian mathematician, astronomer and geographer who believed that the planets and stars all revolved around the Earth. This 'geocentric' theory fitted well with the Church's ideas of the heavens being a circle, because it was the 'perfect' shape. It also fitted with the idea of the Earth (God's creation), the Church and God himself being at the centre of the universe
For centuries, scientists and philosophers had accepted the work of Ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, which they interpreted in the light of Christian belief. (Scholasticism) But now Renaissance astronomers used the new scientific methods of experimenting and observation to study the skies. It was their sensational discoveries which shook European beliefs about the world. American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) described this process as a 'paradigm shift'. By 'paradigm' he means the scientific assumptions (and methods) that underlie what (and how) we know the world. The scholastic paradigm assumed that the ultimate truth was found in uncovering God's perspective as outlined in the Bible. This was replaced by a humanist perspective that suggested that the truth was to be uncovered by human observation of the natural world.
The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c.570-495 BC) proved that the Earth was round and Aristarchus suggested that the Earth and planets revolved around the Sun. However, these ideas were replaced by Ptolemy's theories of the universe written in about AD100. Ptolemy was an Egyptian mathematician, astronomer and geographer who believed that the planets and stars all revolved around the Earth. This 'geocentric' theory fitted well with the Church's ideas of the heavens being a circle, because it was the 'perfect' shape. It also fitted with the idea of the Earth (God's creation), the Church and God himself being at the centre of the universe
What was the Scientific Revolution?
The Scientific Revolution is a concept used by historians to describe the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in science transformed views about nature. While its dates are debated, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution. It is a paradigm shift, because the key assumption of a stationary earth surrounded by moving heavenly bodies is replaced by a new heliocentric view of the cosmos. The completion of the scientific revolution is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia, that formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, and completed the synthesis of a new cosmology.
The Scientific Revolution is a concept used by historians to describe the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in science transformed views about nature. While its dates are debated, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution. It is a paradigm shift, because the key assumption of a stationary earth surrounded by moving heavenly bodies is replaced by a new heliocentric view of the cosmos. The completion of the scientific revolution is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia, that formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, and completed the synthesis of a new cosmology.
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Deductive and Inductive Logic
We have previously examined how medieval scholastics like Thomas Aquinas applied Aristotle’s logic to problems of theological importance to the medieval mind. The question, 'should Christians attempt to covert dog heads?', followed impeccable deductive logic. We should attempt to convert to Christianity all creatures with souls Dogheads have souls Therefore we should try to convert dogheads. This example of deductive reasoning is called a syllogism. A syllogism is a deductive argument which arrives at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. A typical example said to derive from Aristotle says: |
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All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
As long as the propositions are true, the conclusion must be true. Because dogheads have souls we should try and convert them. An argument can still be valid even when the conclusion is false, if one of the propositions is false.
All men have beards
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates has a beard
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
As long as the propositions are true, the conclusion must be true. Because dogheads have souls we should try and convert them. An argument can still be valid even when the conclusion is false, if one of the propositions is false.
All men have beards
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates has a beard
The scholastic paradigm assumed that the ultimate truth was found in uncovering God's perspective as outlined in the Bible. It also assumed that there were mysteries of the universe that could never be understood. The medieval deductive arguments were valid, but could result in false conclusions because they were based on questionable propositions such as the existence of dog heads or that the earth is the centre of the universe. When Galileo posited a heliocentric view of the solar system, he was going further than Copernicus and Kepler (who worked out that planets do not orbit in perfect circles), because his conclusions were based on observations and measurements. These measurements were made possible by technological developments in optics that enabled Galileo to observe and measure the movement of the planets in ways that had previously been impossible. It also made Galileo very dangerous to the Catholic church, because his conclusions were not simply propositions or theories but rather they were proven by observation. This was a humanist perspective that suggested that the truth was to be uncovered by human observation of the natural world. This required a different type of reasoning, inductive logic. This would form the basis of the Scientific Revolution.
Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument may only be probable, based upon the evidence given. It is the weight of evidence that matters. The great 20th century Austrian/British philosopher Karl Popper summarized this uncertainty with the principle of empirical falsification (see IB TOK later). Scientific laws can never be proven, but they should be assumed to be true until proven otherwise (falsified). The basic method of inductive reasoning is the scientific method, which you are all familiar with and which was developed at the start of the Scientific Revolution by Francis Bacon.
Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument may only be probable, based upon the evidence given. It is the weight of evidence that matters. The great 20th century Austrian/British philosopher Karl Popper summarized this uncertainty with the principle of empirical falsification (see IB TOK later). Scientific laws can never be proven, but they should be assumed to be true until proven otherwise (falsified). The basic method of inductive reasoning is the scientific method, which you are all familiar with and which was developed at the start of the Scientific Revolution by Francis Bacon.
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Activity 1 - The Scientific Revolution
There are lots of important complex ideas in this section. It is important that you take time to make your own notes in order to help your understanding. Answer the following questions and try to put as much as possible into your own words. 1. What was medieval scholasticism? Use examples from the Bartlett video to help explain your answer. 2. How was humanism different to medieval thinking, why was it a new 'paradigm shift'? 3. What is the difference between deductive and inductive logic? Provide your own example of deductive logic in which a valid argument provides a false conclusion like this famous one: All men have beards Socrates is a man Therefore, Socrates has a beard As you will learn in critical thinking or TOK this is called a logical fallacy. |
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Extension activity
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Where do good ideas come from? - Steven Johnson
Although not restricted to the scientific revolution, in his book Steven Johnson examines the environments which help us explain 'Where do good ideas come from?' The Scientific Revolution happened in a particular place and particular time good reasons. Innovation happens within the bounds of the adjacent possible, in other words the realm of possibilities available at any given moment. Great leaps beyond the adjacent possible are rare and doomed to be short-term failures. Had YouTube been launched in the 1990s, it would have flopped, since neither the fast internet connections nor the software required to view videos was available then. The Scientific Revolution needed rise of nation states, the priting press, the Protestant Reformation, microscopes and the telescope... amongst other things. |
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Part 2 - The Scientists
As well as producing lots of exciting new ideas, the scientific revolution also produced a roll-call of heroic individuals who often lived through some dramatic times.
The best place to begin is with the father of scientific revolution Galileo. A little while ago I visited the Galileo museum in Florence. It is a beautiful museum with many beautiful exhibits. But for me this was the most impressive. It didn't look like much and most people walked straight passed. This is Galileo's telescope, it might be argued that the scientific revolution began with this.
Who were the scientists?
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Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
British. Bacon believed that knowledge shouldn't be derived from books, but from experience itself.
With inductive thinking, he begins by observing the variety of phenomena and derives general principles to explain those observations. Empiricism emphasises the importance of observable evidence produced in support of a theory. Bacon is considered to be the father of the scientific method:
1 Observe what happens.
2 Develop a theory.
3 Devise an experiment to test the theory. Repeat the experiment to ensure the same outcome.
4 Observe and measure the results of the experiment.
5 If the results do not fit, return to step 2 and develop a new theory.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
In 1610 the Italian mathematician, scientist and astronomer Galileo became one of the first people to build and use a telescope to observe the sky. He managed to observe the Milky Way, the Moon and the orbit of planets in the solar system. He concluded in his book of 1610, The Starry Messenger, that his scientific observations showed that Copernicus' theories, 67 years earlier, were indeed correct. This was to cause a negative reaction from the Catholic Church because these discoveries undermined the teachings of the Church, and attacked the idea that the Church and God were at the centre of a perfect universe. In 1633 Galileo went through a trial conducted by the Church, which led to him being under house arrest for the last eight years of his life!
William Harvey (1578-1657)
British. Harvey worked to discover how the heart and blood worked in the body. Prior to this, scientists in Europe were believers in the teachings of Galen, who was a Greek doctor from the second century. Galen taught that the blood was moved from the heart to all the different parts of the body, where it was used up. William Harvey's approach to Galen's teachings was to be more scientific; he began to experiment and measure scientifically how the blood moved around the body. Harvey experimented in order to discover how the blood circulated: • He pushed thin wire down veins. • He cut up live cold-blooded animals, such as frogs, to watch how their hearts worked.• He made attempts to pump blood past valves inside the veins. When he failed he realised that blood only flowed in one direction. • He took measurements of how much blood the heart pumped. Harvey's experiments had proved that the heart pumped blood to the body through arteries and the blood returned to the heart through veins.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
French mathematician and philosopher. Descartes was a deist who believed that God created the universe as a perfect clockwork mechanism that functioned thereafter without intervention. In Discours de la Méthode (1637), he advocated the systematic doubting of knowledge (scepticism), believing as Plato that sense perception and reason deceive us and that man cannot have real knowledge of nature. The only thing that he believed he could be certain of was that he was doubting, leading to his famous phrase Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).
Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
Dutch. Antony Leeuwenhoek was a businessman and scientist in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology, a friend and contemporary of Johannes Vermeer. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as 'the Father of Microbiology'. He found that plant and animal tissues were made out of rooms or cells, but they also discovered tiny monsters in mud puddles: hydras and amoebas. He was also the first to document microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa, red blood cells, crystals in gouty tophi, and blood flow in capillaries. In 2004, a public poll in the Netherlands to determine the greatest Dutchman ("De Grootste Nederlander") named van Leeuwenhoek the 4th-greatest Dutchman of all time.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703)
British. Hooke was a professor of geometry, an astronomer and designer of the compound microscope. He described his invention and other pieces of equipment, and made detailed drawings from his observations of objects such as the flea. In 1665, he inspired the use of microscopes for scientific exploration with his book, Micrographia. Based on his microscopic observations of fossils, Hooke was an early proponent of biological evolution. Much of Hooke's scientific work was conducted in his capacity as curator of experiments of the Royal Society. He investigated the phenomenon of refraction, deducing the wave theory of light, and was the first to suggest that matter expands when heated and that air is made of small particles separated by relatively large distances.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
British. Forty-five years after the death of Galileo, the English physicist and mathematician. Sir Isaac Newton published what has been termed the greatest scientific book ever written. The book, published in 1687, was called Principia Mathematica and laid down the laws of motion and gravitation. He is mostly remembered for his law of gravity. The story goes that after watching an apple fall from a tree he began to wonder why it fell straight down and did not just stay where it was, or move sideways. His theory of gravity, developed in 1686, showed that all objects attract each other, depending on their mass and distance apart. Therefore the huge Earth pulls a small apple towards it by a force called gravity.
Karl von Linné (1707-1778) also known as Carolus Linnaeus.
Swedish. Linnaeus is considered to be the father of taxonomy. In his Systema Naturae, published in 1767, he catalogued all the living creatures into a single system that defined their relations to one another: the Linnean classification system. Distinct living creatures he called "species," which means "individuals." Related species were called a "genus," which means "kind." And so on up a scale of more abstract relationships: family, class, order, phylum, and kingdom. Each individual species was marked by both its species and its genus name; this classification system, with some modifications, still dominates our understanding of the living world.
British. Bacon believed that knowledge shouldn't be derived from books, but from experience itself.
With inductive thinking, he begins by observing the variety of phenomena and derives general principles to explain those observations. Empiricism emphasises the importance of observable evidence produced in support of a theory. Bacon is considered to be the father of the scientific method:
1 Observe what happens.
2 Develop a theory.
3 Devise an experiment to test the theory. Repeat the experiment to ensure the same outcome.
4 Observe and measure the results of the experiment.
5 If the results do not fit, return to step 2 and develop a new theory.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
In 1610 the Italian mathematician, scientist and astronomer Galileo became one of the first people to build and use a telescope to observe the sky. He managed to observe the Milky Way, the Moon and the orbit of planets in the solar system. He concluded in his book of 1610, The Starry Messenger, that his scientific observations showed that Copernicus' theories, 67 years earlier, were indeed correct. This was to cause a negative reaction from the Catholic Church because these discoveries undermined the teachings of the Church, and attacked the idea that the Church and God were at the centre of a perfect universe. In 1633 Galileo went through a trial conducted by the Church, which led to him being under house arrest for the last eight years of his life!
