Introduction

Scientific Revolution

One of the most important intellectual revolutions of Western civilization occurred in the seventeenth century. Building on some sixteenth-century breakthroughs and a more deeply rooted interest in the workings of the natural world, a small elite of thinkers and scientistsDescartes, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon, and Boyle-established the foundations for the modern sciences of astronomy, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Although at first their work was known to only a few, their ideas spread widely during the eighteenth century.

In the process of developing the modern sciences, these thinkers challenged the established conception of the universe as well as previous assumptions about knowledge. This ultimately successful challenge, now known as the scientific revolution, had a number of key elements. First, the view of the universe as being stable, fixed, and finite, with the earth at its center, gave way to a view of the universe as moving and almost infinite, with the earth merely one of millions of bodies, all subject to the laws of nature. Second, earlier methods for ascertaining the truth, which primarily involved referring to traditional authorities such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, and the Church, were replaced by methods that emphasized skepticism, rationalism, and rigorous reasoning based on observed facts and mathematical laws. Third, although these thinkers remained concerned with their own deeply held religious beliefs, the general scientific orientation shifted from theological questions to secular questions that focused on how things worked.

The primary documents in this chapter emphasize two broad questions that faced these seventeenth-century scientists. First, how can one ascertain the truth? The answers of Descartes, Galileo, and Newton are examined. Second, what is the proper line between science and scriptural authority? Galileo, who came most directly into conflict with Church authorities, and Newton, who like most other scientific thinkers of the period remained religious, provide us with clues.

The secondary documents concentrate on the nature and causes of the scientific revolution. In what ways was seventeenth-century science different from the science of earlier centuries? What explains these differences? What were the specific psychological, social, and cultural motives of seventeenth-century scientists?

Most of these intellectual developments were known to only a few throughout Europe. In the eighteenth century these scientific ideas and methods became popularized as part of the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment.

Why Was Science Backward in the Middle Ages?

Michael Postan

The scientific advances of the seventeenth century are commonly considered revolutionary because of their contrast with the previous state of science. One way to gain insight into the origins of the seventeenth-century developments is to look at earlier periods to see whether something was missing then that explains this contrast. In the following selection Michael Postan takes this approach, focusing specificallu on the lack of scientific incentives in the Middle Ages.

Consider: Why scientific incentives were lacking in the Middle Ages; the typically medieval traits that discouraged the men of the Middle Ages from scientific exploration; how the concerns and problems faced by Galileo relate to this argument.

It is generally agreed that the Middle Ages preserved for the use of later times the science of the ancients. Therein lies both the scientific achievement and the scientific failure of the medieval civilization. . . . What the

Middle Ages took over they did not very much enrich. Indeed so small was their own contribution that historians of science are apt to regard the Middle Ages as something of a pause. . . .

Thus some advance on planes both purely intellectual and technical there was; yet taken together and placed against the vast panorama of medieval life, or indeed against the achievements of Greek and Hellenistic science in the fourth century B.C., or with the scientific activity of the seventeenth century, all these achievements are bound to appear very poor. Why then this poverty?

To this question many answers can be and have been given. But what most of them boil down to is the absence in medieval life of what I should be inclined to call scientific incentives. Students of science sometimes differ about the true inspiration of scientific progress. Some seek and find it in man's intellectual curiosity, in his desire to understand the workings of nature. Others believe that scientific knowledge grew and still grows out of man's attempts to improve his tools and his methods of production; that, in short, scientific truth is a by-product of technical progress. I do not want here to take sides in this particular controversy; what I want to suggest is that the Middle Ages were doubly unfortunate in that both the inspirations, the intellectual as well as the practical, failed more or less.

The easiest to account for is the intellectual. The Middle Ages were the age of faith, and to that extent they were unfavourable to scientific speculation. It is not that scientists as such were proscribed. For on the whole the persecution of men for their scientific ideas was very rare: rare because men with dangerous ideas, or indeed with any scientific ideas at all, were themselves very rare; and it is indeed surprising that there were any at all. This does not mean that there were no intellectual giants. All it means is that in an age which was one of faith, men of intellect and spirit found the calls of faith itself - its elucidation, its controversies, and its conquests - a task sufficient to absorb them. To put it simply, they had no time for occupations like science.

In fact they had neither the time nor the inclination. For even if there had been enough men to engage in activities as mundane as science, there would still be very little reason for them to do so. In times when medieval religious dogma stood whole and unshaken the intellectual objects and the methods of science were, to say the least, superfluous. The purpose of scientific enquiry is to build up piecemeal a unified theory of the universe, of its origin and of its working. But in the Middle Ages was that process really necessary? Did not medieval man already possess in God, in the story of Creation and in the doctrine of Omnipotent Will, a complete explanation of how the world came about and of how, by what means and to what purpose, it was being conducted? Why build up in laborious and painstaking mosaic a design, which was already there from the outset, clear and visible to all?

So much for intellectual incentive. The practical incentive was almost equally feeble. Greater understanding of nature could not come from technical improvements, chiefly because technical improvements were so few.

