New Directions in Thought and Culture in the 16th and
17th Centuries
 Scientific Revolution
 An attempt to understand and explain how man and the
world worked through scientific knowledge
 Astronomy
 Studying the motions and natures of heavenly bodies
 Cosmology
 Studying the creation, evolution, and structure of the
universe
 Geocentric theory
 Ptolemaic belief that the Earth is the center of the
universe and that the sun, moon, and all stars rotated
around the Earth
 Galen
 Greek doctor who emphasized anatomy and cut open
dead animals and recorded his findings; drawings still
used
 Paracelsus
 German-Swiss botanist who gave zinc its
name; established the idea of tria prima
which included mercury (transformative/spirit),
sulfur (binding/soul), and salt (solidifying/body)
believed chemicals in nature could cure illness, which
came from outside the body
 Andreas Vesalius
 Flemish anatomist and physician;
wrote On the Structure of the Human Body
founder of modern human anatomy and
drew anatomical drawings after dissecting
executed criminals and disproved Galen
 On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres
 Written by Nicolaus Copernicus and used to
prove mathematics could explain how the sun
was the center of the universe with Mercury,
Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn revolving around
the sun in perfect circular orbit. The moon revolved
around the Earth and the stars were a fixed sphere
surrounding the other celestial bodies. Attacked
Ptolemy’s vision
 Nicholas Copernicus
 Published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres;
disagreed with Ptolemy’s view that the earth was the
center of the universe
 Heliocentric Theory
 Sun-centered theory of the universe
 Ptolemy
 Greek and Roman citizen of Egypt that worked as a
mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer,
poet, etc. Wrote Almagest (physics of astronomy),
Geography (map of the world), Quadripartitum (Four
books on the horoscopes and astronomy) mapped 1000
stars
 Aristotle
 Student of Plato and Greek philosopher who taught
Alexander the Great; taught about the physical world
and the need for observation instead of Plato’s heavenly
world of knowledge coming from a Universal Form;
established his school the Lyceum; believed the star
were unchangeable
 St. Thomas Aquinas
 Dominican friar and priest of the Roman
Catholic Church who combined Aristotle’s
ideas with the Church in the Summa
Theologica.
Believed that you could uncover the truth
of the world (God) through reason and faith
believed in spontaneous generation;
natural law gave people certain rights that the government
should not take away (life, to learn, worship, and reproduce)
 Gregorian Calendar
 Calendar established by Pope Gregory XIII
of 365.25 days. Needed to offset the
Julian calendar
drift of ten days
 Scholasticism
 Idea of Thomas Aquinas and other Christian
philosophers to solve questions of faith, reason, will, and
the existence of God; method of learning using
dialectical reasoning aka resolving contradictions, or
“bringing together reason and faith in studies of religion
 Alchemy
 Form of chemistry from the Middle Ages and
Renaissance fixated on the ability to transmute base
metals into valuable metals; also finding an elixir of life
 Pope Paul III
 First pope of the Counter-Reformation and last pope of
the Renaissance. Called the Council of Trent to reform
the church and to define Church teachings and
defining/unifying the Biblical canon
 Tycho Brahe
 Danish astronomer that worked with no
telescope; established a geocentric model of the solar
system where the sun and moon circled the Earth and
the planets circled the sun. Observed a super“nova” that
disproved Aristotle
 Johannes Kepler
 German mathematician, astronomer, and
astrologer; focused on celestial physics
Copernicus, and Aristotle’s ideas to create a physics
based system to describe the rotation of the heavenly
bodies. Worked with Tycho Brahe to obtain Brahe’s more
accurate data so he could explain how the sun caused
the motion of the planets. Founder of
celestial mechanics and planetary motion
in elliptical motion; explained
how moon influenced the tides; Lutheran
 Laws of Planetary Motion
 Johannes Kepler’s three laws of the motion of the
planets.
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1.The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of
the two foci.
2.A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas
during equal intervals of time.[1]
3.The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly
proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.
