Chapter 6
Nicolaus Copernicus
a Polish priest and astronomer who, in the last year of his life, published his book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which rejected the Ptolemaic view and introduced a new perspective of the universe in which the sun was the center and the Earth revolved around it. 1473 - 1543, Poland. His views were the revolution of modern astronomy. Though most rejected his ideas, a curious few began to observe the skies and realized that he was right. His sun-centered universe became the model for all astronomers observing the sky, and the basis of much conflict between the new sciences and contemporary religious thought.
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Copernicus's most influential work. Within it, Copernicus modified the original Ptolemaic view to place the sun at the center of the universe, with the Earth orbiting it in a similar manner to the moon around the Earth. Published in 1543, Poland. This book was highly influential, as it laid the groundwork for many different conflicting views in the 16th century of how the universe was formatted. Those scientists adopting this model found that observations matched the theories suggested, and eventually the world came to accept that it revolved around the sun. Later observations would determine the positions of the other planets and help us, eventually, be able to reach them.
Induction
Francis Bacon's philosophy: induction from empirical evidence. In this theory, Francis Bacon stated that to truly understand the natural world, one would have to first observe carefully and gather substantial evidence. First outlined in Bacon's The Advancement of Learning in 1605. The induction theory was widely accepted in Europe, and supported by many, and later became the groundwork of the current scientific method we use today. Rene Descartes's theories would later have significance as well. .
John Locke
the most influential philosopher of the 17th century and an almost exact opposite of Hobbes. In Locke's view, men are naturally sociable, and come into social contracts under their own reason. They instill laws and justice only out of the people's favors. His most famous statement is that men are naturally entitled to "life, liberty, and property.". 1632 - 1704, England. John Locke was extremely influential. His views rejected the Christian original sin, but introduced a new view that he thought came in complete accordance with Christian Scripture. His ideology was adopted by many enlightened thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries, and later on, the United States of America used his principles to help build a Constitution which made the people the ultimate source of power.
Geocentric
refers to the view of the cosmos in which all objects - the sun, the stars, and the planets - revolve around the earth. It was the view of nearly all people until Galileo and Kepler, and many like them, helped show a different view of the cosmos in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is important because it marks the classical views of the old times - Old Regime, one might say - and demonstrates how humanity was able to move past closed thoughts and rely on observations and mathematical mechanics to explain the cosmos.
Method of Rational Deduction
Descartes's greatest work, a new method of scientific observation based more on reasoning from general principle. In this theory, he divided existing things into two categories (similarly to Bacon's view of people) - physical things and mental things. Though he was religious he concluded that god was a spiritual and nonphysical thing and therefore should be eliminated from the study of science. Proposed by Rene Descartes in France in the 1600s. The Descartes model, along with Bacon's, served as one of the most important methods of scientific discovery in the Scientific Revolution. It would later merge with others to form our current scientific model. Many people, especially in France, used the Descartes model to make discoveries.
Explain the development of the scientific method in the 1600s and the impact of scientific thinking on traditional sources of authority.
In the days of Aristotle, it was thought that any theory of the universe and the sciences could be conceived from thought alone, and that observations were unnecessary. It was also thought that most of what there was in the universe was already discovered, and that all there was left was continuous fine-tuning. After the observations of Galileo arose in the 16th-17th centuries, many began to criticize this view. One among them was Francis Bacon, who believed that there were new things to discover, and that observations were necessary to prove theories. He developed the "empirical method," which, among other things, sought to bring about a middle ground of science in which both reasoning and observation were equally important in the study of nature. Years later, Rene Descartes divided reasoning into physical things and mental things - he believed that reason could only be applied to true things, and that nonphysical things fell to the world of speculation. These new views would come as a hard blow to major traditional authorities like the Catholic Church. For years these people believed in the Ptolemaic model and understood truth only from the Bible and the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers, and therefore thought that nothing new could ever be discovered. They rejected Copernicus's theories because they went against what they had known for so long. But eventually, when the truth became overwhelming, these powers either had to adapt to the new sciences or be abolished altogether.
Describe the new astronomy of the 1500 and 1600s and analyze the ways in which it changed scientific thought and methods.
