History 30 Midterm 2 Revew (Kemp-Kuhn-Lindberg)

Leonardo da Vinci

Renaissance artist and investigator who studied nature through observation, drawing, anatomy, and mechanics. Kemp emphasizes an underlying unity connecting his art, science, and engineering.

Necessity

Leonardo’s principle that nature operates according to consistent causes and economical laws: forms fit their functions, and nothing is superfluous. It guided both his study of nature and his designs.

Form and Function

The idea that a natural structure should be understood through what it does. Leonardo used it in anatomy and mechanics, though he sometimes inferred a function before having enough evidence.

Experience vs. Received Wisdom

Leonardo valued direct experience but still relied on inherited medical and philosophical ideas. His work shows that observation can challenge tradition without automatically replacing its assumptions.

Drawing as a Method of Inquiry

Leonardo’s diagrams, sections, and separated views were tools for analyzing how structures worked, not just illustrations. Visual representation helped him test and communicate ideas about anatomy and mechanics.

The Body as a Machine

Leonardo compared bones, joints, muscles, and nerves to coordinated mechanical systems. This connected anatomical study with engineering and the design of artificial devices.

Microcosm and Macrocosm

The traditional idea that the human body (the microcosm) reflects the larger world (the macrocosm). Leonardo used this connection to compare processes across the body, Earth, and nature.

Analogy

Reasoning from one phenomenon to another because they share a structure or pattern, such as comparing blood vessels with tree branches or rivers. Leonardo used analogy to propose common natural causes.

Elements of Machines

Reusable components such as gears, axles, bearings, and springs that can be combined into different machines. Leonardo’s approach focused on adaptable parts, not only complete devices.

Fossils and the Biblical Flood

Leonardo argued that marine shells in mountain layers showed that land and sea had changed over time and that the shells were once living organisms. These observations challenged simple explanations based on Noah’s Flood or magical formations.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Astronomer who proposed a system in which Earth moves and the planets circle the Sun. His aim was to reform mathematical astronomy, but his proposal eventually challenged wider assumptions about nature and humanity’s place in the universe.

Ptolemaic System

An Earth-centered model that used circles, deferents, and epicycles to calculate planetary positions. It remained influential because it provided a workable mathematical framework consistent with established cosmology.

Copernican System

A Sun-centered arrangement in which Earth rotates and orbits the Sun. It offered a new explanation for apparent planetary motions, although Copernicus retained circular motion and did not immediately produce clearly superior predictions.

The Astronomical Tradition

The inherited body of models, techniques, and observations built around Ptolemy and later revisions. By Copernicus’s time, competing versions and inaccurate data weakened confidence in the tradition and encouraged reform.

Renaissance Neoplatonism

A way of thinking that linked mathematical harmony and the Sun’s symbolic importance with divine perfection. Kuhn presents it as part of the intellectual climate that made new cosmological ideas more plausible, not as observational proof.

Tycho Brahe

Astronomer known for precise observations of planetary positions. His data enabled Kepler’s later work, while his own system retained a stationary Earth and placed the Sun in orbit around it.

Tychonic System

A hybrid model in which the Sun orbits a stationary Earth while the other planets orbit the Sun. It could accommodate important observations, showing that the same evidence did not automatically establish Copernicanism.

Johannes Kepler

Astronomer who used Tycho Brahe’s observations to develop a Copernican system with elliptical orbits and changing planetary speeds. His mathematical laws made the new astronomy substantially more accurate.

Galileo Galilei

Astronomer who used the telescope to observe the Moon, Jupiter’s moons, and the phases of Venus. His work made Copernican astronomy more visible and influential, though the observations did not by themselves prove every part of it.

Telescopic Evidence

The telescope revealed features of the heavens that challenged traditional assumptions and helped popularize astronomy. Kuhn stresses that many observations could fit more than one system, so evidence was persuasive without always being decisive.

Retrograde Motion

The apparent backward movement of a planet against the stars. Ptolemy explained it with epicycles, while Copernicus explained it through the relative motions of Earth and the other planets.

Assimilation of Copernican Astronomy

The gradual process by which the moving Earth became accepted and was integrated with new physics and cosmology. The eventual Newtonian universe was not simply Copernicus’s original model accepted unchanged.

Carolingian Revival

A renewal of learning in Western Europe that emphasized schools, literacy, and copying classical texts. Its main scientific contribution was preserving and transmitting older knowledge, not creating a sudden scientific breakthrough.

Charlemagne

Frankish ruler who promoted education by supporting cathedral and monastery schools and gathering scholars at his court. His reforms helped restore literacy and preserve classical learning.

Alcuin of York

Scholar who directed Charlemagne’s educational reforms. He helped organize schools and the collection, correction, and copying of classical texts.

Computus

The mathematical rules used to calculate the date of Easter and other religious observances. It made astronomy and calendar calculation practically important in medieval monasteries.

John Scotus Eriugena

Ninth-century scholar who translated Greek Christian works into Latin and combined Christian theology with Neoplatonic philosophy. His work helped preserve Greek intellectual traditions in the Latin West.

Gerbert of Aurillac

Scholar who helped transmit Arabic mathematics and astronomy into Western Europe. He promoted mathematical learning and the use of instruments and models in teaching astronomy.

