From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
Scientific Revolution was a series of events in which that marked the emergence of
modern science during the
early modern period, when developments in
mathematics,
physics,
astronomy,
biology (including
human anatomy) and
chemistry transformed the views of society about nature.
[1][2][3][4][5][6] The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe towards the end of the
Renaissance period and continued through the late 18th century, influencing the intellectual social movement known as
the Enlightenment. While its dates are debated, the publication in 1543 of
Nicolaus Copernicus's
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often cited as marking the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
The concept of a scientific revolution taking place over an extended period emerged in the eighteenth century in the work of
Jean Sylvain Bailly, who saw a two-stage process of sweeping away the old and establishing the new.
[7] The beginning of the Scientific Revolution, the
Scientific Renaissance,
was focused on the recovery of the knowledge of the ancients; this is
generally considered to have ended in 1632 with publication of
Galileo's
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
[8] The completion of the Scientific Revolution is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of
Isaac Newton's 1687
Principia. The work formulated the
laws of motion and
universal gravitation thereby completing the synthesis of a new cosmology.
[9] By the end of the 18th century, the Scientific Revolution had given way to the "
Age of Reflection."
Introduction
Great advances in science have been termed "revolutions" since the 18th century. In 1747,
Clairaut wrote that "
Newton was said in his own lifetime to have created a revolution".
[10] The word was also used in the preface to
Lavoisier's
1789 work announcing the discovery of oxygen. "Few revolutions in
science have immediately excited so much general notice as the
introduction of the theory of oxygen ... Lavoisier saw his theory
accepted by all the most eminent men of his time, and established over a
great part of Europe within a few years from its first promulgation."
[11]
In the 19th century,
William Whewell described the revolution in
science itself—the
scientific method—that
had taken place in the 15th–16th century. "Among the most conspicuous
of the revolutions which opinions on this subject have undergone, is the
transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind
to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an
unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation
of change and improvement."
[12] This gave rise to the common view of the Scientific Revolution today:
- "A new view of nature emerged, replacing the Greek view that had
dominated science for almost 2,000 years. Science became an autonomous
discipline, distinct from both philosophy and technology and came to be
regarded as having utilitarian goals."[13]
The Scientific Revolution is traditionally assumed to start with the
Copernican Revolution (initiated in 1543) and to be complete in the "grand synthesis" of
Isaac Newton's 1687
Principia. Much of the change of attitude came from
Francis Bacon
whose "confident and emphatic announcement" in the modern progress of
science inspired the creation of scientific societies such as the
Royal Society, and
Galileo who championed
Copernicus and developed the science of motion.
In the 20th century,
Alexandre Koyré introduced the term "scientific revolution", centering his analysis on Galileo. The term was popularized by
Butterfield in his
Origins of Modern Science.
Thomas Kuhn's 1962 work
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions emphasized that different theoretical frameworks—such as
Einstein's
relativity theory and Newton's theory of gravity, which it replaced—cannot be directly compared.
Significance
The
period saw a fundamental transformation in scientific ideas across
mathematics, physics, astronomy, and biology in institutions supporting
scientific investigation and in the more widely held picture of the
universe. The Scientific Revolution led to the establishment of several
modern sciences. In 1984, Joseph Ben-David wrote:
Rapid accumulation of knowledge, which has characterized the
development of science since the 17th century, had never occurred before
that time. The new kind of scientific activity emerged only in a few
countries of Western Europe, and it was restricted to that small area
for about two hundred years. (Since the 19th century, scientific
knowledge has been assimilated by the rest of the world).[14]
Many contemporary writers and modern historians claim that there was a
revolutionary change in world view. In 1611 the English poet,
John Donne, wrote:
[The] new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.[15]
Mid-20th-century historian
Herbert Butterfield was less disconcerted, but nevertheless saw the change as fundamental:
Since that revolution turned the authority in English not only of the
Middle Ages but of the ancient world—since it started not only in the
eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian
physics—it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and
reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes,
mere internal displacements within the system of medieval
Christendom.... [It] looms so large as the real origin both of the
modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary
periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an
encumbrance.[16]
The history professor
Peter Harrison attributes Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution:
historians of science have long known that religious factors played a
significantly positive role in the emergence and persistence of modern
science in the West. Not only were many of the key figures in the rise
of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new
approaches to nature that they pioneered were underpinned in various
ways by religious assumptions. ... Yet, many of the leading figures in
the scientific revolution imagined themselves to be champions of a
science that was more compatible with Christianity than the medieval
ideas about the natural world that they replaced.[17]
Ancient and medieval background
The Scientific Revolution was built upon the foundation of
ancient Greek learning and
science in the Middle Ages, as it had been elaborated and further developed by
Roman/Byzantine science and
medieval Islamic science.
[6] Some scholars have noted a direct tie between "particular aspects of traditional Christianity" and the rise of science.
[18][19] The "
Aristotelian tradition" was still an important intellectual framework in the 17th century, although by that time
natural philosophers had moved away from much of it.
[5] Key scientific ideas dating back to
classical antiquity had changed drastically over the years, and in many cases been discredited.
[5] The ideas that remained, which were transformed fundamentally during the Scientific Revolution, include:
- Aristotle's cosmetics that placed the Earth at the center of a spherical hierarchic cosmos. The terrestrial and celestial regions were made up of different elements which had different kinds of natural movement.
