ASTRONOMERS

The Scientific Revolution

Lesson Objectives

To understand the contributions of Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, the emergence of the scientific worldview, and the pushback from the Church and others

What is the Scientific Revolution?

Process that established the new view of the universe, not a rapid revolution

Mixing of old knowledge and new knowledgeBegan with new ideas in astronomy but

included advances in medicine, chemistry, and natural history

The Old Beliefs

Ptolemaic System- geocentrism- earth center of universe Aristotle’s cosmology

Earth lies in the center of a series of concentric spheres containing the stars, planets ect. out to where God resides.

Used some math to predict planetary positions

Old Cosmology Model

An illustration of the Ptolemaic geocentric system by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomen Velho, 1568 (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

“On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” provided a springboard for others

Changed the Ptolemic model to a sun centered approach

Allowed people to think in a new direction

Nicolaus Copernicus portrait from Town Hall in Thorn/Torun - 1580

Copernican Model

1543 Map of the heavens based on Copernicus, British Library, London UK/Bridgeman Art Library

Excerpt from Dedication of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies to Pope Paul III- Nicolaus

Copernicus

I CAN easily conceive, most Holy Father, that as soon as some people learn that in this book which I have written concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, I ascribe certain motions to the Earth, they will cry out at once that I and my theory should be rejected. For I am not so much in love with my conclusions as not to weigh what others will think about them, and although I know that the meditations of a philosopher are far removed from the judgment of the laity, because his endeavor is to seek out the truth in all things, so far as this is permitted by God to the human reason, I still believe that one must avoid theories altogether foreign to orthodoxy…

How would you characterize Copernicus’s challange of earlier theories

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

Brahe Constructed scientific instruments and recorded years or observations of the planets

Kepler was Brahe’s assistant, heliocentric, developed the idea of elliptical orbits Published “The New

Astronomy”Illustration of Tycho Brahe

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Improved the telescope and used it to observed far more than was previously thought to exist

Advocated for a universe subject to mathematical law

Believed in the heliocentric model

Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Justus Sustermans painted in 1636. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Galileo and the Church

Galileo was a Catholic but tried to interpret scripture on his own ( A big no-no that’s what Protestants did)

In the “Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems” those representing the Pope and defending the old way appear rather dumb (not the best idea)

In retaliation Galileo is placed under house arrest for the last 9 years of his life (not burned at the stake)

Pope Urban XIII, Oil painting by Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini), 1627 Roma, Musei Capitolini

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

“Mathematical Principals of Natural Philosophy” (Principia Mathematica)

First theorized gravity, demonstrated it mathematically

Godfrey Kneller’s 1689 portrait of Isaac Newton (aged 46)

Newton’s own copy of the Pincipia Mathematica

Excerpt of the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

RULE 1 We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say, that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain,

when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

RULE II Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes. As to respiration in a man, and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and in America;

the light of`our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets

RULE III The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

Why do you think Newton will influence more than just theories on gravity based on this document?

Conclusion

The Scientific Revolution began be challenging assumptions about the nature of our world, this new attitude would be and thinkers would begin challenging other long help assumptions that would result in the period known as the Enlightenment

Bibliography and Further Reading

1. Kagan, Donald, Steven Ozment, and Frank M Turner. The Western Heritage Since 1300. 10th ed. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010.

2. Copernicus, Nicolaus. On the Revolutions of Heavently Spheres. Translated by Glenn Wallis. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1995.

3.  McGreal P Ian, ed. Great Thinkers of the Western World (New York: HarperCollins, 1992)

4. Finocchiaro, Maurice A. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

5. Rosen, Edward. Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution. Malabar, Fl: Robert E. Krieger, 1984.

6. Isaac Newton, The Mathmatical Principals of Natural Philosophy, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/newton-princ.html (accessed August 5, 2010).