 Ellipticals
 Kepler’s geometric explanation of the orbits of the
planet
 The New Astronomy
 Kepler’s ideas on how astronomy worked and
explanation of the orbit of Mars; explained
away the retrograde of Mars with ellipses
 Isaac Newton
 Used Kepler’s laws of planetary motion
and his own ideas on gravity to show
Earth and celestial bodies were governed
by the same laws; Wrote The Principia, and
built the first reflecting telescope;
explained how a prism works; helped to
develop the Calculus; Three laws of motion
 Principia Mathematica
 Describes gravity as the one true force shared by all;
identified that discrepancies must be noted and
explained for good science; contains Newton’s Three
Laws of Motion:
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I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to
remain in that state of motion unless an external force is
applied to it.
II. The relationship between an object's mass m, its
acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma.
Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their
symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law
the direction of the force vector is the same as the
direction of the acceleration vector.
III. For every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction.
 Epistemology
 Branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature
and scope of knowledge. (What is it?, How acquired?,
How do you know something?)
 Scientific method
 Techniques for investigating/acquiring knowledge;
based on empirical/measurable evidence (Francis
Bacon)
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Formulate questions/Observe
Hypothesis
Prediction
Test/Experiment
Analysis/Conclusion
 Inductive reasoning
 Using detailed facts to come to a decision, but not
always the conclusion; reasoning to support a
conclusion, but not ensure it
 i.e. all observed crows are black, therefore all crows are
black
 Gravity
 Proved by Isaac Newton, but do I really need to define
this?
 Attractive force between objects
 Divine watchmaker
 Developed by William Paley to explain God;
 States that if you found a watch on the ground
you would infer someone made it because it had
design, just like nature, the world, and the universe
 Francis Bacon
 English thinker who believed ideas
based on tradition should be put aside;
developed scientific method
 Novum Organum
 Francis Bacon’s work about the new
instrument of science that details his new
system of logic the scientific method;
used inductive reasoning to find the cause of things
Baconian Method
 The Advancement of Learning
 The first important philosophical book written
in English; outlined Bacon’s ideas before
Latin works
 New Atlantis
 Utopian novel by Bacon that envisioned the future of
human discovery and knowledge; identified a future of
utopian Bensalem island and its scientific institutes
 Deductive reasoning
 Reasoning from one general statement to reach a logical
conclusion; identifies an accurate and specific
conclusion
 i.e. all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore,
Socrates is mortal
 “Battle of the Books”
 Written by Jonathan Swift to satirize the
battle between Ancient and Modern
thought
 Portrays fighting authors and books trying
to win supremacy of thought
 René Descartes
 Frenchman who wrote Discourse on Meth0d, which
attempted to identify how you could know what was
true; put aside all things except the one thing that could
be proven “Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am.”
 Claimed mathematics was the source of all scientific
truth because math was always true; used logic to move
toward truths
 Founder of rationalism, the belief that reason is the
chief source of knowledge
 Cartesian Dualism
 Descartes’ idea that the immaterial mind and the
material body are two different types of substances that
interact with each other
 Body could be divided up, the mind/soul could not be
 Mechanism
 All natural phenomena are caused by material things
and principles and can be explained by mechanical laws;
just needed to understand how something worked by
uncovering why it worked
 Thomas Hobbes
 Wrote about English government and society;
Strong supporter of the British monarchy and
Charles I who was beheaded;
 Wrote the Leviathan
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Hobbes argued that natural law made absolute monarchy the
best form of government
Humans were naturally selfish and violent; could not be
trusted to make decisions on their own; needed government
that had power of a sea monster, or strong king to give people
direction
 Natural law

Law that applied to everyone and could be understood by
reason; explained how government worked
 William Harvey
 English doctor who proved that blood
flowed through the human body and
that the heart pumped it
 John Locke
 English thinker who used natural law
to affirm citizens’ rights and to make
government answerable to the people;
 Explained the ideas of the Glorious
Revolution in book Two Treatises of Gov.