- The terrestrial region, according to Aristotle, consisted of concentric spheres of the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire. All bodies naturally moved in straight lines until they reached the sphere appropriate to their elemental composition—their natural place. All other terrestrial motions were non-natural, or violent.[20][21]
- The celestial region was made up of the fifth element, aether, which was unchanging and moved naturally with uniform circular motion.[22]
In the Aristotelian tradition, astronomical theories sought to explain
the observed irregular motion of celestial objects through the combined
effects of multiple uniform circular motions.[23]
- The Ptolemaic model of planetary motion: based on the geometrical model of Eudoxus of Cnidus, Ptolemy's Almagest,
demonstrated that calculations could compute the exact positions of the
Sun, Moon, stars, and planets in the future and in the past, and showed
how these computational models were derived from astronomical
observations. As such they formed the model for later astronomical
developments. The physical basis for Ptolemaic models invoked layers of spherical shells, though the most complex models were inconsistent with this physical explanation.[24]
It is important to note that ancient precedent existed for
alternative theories and developments which prefigured later discoveries
in the area of physics and mechanics; but in light of the limited
number of works to survive translation in a period when many books were
lost to warfare, such developments remained obscure for centuries and
are traditionally held to have had little effect on the re-discovery of
such phenomena; whereas the invention of the
printing press
made the wide dissemination of such incremental advances of knowledge
commonplace. Meanwhile, however, significant progress in geometry,
mathematics, and astronomy was made in medieval times.
It is also true that many of the important figures of the Scientific Revolution shared in the general
Renaissance respect for ancient learning and cited ancient pedigrees for their innovations.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543),
[25] Galileo Galilei (1564–1642),
[1][2][3][26] Kepler (1571–1630)
[27] and
Newton (1642–1727),
[28] all traced different ancient and medieval ancestries for the
heliocentric system. In the Axioms Scholium of his
Principia, Newton said its axiomatic
three laws of motion were already accepted by mathematicians such as
Huygens (1629–1695), Wallace, Wren and others. While preparing a revised edition of his
Principia, Newton attributed his
law of gravity and his
first law of motion to a range of historical figures.
[28][29]
Despite these qualifications, the standard theory of the history of
the Scientific Revolution claims that the 17th century was a period of
revolutionary scientific changes. Not only were there revolutionary
theoretical and experimental developments, but that even more
importantly, the way in which scientists worked was radically changed.
For instance, although intimations of the concept of
inertia are suggested sporadically in ancient discussion of motion,
[30][31]
the salient point is that Newton's theory differed from ancient
understandings in key ways, such as an external force being a
requirement for violent motion in Aristotle's theory.
[32]
Scientific method
Under
the scientific method as conceived in the 17th century, natural and
artificial circumstances were set aside as a research tradition of
systematic experimentation was slowly accepted by the scientific
community. The philosophy of using an
inductive
approach to obtain knowledge — to abandon assumption and to attempt to
observe with an open mind — was in contrast with the earlier,
Aristotelian approach of
deduction,
by which analysis of known facts produced further understanding. In
practice, many scientists and philosophers believed that a healthy mix
of both was needed — the willingness to question assumptions, yet also
to interpret observations assumed to have some degree of validity.
By the end of the Scientific Revolution the qualitative world of
book-reading philosophers had been changed into a mechanical,
mathematical world to be known through experimental research. Though it
is certainly not true that
Newtonian science was like modern science in all respects, it conceptually resembled ours in many ways. Many of the hallmarks of
modern science,
especially with regard to its institutionalization and
professionalization, did not become standard until the mid-19th century.
Empiricism
The
Aristotelian scientific tradition's primary mode of interacting with
the world was through observation and searching for "natural"
circumstances through reasoning. Coupled with this approach was the
belief that rare events which seemed to contradict theoretical models
were aberrations, telling nothing about nature as it "naturally" was.
During the Scientific Revolution, changing perceptions about the role of
the scientist in respect to nature, the value of evidence, experimental
or observed, led towards a
scientific methodology in which
empiricism played a large, but not absolute, role.
By the start of the Scientific Revolution, empiricism had already
become an important component of science and natural philosophy.
Prior thinkers, including the early 14th century
nominalist philosopher
William of Ockham, had begun the intellectual movement toward empiricism.
[33]
The term British empiricism came into use to describe philosophical differences perceived between two of its founders
Francis Bacon, described as empiricist, and
René Descartes, who was described as a rationalist.
Thomas Hobbes,
George Berkeley, and
David Hume were the philosophy's primary exponents, who developed a sophisticated empirical tradition as the basis of human knowledge.
An influential formulation of empiricism was
John Locke's
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1689), in which he maintained that the only true knowledge that could
be accessible to the human mind was that which was based on experience.
He wrote that the human mind was created as a
tabula rasa, a "blank tablet," upon which sensory impressions were recorded and built up knowledge through a process of reflection.
Baconian science
The philosophical underpinnings of the Scientific Revolution were laid out by
Francis Bacon, who has been called the father of
empiricism.
[34] His works established and popularised
inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the
Baconian method, or simply the
scientific method.
His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural
marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for
science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper
methodology today.
Bacon proposed a great reformation of all process of knowledge for
the advancement of learning divine and human, which he called
Instauratio Magna
(The Great Instauration). For Bacon, this reformation would lead to a
great advancement in science and a progeny of new inventions that would
relieve mankind's miseries and needs. His
Novum Organum
was published in 1620. He argued that man is "the minister and
interpreter of nature", that "knowledge and human power are synonymous",
that "effects are produced by the means of instruments and helps", and
that "man while operating can only apply or withdraw natural bodies;
nature internally performs the rest", and later that "nature can only be
commanded by obeying her".
[35]
Here is an abstract of the philosophy of this work, that by the
knowledge of nature and the using of instruments, man can govern or
direct the natural work of nature to produce definite results.
Therefore, that man, by seeking knowledge of nature, can reach power
over it – and thus reestablish the "Empire of Man over creation", which
had been lost by the Fall together with man's original purity. In this
way, he believed, would mankind be raised above conditions of
helplessness, poverty and misery, while coming into a condition of
peace, prosperity and security.
[36]
For this purpose of obtaining knowledge of and power over nature,
Bacon outlined in this work a new system of logic he believed to be
superior to the old ways of
syllogism,
developing his scientific method, consisting of procedures for
isolating the formal cause of a phenomenon (heat, for example) through
eliminative induction. For him, the philosopher should proceed through
inductive reasoning from
fact to
axiom to
physical law.
