The Scientific Revolution

Way before the Scientific Revolution people were coming up with answers about what the universe was like. One of these people was Aristotle, his ideas were Christianized by medieval theologians what was the resulting philosophy?

- A motionless earth center surrounded by 10 crystal spheres (with moon, sun, planets, stars), beyond the spheres was heaven and angels kept the spheres moving in circles.

- uniform force moved objects at a constant speed and objects would stop when force was gone

- did not account for motion of planets and stars, no explanation for apparent backwards motion of planets

- no application of experimentation, just thoughts

What did Ptolemy theorize?

- planets moved in epicycles and each epicycle moved in a large circle called a deferent → more complex than Aristotle's but gave an accurate model for predicting planet motion

- geocentric model

- contributed to cartography: round Earth divded into 360 degree with major latitude marks BUT only had Europe, Africa, and Asia + land covered 3/4 of world

General Concepts: The Big Picture

• Aristotle's geocentric model challenged by Copernicus' heliocentric model

• no more perfect, heavenly, crystal spheres because moons discovered around planets (like Jupiter by Galileo)

• more secular knowledge about the solar system/universe

• more skepticism: questioning established ideas, relying on evidence-based reasoning

• empiricism: using math and observations to support theories

• science became more "modern," rational (with an emphasis on methods, math, evidence), and interconnected with progress

Nicholas Copernicus' Background + Writings

• Polish, 1473-1543

• studied astronomy, medicine, and church law in East Prussia

• didn't believe in Ptolemy's cumbersome rules were right because they diminished the majesty of the perfect divine creator

• was a monk, worked for the Roman Catholic Church

• wrote "On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres" (published after his death, post mortem, because he was scared of the Church): explained his heliocentric model but lacked the math to prove it, dedicated to the Pope

• worked for 25 years to create a theory that the earth moved in a circular orbit around the sun

Nicholas Copernicus' Major Contributions / Challenges to Contemporary Thought

• Copernican Hypothesis: 1st stars don't move → destroyed belief in crystal spheres; 2nd the universe is massive; 3rd used math to prove and challenge the disciplines; 4th Earth was is just another planet → destroyed Aristotelian physics that earthly spere was different from heavenly one

• heliocentric model: Sun is the center and Earth revolves around it, no Earth center BUT kept the orbits as perfect circles like Aristotle

Tycho Brahe's Background + Writings

• Danish, 1546-1601

• supported by the King of Denmark, and the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (after King of Denmark died) → allowed him to fund the building of many observatories

• He died too early, 1601

• wanted to disprove Copernicus (but his findings only proved Copernicus right and he was distraught)

Tycho Brahe's Major Contributions / Challenges to Contemporary Thought

• studied new 1572 star which destroyed the idea of perfect, crystal spheres

• believed that all planets except Earth revolved around the Sun and the group of planets + stars revolved around Earth

Johannes Kepler's Background + Writings

• German

• Brahe's assistant

• uses Brahe's data and observations

• uses math which Copernicus lacked

• wrote "Rudolphine Tables" (1627): a catalog of more than 1000 stars, tables of positions of the moon, sun and planets based on his and Brahe's observations, astronomers used this for years

Johannes Kepler's Major Contributions / Challenges to Contemporary Thought

• 1. proved an elliptical, not circular, orbit

• 2. planets don't move at a uniform speed, faster near the sun and slower away from the sun

• 3. the time it takes a planet to make a complete orbit around the sun is related to its distance from the sun

Galileo Galilei's Background + Writings

• Florentine, 1564-1642

• tutor of the Medici family, which became the Grand Dukes of Tuscany

• Medici's protected him → he showed his discoveries at their court first

• he wanted to challenge Aristolian physics

• wrote the "Sidereal Messenger" aka "Starry Messenger" (1609) and got into a bit of trouble for it

• wrote "Dialogue on the Two Worlds System": a conversation between two fictional characters who argue about the geocentric and heliocentric model, wrote it as fiction so he doesn't get killed by the Church, but the Church still threatened to torture him + the Medici's didn't help him, lived the rest of his live under house arrest

