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excerpts from An Intellectual
History of Modern Europe by Marvin Perry The Scientific Revolution: A New Cosmology and Methodology
The Scientific Revolution made the medieval world picture obsolete and
established the scientific method, rigorous
and systematic observation and experimentation, as the means of unlocking
nature’s secrets. Natural philosophers finally grasped the essential
importance of mathematics to understanding the natural world, and this tool
would grow more sophisticated with the discovery of the calculus. These early
scientists conceived of the universe as a mechanical system governed by
mathematical laws. Science displaced theology as the queen of knowledge and
gave rise to the Enlightenment. The Origins of the Scientific
Revolution
Medieval thinkers, influenced by Plato and Aristotle, had conceived of the
cosmos as a divine hierarchy with the earth at the center but lower than the
heavens. This dualistic model of the universe divided into higher and lower
worlds accorded with passages of Scripture that medieval scholastic
philosophers had cited to harmonize classical science with Christian
theology. Aristotle’s Model of the
Universe
Human beings, at the center of the universe and in the center of the great
ladder of creation, were the masters of Earth. Earthly objects were composed
of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water; celestial objects were
composed by a magical ether. The planets, according to Ptolemy, the ancient
astronomer, moved in perfect circular orbits and at uniform speeds around the
earth. Since the planets do not move in circles, but ellipses, Ptolemy, had
been forced to invent complicated explanations of these apparent
eccentricities (epicycles, equants, and retrograde motion) to save the
appearance of circular motion. Aristotle’s Theory of the
Solar System (Video) The Renaissance paved the way for the Scientific Revolution. Revived interest in classical science had led to the rediscovery of important ancient texts (Archimedes’ mechanics and Galens’ anatomy). Artists’ representations of the human body linked exact proportions to a principle of beauty. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) formulated the mathematical theory of perspective in his depiction of space, establishing a precise mathematical relation between the object and the observer. The natural world could now be analyzed and depicted with scientific precision. 
The revival of ancient Pythagorean and neo-Platonic ideas led to a new stress
on mathematics as the key to the comprehension of reality. The Pythagoreans
had been fascinated by the mathematical harmonies to be found in music. They
extended this idea to the universe at large, expressing the idea that
everything in nature could be expressed numerically. They believed that
knowledge of this cosmic harmony could purify the soul. (Music of the Spheres)
Plato had maintained that beyond the world of everyday objects lay a higher
reality, the world of Forms, which contains a mathematical reality
apprehensible only through rational thought. Renaissance science blended
science with mysticism and magic in the tradition of Hermes Trismegistus,
thought to have been an Egyptian priest and contemporary of Moses. The
Hermetic writings mixed astrology, alchemy, Jewish creation accounts, and
mystical yearnings with neo-Platonism and Pythagoreanism. Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)
This astronomer and mathematician proclaimed that the earth is a planet that
orbits a centrally located sun together with the other planets. The
heliocentric theory became the kernel of a new cosmology. Copernicus’
sense of mathematical order had been offended by the cumbersomeness of
Ptolemy’s model of the universe. His theory was published in 1543, but his
ideas had become current even earlier than that.
In 1539 Martin Luther condemned Copernicus, but his astronomical
theories did not inspire passionate rejection until the religious wars of the
early seventeenth century. In 1616 the Catholic Church banned
Copernicus, fearing another propaganda weapon for Protestants. Authorities
feared the theological and social implications of Copernicus’ reordering of
the cosmos in opposition to the divisions of the divine hierarchy.
This new cosmology inspired some religious thinkers to develop new
conceptions of God. Giordano
Bruno (1548-1600) was burned at the stake for heresy because he had
embraced Copernicus’ theory and combined it with mystic hermeticism to
conceive of the universe as a living creature existing in an infinite space
which must contain innumerable inhabitable worlds. To Bruno, nature was God,
worthy of worship and investigation. He believed this new religion of
rapturous worship, glorification and contemplation of nature should replace
the teachings of organized churches.
Contemplation of the new cosmology could also produce despair. Instead of a
secure universe created for man, Copernican astronomy dethroned man, expelled
human beings from their central position in the cosmos, and implied an
infinite universe. This concept would prove as traumatic for modern thinkers
as Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden had been for medieval thinkers. The
Copernican Model (Diagram) Galileo's Drawing of the Moon
Indebted to the Platonic tradition of mathematics and to Archimedes’
mechanics, Galileo exploited the recent invention of the telescope
to prove Copernicus’ theories scientifically and to advance a new
understanding of physics. (Galileo’s
Telescope) His observations of craters and mountains on the moon and of
spots blemishing the surface of the sun proved that the celestial bodies were
not perfect and immutable. (Galileo's
Drawing of the Craters on the Moon)
(Sunspots)
This demonstration showed that all of nature was a homogeneous system, not
hierarchical. His observations of the moons of Jupiter demonstrated that a
celestial body could indeed move around a center other than earth. In dealing
with problems of motion, Galileo dispensed with Aristotle’s ‘common sense’
conclusions and insisted on the application of mathematics to experiments.