Before beginning this induction, though, the enquirer must free his or
her mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the
truth. In particular, he found that philosophy was too preoccupied with
words, particularly discourse and debate, rather than actually observing
the material world: "For while men believe their reason governs words,
in fact, words turn back and reflect their power upon the understanding,
and so render philosophy and science sophistical and inactive."
[37]
Bacon considered that it is of greatest importance to science not to
keep doing intellectual discussions or seeking merely contemplative
aims, but that it should work for the bettering of mankind's life by
bringing forth new inventions, having even stated that "inventions are
also, as it were, new creations and imitations of divine works".
[35][page needed] He explored the far-reaching and world-changing character of inventions, such as the
printing press,
gunpowder and the
compass.
Scientific experimentation
Bacon first described the
experimental method.
There remains simple experience; which, if taken as it comes, is
called accident, if sought for, experiment. The true method of
experience first lights the candle [hypothesis], and then by means of
the candle shows the way [arranges and delimits the experiment];
commencing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested, not
bungling or erratic, and from it deducing axioms [theories], and from
established axioms again new experiments.
—
Francis Bacon. Novum Organum. 1620.[38]
William Gilbert was an early advocate of this method. He passionately rejected both the prevailing
Aristotelian philosophy and the
Scholastic method of university teaching. His book
De Magnete was written in 1600, and he is regarded by some as the father of
electricity and
magnetism.
[39] In this work, he describes many of his experiments with his model Earth called the
terrella. From these experiments, he concluded that the
Earth was itself
magnetic and that this was the reason
compasses point north.
De Magnete was influential not only because of the inherent
interest of its subject matter, but also for the rigorous way in which
Gilbert described his experiments and his rejection of ancient theories
of magnetism.
[40] According to
Thomas Thomson,
"Gilbert['s]... book on magnetism published in 1600, is one of the
finest examples of inductive philosophy that has ever been presented to
the world. It is the more remarkable, because it preceded the
Novum Organum of Bacon, in which the inductive method of philosophizing was first explained."
[41]
Galileo Galilei has been called the "father of modern
observational astronomy",
[42] the "father of modern
physics",
[43][44] the "father of science",
[44][45] and "the Father of Modern Science".
[46] His original contributions to the science of motion were made through an innovative combination of experiment and mathematics.
[47]
On this page
Galileo Galilei first noted the
moons of
Jupiter. Galileo revolutionized the study of the natural world with his rigorous experimental method.
Galileo was one of the first modern thinkers to clearly state that the
laws of nature are mathematical. In
The Assayer
he wrote "Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe ... It
is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are
triangles, circles, and other geometric figures;...."
[48] His mathematical analyses are a further development of a tradition
employed by late scholastic natural philosophers, which Galileo learned
when he studied philosophy.
[49]
He ignored Aristotelianism. In broader terms, his work marked another
step towards the eventual separation of science from both
philosophy
and religion; a major development in human thought. He was often
willing to change his views in accordance with observation. In order to
perform his experiments, Galileo had to set up standards of length and
time, so that measurements made on different days and in different
laboratories could be compared in a reproducible fashion. This provided a
reliable foundation on which to confirm mathematical laws using
inductive reasoning.
Galileo showed an appreciation for the relationship between
mathematics, theoretical physics, and experimental physics. He
understood the
parabola, both in terms of
conic sections and in terms of the
ordinate (y) varying as the square of the
abscissa (x). Galilei further asserted that the parabola was the theoretically ideal
trajectory of a uniformly accelerated projectile in the absence of
friction
and other disturbances. He conceded that there are limits to the
validity of this theory, noting on theoretical grounds that a projectile
trajectory of a size comparable to that of the
Earth could not possibly be a parabola,
[50]
but he nevertheless maintained that for distances up to the range of
the artillery of his day, the deviation of a projectile's trajectory
from a parabola would be only very slight.
[51][52]
Mathematization
Scientific knowledge, according to the Aristotelians, was concerned with establishing true and necessary causes of things.
[53]
To the extent that medieval natural philosophers used mathematical
problems, they limited social studies to theoretical analyses of local
speed and other aspects of life.
[54]
The actual measurement of a physical quantity, and the comparison of
that measurement to a value computed on the basis of theory, was largely
limited to the mathematical disciplines of
astronomy and
optics in Europe.
[55][56]
In the 16th and 17th centuries, European scientists began
increasingly applying quantitative measurements to the measurement of
physical phenomena on the Earth. Galileo maintained strongly that
mathematics provided a kind of necessary certainty that could be
compared to God's: "...with regard to those few [mathematical
propositions] which the human intellect does understand, I believe its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty..."
[57]
Galileo anticipates the concept of a systematic mathematical interpretation of the world in his book
Il Saggiatore:
Philosophy [i.e., physics] is written in this grand book—I mean the
universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be
understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and
interpret the characters in which it is written. It 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; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth.[58]
The mechanical philosophy
Aristotle
recognized four kinds of causes, and where applicable, the most
important of them is the "final cause". The final cause was the aim,
goal, or purpose of some natural process or man-made thing. Until the
Scientific Revolution, it was very natural to see such aims, such as a
child's growth, for example, leading to a mature adult. Intelligence was
assumed only in the purpose of man-made artifacts; it was not
attributed to other animals or to nature.
In "
mechanical philosophy"
no field or action at a distance is permitted, particles or corpuscles
of matter are fundamentally inert. Motion is caused by direct physical
collision. Where natural substances had previously been understood
organically, the mechanical philosophers viewed them as machines.
[59] As a result,
Isaac Newton's theory seemed like some kind of throwback to "spooky action at a distance". According to
Thomas Kuhn, Newton and
Descartes held the
teleological principle that God conserved the amount of motion in the universe:
Gravity, interpreted as an innate attraction between every pair of
particles of matter, was an occult quality in the same sense as the
scholastics' "tendency to fall" had been.... By the mid eighteenth
century that interpretation had been almost universally accepted, and
the result was a genuine reversion (which is not the same as a
retrogression) to a scholastic standard. Innate attractions and
repulsions joined size, shape, position and motion as physically
irreducible primary properties of matter.[60]
Newton had also specifically attributed the inherent power of inertia
to matter, against the mechanist thesis that matter has no inherent
powers. But whereas Newton vehemently denied gravity was an inherent
power of matter, his collaborator
Roger Cotes made gravity also an inherent power of matter, as set out in his famous preface to the
Principia's
1713 second edition which he edited, and contradicted Newton himself.
