Basic II
1500-1720
Scientific Revolution
1. Introduction: Dr. Faustus’s evil deal
a) The notion of the “Scientific revolution”: meaning and history
b) Scholasticism
c) Aristotelian philosophy and its idea of the cosmos
2. Scientific Renaissance in the sixteenth century: Renewing ancient wisdom
a) Nicolaus Copernicus
b) Andreas Vesalius
3. Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century: Breaking with the past
a) René Descartes (1596-1650): ”I know therefore I am”
b) William Harvey: the role of experiment
c) Isaac Newton: perfecting mechanical philosophy
4. Conclusion: restructuring the universe (1500-1720)
Glossary of major terms and names:
(chosen from Dear, Peter: Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and its
Ambition, 1500-1700 (London: Palgrave, 2001). You will find there many more useful
explanations! Have a look
Aether: originally, the Aristotelian matter composing the heavens.
Almagest: Ptolemy’s important work that defined astronomy in the Islamic world and the
Christian Europe until Copernicus.
Aristotle: (384-322 BC): Greek philosopher, of enormous importance for medieval and early
modern universities, who stressed the senses as the source of knowledge.
Aristotelianism: a style of philosophy based in the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle, and incorporating some of the central elements of his approach to knowledge.
Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037): Arabic medical writer and commentator on Aristotle.
Cartesianism: a strain of philosophy owing its central tenets to René Descartes. Descartes’s
main doctrine as discussed in the seventeenth century concerned his mechanistic explanations
of physical phenomena as well as his arguments for seperability of the human mind from
body.
Cartesian dualism: Descartes' position that the mind and body are entirely distinct kinds of
thing.
Contextualism: modern historiographical term used to designate attempts to understand the
history of ideas by reference to the social and political context in which those ideas were
promoted.
Copernicanism: Copernicus’s doctrine that the earth orbits around a stationary sun once a
year or an adherence to the geometrical models given in Copernicus’s De revolutionibus for
calculation celestial appearances.
Cosimo II de’ Medici (1590-1621): Grand Duke of Tuscany and Florentine patron of
Galileo.
Cosmology: the philosophy of the universe as a whole and its structure ; the physics of the
heavens.
Dioscorides (fl. 50-70): Greek botanist and physician.
Empiricism: a philosophical stance that holds that all knowledge is rooted in the senses and
the experience that they provide.
Experimental philosophy: a natural philosophy that relied on gathering facts from
experimental and observational work.
Galen (129-c.200): Greek physician and anatomist.
Geocentric: centred on the earth; used in astronomy
Heliocentric: Centred on the sun; used in astronomy
Humanism: a cultural movement originating in Italy in the fourteenth century and the
fifteenth century. It consisted of a reverence for an close study of the writings of Greek and
Roman antiquity, and promoted attempts at the emulation of ancient cultural achievements.
Educationally, it involved a stress on the teaching of classical rhetoric.
Materia medica: something from which medical remedies can be prepared.
Mechanical philosophy: a term coined by the English Robert Boyle to describe any general
explanatory system of the physical world that treated its phenomena as due to nothing but
pieces of inert matter interaction with one another by virtue of their shapes, sizes, and
motions.
Natural history: a descriptive account of things in the physical (non-human) world;
particularly, but by no means exclusively, applied to systematic description of plants and
animals.
Natural philosophy: a category, also known as “physics”, approximately equal to Aristotle’s
term physis. It referred to systematic knowledge of all aspects of the physical world, including
living things, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries routinely understood that worked
as being God’s Creation. It therefore possessed strong theological implications.
Newtonianism: a style of philosophy, first developing in England in the 1690s, that claimed
to follow the doctrines of Isaac Newton regarding the right way of learning about nature
(empiricism and induction; mathematics) and the content and structure of the physical
universe.
Philosopher: in the early modern period, a term which much wider scope than nowadays. A
philosopher could be anyone who thought about and sought knowledge in any area; as, natural
philosopher, moral philosopher, political philosopher. Rather like the modern term
“intellectual”.
Physics: a general term for the study of the natural world, whether animate or inanimate. A
practical synonym for “natural philosophy”.
Renaissance: the historical period from 1400 or so to around 1600, depending in the
particular region of Europe. The word means “rebirth”, and refers to the period in which high
culture devoted itself to the recovery of the civilisation of classical antiquity. See also
humanism.
Rheticus, Georgius (1514-1574): German mathematician. Disciple and publicist of
Copernicus.
Royal academy of Sciences (Académie Royale des Sciences): Founded in 1666 in Paris as
an arm of the French state. Its restricted and paid members conducted inquiry into
mathematical studies such as astronomy and navigation, and natural-philosophical
(“physical”) inquiries such as chemistry and zoology.
Royal Society: The Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural knowledge was
established in early 1660s. Its Fellows committed themselves to self-described experimental
and natural historical inquiry, with a stress on the practical usefulness of natural philosophy.
Scholasticism, scholastic: scholasticism is a term applied to the intellectual and academic
style of the medieval universities, a style stressing debate, disputation, and the effective use of
canonical texts (such as those of Aristotle) in the making of arguments. A “scholastic” is a
practitioner of that style.
Scholastic Aristotelianism: Aristotelian philosophy pursued according to scholastic
procedures.