Chapter 6

THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE WORLD

Part 1 Scientific Revolution

Scientific Revolution

1543 1572 1580 1620 1627 1632 1637 1687

Montaigne’s Essays

Bacon’s Norganum Organum

Descartes’ Discourse on

Method

Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of Heavenly Orbs (1543)

Tycho Brahe’s

Observations

Johann Kepler’s

Rudolphine Tables

Galileo’s Discourse

Concerning the Two

Chief Systems

Newton’s

Principia

Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation man

• past knowledge as the most reliable source of wisdom– Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas

• Geocentric (Ptolemaic) world – 8-10 crystal (hierarchical

spheres– 4 elements/ 4 humours– Great Chain of Being

• Hierarchical link from God down to insects

• abstract wisdom would help man turn away from the corruptibility of the earth

Enlightenment man• rejected ancient authority

– relied on their own observable intellects

• Modern Science– A fusion of

experimental observation & mathematics

• Heliocentric world– Sun-centered– World Machine

• Universe was demystified & worked like a mechanical clock (predictable & understandable, orderly and harmonious

• saw knowledge as useless unless it could be put to use “the relief of man’s estate”

Changes in Intellectual Environment

Prophets of a scientific Civilization

• The seventeenth century has been called the

century of genius. It was the age when science

became “modern.” scientific methods of inquiry

had been defined. It was the great age of Galileo

and Sir Isaac Newton, whose combined lifetimes

spanned the century. The fist modern scientific

synthesis, or coherent theory of the physical

universe, had been presented by Newton. Science

was accepted as the main force in the

advancement of civilization and progress.

Science before the Seventeenth Century

• Can we mark the advent of sceince with Leonardo?

– Anatomy, astronomy, engineer– dissected over 30 bodies– conceived of circulation of the

blood– movement of the earth around

the sun– designed submarines,

airplanes– BUT didn’t publish anything– Isolated genius and did not

transmit his ideas to others

• SCIENCE depends on the transmission of ideas

Science before the Seventeenth Century

The scientific view became characteristic of elite European

society about the middle of the Seventeenth Century

• Leonardo da Vinci:

the universal genius of the Italian

Renaissance, who had been artist, engineer,

and scientific thinker all in one.

• Witchcraft panic A century after the death of Leonardo da Vinci educated

Europeans were by no means scientifically minded. One the one hand there was a great deal of skepticism, a constantly doubting frame of mind. One the other hand, there was also a tendency to over-believe in mysterious, supernatural powers, arising from the same inability to distinguish between true and false.

The two centuries from about 1450 to about 1650 were also the period when fear of witches was at its height.

The witchcraft panic lasted longest in Germany and central Europe, probably kept alive in the insecurities

engendered by the Thirty Year’s War.

• Fathers of Scientific Revolution• Go beyond skeptics• Truth

– is not postulated from the start and then worked within a paradigm

– It is something found at the end of long process or investigation, experiment, observation

How is truth attained?• inductive reasoning

– proceeding from the particular to the general, from concrete to abstract

• This ice is cold. • All ice is cold.

• deductive-– start with general information and infer

specific• All apples are fruit. • All fruits grow on trees. • Therefore all apples grow on trees.

• True and reliable knowledge exists and can be employed to the benefit of humans

Bacon and Descartes 1620 to 1640

In the Center is a bust of the Society's Founder - Charles II Left is William Brouncker- The first PresidentOn the Right is Francis Bacon the Inspiration of the Royal Society

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)• Novum Organum (New Instrument) (1620)• The New Atlantis (1627)• championed empiricism-

• knowledge based on observation and experience

• wanted people to rid themselves of preconceptions, traditional ideas and look with fresh eyes, use their senses

• portrayed a scientific utopia: society based on the results of science

– Inhabitants enjoyed a perfect society through knowledge and control of nature

• Usefulness of knowledge became main element of Baconian tradition

• It can be used for practical purposes– ex. Weapon are more accurate (science of

ballistics)• Called on scientist to share their knowledge by

recording their experiments and to rid themselves of superstition and religion in science (he called philosophy)

• Fails to recognize importance of mathematics– It proceeds deductively from axioms to theorems

• Science is both inductive and deductive

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

• All knowledge of past should be discarded

• Considered the inventor of coordinate geometry

• Any algebraic formula could be plotted as a curve in space and any curve in space could be converted into an algebraic term

• Knowledge is worthy if it is useful to mankind

• Discourse on Method (1637) – Proposed the principle of

systematic doubt– 1st rule was “never to

receive anything as a truth which he did not clearly know to be such”

– after doubting everything he realized his mere process of thought confirmed his own existence (I think, therefore I am) (Cogito ergo sum)

– used this as his starting point and began to reconstruct the universe, the existence of God

• could not be empirically verified but he believed that nature is so small that it eludes our senses anyway

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Descartes Influence

• Although his system of thought did not reveal any new discoveries it did help disprove errors of ancients

• Stress on math to pursue science proved invaluable

• Cartesian Dualism-God created two kinds of reality:– Thinking Substance-

• Mind, spirit, consciousness– subjective experience

– Extended Substance- • matter, & everything outside

the mind– Objective experience

• Mind belonged to man alone• Everything else was matter and

operated according to physical laws• everything else was a machine• therefore the entire universe could be

understood without the help of religion

• apparent attribute to matter (sound, light, taste) were subjective impressions of the mind and not subject to science

• The natural world can be controlled!

Descartes Influence