And it was Cotes's interpretation of gravity rather than Newton's that
came to be accepted.
Institutionalization
The first moves towards the institutionalization of scientific
investigation and dissemination took the form of the establishment of
societies, where new discoveries were aired, discussed and published.
The first scientific society to be established was the
Royal Society of London. This grew out of an earlier group, centred around
Gresham College in the 1640s and 1650s. According to a history of the College:
The scientific network which centred on Gresham College played a
crucial part in the meetings which led to the formation of the Royal
Society.[61]
These physicians and
natural philosophers were influenced by the "
new science", as promoted by
Francis Bacon in his
New Atlantis, from approximately 1645 onwards. A group known as
The Philosophical Society of Oxford was run under a set of rules still retained by the
Bodleian Library.
[62]
On 28 November 1660, the
1660 committee of 12
announced the formation of a "College for the Promoting of
Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning", which would meet weekly to
discuss science and run experiments. At the second meeting,
Robert Moray announced that the
King approved of the gatherings, and a
Royal charter was signed on 15 July 1662 creating the "Royal Society of London", with
Lord Brouncker
serving as the first President. A second Royal Charter was signed on 23
April 1663, with the King noted as the Founder and with the name of
"the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge";
Robert Hooke was appointed as Curator of Experiments in November. This
initial royal favour has continued, and since then every monarch has
been the patron of the Society.
[63]
The Society's first Secretary was
Henry Oldenburg. Its early meetings included experiments performed first by
Robert Hooke and then by
Denis Papin,
who was appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their subject
area, and were both important in some cases and trivial in others.
[64] The society began publication of
Philosophical Transactions from 1665, the oldest and longest-running scientific journal in the world, which established the important principles of
scientific priority and
peer review.
[65]
The French established the
Academy of Sciences in 1666. In contrast to the private origins of its British counterpart, the Academy was founded as a government body by
Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Its rules were set down in 1699 by King
Louis XIV, when it received the name of 'Royal Academy of Sciences' and was installed in the
Louvre in Paris.
New ideas
As
the Scientific Revolution was not marked by any single change, the
following new ideas contributed to what is called the Scientific
Revolution. Many of them were revolutions in their own fields.
Astronomy
- Heliocentrism
For almost five
millennia, the
geocentric model
of the Earth as the center of the universe had been accepted by all but
a few astronomers. In Aristotle's cosmology, Earth's central location
was perhaps less significant than its identification as a realm of
imperfection, inconstancy, irregularity and change, as opposed to the
"heavens" (Moon, Sun, planets, stars), which were regarded as perfect,
permanent, unchangeable, and in religious thought, the realm of heavenly
beings. The Earth was even composed of different material, the four
elements "earth", "water", "fire", and "air", while sufficiently far
above its surface (roughly the Moon's orbit), the heavens were composed
of different substance called "aether".
[66] The
heliocentric model
that replaced it involved not only the radical displacement of the
earth to an orbit around the sun, but its sharing a placement with the
other planets implied a universe of heavenly components made from the
same changeable substances as the Earth. Heavenly motions no longer
needed to be governed by a theoretical perfection, confined to circular
orbits.
Copernicus' 1543 work on the heliocentric model of the solar system
tried to demonstrate that the sun was the center of the universe. Few
were bothered by this suggestion, and the pope and several archbishops
were interested enough by it to want more detail.
[67] His model was later used to create the
calendar of
Pope Gregory XIII.
[68]
However, the idea that the earth moved around the sun was doubted by
most of Copernicus' contemporaries. It contradicted not only empirical
observation, due to the absence of an observable
stellar parallax,
[69] but more significantly at the time, the authority of Aristotle.
The discoveries of
Johannes Kepler and
Galileo gave the theory credibility. Kepler was an astronomer who, using the accurate observations of
Tycho Brahe, proposed that the planets move around the sun not in circular orbits, but in elliptical ones. Together with his other
laws of planetary motion,
this allowed him to create a model of the solar system that was an
improvement over Copernicus' original system. Galileo's main
contributions to the acceptance of the heliocentric system were his
mechanics, the observations he made with his telescope, as well as his
detailed presentation of the case for the system. Using an early theory
of
inertia,
Galileo could explain why rocks dropped from a tower fall straight down
even if the earth rotates. His observations of the moons of Jupiter,
the phases of Venus, the spots on the sun, and mountains on the moon all
helped to discredit the Aristotelian philosophy and the
Ptolemaic
theory of the solar system. Through their combined discoveries, the
heliocentric system gained support, and at the end of the 17th century
it was generally accepted by astronomers.
This work culminated in the work of
Isaac Newton. Newton's
Principia formulated the
laws of motion and
universal gravitation,
which dominated scientists' view of the physical universe for the next
three centuries. By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his
mathematical description of
gravity, and then using the same principles to account for the trajectories of
comets,
the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton
removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of
the cosmos. This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on
Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles.
His prediction that the Earth should be shaped as an oblate spheroid
was later vindicated by other scientists. His
laws of motion were to be the solid foundation of mechanics; his
law of universal gravitation
combined terrestrial and celestial mechanics into one great system that
seemed to be able to describe the whole world in mathematical
formulae.
- Gravitation
As well as proving the heliocentric model, Newton also developed the
theory of gravitation. In 1679, Newton began to consider gravitation and its effect on the orbits of
planets with reference to
Kepler's laws of planetary motion. This followed stimulation by a brief exchange of letters in 1679–80 with
Robert Hooke, who had been appointed to manage the
Royal Society's correspondence, and who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions.
[70]
Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further
stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680–1681, on
which he corresponded with
John Flamsteed.
