The Scientific Revolution

Overview

• The Scientific Rev. began in the 16th century and accelerated for the next two.

• Led to a rethinking of religious and moral issues.

• Birth of the scientific method and a rational view of the universe.

Nicolaus Copernicus(1473-1543)

• Previous theory = Ptolemaic System: Earth is the center of the universe. Everything else in crystalline spheres that make them move.

• Caused variations in the calendar. Seafaring commerce needed a better model.

• Copernicus thought the Sun at the center made more mathematical sense

• Mathematical astronomy + empirical data + observation = the new model for scientific thought

• Uncle was Bishop of Ermeland and appointed him canon

• Friends pressured him to publish. “Rheticus,” his enthusiastic disciple did first.

• On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres is finally published after he dies with a forged introduction that downplays the his certainty in his system.

• Friends in the Catholic Church had actually encouraged him to publish and his work was read in Catholic universities.

• Martin Luther and Calvin were highly critical.

• Leads to our Gregorian Calendar

Tycho Brahe• Was given an island by Denmark’s

King Frederick II. It became a whole astronomical community.

• Thought the Sun went around the Earth but other planets went around the Sun

• Left his records to Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler

• Wanted to be a Lutheran minister but was too poor. Taught math instead.

• Kepler concluded the Sun was at the center but planetary orbits were elliptical, not perfectly circular.

• Believed magnetism, not spirits, moved the planets.

Galileo Galilei(1564-1642)

• Taught math and created instruments for his shop. Invented the thermometer.

• Designed his own telescope. In 1610 looked to the Heavens, saw their complexity and believed Copernicus.

• Said the Bible and nature were 2 languages. In the Bible God spoke so man could understand.

• Jesuits accused Galileo of heresy and he defends his self in Rome in 1616.

• Published Dialogues of the Two Chief Systems of the World in 1632.

• In 1633 Pope Urban VIII called an ill Galileo to Rome, threatened him with torture, banned Dialogue, forced him to recant and placed him under house arrest.

Francis Bacon(1561-1626)

• Believed in Empiricism: the use of experiment and observation derived from sensory evidence to construct scientific theory.

• Challenged the superiority of the ancients

• Died from pneumonia after studying the effects of freezing meat.

Rene Descartes(1596-1650)

• Mathematician who stressed deductive reasoning over Bacon’s inductive approach.

• His Discourse on Method related all human thought to mathematics

• Divide existence between things of the mind and “extension” (matter)

• Considered the father of modern philosophy and analytical geometry

Isaac Newton(1642-1727)

• Published Principia Mathematica in 1687. Mathematically described gravity and laid the basis for modern physics.

• Proved the Sun to be the center of the solar system

• Also believed in the importance of empirical data and observation alongside math.

• Devoutly religious and used the observation of fixed laws to show the rationality of God

John Locke(1632-1704)

• In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding he described the human mind as a blank slate.

• Minds form through experience and can be molded through environment.