The new astronomy was a huge part of the changing scientific world, as the new theories changed the traditional view of the universe forever. These began with Copernicus, who introduced a new idea that the universe may be heliocentric, or centered on the sun. Most people rejected this idea, but new observations by astronomers like Galileo, Brahe and Kepler eventually proved that it was correct. Now knowing that the universe was completely different than had once been thought, people began to question the traditional 'truth' of the Bible and the church, either changing their views or bluntly ignoring what they saw. Scientists became more reliant on actual, physical data than on the views of others that had no observational backbone. Analysis became a critical part of thought and method in natural philosophy. Ultimately science and religion became separated altogether, because religion relied on older information that could no longer be verified to be true.
How do you explain the phenomena of witchcraft and witch-hunts in an age of scientific enlightenment?.
The significant increase in witch-hunts in the 1400s - 1700s was due to the massive shake-up in the wake of the Reformation and the Age of Religious Wars. As Christians spread to new lands they began to be more aggressive towards traditional medicine men and healers of the small villages scattered across the nation. Christian leaders feared these people would take their control of the lands away, and so began to point to them as followers of the devil, claiming only Christians have the true magic of God. The people now greatly feared these traditional wise ones of the old villages, and they began to be hunted and killed in massive numbers. The reason most witches were women was because men feared that women, especially widows, for a tendency to strike out in their loneliness, and midwives, for whenever there were miscarriages in the birth of children. Widespread fear evolved from simple dislike, and it could be said that the entirety of the witch-hunts were just a mask for political and basic reasons by men to kill women.
What were the differences between the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke? How did each view human nature?.
Thomas Hobbes thought of humans in a frankly dark way. His philosophy was that men were constantly locked in a war of "every man against every man." He thought there were no 'natural' rights and that the only way humans preserved themselves was to agree to a mutual social contract under a powerful governing body, like a Parliament, of unlimited and widespread power. John Locke was practically Hobbes's moral opposite in that he believed in a very different natural state. Like the ancients such as Aristotle, he believed living beings were naturally sociable, and that they organized into social contracts only out of their own consent. He believed that governments must be both responsible for and responsive to the governed. In the views that would someday be the foundation of America, he said that governments could only run if their ultimate and total power was found in the people. He said that people are naturally entitled to life, liberty, and property, and that all people have a say in the actions and processes of their government. In Locke's perfect nation, any major decision would be decided by the people in a 2/3 rule.
Tycho Brahe
a Danish astronomer who, while searching to prove the views of Ptolemy, gathered the astronomical data needed for Kepler to prove the Copernican heliocentric view. 1546 - 1601, Denmark. Brahe was important not because of his personal views, but because of the vast data he gathered during his studies. Brahe carefully analyzed each and every motion of the planets and stars, and eventually, his assistant Kepler would piece together these observations and prove a heliocentric universe. So thanks, Brahe, for finding the data we needed to prove you were completely wrong.
Johannes Kepler
a German astronomer and the assistant of Brahe. After Brahe's death, Kepler took up his mantle and studied his observations, and made the shocking discovery that they perfectly matched Copernicus's theories of a sun-centered universe. 1571 - 1630, Germany. Kepler was influential because he put the pieces together with Brahe's observations and Copernicus's views. He proved using valid, tangible and mathematical data that the planet Earth, and all of the other planets, do indeed orbit the sun. Kepler also showed that these orbits were elliptical. Kepler's laws about gravitational motion were an influence to the work of Isaac Newton years later.
Francis Bacon
a lawyer, royal official, and author who developed a new fashion of scientific study. His new scientific method outlined that the correct way to study was not to simply mentally theorize in the manner of Aristotle, and not to only observe as with Galileo, but instead pursue a middle ground of both observation and careful thought. He urged for men of thought to throw out the traditional wisdom of the ancients and instead seek to expand the pursuit of knowledge. 1561 - 1626, England. Bacon's scientific method was widely used among natural philosophers, and laid out the basic value of scientific thought and observation that all good scientists soon came to incorporate.
