Age of Discoveries (1500-1750)

Age of Discoveries(1500-1750)

Mercantilism

• Money

• Credit

Spice Routes

Christopher Columbus

European Voyages

New Continent, Changing Worldview

salvation history

history of progress

Columbian Exchange:Exchange of Plants, Animals &

Diseases

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Age of Exploration Technologies

astrolabe: measures latitude

magnetic needle (compass): measures direction

maps & skilled mapmakers

Scientific Revolution

Changes• medieval scientific philosophy

abandoned in favor of new methods

• the importance of experimentation to the scientific method reaffirmed

• the importance of God to science invalidated

• pursuit of science itself (rather than philosophy) gained validity on its own terms

Abandoning Medievalism• collaboration with

mathematical & astronomical communities

• inadequacy of medieval experimental methods

• access to legacy of European, Greek, and Middle Eastern scientific philosophy

• British Royal Society helped validate science providing an outlet for publication

Scientific Developments Nicolaus Copernicus :

heliocentric theory of cosmology

Galileo Galilei : laws for falling bodies

William Harvey: blood circulates

Johannes Kepler: laws of planetary motion

Antony van Leeuwenhoek: single lens microscopes

Isaac Newton: elliptical orbits of the planets & law of universal gravitation

Particular view of the nature of reality

Science can account for only those aspects of nature that are accessible to scientific methods of observation and explanation

Insistence on exact observation

No explanation of a fact or event in nature has been acceptable unless it has taken into account all of the observed data

Universe a vast machine operating according to mathematical laws

the vast universe came more and more to be seen and felt as a collection of physical bodies moving through space according to immutable mathematical laws

Conceptions of divinity changed

no longer saw the necessity of postulating the presence of a deity to explain the workings of the universe

Conclusion

increasing control of physical forces

master nature for own purposes