 What was being
overthrown?
 What was known?
 How was it known?
 For what purposes?
 Who were those guys?
 Legacies, remnants, and
relevance of the past?
Scientific Revolution(s)
The Scientific Revolution is a term commonly referring to
the transformation of thought about nature through which
the Aristotelian tradition was replaced by so-called
"modern" science.
Most see it as a series of events focused in the period 16th
and 17th century or, more precisely, from 1543 (De
Revolutionibus of Copernicus) to 1687 (Principia of
Newton). Others grant it some status from 1300 to 1800.
Still others, see revolutions all around, Glorious, American,
French, Industrial, Chemical, Darwininan, Freudian,
Russian, Quantum, and Plate Tectonics.
Revolution, revolutions, or evolution of ideas, it depends on
who you read.
History of Science…
Studies the change of natural knowledge claims over
time and also the causes of these changes.
A vast field (Plato-NATO) embracing many different
scientific traditions, from Algebra to Zoology.
“Today’s science is tomorrow’s history of science.”
“Science dynamics.”
Program in Science, Technology, and Society
5881 Mayflower Hill, Waterville, ME 04901 Phone 207-859-5881
Dr. Myron Gutmann, Director
SBE Directorate
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22230
mgutmann@nsf.gov
Nov. 18, 2010
Dear Dr. Gutmann,
I don’t know the practical budgetary pressures you are facing, but I do wish to make the case for
understanding science and science policy by studying its history. We are all 21st century citizens
and our social trajectory is aimed squarely at the future, yet our knowledge is shaped by what we
have and have not done in the past.
Historians study change over time and the underlying causes of these changes. They identify
events, trends, and common shared experiences that place people and their environment in larger
contexts. History matters. It shapes collective identities and consciousness on all temporal and
spatial scales from personal to national to global. Framed properly, history is an essential and
accessible component of informed decision-making and interdisciplinary communication, and
serves as a resource for future innovation and citizen involvement.
I study Climate, Climate Change, and Climate Dynamics by examining “Science Dynamics,” the
complex web of intellectual, social and technical influences surrounding science. My recent
work on the history of weather and climate control is serving to inform decision makers in
Washington, including the US House Committee on Science and Technology, chaired by Bart
Gordon, where I testified last year; the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO), which uses
my work in its study of geoengineering; and the National Academy of Sciences Government,
University, Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) in which I participated as a historian just last
month. My historical work on Earth observations from space is documented in a 2007 NRC
report. Many of my colleagues do similar work at the cutting edge of public policy.
If we don’t study the past, then every decision we face will seem unprecedented. If we don’t
study the history of science and apply its lessons, then I don’t think we can say we really
understand science. I hope you will act to maintain a robust STS Program within NSF.
Sincerely,
James R. Fleming
Professor and Program Director of Science, Technology, and Society
Aristotelian natural philosophy
Aristotelian Cosmology
Sublunar realm:
Natural place and natural motion
Generation and corruption
Four elements: earth, water, air, and fire
Cold, hot, most, dry, affinity and opposition
Heavens:
Uniform circular motion
Perfect and incorruptable
Quintessence or aether
The sub-lunar realm
Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places
Emphasized the effects of climate and other geographical
factors on human health.
Climate is a primary influence, but human institutions could
have a moderating effect.
Overall, however, the relationship between health and
lifestyle is under the direct influence, if not the control, of
airs, waters, and places.
Hippocratic medicine
Scientific Revolutions
Nicholas Copernicus
(1473 – 1543)
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)
De humani corporis fabrica…, 1543
On the fabric of the human body
William Harvey (1578 –1657)
and the circulation of the blood
De Motu Cordis
1628
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Natural Philosopher
Government Official
Lord Chancellor
Novum Organon
Great Instauration
New Atlantis
Compass, Gunpowder,
Printing
The ant, the spider, the
bee
William Gilbert
De Magnete (1600)
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Kinematics and Astronomy
Telescope
Sunspots, Phases of Venus, Lunar craters, Moons
of Jupiter, Milky way made of stars
Support of Heliocentrism
Experiments with falling bodies
Mathematics of motion
Galileo explains his discovery to the Pope
René Descartes (1596-1650)
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy
Analytic geometry
Le monde (1633)
L’Homme (1637)
Discours de la Méthode (1637)
Principia philosophia (1644)
Les Passions de l’âme (1649)
Dynamics
Evangelista Torricelli’s Experiment (1644)
Nature does not “abhor a vacuum” and the air has weight.

Blaise Pascal and Florin Périer
On September 19, 1648, Florin Périer and some friends perform the
Torricelli experiment on top of Puy de Dôme in central France. The
height of the mercury column is 85 mm less than in Clermont-Ferrand
at the base of the mountain, about 1000 meters below.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
Experimental Method, Natural Philosophy
Air Pump
Skeptical Chymist (1661)
Boyle’s Law
Royal Society of London
Public Verification of Science
An experiment on a bird in the air pump, by
Joseph Wright
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Theory of Light
Theory of Motion
Theory of Gravity
Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica
(1667)
Dynamics
Alchemy
Theology
Master of the Mint
Newtonian World System
Mechanical Philosophy
Natural law
Reductionistic
Mathematical
Materialistic
Anti-teleological
Inductive
Observation
Experimental method
Clockwork universe
Herbert Butterfield (1949)
Since the Scientific Revolution overturned the authority in
science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient
world
Since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic
philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics
It outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and
reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the realm
of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within
the system of medieval Christendom.
Historian Alexandre Koyre had first used the term
Scientific Revolution in 1943 when he called it, “the
most profound revolution achieved or suffered by the
human mind.”
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature.
The removal of animistic, organic assumptions about the
cosmos constituted the death of nature—the most farreaching effect of the Scientific Revolution.
Because nature was now viewed as a system of dead, inert
particles moved by external, rather than inherent forces,
the mechanical framework itself could legitimate the
manipulation of nature.
Moreover, as a conceptual framework, the mechanical order
had associated with it a framework of values based on
(masculine) power, fully compatible with the directions
taken by commercial capitalism.
Thomas Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
What are scientific revolutions all about?
1. The community's rejection of a time-honored scientific
theory in favor of another incompatible (or
incommensurable) with it.
2. A shift in the problems available for scientific scrutiny
and the standards of legitimate problem solving.
3. Each involved a transformation of the scientific
imagination and worldview.
4. Each involved heated controversy.
5. Each was followed by a period of “normal science”
6. Examples: Copernicus, Newton, Lavosier, Einstein.
Is there a “Post-normal” science?
'Post-Normal Science', a mode of scientific problem-solving
appropriate to policy issues where facts are uncertain, values
are in dispute, stakes are high and decisions are urgent.
Today’s blogs are becoming the equivalent of printing which
empowered the Protestant revolution against the Church.
Scientific elites vs. the extended “peer-to-peer” community with
its new technological base,” the internet.
Wikipedia, post-normal science
Opens more of science to the democratic process.
Problems: Critics are not usually researchers.
Junk science.
Conspiracy theorists.
Needed: ethics in science, open data, and reform of peer review.