• put on trial by Roman Catholic Inquisition

Galileo Galilei's Major Contributions / Challenges to Contemporary Thought

• experiment of the moving ball across a surface: showed uniform force (gravity) producing a uniform acceleration

• observed mountains and valleys on the moon (craters) → proving the moon was imperfect

• discovered the first four moons of Jupiter and named them after the Medici family, his patrons

• discovered imperfect movement of planets

• observed sunspots on the sun

• discovered rings around Saturn

• created a telescope that magnified 30 times, while the usual only did 3 times

• observed what he saw (through his telescope) by drawing pictures

Sir Issac Newton's Background + Writings

• English, 1642-1727

• born in Lower English Gentry

• enrolled in Cambridge University

• wrote "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (1687): a set of math laws that explained motion and mechanics by integrating Copernican astronomy with Kepler's laws and physics by Galileo, took scientists and engineers 200 years to work out

Sir Issac Newton's Major Contributions / Challenges to Contemporary Thought

• Law of Universal Gravitation: every body in the universe attracts every other body in a math relationship where the force of attraction is proportional to quantity of the matter of objects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance

• invented calculus

• linked planetary and terrestrial motion by Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei to describe motion can be measured

• "Newtonian Universe": natural laws work together to provide a clear explanation of the physical universe

Francis Bacon's Background + Writings

• Lord Chancellor under James I → big influence

• followers created the Royal Society in 1660, after his death

• "Novum Organum" (1620): new organization of science

• "New Atlantis" (1627): the search for a utopia

Francis Bacon's Main Ideas / Discoveries

• inductive reasoning: observations work up to broader generalizations and theories, valid conclusions can be reached only through experimentation

• started the widespread adoption of experimental philosophy

• rejected Aristotelian and medieval methods of speculative reasoning

• early propagandist for experimental/scientific method

• religion, society, language, and personal experience taint the way to perceive knowledge

René Descartes' Background + Writings

• 1619: was a 23 year old soldier in the 30 Years War and saw there was a perfect correspondence between geometry and algebra → geometric figures could be represented by algebraic equations and vice versa

René Descartes' Main Ideas / Discoveries

• discovered analytical geometry, new tool

• invented calculus, separate from Newton

• said the universe was made up of "corpuscles" (tiny particles) that collide in an endless series for motions, like the workings of a machine

• said vacuum was impossible → proved wrong

• deductive reasoning: everything could be reasonably doubted, so use reasoning from self-evident truths to ascertain scientific laws, reasoning out of general law from specific cases then apply broadly to cases not specifically observed

• used scientific method

• reduced all substances to physical and mental

• Cartesian Dualism: God gave man reason for a purpose and that rational speculation could provide path to the truths of creation

Galen

• ancient Greek physician

• stated the body had 4 humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile

• illness resulted because of an imbalance of humors → why bloodletting was often prescribed

Andreas Vesalius

• Flemish physician

• studied anatomy by dissecting human bodies, often of executed criminals

• published "On the Structure of the Human Body" (1543): contained over 200 detailed drawings, revolutionizing the understanding of human anatomy, and disproved Galen

Paracelsus

• Swiss physician and alchemist

• supporter of the experimental method in medicine

• pioneered the use of chemicals to address illness

William Harvey

• English royal physician

• discovered the circulation of blood through veins and arteries

• 1st to explain that the heart worked like a pump

Robert Boyle

• helped create the Royal Society in 1660

• key figure in victory of experimental methods in England

• built and experimented with an air pump to investigate the properties of air and creating a vacuum

• formulated a new law, named after him, in 1662, stating that the pressure of gas varies inversely with its volume

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

• brought the smallpox vaccine from the Ottoman Empire to Britain and France because her son was sick and her husband was the British ambassador to the O.E.

• published papers about the success of the vaccine but not taken seriously because she was a woman and the cure came from the Ottoman Empire (racist + sexist)