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Something world-changing happened in Europe between 1500 and 1700, and it is still shaping how we think today. This lecture from Academy of Ideas surveys the Scientific Revolution — the slow overthrow of Aristotle’s universe and the rise of mathematics as the language of nature. It follows the printing press, the telescope, and the shift from qualities to quantities. Most importantly, it shows how this era planted a new idea in the modern mind: that the future could be better than the past — the birth of the doctrine of progress.
Full Video Transcript
Introduction to the Scientific Revolution.
The Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries was an extremely formative period in the history of human civilization.
But surprisingly, given its significance in shaping modern day science, there is a great deal of misunderstanding concerning what took place over those few centuries in Europe.
In this lecture we will overview some of the general characteristics of the Scientific Revolution, and then look at how science changed during this period,
concentrating on the movement away from the Aristotelian view of nature, and the
accompanied increase in the use of mathematics to describe the workings of
nature. We will also discuss the famous historian Herbert Butterfield’s
influential views on the impact of the Scientific Revolution. It is important to
emphasize that the Scientific Revolution did not mark the birth of science.
Instead, the origins of science reach back thousands of years to the ancient
civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It should also be noted that the term
science did not gain its modern meaning until the 19th century. Prior to that
time, and thus during the scientific revolution, the term natural philosophy
or philosophy of nature was used to designate what today we would call
science. Natural philosophy is a term with roots stretching back to Aristotle
in ancient Greece. Ancient and medieval scholars used the term to signify
investigations into the natural world and the material causes of natural
phenomena. Natural philosophy included, among others, the disciplines we call
chemistry, physics, biology, physiology, and meteorology. However, interestingly,
ancient and medieval scholars saw the disciplines of mathematics and medicine
as being outside the domain of natural philosophy. It was not until the
scientific revolution that mathematics was seen as a proper, and in many cases
integral tool for describing nature. The scientific revolution took place in
Europe over the years 1500 to 1700, and was a period which saw remarkable
advances in virtually all areas of science. Some mark the beginning of it in
a somewhat arbitrary manner, as coinciding with Nicolaus Copernicus’s
development of the heliocentric or sun-centered universe, a theory he put
forth in his book on the revolutions of the celestial spheres, which was
published around the time of his death in 1543. While there were many factors
contributing to the remarkable growth in science at this time, the influence of
the Renaissance is often seen as one of the most important. The Renaissance, which
began around the 14th century, was a period in European history of great
cultural and scholarly development. This period saw the invention of the movable
printing press, the exploration of the New World, and the rise of the scholarly
movement known as Renaissance Humanism. Humanist scholars were very interested
in the works of ancient philosophers and were responsible for the rediscovery and
translation of hundreds of works by ancient scholars, including many of
Plato’s dialogues. Humanist scholars also translated many ancient works on
mathematics, works which were to have a great influence on the philosophers of
the scientific revolution. While the scientific revolution began in the
16th century, the majority of the major achievements were seen in the 17th century.
This was the time which saw the work of such giants as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler,
René Descartes, and Isaac Newton, to name but a few.
The 17th century also saw widespread abandonment of Aristotelian natural philosophy, which
up until the time was the most influential natural philosophical system the world had
ever seen.
To understand why the abandonment of Aristotle’s system is seen as such a momentous event in
the history of science, it will be beneficial to briefly examine the impact it had on the
natural philosophy of the Middle Ages.
Soon after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Aristotle’s works
on natural philosophy became largely lost to the Latin West.
However, beginning in the early 12th century a great translation movement commenced, which
saw the reintroduction into Europe of many ancient Greek texts from
Arabic and Byzantine sources. Included among these were many of
Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy. Aristotle soon came to be the most
influential ancient philosopher of the Middle Ages. Dante,
the Italian poet who was born in the 13th century, referred to Aristotle
as the master of those who know, while to many Christian theologians he was simply
known as
Theologians such as St. Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated the Aristotelian
philosophy with Christian theology in the 13th century to help develop what was to become
known as scholasticism, a system or method of thought which was to dominate many European
universities well into the 17th century.
In fact, many of the giants of the scientific revolution including Descartes, Galileo, and
Pierre Gassendi were educated in the scholastic method, a method whose downfall they contributed
to.
The Aristotelian system was extremely comprehensive, which was one reason for its endurance.
However, many elements of it were challenged during the scientific revolution.
A good example of one aspect which faced many challenges was Aristotle’s view of the cosmos.