Instead of concluding that rocks fell to earth because they were striving to
reach their proper place in the universe, Galileo insisted that motion is a
mathematical relationship of bodies to time and distance. Galileo
and the Mathematics of Motion
Galileo’s experiments and discoveries attacked the authority of the
Scriptures in scientific matters. He tried to separate science from faith. He
argued that the purpose of Scripture was the salvation of the soul, not the
instruction of people in the operations of nature.
In 1633 Galileo, under the threat of the Inquisition, was forced to recant
and condemn the theories of Copernicus. One of the consequences of the
Church’s stand was the impetus it gave to the study of science in the
Protestant areas of Europe. The
Surface of Jupiter (animation) The Galileo Project (Rice
University)
This German mathematician and astronomer was deeply influenced by the
teaching of Renaissance Pythagoreans and neo-Platonists. He tried
to harmonize mathematics with a deep commitment to Lutheran Christianity. He
believed that God had prescribed a geometric harmony to creation which humans
could understand. He was also a believer in astrology. He yearned to
understand the ‘music of the spheres’ and thus achieve a supreme insight into
God’s mind. Even so, he did not allow the inspiration of his mystical beliefs
to obscure his disciplined dedication to empirical research.
Using data collected by a Dutch astronomer, Tycho Brahe, Kepler
discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion. First, planets move in
an elliptical orbit with the sun at one focus of the ellipse. Second, the
planets do not move at a uniform speed; instead he argued that they
accelerate as they approach the sun. A planet’s speed is determinable at any
point since its arc will sweep out an equal area of space in equal areas of
time if a line is drawn from the planet to the sun. Third, there is a
mathematical relationship between the time it takes a planet to complete its
orbit of the sun and its average distance from the sun: time squared is
proportionate to distance cubed.
Kepler’s
Laws of Planetary Motion
Isaac Newton provided the celestial mechanics that linked the astronomy of
Copernicus and Kepler with the physics of Galileo and accounted for the
behavior of the planets. His publication of The Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy in 1687 climaxed the scientific revolution and
arguably can be described as the birth of the Enlightenment. Newton’s three
laws of motion joined all celestial and terrestrial objects into a vast
mechanical system which functioned in perfect harmony and whose connections
could be expressed in mathematical terms. He offered mathematical proof of
the heliocentric system.
The Laws of Motion: Newton’s first law is the
principle of inertia: a body at rest remains at rest unless acted on by a
force, and a body in rectilinear motion moves in a straight line at the same
velocity unless a force acts on it. Motion is as natural a condition as rest.
The second law states that a given force produces a measurable change in a
body’s velocity, the change in velocity proportional to the force acting on
it. The third law holds that for every action or force there is an equal and
opposite reaction or force. The sun pulls the earth with the same force that
the earth pulls the sun.
Newton proved that the same laws of motion and gravitation that operate in
the celestial world also govern the movement of earthly bodies. There is no
cosmic division, no dual universe. The universe is an integrated, harmonious
mechanical system held together by the force of gravity. His laws
demonstrated the inherent mathematical order of the universe, thus realizing
the ancient Pythagorean and Platonic visions of the cosmos.
Many of Newton’s contemporaries believed he had unraveled all of nature’s
mysteries. For Newton, God was the grand architect whose wisdom and skill
accounted for nature’s magnificent design. Newton believed that God could
intervene in this clockwork universe and perform miracles. Later, followers of
Newton, the deists, would reject miracle as incompatible with a
universe governed by impersonal mechanical principles.
Newton helped formulate the scientific method: a systematic and logical
process of inquiry into the properties of phenomena on earth and establishing
those properties by experiment, only then proceeding to hypotheses for
explanations of the phenomena themselves. Newtonian
Mechanics With Gravity Francis Bacon (1561-1626): The New Empiricism
Sir Francis Bacon, an English statesman and philosopher, was an important
advocate of the scientific method. In his New Organon (1620), Bacon
repudiated the medieval scholastics' effort to blend theories of nature with
the requirements of Holy Scripture. He denounced scholasticism’s slavish
attachment to Aristotelian doctrines because that prevented independent
thinking. He also complained that the arid, pure verbal ingenuity of the
scholastics’ elaborate arguments had little or nothing to do with the
empirical world. Bacon argued that humans needed to resist their tendency to
color observations of nature with prejudices from their experience, their
desire for profit, or their attachment to any philosophical dogma. Instead,
Bacon advocated inductive reasoning as the path to truth. Through
careful observation of nature and the systematic accumulation of data,
general laws could be discovered from the knowledge of particulars. These
laws should be constantly tested and verified by experimentation. Bacon
became a founder of the empirical tradition in modern philosophy. He attacked
astrology, magic, and alchemy. He advocated cooperative and methodical
scientific research that could be publicly criticized. Bacon appreciated
science’s potential value for human life. The function of thought was not to
explain how everything fit into a divine design; rather, knowledge should
help us utilize nature for our own advantage and improve the quality of life. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) The New Rationalism
Rene Descartes, a French mathematician and philosopher, developed the other
approach to knowledge which underlay the scientific method: deductive
reasoning. Whereas Bacon regarded sense data as the foundation of
knowledge, Descartes believed that truth derived in successive steps from
first principles, indubitable axioms. In his Discourse on Method
(1637), Descartes rejected all authority for knowledge which depended on the
senses which he revealed as fallible. In one famous argument, he considered a
piece of wax. Using his senses he could measure a piece of wax's various
physical characteristics: its shape, size, weight, texture, etc. However,
when he melted the wax using a flame, the substance possessed utterly
different characteristics. Even so, his mind knew that the substance remained
wax. Descartes therefore concluded that the mind, not the senses, was
essential to knowing.