 Gov. should be based on natural law, giving
all people natural rights from birth of life,
liberty, and right to own property
 Gov. should protect these rights and a
social contract
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An agreement between rulers and the people; if ruler took away people’s
natural rights, the people had a right to revolt and set up a new
government
 First Treatise on Government
 Locke disproves Robert Filmer’s ideas that parents have
authority over their children for creating them and that
kings are sons of Adam and have authority over them
 Second Treatise on Government
 Explains the social contract
 Letters Concerning Toleration
 Locke’s letter to an anonymous friend explaining that
religious toleration should be displayed for all
Christians; argued that churches should persuade
people to join, not threaten them to join
 Essay on Human Understanding
 John Locke’s idea book that explained human
learning/understanding of the world
 Explained that all humans were born with a blank mind
“tabula rasa/blank slate” and that the mind was filled
through life experiences or empiricism
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Knowledge comes from sensory experiences
 Not innate knowledge that would be given to you
through your parents
 Galileo Galilei
 Italian scientist who believed that new
knowledge could come through
experiments that were carefully carried out
 Challenged Aristotle’s idea that the heavier the object,
the faster it falls to the ground
 Improved the clock and telescope
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Found evidence that the Earth revolves around the sun
 Developed water thermometer and his assistant,
Evangelista Torricelli, used mercury to build the first
barometer to measure air pressure
 Condemned by the Church and forced to withdraw
many of his ideas under the threat of torcher/death
 Inertia
 Resistance of any physical object to change its state of
motion or rest; defined by Isaac Newton in Principia
Mathematica
 Dialogues on the Two Chief Systems of the World
 Written by Galileo to compare the Copernican system of
the universe with the Ptolemaic system; this book led to
Galileo’s charge for heresy
 Blaise Pascal
 French mathematician, physicist who
studied the motion of fluids, developed
mechanical calculators, and clarified the
concepts of pressure and vacuum; also
focused on geometry
 Jansenists
 Theory established by Dutch theologian Cornelis Jansen
which emphasized predestination, deny free will, and
maintain human nature is incapable of good;
condemned by the Church
 Pascal’s Wager
 Pascal’s idea that there was more to be wagered on the
existence of God than from atheism; rational people
should live as though God exists
 “Rational God”
 Science based approach to understanding nature or reality
 Pensées
 Pascal’s defense of Christianity; helped to establish “Pascal’s
Wager”; published posthumously
 Law of Probability
 Laws used to teach/study Quantum
Mechanics and establish that the universe
is not always exact
 Robert Boyle
 Irish scientist who proved that all
substances are made up of basic elements that
cannot be broken down
 Established modern chemistry and Boyle’s Law
describing the inversely proportional
relationship between the absolute pressure and
volume of a gas if the temperature is kept
constant within a closed system
 Royal Society of London
 Given a royal charter by King Charles II; advised the
crown on scientific studies; originally a group of natural
philosophers (scientists) who promoted knowledge and
understanding via observation and experiment
 Pantheism
 Belief that all things encompass God and therefore are
identical with divinity; Baruch Spinoza’s answer to
Descartes’ Cartesian Dualism
 Marin Mersenne
 French theologian and “father of acoustics”
identified oscillations in a stretched string
and frequency
 Margaret Cavendish
 English aristocrat and scientist; wrote first
science fiction works; influenced by
Thomas Hobbes and supported his ideas of
materialist philosophy with no incorporeal (like air) soul
 Maria Sibylla Merian
 Naturalist and scientific illustrator who
studied plants and insect and made detailed
paintings about them; illustrated butterfly
metamorphosis and contributed to
entomology
 Maria Winkelmann
 German astronomer who gave information to
Royal Society of London which published/sold
calendars and almanacs for her and her husband
discovered Comet of 1702
 Benedict de Spinoza
 Post-Cartesian philosopher and Rationalist
who did not believe in sense perception to
acquire knowledge, but instead should use
intellect and geometry
 Wrote Ethics explaining that nature included
God, not separated from God
 “Cunning folk”
 Early individuals accused of practicing magic “science”
that would be helpful to people; searched for remedies
to help people