Section 1- The Scientific Revolution



Medieval scientists, know as “natural philosophers,” did not make observations of the world and nature so much as rely on ancient authorities, such as Aristotle, for their scientific knowledge.
Changes in the 1400s & 1500s caused society to adapt to new views and methods.



Renaissance humanists studied the works of Ptolemy, Archimedes, Plato, among others.
They learned that some ancient thinkers disagreed with Aristotle.

Problems leading to the Revolution




Calculating how much a ship could hold.
Observing space.
Printing copies
No advancements in math.




The study of math in the Renaissance contributed to the achievements in the
16 th and 17 th centuries.
Great scientists believed that the secrets of nature were written in the language of mathematics.
The following intellectuals developed new theories that became the foundation of the Scientific Revolution.




He was antiquity’s greatest astronomer.
Medieval philosopher’s constructed a geocentric model of the universe known as the Ptolemaic system.
It was a series of concentric spheres with a motionless Earth in the middle.




Believed that planets are in different, crystal-like spheres.
They rotate, which accounts for movements of other heavenly bodies.
Beyond the tenth sphere is Heaven, where God and all the saved souls reside.




Polishman who published, On the
Reolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, in 1543.
Believed his heliocentric system was more accurate than the Ptolemiac System.
Argued that all planets revolved around the sun, the moon revolved around the
Earth, and the Earth rotated on its axis.

Copernicun System (heliocentric)





Helped destroy the Ptolemiac System.
Confirmed the sun was the center of the universe.
Tracked the elliptical orbits of planets.
(Kepler’s First Law)
Ptolemy insisted the orbits were circular.

Kepler’s 1 st Law of Planetary Motion






Italian which answered one of the two remaining questions.
What are planets made of?
1 st to make regular observations with a telescope.
Saw mountains on the Moon and the 4 moons orbiting Jupiter.
Ptolemy said planets were orbs of light,
Galileo said they were material.




Church ordered him to abandon the new system because it contradicted that of the
Church.
In the new system, heavens were not spiritual but material, and God was no longer in a specific place.
Most astronomers believed the new concept anyway.




Englishman responded to the 2 nd question.
What explains motion in the universe?
Published his views in Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy, also known as the Principia.





Defined the 3 laws of motion
Centered around the Universal Law of
Gravitation: every object in the universe is attracted to every other object by a force called gravity.
This explained why planets did not go off in a straight line.
Universe was now sees as a huge, regulated, uniform machine.

Breakthroughs in Medicine &
Chemistry

Late Middle Ages, medicine was dominated by the teachings of Galen.

His views were often wrong because he used animals, not people, for dissection.





Published On the Fabric of the Human Body
(1543)
Dissected humans at the University of
Padua.
Presented an accurate view of individual organs and the general structure of the body.
However, he thought humans had 2 kinds of blood.




Published On the Motion of the Heart and
Blood (1628)
Showed the heart, not the liver as Galen thought, was the beginning point of circulation.
Also showed that blood makes a complete circuit through the body.

Robert Boyle & Antoine Lavoisier



Chemist who formulated Boyle’s Law about gases.
The volume of a gas varies with pressure exerted on it.
Antoine Lavoisier, the founder of modern chemistry, invented a system of naming the chemicals.

Women & the Origins of Modern
Science

The most prominent woman in science was Margaret Cavendish.



She criticized the belief that humans, through science, were the masters of nature in her work Observations Upon
Experimental Philosophy.
Maria Winkelmann was the most famous astronomer.
She assisted her husband and helped discover a comet.







French philosopher Rene Descartes reflected the Western view of humankind.
Wrote Discourse on Method (1637) and asserts that he can rationally be sure of only one thing – his own existence.
He would only accept those things that his reason said were true.
“I think, therefore I am”
Separated mind and matter
Father of modern rationalism



Philospher Francis Bacon was most responsible for the Scientific Method.
Emphasized arriving at conclusions about nature using inductive reasoning, or making generalizations from particular observations and experiments organized to test hypotheses.


Believed science was to give human kind new discoveries and to serve human purposes by conquering “nature in action.”

Next: The Enlightenment