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This article is about the period or event in history, not the process of scientific progress via revolution, proposed by Thomas Kuhn and discussed at Paradigm shift The event which most historians of science call the scientific revolution can be dated roughly as having begun in 1543, the year in which Nicolaus Copernicus published his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) and Andreas Vesalius published his De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human body). As with many historical demarcations, historians of science disagree about its boundaries, some seeing elements contributing to the revolution as early as the 14th century and finding its last stages in chemistry and biology in the 18th and 19th centuries. There is general agreement, however, that the intervening period saw a fundamental transformation in scientific ideas in physics, astronomy and biology, in institutions supporting scientific investigation, and in the more widely held picture of the universe. Significance of the "revolution" Many contemporary writers and modern historians claim there was a change in world view that was revolutionary. In 1611 the English poet, John Donne, wrote:
The 20th century historian, Herbert Butterfield, was less disconcerted but saw the change as equally fundamental. Since that revolution overturned the authority in science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world — since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics — it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements within the system of medieval Christendom.... It looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance. A single change does not make a revolution. Among the new ideas which Donne and Butterfield saw as revolutionary were However, many of the important figures of the scientific revolution shared in the Renaissance respect for ancient learning and cited ancient pedigrees for their innovations. Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton all traced different ancient and medieval ancestries for the heliocentric system. While preparing a revised edtion of his Principia, Newton attributed his law of gravity and his first law of motion to a range of historical figures. A few modern historians have agreed with Newton that Aristotle anticipated his first law of motion, whereby it follows that the principle of the continuation of unresisted and externally unforced motion would not be a product of the scientific revolution. Many historians of science have seen other ancient and medieval antecedents of these ideas. It is widely accepted that Copernicus's De revolutionibus followed the outline and method set by Ptolemy in his Almagest and that Galileo's mathematical treatment of acceleration and his concept of impetus grew out of earlier medieval analyses of motion. The standard theory of the history of the scientific revolution claims the seventeenth century was a period of revolutionary scientific changes. It is claimed that not only were there revolutionary theoretical and experimental developments, but that even more importantly, the way in which scientists worked was radically changed. Some claim that at the beginning of the century, science was highly Aristotelian, while at its end, science was mechanical, and empirical. But an alternative anti-revolutionist view is that science as exemplified by Newton's Principia was anti-mechanist and highly Aristotelian, being specifically directed at the refutation of anti-Aristotelian Cartesian mechanism, as evidenced in the Principia quotations below, and not more empirical than it already was at the beginning of the century or earlier in the works of such as Benedetti, Galileo, Kepler and others. Ancient and Medieval background
Emergence of the revolution Since the time of Voltaire, some observers have considered that a revolutionary change in thought, called in recent times a scientific revolution, took place around the year 1600; that is, that there were dramatic and historically rapid changes in the ways in which scholars thought about the physical world and studied it. Science, as it is treated in this account, is essentially understood and practiced in the modern world; with various "other narratives" or alternate ways of knowing omitted. Alexandre Koyré coined the term and definition of 'The Scientific Revolution' in 1939, which later influenced the work of traditional historians A. Rupert Hall and J.D. Bernal and subsequent historiography on the subject (Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, 1996). To some extent, this arises from different conceptions of what the revolution was; some of the rancor and cross-purposes in such debates may arise from lack of recognition of these fundamental differences. But it also and more crucially arises from disagreements over the historical facts about different theories and their logical analysis, e.g. Did Aristotle's dynamics deny the principle of inertia or not? Did science become mechanistic? New scientific developments About 1600, Ideas and People who emerged: Theoretical developments In 1543 Copernicus' work on the heliocentric model of the solar system was published, in which he tried to prove that the sun was the center of the universe. Ironically, this was at the behest of the Catholic Church as part of the Catholic Reformation efforts for a means of creating a more accurate calendar for its activities. For almost two millennia, the geocentric model had been accepted by all but a few astronomers. The idea that the earth moved around the sun, as advocated by Copernicus, was to most of his contemporaries preposterous. It contradicted not only the virtually unquestioned Aristotelian philosophy, but also common sense. For suppose the earth turns about its own axis. Then, surely, if we were to drop a stone from a high tower, the earth would rotate beneath it while it fell, thus causing the stone to land some space away from the tower's bottom. This effect is not observed. It is no wonder, then, that although some astronomers used the Copernican system to calculate the movement of the planets, only a handful actually accepted it as true theory. It took the efforts of two men, Johannes Kepler and Galileo, to give it credibility. Kepler was a brilliant astronomer who, using the very accurate observations of Tycho Brahe, realized that the planets move around the sun not in circular orbits, but in elliptical ones. Together with his other laws of planetary motion, this allowed him to create a model of the solar system that was a huge improvement over Copernicus' original system. Galileo's main contributions to the acceptance of the heliocentric system were his mechanics and the observations he made with his telescope, as well as his