Al-Andalus

Muslim-ruled Spain, where Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars participated in a multilingual intellectual culture. It became an important channel for the transmission of Arabic learning to Latin Europe.

Translation Movement

The translation of Greek and Arabic scientific and philosophical works into Latin, especially through Spain and Italy. It greatly expanded Western European knowledge of mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and Aristotle.

Constantine the African

Translator who brought Arabic medical works, including texts by Galen and Hippocrates, into Latin. His translations helped rebuild medical learning in Western Europe.

Gerard of Cremona

Major Arabic-to-Latin translator who worked in Toledo. His translations included Ptolemy’s Almagest, Euclid’s Elements, Aristotle’s natural philosophy, and Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine.

William of Moerbeke

Thirteenth-century translator who revised existing Latin versions and translated Aristotle directly from Greek. His work made more reliable versions of the Aristotelian corpus available in the West.

University (universitas)

A medieval university began as a corporate association or guild of masters or students, not as a campus or collection of buildings. These organizations gained rights to regulate teaching, curriculum, and degrees.

Quadrivium

The four mathematical liberal arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. They provided the mathematical foundation of the medieval liberal arts curriculum.

Ius ubique docendi

The right of a qualified master to teach at other universities. It encouraged academic mobility and helped create a shared European curriculum.

Anselm of Canterbury

Theologian who used philosophical reasoning to examine religious doctrines. His ontological argument attempted to demonstrate God’s existence without relying directly on biblical authority.

Peter Abelard

Teacher who extended the use of logic and reason in theology. He used conflicting statements from church authorities to make students investigate difficult questions rather than accept answers passively.

Sic et Non

Abelard’s collection of apparently conflicting statements by church authorities. It encouraged students to analyze contradictions through careful reasoning.

Thierry of Chartres

Scholar who used Platonic cosmology and natural philosophy to interpret the biblical account of creation. He described much of creation as the natural unfolding of an initial divine act.

William of Conches

Advocate of explaining nature through natural causes rather than immediately appealing to miracles. He argued that nature operates through powers established by God.

Medieval Naturalism

The view that nature has an orderly structure and that natural phenomena should be explained through their causes. It treated investigation of nature as compatible with belief in God.

Seminal Causes

The idea, drawn from Stoic philosophy and transmitted through Augustine, that created things contain principles or seeds that unfold through natural development. It helped explain how life and other forms emerge through natural processes.

Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

Persian philosopher whose interpretation of Aristotle blended Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ideas. His commentaries strongly influenced early Western understandings of Aristotle.

Averroes (Ibn Rushd)

Andalusian philosopher whose commentaries on Aristotle became highly influential in Europe. He was known in the West as “the Commentator” and helped transmit a less Platonized reading of Aristotle.

Robert Grosseteste

English scholar who studied Aristotle’s scientific method and combined Aristotelian ideas with Platonic, Neoplatonic, and mathematical traditions. He helped shape the study of natural philosophy at Oxford.

Roger Bacon

Franciscan scholar who promoted mathematics, optics, and the value of empirical evidence. Lindberg cautions against portraying him as the lone founder of modern experimental science.

Bonaventure

Franciscan theologian who respected parts of Aristotle but stressed the limits of unaided reason and the importance of divine illumination. He defended providence and the immortality of the individual soul.

Albert the Great

Dominican scholar who produced a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle while correcting him where necessary. He combined philosophical learning with extensive firsthand observation of plants and animals.

Thomas Aquinas

Dominican theologian who argued that philosophy and Christian theology use different methods but cannot genuinely contradict one another. He gave Aristotelian philosophy a major role in Christian thought.

Christian Aristotelianism

The synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. It adapted Aristotle’s ideas while rejecting or reinterpreting claims that conflicted with Christian doctrines.

Siger of Brabant

Master of arts associated with radical Aristotelianism. He argued that philosophical conclusions should be followed through even when they appeared to conflict with theology.

Monopsychism

Averroes’s theory that the intellective part of the human soul is one shared intellect rather than an individual faculty. It challenged the Christian doctrine of personal immortality.

Aristotle’s Eternal Cosmos

Aristotle argued that the universe had always existed and would never cease to exist. This conflicted with the Christian belief that God created the world.

Philosophy as Handmaiden

The view that philosophy and the sciences serve theology by helping explain, defend, and interpret religious truths. Medieval thinkers disagreed over how much independence these disciplines should have.

Étienne Tempier

Bishop of Paris who issued condemnations of philosophical propositions considered incompatible with Christian teaching. His actions asserted theological authority over university philosophy.

Parisian Condemnations

Censures of philosophical propositions that challenged Christian doctrine, especially claims associated with radical Aristotelianism. Lindberg presents them primarily as a conservative theological response, not as the birth of modern science.

Divine Omnipotence and Contingency

The idea that God could have created any world that involved no logical contradiction, so the actual order of nature was not absolutely necessary. Medieval thinkers debated what this meant for natural laws and the study of nature.

God’s Absolute and Ordained Power

Absolute power refers to what God could do; ordained power refers to the order God actually established and ordinarily maintains. This distinction allowed thinkers to affirm divine omnipotence while treating nature as regular enough to investigate.

Faith and Reason

A central medieval debate about how philosophical reasoning relates to revealed religious truth. Aquinas argued that they are distinct paths to knowledge and that any apparent contradiction must come from an error in reasoning or interpretation.