Development of Modern Science in Europe
Questions! Where did I come from? Why is the sky blue? How do the trees produce fruit? Ever since man looked around his environment and tried to figure out the things that was going on around him he'd ask questions. Mankind has always wanted to understand the world around him.
For centuries mankind had used a belief system of supernatural powers, gods and goddesses and eventually an all-powerful God to explain the world around him. And for a while supernatural explanations of how nature worked was enough. But by the 16th century man had started to explore the workings of the world around him. This exploration of nature and how it relates to mankind is called science. This time of exploration from the 16th century is called the Scientific Revolution.
We will take a look at the development of science throughout the periods of the first scientific revolution. We will take a look at the men who played a significant part in the development of science and how that development affected mankind's outlook on the universe in which he lived. We will discuss the ideas of Galileo, Bacon and Marquis de Condorcet and see how their ideas affected society.
In order to understand how revolutionary the ideas of the Scientific Revolution where we need to understand theories of the universe that preceded 1500's called the Aristotelian concept of the universe. According to this theory all matter was arranged in a hierarchical order according to its quality. The higher up the order that the matter was placed the better the quality of that matter. The Christian church adapted the principal with, of course, God being at the top. The closer to the top that the object was, the closer to God it ...
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...e and contagious diseases to disappear as well list diseases caused by climate,
nourishment and certain vocations."
The men that we have discussed felt that it was important to open our eyes and discover the world around us and try and answer the many questions that human beings ask about our universe, through observation, experimentation and deductive reasoning. That all mankind had the ability to reason and make a better life for themselves here on earth through progress, and scientific inventions. The Scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment was just the beginning of a journey that mankind would take toward a world of better medicine, more and healthier food, shorter work hours and longer lives. And maybe, if we use a little more reason and common sense we can achieve the goal of The Marquis de Condorcet and live in that peaceful and perfect world.
Previously, the Catholic Church had professed to the entire medieval world that faith in God was absolute. Indeed, the medieval world was truly an age of faith. As such, ideas that went against the teachings of God were ignored and their preachers subsequently murdered. After the Crusades brought back old Aristotelian learning from the middle east, all this changed. Advances in Geography were made with the introduction of Ptolemaic Geography. More importantly than the rediscovery of ancient geography was the beginning of skepticism in Western Europe. No longer would the Church's word be taken on faith. The idea that the physical world could be understood through the use of empiricism-analytical thought-was also introduced. René Descartes even began to doubt his own existence until coming to the conclusion: "I think, therefore, I am." In this age we see the rise of deism. No longer is a priest's cryptic and dogmatic preachings the sole explanation for weather, personal failure, and scientific phenomena such as electricity. With deis...
Wolf, A. A History of Science, Technology and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Vol. 2. New York: Harper, 1959.
Henry, John. (2001). The scientific revolution and the origins of modern science. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Publishing
In conclusion, the Scientific Revolution helped influence the great thinkers of the Enlightenment and the future progress of mankind. Paine, Franklin, and Condorcet all used reason and logic when examining the former tyrannies of religion and the teachings of the middle ages. They removed the dogma and doctrine and extracted what was good and valuable for the teaching and improvement of mankind.
The Enlightenment had its roots in the scientific and philosophical movements of the 17th century. It was, in large part, a rejection of the faith-based medieval world view for a way of thought based on structured inquiry and scientific understanding. It stressed individualism, and it rejected the church's control of the secular activities of men. Among the movement's luminaries were Descartes, Newton, and Locke. They, among others, stressed the individual's use of reason to explain and understand the world about himself in all of its aspects. Important principles of the Enlightenment included the use of science to examine all aspects of life (this was labeled "reason"),...
The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the 17th and 18th centuries. It concentrated on reason, logic, and freedom over blind faith. During this time more and more people reject absolute authority of the church and state. The driving force of the enlightenment across Europe and England came from a small group of thinkers and writers that are known today as “philosophes.” The English Enlightenment differed from other European countries, like France. England had many discoveries in manufacturing, literature, plays, and landscaping, but the advances in sciences were probably one of the important. This period of time was coined as the Scientific Revolution. The most
The Scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries changed the way that people views the world. Scientific philosophers such as Galileo and Descartes threw out the old teachings of the church and challenged them with new ways of thinking. These men sought to prove that rational thought could prove the existence of God. They also challenged that it was an understanding of a series of rational thoughts, not faith, would bring understanding of how the world worked. Traditional ways of thinking were ultimately challenged by logical and sensible rationale.
...but it also significantly altered the scientific community. People such as Francis Bacon, John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and many more, helped to spread ideals that would become a crucial turning point in the thought process of people during the seventeenth century. Without the important scientific and intellectual advances that occurred during the Enlightenment period, countless other important events and inventions that were sparked by them would also be nonexistent. There is no way of telling how history’s course would be different had the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment not occurred, but the fact is that they did. And what is known is that religion, science, government and politics, beliefs, relations between humans, society, and human perspective were all significantly altered by the wide-ranging metamorphoses inspired by these movements.
The struggle for power and balance between the young, developing academies and the formidable Church affected the lives of prominent Italian Scientists, such as Copernicus and Galileo, during the Scientific Revolution
5. Burns, William E. Science in the Enlightenment: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Print.
The revolution brought about many radical changes and ideas that helped to strengthen it and the scientists that helped to bring it about became significant persons in history. "The emergence of a scientific community is one of the distinguishing marks of the Scientific Revolution."2 It was this form of community that gave a foundation for open thinking and observing throughout the sixteenth century and through twenty-first century. It was the first revolution that had more of a dedication to the ongoing process of science than of a goal to achieve scientific knowledge.3
The changes produced during the Scientific Revolution were not rapid but developed slowly and in an experimental way. Although its effects were highly influential, the forerunners Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes only had a few hundred followers. Each pioneered unique ideas that challenged the current views of human beingsí relationship with nature. With the backing of empirical observation and mathematical proof, these ideas slowly gained acceptance. As a result, the operation of society, along with prior grounds for faith were reconsidered. Their ideas promoted change and reform for humansí well-being on earth.
Science and technology in the middle ages flourished because of the need of inventions to make life easier. In Europe, from the 5th century to the 16th century there was a radical change in the inventions made. It was between the fall of the Western Roman empire and the early modern era. This was a time for exploration in new ideas and ways of doing things. Europe invented many things for wars, time-keeping, and for everyday use. These inventions may be still used today. They range from huge mortar to a small set of eyeglasses. Europeans found that life was easier with new better inventions to help them in everything. There are a series of inventions about war because of nearby wars with neighboring civilizations or even within Europe.
In addition to this, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, which had always held that the motion of the universe was controlled by God, was now questioned by many. In response, this set the Roman Catholic Church as a natural opponent of the Scientific Revolution. This was because the new information contradicted the Church’s world view not because of opposition to new ideas or scientific exploration itself. Fortunately, the Scientific Revolution happened moderately over approximately a one hundred and fifty year period so society and the Church had time to adjust to the revolutionary new thoughts.
Over the course of the years, society has been reformed by new ideas of science. We learn more and more about global warming, outer space, and technology. However, this pattern of gaining knowledge did not pick up significantly until the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution started, which concerned the fields of astronomy, mechanics, and medicine. These new scientists used math and observations strongly contradicting religious thought at the time, which was dependent on the Aristotelian-Ptolemy theory. However, astronomers like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton accepted the heliocentric theory. Astronomical findings of the Scientific Revolution disproved the fact that humans were the center of everything, ultimately causing people to question theology’s role in science and sparking the idea that people were capable of reasoning for themselves.