detailed presentation of the case for the system (which led to his condemnation by the Inquisition). Using an early theory of inertia, Galileo could explain why rocks dropped from a tower fall straight down even if the earth rotates. His observations of the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the spots on the sun, and mountains on the moon all helped to discredit the Aristotelian philosophy and the Ptolemaic theory of the solar system. Through their combined discoveries, the heliocentric system gained more and more support, and at the end of the 17th century it was generally accepted by astronomers. Both Kepler's laws of planetary motion and Galileo's mechanics culminated in the work of Isaac Newton. His laws of motion were to be the solid foundation of mechanics; his law of universal gravitation combined terrestrial and celestial mechanics into one great system that seemed to be able to describe the whole world in mathematical formulae. Not only astronomy and mechanics were greatly changed. Optics, for instance, was revolutionized by people like Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens, René Descartes and, once again, Isaac Newton, who developed mathematical theories of light as either waves (Huygens) or particles (Newton). Similar developments could be seen in chemistry, biology and other sciences, although their full development into modern science was delayed for a century or more. Methodological developments Adherents of the Scientific Revolution traditionally maintain its most important changes were in the way in which scientific investigation was conducted, as well as the philosophy underlying scientific developments. Two main philosophical changes are said to be mechanization (or mechanical philosophy), and empiricism. Mechanization Aristotle recognized four kinds of causes, of which the most important was the "final cause". The final cause was the aim or goal of something. Thus, the final cause of rain was to let plants grow. Until the scientific revolution, it was very natural to see such goals in nature. The world was inhabited by angels and demons, spirits and souls, occult powers and mystical principles. Scientists spoke about the 'soul of a magnet' as easily as they spoke about its velocity. The "mechanical philosophy" tried to put a stop to this. The mechanists, of whom the most important was René Descartes, rejected all goals, emotion and intelligence in nature. In this modern view, the world consisted of matter moving in accordance with the laws of physics. Where nature had previously been imagined to be like a living entity, the scientific revolution viewed nature as following natural, physical laws. Mechanical philosophy is frequently described as envisioning a clockwork universe, as clockwork was growing increasingly refined at the time. In the view of many, the universe could be envisioned as giant intermeshing mechanical gears or vortices, as in a clock. But this philosophy was refuted by Isaac Newton's Theory of Gravity, which acted at a distance, and together with Newton's force of inertia, replaced Cartesian mechanism's vortices in explaining the motions of planets and comets. The concluding General Scholium of the 1713 2nd Edition of the Principia was anti-mechanist, and opened "The hypothesis of vortices is beset with many difficulties." As Newton put his crucial objection:"And all these regular motions of the planets and their moons do not have their origin in mechanical causes, since comets go freely in very eccentric orbits and into all parts of the heavens." p940 Cohen & Whitman ''Principia'' Newton posited the solar system and fixed stars were all designed and maintained by an all pervading intelligence, namely God, and whose will sets final causes, such as setting the stars sufficiently far apart to avoid their mutual gravitational collapse in a big crunch. Thus Newton wrote: "This most elegant system of the sun, planets and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of similar systems, they will all be constructed according to a similar design and subject to the dominion of ONE... And so that systems of the fixed stars will not fall upon one another as a result of their gravity, he has placed them at immense distances from one another." ibid p940 "We know God only by his properties and attributes and by the wisest and best construction of things and their final causes...and a god without dominion, providence and final causes is nothing other than fate and nature." ibid p942 "This concludes the discussion of God, and to treat of God from phenomena is certainly a part of natural philosophy." ibid p943 Empiricism The Aristotelian scientific tradition's primary mode of interacting with the world was through observation and searching for "natural" circumstances. It saw what we would today consider "experiments" to be contrivances which at best revealed only contingent and un-universal facts about nature in an artificial state. Coupled with this approach was the belief that rare events which seemed to contradict theoretical models were "monsters", telling nothing about nature as it "naturally" was. During the scientific revolution, changing perceptions about the role of the scientist in respect to nature, the value of evidence, experimental or observed, led towards a scientific methodology in which empiricism played a large, but not absolute, role. Under the influence of philosophers like Francis Bacon, an empirical tradition was developed in the 17th century. The Aristotelian belief of natural and artificial circumstances was abandoned, and a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted throughout the scientific community. Bacon's philosophy of using an inductive approach to nature – to abandon assumption and to attempt to simply observe with an open mind – was in strict contrast with the earlier, Aristotelian approach of deduction, by which analysis of "known facts" produced further understanding. In practice, of course, many scientists (and philosophers) believed that a healthy mix of both was needed—the willingness to question assumptions, yet also interpret observations assumed to have some degree of validity. At the end of the scientific revolution the organic, qualitative world of book-reading philosophers had been changed into a mechanical, mathematical world to be known through experimental research. Though it is certainly not true that Newtonian science was like modern science in all respects, it conceptually resembled ours in many ways—much more so than the Aristotelian science of a century earlier. Many of the hallmarks of modern science, especially in respect to the institution and profession of science, would not become standard until the mid-19th century. Notes See also | |||||||||
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