His view of the cosmos was to face strong challenges by astronomers such as Copernicus,
Kepler, Galileo, and Newton in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The works of these men finally secured the abandonment of the geocentric or earth-centered
universe, a view Aristotle favored, and the adoption of a heliocentric or sun-centered
universe.
Aristotle’s geostatic view of the universe, one in which the earth remained stationary,
was also abandoned in favor of geokineticism, geokineticism being the claim that the earth
exhibits motion, both diurnal motion on its axis and annual motion around the Sun.
The heliocentric and geokinetic hypotheses were put forth by Copernicus in his work on
the revolutions of the celestial spheres in the 16th century, but it was not until the
further work by men such as Galileo and Newton in the 17th century that these views became
increasingly accepted.
Aristotle also emphasized the division of the cosmos into two realms, but this view
was also largely relinquished by the end of the scientific revolution.
These two realms which the universe was supposedly divided into were the terrestrial realm and
celestial realm.
The terrestrial realm, according to Aristotle, was the region below the moon and included
the earth.
This realm was made up of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, and characterized
by change.
The celestial realm, on the other hand, the region above the moon, included all the stars
and planets, and was seen as unchanging and composed of a fifth element.
However, with the growing use of the telescope during the scientific revolution, astronomers
found increasing evidence that countered Aristotle’s claim that the celestial realm was unchanging.
The scientific revolution also saw a decline in emphasis on qualities, a marking feature
of Aristotle’s natural philosophy, to an emphasis on quantity. To make the distinction
between quantity and quality clear, a good analogy is to think of the different ways
one could describe a tree. As a description, one could offer the tree’s qualities, such
as its color, texture, or shape. Or alternatively, one could describe the tree using quantities,
such as its weight, height, the length of its branches, the number of leaves it has,
so on. During the scientific revolution, natural philosophers became increasingly concerned
with using quantity to describe nature, and this emphasis on quantity went hand in hand
with the growing role of mathematics in natural philosophy. As we mentioned at the beginning
of the lecture, mathematics was for a long time seen as outside the realm of natural
philosophy, but philosophers such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton increasingly made
use of mathematics in their natural philosophical works.
Galileo probably uttered the most famous statement on the role of mathematics for understanding
the natural world when he stated,
This grand book, I mean the universe, is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters
are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible
to understand a single word of it.
The philosophical system which largely came to supplant the Aristotelian worldview and
emphasized quantity over quality is called the Mechanical Philosophy.
John Henry nicely explains the basic tenets of the Mechanical Philosophy in his book The
Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science.
All phenomena were to be explained in terms of concepts employed in the mathematical discipline
of mechanics .
The mechanical philosophy saw the workings of the natural world by analogy with machinery.
Change was brought about by and could be explained in terms of the intermeshings of bodies, like
cogwheels in a clock.
The move away from Aristotelian natural philosophy, the increased use of mathematics to describe
the natural world, and the rise of the mechanical philosophy were all very significant for the
future development of science.
The changes were seen as so significant by the famous 20th century British historian
Herbert Butterfield, that as Kenneth McIntyre says in his book
Herbert Butterfield, History, Providence, and Skeptical Politics,
according to Butterfield, the two most significant intellectual events of the
modern period
are the emergence in the 17th century of the scientific worldview
and the emergence in the 19th century of modern historical consciousness.
Butterfield also suggested that the scientific revolution
led to the emergence of a new belief which now characterizes the way modern
humans look at the future of human civilization, this being the belief in the doctrine of progress.
Prior to the 18th century the quality of life from generation to generation stayed largely
the same.
However, ever since the theoretical advances achieved during the scientific revolution
began to see practical uses in the form of new technologies, living standards have increased
at a dramatic pace.
This has led to the idea that humans have entered a new stage of development, one in
which continued scientific advances will lead to unending social and cultural progress.
This idea of unending and inevitable progress is today accepted unquestioningly by many.
However, belief in a doctrine of progress was absent prior to the scientific revolution.
So to conclude, while the scientific revolution was not the period which saw the birth of
science, or the first period to experience significant scientific advance, it was a period
which saw remarkable individual achievements in natural philosophy by men who are now viewed
as giants of the field.
It was also the period which saw the overthrow of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and an
increase in the use of mathematics to describe the natural world.
These two changes have undoubtedly had a remarkable impact on the development of science up until
the present day.
And along with the many other changes to science which took place in the 17th century, some
Some have come to view the scientific revolution as one of the most formative periods in the
history of human civilization.
Source: Academy of Ideas