[71]
After the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out proof that the
elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal
force
inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector (see
Newton's law of universal gravitation – History and
De motu corporum in gyrum). Newton communicated his results to
Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in
De motu corporum in gyrum, in 1684.
[72] This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the
Principia.
[73]
The
Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from
Edmond Halley.
[74] In this work, Newton stated the
three universal laws of motion that contributed to many advances during the
Industrial Revolution
which soon followed and were not to be improved upon for more than 200
years. Many of these advancements continue to be the underpinnings of
non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin
word
gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as
gravity, and defined the law of
universal gravitation.
Newton's postulate of an invisible
force able to act over vast distances led to him being criticised for introducing "
occult agencies" into science.
[75] Later, in the second edition of the
Principia (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding
General Scholium,
writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational
attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and
it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that
were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his
famous expression "hypotheses non fingo"
[76]).
Biology and Medicine
- Medical discoveries
Vesalius's intricately detailed drawings of human dissections in
Fabrica helped to overturn the medical theories of
Galen.
The writings of Greek physician
Galen had dominated European medical thinking for over a millennium. The Flemish scholar
Vesalius
demonstrated mistakes in the Galen's ideas. Vesalius dissected human
corpses, whereas Galen dissected animal corpses. Published in 1543,
Vesalius'
De humani corporis fabrica[77] was a groundbreaking work of
human anatomy.
It emphasized the priority of dissection and what has come to be called
the "anatomical" view of the body, seeing human internal functioning as
an essentially corporeal structure filled with organs arranged in
three-dimensional space. This was in stark contrast to many of the
anatomical models used previously, which had strong Galenic/Aristotelean
elements, as well as elements of
astrology.
Besides the first good description of the
sphenoid bone, he showed that the
sternum consists of three portions and the
sacrum of five or six; and described accurately the
vestibule
in the interior of the temporal bone. He not only verified the
observation of Etienne on the valves of the hepatic veins, but he
described the
vena azygos, and discovered the canal which passes in the fetus between the umbilical vein and the vena cava, since named
ductus venosus. He described the
omentum, and its connections with the stomach, the
spleen and the
colon; gave the first correct views of the structure of the
pylorus; observed the small size of the caecal appendix in man; gave the first good account of the
mediastinum and
pleura
and the fullest description of the anatomy of the brain yet advanced.
He did not understand the inferior recesses; and his account of the
nerves is confused by regarding the optic as the first pair, the third
as the fifth and the fifth as the seventh.
Further groundbreaking work was carried out by
William Harvey, who published
De Motu Cordis in 1628. Harvey made a detailed analysis of the overall structure of the
heart, going on to an analysis of the
arteries, showing how their pulsation depends upon the contraction of the
left ventricle, while the contraction of the
right ventricle propels its charge of blood into the
pulmonary artery. He noticed that the two
ventricles move together almost simultaneously and not independently like had been thought previously by his predecessors.
[78]
Image of
veins from
William Harvey's
Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. Harvey demonstrated that blood circulated around the body, rather than being created in the liver.
In the eighth chapter, Harvey estimated the capacity of the
heart, how much
blood is expelled through each
pump of the
heart,
and the number of times the heart beats in a half an hour. From these
estimations, he demonstrated that according to Gaelen's theory that
blood was continually produced in the liver, the absurdly large figure
of 540 pounds of blood would have to be produced every day. Having this
simple mathematical proportion at hand – which would imply a seemingly
impossible role for the
liver – Harvey went on to demonstrate how the
blood circulated in a circle by means of countless experiments initially done on
serpents and
fish: tying their
veins and
arteries in separate periods of time, Harvey noticed the modifications which occurred; indeed, as he tied the
veins, the
heart would become empty, while as he did the same to the arteries, the organ would swell up.
This process was later performed on the human body (in the image on
the left): the physician tied a tight ligature onto the upper arm of a
person. This would cut off
blood flow from the
arteries and the
veins. When this was done, the arm below the
ligature was cool and pale, while above the ligature it was warm and swollen. The ligature was loosened slightly, which allowed
blood from the
arteries
to come into the arm, since arteries are deeper in the flesh than the
veins. When this was done, the opposite effect was seen in the lower
arm. It was now warm and swollen. The
veins were also more visible, since now they were full of
blood.
Various other advances in medical understanding and practice were made. French
physician Pierre Fauchard started dentistry science as we know it today, and he has been named "the father of modern dentistry".
Surgeon Ambroise Paré (c.1510–1590) was a leader in surgical techniques and
battlefield medicine, especially the treatment of
wounds,
[79] and
Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738) is sometimes referred to as a "father of physiology" due to his exemplary teaching in
Leiden and his textbook
Institutiones medicae (1708).
Chemistry
Chemistry, and its antecedent
alchemy,
became an increasingly important aspect of scientific thought in the
course of the 16th and 17th centuries. The importance of chemistry is
indicated by the range of important scholars who actively engaged in
chemical research. Among them were the
astronomer Tycho Brahe,
[80] the chemical
physician Paracelsus,
Robert Boyle,
Thomas Browne and
Isaac Newton.
Unlike the mechanical philosophy, the chemical philosophy stressed the
active powers of matter, which alchemists frequently expressed in terms
of vital or active principles—of spirits operating in nature.
[81]
Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their
extraction to smelt metals was an important source of information for
early chemists in the 16th century, among them
Georg Agricola (1494–1555), who published his great work
De re metallica in 1556.
[82]
His work describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining
metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the time. His approach
removed the mysticism associated with the subject, creating the
practical base upon which others could build.
[83]
English chemist
Robert Boyle
(1627–1691) is considered to have refined the modern scientific method
for alchemy and to have separated chemistry further from alchemy.
[84] Although his research clearly has its roots in the
alchemical tradition, Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern
chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental
scientific method. Although Boyle was not the original discover, he is best known for
Boyle's law, which he presented in 1662:
[85] the law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute
pressure and
volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a
closed system.
[86]
Boyle is also credited for his landmark publication
The Sceptical Chymist
in 1661, which is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry.