Blaise Pascal
a mathematician and physical scientist who formulated many views about the new sciences and religion. He believed that reason was not enough to determine human fate and so did not agree with the atheists and deists of his age. He stated that it is better to believe in God and have him turn out not to be real than to not believe in him and have him turn out to be real. He worked to strengthen religious belief. 1623 - 1662, France. Pascal's teachings would become widely regarded in the religious world and became a major contradiction of science. Pascal emphasized "learned ignorance" and therefore practically eliminated reason and observation from the question of the existence of God. .
Margaret Cavendish
a notable female scientist who made significant contributions to the Scientific Revolution. Her marriage and education helped bring her in contact with many natural philosophers who expanded her knowledge even farther. She questioned the views of Hobbes and Descartes and the current scientific fascination with observation of nature and not philosophy. 1623 - 1673, England. Cavendish was important because she was one of the only women in the seventeenth century to have, at least for some time, the free ability to contribute to scientific advances. She was an early example of women making great contributions to science and philosophy.
Thomas Hobbes
a scientific philosopher whose views on humanity were quite dark. He had a philosophy that men are naturally arrogant, and that life is a constant war of "man-against-man," and that the only way to fix this would be to join in a strict social contract tightly ruled by a recognized sovereign. 1578 - 1657, England. Thomas Hobbes's views on the world of man brought much conflict - nearly everyone rejected his views for their own individual reasons. For this reason, he did not have any immediate preside, but in the late 1600s his thoughts would later become regarded.
Sir Isaac Newton
an English physicist and probably the most influential of all scientists during the Scientific Revolution. His first work, the Principia Mathematica, laid out new observations of the universe and suggested that gravitation is universal. Newton developed three laws of his new gravitational theory that helped astronomers forever in determining the position and motions of the planets. He developed the mathematical system calculus to accompany his new theories. Newton also experimented with optics and discovered that the colors of the rainbow can be made by separating white light in a prism. 1642 - 1727, England. Isaac Newton's theories of gravity laid the groundwork for observations of the sky for years to come. Astronomers could now accurately pinpoint the locations of the planets and stars, and soon began to study their actual nature in a science which would one day come to be known as astrophysics. Studies of the sky began anew, and unlike the theories of Galileo and Copernicus, Newton's theories spread very rapidly and were openly accepted by many people.
Galileo Galilei
an Italian mathematician who, after acquiring an early telescope prototype, looked to the stars and discovered that Jupiter had its own moons, and with other observations, was able to theorize that Copernicus was right and that the sun was the center. His initial release of his theory was rejected by the Church, and therefore Galileo agreed to abstain from support of Copernican theories, but years later he resurfaced and advocated them again. He was condemned and sentenced to house arrest for years to come. 1564 - 1642. Galileo's observations would later come into great prominence. From his theories it was later concluded that the sun is the center of the (solar system), and his observations were part of what proved it. Galileo laid the groundwork for the theories of gravitation proposed by Isaac Newton.
Ptolemaic system
the classic mathematical observation of the sky derived from the teachings of Aristotle and the book Almagest by Ptolemy. It was the system most often used during the Medieval Era to explain the sky. It focused on a geocentric outlook that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the stars and planets were rotating spheres high above. This was useful to Christians as it left room for God and Hell outside of the star sphere. Created in the early 1st millennium, used throughout the medieval era until the days of Galileo. It was strongly voiced by Roman Catholic and contemporary authorities for a long time, and so it became a challenge for early astronomers to spread influence of their new ideas and discoveries.
Rene Descartes
the developer of the theory of rational deduction. He was a mathematician and philosopher and an associate of many royal parties. 1632 - 1654. Descartes was important because his theories of rational deduction revised and rationalized the scientific theories proposed by Francis Bacon. See "Deduction" for details.
Heliocentric views
were those suggesting the sun was the center of the universe. Introduced by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler later worked to prove these theories, and they became the grounds behind Isaac Newton's work in the 16th century. The heliocentric view began in the 1500s with Copernicus and was later modified throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The heliocentric view, as mentioned now three times, changed greatly the way scientists analyzed the planets. It was also important because it brought up much controversy, causing conflict between the modern sciences and older Ptolemaic views that most people in Europe followed.