Descartes searched for one incontrovertible truth that could serve as the
first principle of knowledge, and he found one truth to be certain and
unshakeable: his mind was at work: "Cogito ergo sum" (“I
think therefore I am.”) Here was the starting point of knowledge. By
overthrowing all authority for thought except the individual’s inviolable
autonomy and importance, Descartes founded modern philosophy. Human beings
had become fully aware of their capacity to comprehend the world with their
own mental powers. The
Cartesian Plane
Descartes was a brilliant mathematician who founded
analytic geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, crucial to the
invention of calculus. Descartes believed that mathematical reasoning could
be applied to philosophical problems, thus providing a geometry applicable to
the moral order. Once his central axiom (“I think therefore I am.”) was
accepted, other truths could be logically deduced. Proceeding step by step
from the fact of his own existence, Descartes was able to deduce the
existence of the physical world and the existence of God. Descartes argued that because humans could
conceive the idea of a perfect being, then God must exist. The idea of
perfection had been implanted in us. The conception of perfection presupposes
the existence of God. God ordered the universe in such a way that it
functions in harmony with the human mind, and He gave humans the capacity to
understand the world. Descartes argued that he structures of the natural
world correspond to the form of the ideas of the mind. Logic is not only
inherent in the human mind but also independent of human existence. Descartes reasserted Plato's dualistic
conception of the universe. He divided reality into two fundamentally
different substances: the mind
with its principle attributes of consciousness and thought, and matter which is characterized by spatial
extension. A basic question of modern philosophy has been the attempt to
discover where the mind and matter connect.
Although Descartes believed in God, he thought that once God had set the
universe in motion, he served no further significant function. His support of
reason and his faith in the ability of humans to think for themselves
undermined Christian dogma and helped form the skeptical outlook of the
Enlightenment. History of Philosophy:
Descartes Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)
Rationalism
Spinoza was a descendant of Spanish Jews who fled to the Netherlands to
escape the Inquisition. He studied traditional Jewish religious and
philosophical works, medieval scholasticism and the new science and
philosophy of Descartes. He disputed rabbinical interpretation of the
Scripture, was accused of heresy, and subsequently was excommunicated by
Jewish religious authorities. He lived simply as a lens grinder and devoted
his life to philosophy.
Spinoza used the logic of mathematics to understand the world. He modeled his
metaphysical arguments on Euclidean geometry: first axioms and definitions
allow propositions to be deduced. If we accept the axioms, and the deductions
are properly made, then we must accept the conclusions. He took the same
approach to ethics. Like Descartes, he contended that reality was
intelligible only through reason. Applying the logic of Euclidean geometry to
philosophy, he began with what seemed to be universally valid premises and
deduced other truths using logic.
Spinoza held that the highest form of knowledge was the knowledge of God, but
his conception of God marked a radical break with traditional thinking. To
Spinoza, God was not a transcendent creature, some superhuman father
possessed of intellect and will. Inspired by the new science, Spinoza
identified God with the order of nature: a single, all inclusive system of
unchanging, universal laws in which all things have a determinate place.
Unlike Descartes who conceived of a sharp divide between thought and
substance, Spinoza believed that the universe was monistic: thought and
substance are different aspects of the same being. Since this unified system
is open to reason, divine revelation is unnecessary. Spinoza was a
determinist who believed that everything happens due to necessity: an
unbreakable chain of cause and effect. The only freedom humans possess stems
from our ability to understand our situation (ala Oedipus). Spinoza
called for a critical reading of the Bible as an ancient, human text that
should be analyzed using linguistic and historical techniques. He condemned
belief in miracles and in the efficacy of prayer as superstitions and
dedicated himself to scientific objectivity. He pleaded for freedom of
thought, religious toleration, and a constitutional government. Spinoza’s
thinking was a hallmark of the emerging modern mind. History of Philosophy:
Spinoza |