In the work, Boyle presents his hypothesis that every phenomenon was
the result of collisions of particles in motion. Boyle appealed to
chemists to experiment and asserted that experiments denied the limiting
of chemical elements to only the
classic four: earth, fire, air, and water. He also pleaded that chemistry should cease to be subservient to
medicine
or to alchemy, and rise to the status of a science. Importantly, he
advocated a rigorous approach to scientific experiment: he believed all
theories must be tested experimentally before being regarded as true.
The work contains some of the earliest modern ideas of
atoms,
molecules, and
chemical reaction, and marks the beginning of the history of modern chemistry.
Physical
- Optics
Newton's Opticks or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light
Important work was done in the field of
optics.
Johannes Kepler published
Astronomiae Pars Optica (
The Optical Part of Astronomy)
in 1604. In it, he described the inverse-square law governing the
intensity of light, reflection by flat and curved mirrors, and
principles of
pinhole cameras, as well as the astronomical implications of optics such as
parallax and the apparent sizes of heavenly bodies.
Astronomiae Pars Optica is generally recognized as the foundation of modern optics (though the
law of refraction is conspicuously absent).
[87]
Willebrord Snellius (1580–1626) found the mathematical law of
refraction, now known as
Snell's law, in 1621. Subsequently
René Descartes
(1596–1650) showed, by using geometric construction and the law of
refraction (also known as Descartes' law), that the angular radius of a
rainbow is 42° (i.e. the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the
rainbow and the rainbow's centre is 42°).
[88] He also independently discovered the
law of reflection, and his essay on optics was the first published mention of this law.
Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) wrote several works in the area of optics. These included the
Opera reliqua (also known as
Christiani Hugenii Zuilichemii, dum viveret Zelhemii toparchae, opuscula posthuma) and the
Traité de la lumière.
Isaac Newton investigated the
refraction of light, demonstrating that a
prism could decompose
white light into a
spectrum of colours, and that a
lens
and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into
white light. He also showed that the coloured light does not change its
properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various
objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reflected or
scattered or transmitted, it stayed the same colour. Thus, he observed
that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured
light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is
known as
Newton's theory of colour. From this work he concluded that any refracting
telescope would suffer from the
dispersion of light into colours. The interest of the
Royal Society encouraged him to publish his notes
On Colour (later expanded into
Opticks). Newton argued that light is composed of particles or
corpuscles and were refracted by accelerating toward the denser medium, but he had to associate them with
waves to explain the
diffraction of light.
In his
Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton
posited the existence of the
ether to transmit forces between particles. In 1704, Newton published
Opticks,
in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered
light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter
was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of
alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible
into one another, ...and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity
from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"
[89]
- Electricity
Dr.
William Gilbert, in
De Magnete, invented the
New Latin word
electricus from
ἤλεκτρον (
elektron),
the Greek word for "amber". Gilbert undertook a number of careful
electrical experiments, in the course of which he discovered that many
substances other than amber, such as sulphur, wax, glass, etc.,
[90]
were capable of manifesting electrical properties. Gilbert also
discovered that a heated body lost its electricity and that moisture
prevented the
electrification
of all bodies, due to the now well-known fact that moisture impaired
the insulation of such bodies. He also noticed that electrified
substances attracted all other substances indiscriminately, whereas a
magnet only attracted iron. The many discoveries of this nature earned
for Gilbert the title of
founder of the electrical science.
[91]
By investigating the forces on a light metallic needle, balanced on a
point, he extended the list of electric bodies, and found also that many
substances, including metals and natural magnets, showed no attractive
forces when rubbed. He noticed that dry weather with north or east wind
was the most favourable atmospheric condition for exhibiting electric
phenomena—an observation liable to misconception until the difference
between conductor and insulator was understood.
[92]
Robert Boyle also worked frequently at the new science of
electricity, and added several substances to Gilbert's list of
electrics. He left a detailed account of his researches under the title
of
Experiments on the Origin of Electricity.
[92]
Boyle, in 1675, stated that electric attraction and repulsion can act
across a vacuum. One of his important discoveries was that electrified
bodies in a vacuum would attract light substances, this indicating that
the electrical effect did not depend upon the air as a medium. He also
added resin to the then known list of electrics.
[90][91][93][94][95]
This was followed in 1660 by
Otto von Guericke, who invented an early
electrostatic
generator. By the end of the 17th Century, researchers had developed
practical means of generating electricity by friction with an
electrostatic generator,
but the development of electrostatic machines did not begin in earnest
until the 18th century, when they became fundamental instruments in the
studies about the new science of
electricity. The first usage of the word
electricity is ascribed to
Sir Thomas Browne in his 1646 work,
Pseudodoxia Epidemica. In 1729
Stephen Gray (1666–1736) demonstrated that electricity could be "transmitted" through metal filaments.
[96]
New mechanical devices
As an aid to scientific investigation, various tools, measuring aids and calculating devices were developed in this period.
Calculating devices
John Napier introduced
logarithms as a powerful mathematical tool. With the help of the prominent mathematician
Henry Briggs their logarithmic tables embodied a computational advance that made calculations by hand much quicker.
[97] His
Napier's bones used a set of numbered rods as a multiplication tool using the system of
lattice multiplication. The way was opened to later scientific advances, particularly in
astronomy and
dynamics.
At
Oxford University,
Edmund Gunter built the first
analog device
to aid computation. The 'Gunter's scale' was a large plane scale,
engraved with various scales, or lines. Natural lines, such as the line
of chords, the line of
sines and
tangents
are placed on one side of the scale and the corresponding artificial or
logarithmic ones were on the other side. This calculating aid was a
predecessor of the
slide rule. It was
William Oughtred (1575–1660) who first used two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct
multiplication and
division, and thus is credited as the inventor of the
slide rule in 1622.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) invented the
mechanical calculator in 1642.
[98] The introduction of his
Pascaline in 1645 launched the development of mechanical calculators first in Europe and then all over the world.
