Science and the Enlightenment
Dr Claudia Stein
Galilei Galilei defending himself at his trial in 1633
Assumptions about ‘science’ today:
• ‘science’ = natural science
• Production of science through the empirical method
• The value of scientific results: objective and neutral
• Scientific knowledge is more truthful knowledge than knowledge produced,
for example, in the humanities
Practical consequences of such assumptions/beliefs
Science or ‘scientia’:
The word ‘science’ or lat. scientia, in its original
sense means a body of systematic or orderly
thinking about a determinate subject-matter.
Therefore, history, theology, music, biology,
physics etc. are all ‘sciences’ – and still are
considered ‘sciences’ in most of the European
languages (NOT in English though)
The ‘Lunar Society’ at Birmingham
Members: Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood,
Joseph Priestley, and many others
Natural Philosophy:
refers to systematic knowledge of all aspects of
the physical world, including living things. The early
modern period routinely understood the physical world
as God’s creations. Thus, natural philosophy concerns
itself with God’s world and is linked to theology.
7
‘I suspect I might be one of the most curious
entrepreneurs alive today, in that most
entrepreneurs just specialize in one area,
because I keep on - you know, I'll fly in America
on - have done for many years on dirty, horrible,
big American carriers, and my curiosity drives me
to think I can do better. "Let's set up Virgin
America." Somebody tells me that 80 per cent of
the species in the ocean have not been
discovered, so I think, well, maybe we should try
to build a submarine to go down to the bottom
of the oceans and explore them…
I love learning, and I just find that my general
motto in life - "Screw it, just do it" - is great fun.
Sometimes we fall flat on our face. Sometimes
we succeed. But I'm learning all the time
because I'm a curious person.’
Sir Richard Branson, the most curious man on
earth (according to google)
Parable of the prodigal son, Luke 15
curiosity let the younger son to sin against
his father
Francis Bacon, 1561 – 1626) Lord
Chancellor
Allegedly he died due to
experimentation with a frozen
chicken to understand food
preservation (!)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
The Great Instauration (1620)
Novum Organum (1620)
New Atlantis (1627)
Sylva Sylvarum, or Natural History (1627)
‘So as what so ever is not God but parcel of the
world, he hath fitted it for the comprehension of
man's mind, if man will open and dilate the
powers of understanding as he may. But yet
evermore it must be remembered that the least
part of the knowledge passed to man by this so
large a charter from God must be subject to that
use for which God hath granted it; which is the
benefit and relief of the state and society of man;
for otherwise all manner of knowledge becometh
malign and serpentine, and therefore as carrying
the quality of the serpent's sting and malice it
maketh the mind of man to swell; ast he Scripture
saith excellently: knowledge bloweth up, but
charity buildeth up.’
‘…that they consider what are the
true ends of knowledge, and that
they seek it not either for pleasure of
the mind, or for contention or for
superiority to others, or for profit, or
fame, or power, or any of these
inferior things; but for the benefit
and use of life; and that they perfect
and govern it in charity.’
Empiricism:
a philosophical stance that
holds that all knowledge is rooted in the
senses and the experience that they
provide
Bacon is often called the ‘father’ of
empiricism
Some of his writings:
On the heavens
On sleep and sleeplessness
On animals
On the soul
Virtues and vices
Meteorology
Metaphysics
On Longlivity and Shortness of Life
Poetics
Generation and Corruption
And many, many more …
Aristotle, 384 BC – 322 BC
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 cannonical texts (such as those of
Aristotle) in the making of arguments. A ‘scholastic’ is a practitioner of that
style of thinking.
Syllogism: the central technical device in formal logic in the universities of the
Middle Ages and early modern period, derived from Aristotle’s writings on
logic, and consisting of a ‘major premises’ (all As are B), a ‘minor premise’ (C is A),
And a ‘conclusion’ (therefore C is B)
Example:
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore Socrates is mortal
See for all this: Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its
Ambition (2001,2009)
What did scholastic natural philosophers do?
• Collecting and cataloguing the wonders of God’s creation – all the things we
have forgotten due to the fall
• To explain why things were the way they were; they were not about ‘discovery’
But about the question. Why did God make things the way they are?
The method is ‘deductive’ – it moves from what is known as universally true to why a
natural thing behaves in the way it does
Bacon wished to changes this system of thinking and suggested his empirical
method (inductive). We move from individual sense experience to universal
claims.
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"
first published in 1687, laid the foundations for
classical mechanics.
Nature proceeds according to laws
Newton-mania in the 18th century
Experimentation and mathematics become
Foundations for the investigations of science
Experimentation as a popular pursuit
Isaac Newton, 1642-1727)
Mesmermism: a theory
which assumed a natural
energetic transference
that occurred between all
animated and inanimate
objects, so-called animal
magnetism.
His theory attracted a
wide following between
about 1780 and 1850 all
over Europe.
Franz Anton Mesmer, 1743-1815
Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690; 1694)
presents a new idea about human nature and
the self which becomes the basis for theories abou
thinking about self and mind during the 18th centu
Based on Thomas Hobbes and his ideas on human
reasoning in Leviathan (1651) –
Presents idea that sense perception is key to
understanding human behavior
John Locke 1632-1704,
Central claim:
Mind is a ‘blank slate’ at birth; thus a persons
character, his or her self, is not innate but ‘made’
throughout life due to ongoing sense perception; mind
is in constant development
On the heavens
On sleep and sleeplessness
On animals
On the soul
Virtues and vices
Metereology
Metaphysics
On Longlivity and Shortness of Life
Poetics
In Generation and Corruption
And so on……..
Aristotle, 384 BC – 322 BC
John Ray, 1625-1705
Scientific Revolution: a term
coined by historians to describe a
period in European history
(ca.1500-1720) when new practices
and theories of investigating nature
came into being which challenged
the old Aristotelian world view.
Typical ‘heroes’ of the ‘Scientific
Revolution are: Copernicus,
Andreas Vesalius, Galileo Galilei,
Rene Descartes, William Harvey,
and Isaac Newton.
1. the use of mathematics and
measurements to give precise
determinations of how the world and its
parts work (e.g. mechanical philosophy)
cogito, ergo, sum -- I think, therefore I am
Cartesianism: a strain of philosophy owing its
central tenets to René Descartes.
mechanical philosophy: a general explanation of the
world that treated its phenomenon as due to nothing
But pieces of inert matter interacting with another by
virtue of their shapes, sizes, and motions.
René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
Passions of the Soul, 1649
Description of the Human Body, 1647
The body as a machine
mind/body dualism
2. the use of observation, experience, and
where necessary artificially constructed
experiments, to gain understanding of
nature.
De Motu Cordis – On the Motion of the Heart, 1628
William Harvey, 1578-1657
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Newton
Philosophiae naturalis
principia mathematica, (1687)
(Mathematical principles of
natural philosophy)
Vitalism: embraces the idea that living organisms are
fundamentally different from non-living entities because
they contain some non-physical element or are governed by
different principles than are inanimate things.
Such vital principles can be referred to as the ‘vital spark,
‘energy’ or ‘élan vital’, ’life force’ etc. They are often related
to the soul.
Georg Stahl (1659?-1734)
Theorie media vera
(True theory of medicine), 1708
Fundamenta chymiae dogmaticae
et experimentalis
(Foundation of dogmatic and
experimental chemistry), 1723
A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery in which a Lamp is
put in Place of the Sun
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1798)
An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797)