William Harvey (1578-1657)
British. Harvey worked to discover how the heart and blood worked in the body. Prior to this, scientists in Europe were believers in the teachings of Galen, who was a Greek doctor from the second century. Galen taught that the blood was moved from the heart to all the different parts of the body, where it was used up. William Harvey's approach to Galen's teachings was to be more scientific; he began to experiment and measure scientifically how the blood moved around the body. Harvey experimented in order to discover how the blood circulated: • He pushed thin wire down veins. • He cut up live cold-blooded animals, such as frogs, to watch how their hearts worked.• He made attempts to pump blood past valves inside the veins. When he failed he realised that blood only flowed in one direction. • He took measurements of how much blood the heart pumped. Harvey's experiments had proved that the heart pumped blood to the body through arteries and the blood returned to the heart through veins.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
French mathematician and philosopher. Descartes was a deist who believed that God created the universe as a perfect clockwork mechanism that functioned thereafter without intervention. In Discours de la Méthode (1637), he advocated the systematic doubting of knowledge (scepticism), believing as Plato that sense perception and reason deceive us and that man cannot have real knowledge of nature. The only thing that he believed he could be certain of was that he was doubting, leading to his famous phrase Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).
Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
Dutch. Antony Leeuwenhoek was a businessman and scientist in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology, a friend and contemporary of Johannes Vermeer. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as 'the Father of Microbiology'. He found that plant and animal tissues were made out of rooms or cells, but they also discovered tiny monsters in mud puddles: hydras and amoebas. He was also the first to document microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa, red blood cells, crystals in gouty tophi, and blood flow in capillaries. In 2004, a public poll in the Netherlands to determine the greatest Dutchman ("De Grootste Nederlander") named van Leeuwenhoek the 4th-greatest Dutchman of all time.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703)
British. Hooke was a professor of geometry, an astronomer and designer of the compound microscope. He described his invention and other pieces of equipment, and made detailed drawings from his observations of objects such as the flea. In 1665, he inspired the use of microscopes for scientific exploration with his book, Micrographia. Based on his microscopic observations of fossils, Hooke was an early proponent of biological evolution. Much of Hooke's scientific work was conducted in his capacity as curator of experiments of the Royal Society. He investigated the phenomenon of refraction, deducing the wave theory of light, and was the first to suggest that matter expands when heated and that air is made of small particles separated by relatively large distances.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
British. Forty-five years after the death of Galileo, the English physicist and mathematician. Sir Isaac Newton published what has been termed the greatest scientific book ever written. The book, published in 1687, was called Principia Mathematica and laid down the laws of motion and gravitation. He is mostly remembered for his law of gravity. The story goes that after watching an apple fall from a tree he began to wonder why it fell straight down and did not just stay where it was, or move sideways. His theory of gravity, developed in 1686, showed that all objects attract each other, depending on their mass and distance apart. Therefore the huge Earth pulls a small apple towards it by a force called gravity.
Karl von Linné (1707-1778) also known as Carolus Linnaeus.
Swedish. Linnaeus is considered to be the father of taxonomy. In his Systema Naturae, published in 1767, he catalogued all the living creatures into a single system that defined their relations to one another: the Linnean classification system. Distinct living creatures he called "species," which means "individuals." Related species were called a "genus," which means "kind." And so on up a scale of more abstract relationships: family, class, order, phylum, and kingdom. Each individual species was marked by both its species and its genus name; this classification system, with some modifications, still dominates our understanding of the living world.
Activity 2 - The Scientists
Complete the following table with essential information taken from the section above
Complete the following table with essential information taken from the section above
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Optional activity
Watch the film about Galileo. (a) How did Galileo prove the theories of Copernicus and Kepler? (b) How did Galileo get around the injunction not to write in support of Copernicus? (c) Why was Pope Urban VIII so upset by Galileo and why did he feel the need to take action? (d) How did Galileo defend himself? (e) Why in the end did Galileo confess, with what consequences for him and his book? |
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Extension suggestions
You never have to do extension suggestions, I just suggest them to extend you, if you feel like being extended. For this unit I recommend some reading. Probably the most readable books on the history of the scientific revolution are Dava Sobel's Longitude, the story of John Harrison an English clockmaker who solved the problem of how to measure longitude at sea and Galileo's Daughter which brilliantly captures a relationship and time: plague, Thirty Years' War and the Medicis. Longitude was also made into an outstanding TV film, very long, it is ideal for any long car journeys you may have coming up. |
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