[99][100] Gottfried Leibniz
(1646–1716), building on Pascal's work, became one of the most prolific
inventors in the field of mechanical calculators; he was the first to
describe a
pinwheel calculator, in 1685,
[101] and invented the
Leibniz wheel, used in the
arithmometer,
the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the
binary number system, foundation of virtually all modern computer
architectures.
[102]
John Hadley (1682–1744) was the inventor of the
octant, the precursor to the
sextant (invented by
John Bird), which greatly improved the science of
navigation.
Industrial machines
Denis Papin (1647–1712) was best known for his pioneering invention of the
steam digester, the forerunner of the
steam engine.
[103] The first working steam engine was patented in 1698 by the inventor
Thomas Savery,
as a "...new invention for raising of water and occasioning motion to
all sorts of mill work by the impellent force of fire, which will be of
great use and advantage for drayning mines, serveing townes with water,
and for the working of all sorts of mills where they have not the
benefitt of water nor constant windes." [
sic]
[104] The invention was demonstrated to the
Royal Society on 14 June 1699 and the machine was described by Savery in his book
The Miner's Friend; or, An Engine to Raise Water by Fire (1702),
[105] in which he claimed that it could pump water out of
mines.
Thomas Newcomen (1664–1729) perfected the practical steam engine for pumping water, the
Newcomen steam engine. Consequently, Thomas Newcomen can be regarded as a forefather of the Industrial Revolution.
[106]
Abraham Darby I (1678–1717) was the first, and most famous, of three generations of the Darby family who played an important role in the
Industrial Revolution. He developed a method of producing high-grade iron in a
blast furnace fueled by
coke rather than
charcoal. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the Industrial Revolution.
Telescopes
Refracting telescopes first appeared in the
Netherlands in 1608, apparently the product of spectacle makers experimenting with lenses. The inventor is unknown but
Hans Lippershey applied for the first patent, followed by
Jacob Metius of
Alkmaar.
[107] Galileo was one of the first scientists to use this new tool for his astronomical observations in 1609.
[108]
The
reflecting telescope was described by
James Gregory in his book
Optica Promota (1663). He argued that a mirror shaped like the part of a
conic section, would correct the
spherical aberration that flawed the accuracy of refracting telescopes. His design, the "
Gregorian telescope", however, remained un-built.
In 1666,
Isaac Newton
argued that the faults of the refracting telescope were fundamental
because the lens refracted light of different colors differently. He
concluded that light could not be refracted through a lens without
causing
chromatic aberrations.
[109] From these experiments Newton concluded that no improvement could be made in the refracting telescope.
[110] However, he was able to demonstrate that the angle of reflection remained the same for all colors, so he decided to build a
reflecting telescope.
[111] It was completed in 1668 and is the earliest known functional reflecting telescope.
[112]
50 years later,
John Hadley developed ways to make precision aspheric and
parabolic objective mirrors for
reflecting telescopes, building the first parabolic
Newtonian telescope and a
Gregorian telescope with accurately shaped mirrors.
[113][114] These were successfully demonstrated to the
Royal Society.
[115]
Other devices
Air pump built by
Robert Boyle. Many new instruments were devised in this period, which greatly aided in the expansion of scientific knowledge.
The invention of the
vacuum pump paved the way for the experiments of
Robert Boyle and
Robert Hooke into the nature of
vacuum and
atmospheric pressure. The first such device was made by
Otto von Guericke in 1654. It consisted of a piston and an
air gun cylinder
with flaps that could suck the air from any vessel that it was
connected to. In 1657, he pumped the air out of two conjoined
hemispheres and demonstrated that a team of sixteen horses were
incapable of pulling it apart.
[116] The air pump construction was greatly improved by
Robert Hooke in 1658.
[117]
Evangelista Torricelli (1607–1647) was best known for his invention of the mercury
barometer. The motivation for the invention was to improve on the suction pumps that were used to raise water out of the
mines.
Torricelli constructed a sealed tube filled with mercury, set
vertically into a basin of the same substance. The column of mercury
fell downwards, leaving a Torricellian vacuum above.
[118]
Materials, construction, and aesthetics
Surviving instruments from this period,
[119][120][121][122] tend to be made of durable metals such as brass, gold, or steel, although examples such as telescopes
[123] made of wood, pasteboard, or with leather components exist.
[124]
Those instruments that exist in collections today tend to be robust
examples, made by skilled craftspeople for and at the expense of wealthy
patrons.
[125]
These may have been commissioned as displays of wealth. In addition,
the instruments preserved in collections may not have received heavy use
in scientific work; instruments that had visibly received heavy use
were typically destroyed, deemed unfit for display, or excluded from
collections altogether.
[126]
It is also postulated that the scientific instruments preserved in many
collections were chosen because they were more appealing to collectors,
by virtue of being more ornate, more portable, or made with
higher-grade materials.
[127]
Intact air pumps are particularly rare.
[128]
The pump at right included a glass sphere to permit demonstrations
inside the vacuum chamber, a common use. The base was wooden, and the
cylindrical pump was brass.
[129] Other vacuum chambers that survived were made of brass hemispheres.
[130]
Instrument makers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
century were commissioned by organizations seeking help with navigation,
surveying, warfare, and astronomical observation.
[128]
The increase in uses for such instruments, and their widespread use in
global exploration and conflict, created a need for new methods of
manufacture and repair, which would be met by the
Industrial Revolution.
[126]
Scientific developments
People and key ideas that emerged from the 16th and 17th centuries:
- First printed edition of Euclid's Elements in 1482.
- Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, which advanced the heliocentric theory of cosmology.
- Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) published De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) (1543), which discredited Galen's
views. He found that the circulation of blood resolved from pumping of
the heart. He also assembled the first human skeleton from cutting open
cadavers.
- Franciscus Vieta (1540–1603) published In Artem Analycitem Isagoge (1591), which gave the first symbolic notation of parameters in literal algebra.
- William Gilbert (1544–1603) published On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth in 1600, which laid the foundations of a theory of magnetism and electricity.
- Tycho Brahe
(1546–1601) made extensive and more accurate naked eye observations of
the planets in the late 16th century. These became the basic data for
Kepler's studies.
- Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) published Novum Organum in 1620, which outlined a new system of logic based on the process of reduction, which he offered as an improvement over Aristotle's philosophical process of syllogism. This contributed to the development of what became known as the scientific method.
- Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) improved the telescope, with which he made several important astronomical observations, including the four largest moons of Jupiter (1610), the phases of Venus (1610 - proving Copernicus correct), the rings of Saturn (1610), and made detailed observations of sunspots. He developed the laws for falling bodies based on pioneering quantitative experiments which he analyzed mathematically.
- Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) published the first two of his three laws of planetary motion in 1609.
- William Harvey (1578–1657) demonstrated that blood circulates, using dissections and other experimental techniques.
- René Descartes (1596–1650) published his Discourse on the Method in 1637, which helped to establish the scientific method.
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
(1632–1723) constructed powerful single lens microscopes and made
extensive observations that he published around 1660, opening up the
micro-world of biology.
- Christiaan Huygens
(1629–1695) published major studies of mechanics (he was the first one
to correctly formulate laws concerning centrifugal force and discovered
the theory of the pendulum) and optics (being one of the most
influential proponents of the wave theory of light).
- Isaac Newton
(1643–1727) built upon the work of Kepler, Galileo and Huygens. He
showed that an inverse square law for gravity explained the elliptical
orbits of the planets, and advanced the law of universal gravitation. His development of infinitesimal calculus
(along with Leibniz) opened up new applications of the methods of
mathematics to science. Newton taught that scientific theory should be
coupled with rigorous experimentation, which became the keystone of
modern science.
Criticism
The idea that modern science took place as a kind a revolution has
been debated among historians. A weakness of the idea of scientific
revolution is the lack of a systematic approach to the question of
knowledge in the period comprehended between the 14th and 17th
centuries, leading to misunderstandings on the value and role of modern
authors. From this standpoint, the continuity thesis is the hypothesis
that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual
development of the Middle Ages and the developments in the Renaissance
and early modern period and has been deeply and widely documented by the
works of scholars like Pierre Duhem, John Hermann Randall, Alistair
Crombie and William A. Wallace, who proved the preexistence of a wide
range of ideas used by the followers of the Scientific Revolution thesis
to substantiate their claims. Thus, the idea of a scientific revolution
following the Renaissance is—according to the continuity thesis—a myth.
Some continuity theorists point to earlier intellectual revolutions
occurring in the
Middle Ages, usually referring to either a European
Renaissance of the 12th century[131][132] or a medieval
Muslim scientific revolution,
[133][134][135] as a sign of continuity.
[136]
Another contrary view has been recently proposed by Arun Bala in his
dialogical history of the birth of modern science. Bala proposes that the changes involved in the Scientific Revolution—the
mathematical realist turn, the mechanical
philosophy, the
atomism, the central role assigned to the Sun in
Copernican heliocentrism—have to be seen as rooted in
multicultural influences on Europe. He sees specific influences in
Alhazen's physical optical theory,
Chinese mechanical technologies leading to the perception of the world as a
machine, the
Hindu-Arabic numeral system, which carried implicitly a new mode of
mathematical atomic thinking, and the heliocentrism rooted in ancient Egyptian religious ideas associated with
Hermeticism.
[137]
Bala argues that by ignoring such multicultural impacts we have been led to a
Eurocentric conception of the Scientific Revolution.
[138]
However, he clearly states: "The makers of the revolution – Copernicus,
Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and many others – had to
selectively appropriate relevant ideas, transform them, and create new
auxiliary concepts in order to complete their task... In the ultimate
analysis, even if the revolution was rooted upon a multicultural base it
is the accomplishment of Europeans in Europe."
[139]
Critics note that lacking documentary evidence of transmission of
specific scientific ideas, Bala's model will remain "a working
hypothesis, not a conclusion".
[140]
A third approach takes the term "Renaissance" literally as a "rebirth". A closer study of
Greek Philosophy and
Greek Mathematics
demonstrates that nearly all of the so-called revolutionary results of
the so-called scientific revolution were in actuality restatements of
ideas that were in many cases older than those of
Aristotle and in nearly all cases at least as old as
Archimedes. Aristotle even explicitly argues against some of the ideas that were espoused during the Scientific Revolution, such as
heliocentrism.
The basic ideas of the scientific method were well known to Archimedes
and his contemporaries, as demonstrated in the well-known discovery of
buoyancy. Atomism was first thought of by
Leucippus and
Democritus.
Lucio Russo claims that science as a unique approach to objective
knowledge was born in the Hellenistic period (c. 300 B.C), but was
extinguished with the advent of the Roman Empire.
[141]
This approach to the Scientific Revolution reduces it to a period of
relearning classical ideas that is very much an extension of the
Renaissance. This view does not deny that a change occurred but argues
that it was a reassertion of previous knowledge (a renaissance) and not
the creation of new knowledge. It cites statements from Newton,
Copernicus and others in favour of the
Pythagorean worldview as evidence.
[142][143]
In more recent analysis of the Scientific Revolution during this
period, there has been criticism of not only the Eurocentric ideologies
spread, but also of the dominance of male scientists of the time.
[144]
Science as we know it today, and the original theories that we base
modern science on, was built by males, regardless of the input women
might have made. The incorporation of women's work in the sciences
during this time tends to be obscured. Scholars have tried to look into
the participation of women in the 17th century in science, and even with
sciences as simple as domestic knowledge women were making advances.
[145]
With the limited history provided from texts of the period we are not
completely aware if women were helping these scientists develop the
ideas they did. Another idea to consider is the way this period
influenced even the women scientists of the periods following it. Annie
Jump Cannon was an astronomer who benefitted from the laws and theories
developed from this period; she made several advances in the century
following the Scientific Revolution. It was an important period for the
future of science, including the incorporation of women into fields
using the developments made.
[146]