Medieval occupations continued for centuries without appreciable change of method. After the great period of initial development, i.e., after the late eleventh century, the routine of medieval farming in the greater part of Europe became as fixed as the landscape itself. In the history of the smithies, the weaving shops, or the potteries, there were occasional periods of innovation, but taking the Middle Ages as a whole technical improvement was very rare and very slow. For this medieval economic policy was largely to blame. In the course of centuries economic activities got surrounded with a vast structure of bye-laws and regulations. . . . For bye-laws were as a rule based on the technical methods in existence when they were framed; and once framed they were to stand in the way of all subsequent change.

What is more, so deeply ingrained was the spirit of protection that in every local trade the technical methods were treated as a secret. . . . The men of the Middle Ages were unable to do more than they did because they were lacking in scientific incentive. What they achieved in advancing the practical arts of humanity or in preserving and transmitting ancient learning, they did in so far and as long as they were not typically medieval.

Early Modern Europe:

Motives for the Scientific

Revolution

Sir George Clark

By the seventeenth century, certain broad historical developments had set the stage for individuals to make the discoveries we associate with the scientific revolution. In addition, these individuals were motivated in ways that medieval people were not and used the new and growing body of techniques, materials, and knowledge to make their discoveries. In the following selection, British historian Sir George Clark, a recognized authority on the seventeenth century, examines some of the motives that led people to engage in scientific work.

Consider: The distinctions Clark makes among different people engaged in scientific work; why, more than thirteenth- or fourteenth-century people, these seventeenth-century people had a "disinterested desire to know. "

There were an infinite number of motives which led men to engage in scientific work and to clear the scientific point of view from encumbrances; but we may group together some of the most important under general headings, always remembering that in actual life each of them was compounded with the others. There were economic motives. The Portuguese explorers wanted their new instrument for navigation; the German mine-owners asked questions about metallurgy and about machines for lifting and carrying heavy loads; Italian engineers improved their canals and locks and harbours by applying the principles of hydrostatics; English trading companies employed experts who used new methods of drawing charts. Not far removed from the economic motives were those of the physicians and surgeons, who revolutionized anatomy and physiology, and did much more good than harm with their new medicines and new operations, though some of them now seem absurd. Like the doctors, the soldiers called science to their aid in designing and aiming artillery or in planning fortifications. But there were other motives far removed from the economic sphere. jewellers learnt much about precious and semi-precious stones, but so did magicians. Musicians learnt the mathematics of harmony; painters and architects studied light and colour, substances and proportions, not only as craftsmen but as artists. For a number of reasons religion impelled men to scientific study. The most definite and old-established was the desire to reach absolute correctness in calculating the dates for the annual fixed and movable festivals of the Church: it was a pope who presided over the astronomical researches by which the calendar was reformed in the sixteenth century. Deeper and stronger was the desire to study the wonders of science, and the order which it unravelled in the universe, as manifestations of the Creator's will. This was closer than any of the other motives to the central impulse which actuated them all, the disinterested desire to know.

The Scientific Intellectual: A Psychological Interpretation of the Scientific Revolution

Lewis Feuer

The traditional approach to the scientific revolution has been to view it from a technological perspective, tracing the discovery and use of scientific techniques before and during the seventeenth century. Postan and Clark in the preceding selections deal with the motives that did or did not impel people to engage in scientific work. In both cases a "common sense" view of humans was assumed. In recent years scholars have become more sophisticated in applying the social sciences to the scientific revolution. In the following selection Lewis Feuer uses insights from modern psychology and social psychology to explain what turned seventeenthcentury men to science.

Consider: The spirit common to the scientific revolution and how this spirit was manifested in what the scientists were doing; why Postan or Clark might be unwilling to accept Feuer's interpretation.

That the scientific revolution was the outcome of a liberation of curiosity all would agree. The question, however, remains unsettled: What was the emotional revolution in seventeenth-century thinkers which turned them into men of science? What was the psychological revolution upon which the scientific revolution was founded? Modern science, writes Lynn White, Jr., as it first appeared in the later Middle Ages, "was one result of a deep-seated mutation in the general attitude toward nature." The new science, he continues, was an aspect "of an unprecedented yearning for immediate experience of concrete facts which appears to have been characteristic of the waxing third estate." What, then, was the character of this deep-seated emotional mutation? What changes in attitude and feeling toward human thought, sensation, and knowledge made possible the emergence of scientific intellectuals? . . .

The scientific intellectual was born from the hedonist-libertarian spirit which, spreading through Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, directly nurtured the liberation of human curiosity. Not asceticism, but satisfaction; not guilt, but joy in the human status; not self- abnegation, but self- affirmation; not original sin, but original merit and worth; not gloom, but merriment; not contempt for one's body and one's senses, but the hymn of pleasure -this was the emotional basis of the scientific movement of the seventeenth century. Herbert Butterfield has spoken of "a certain dynamic quality" which entered into Europe's "secularization of thought" in the seventeenth century.. ..

The hedonist-libertarian ethic provided the momentum for the scientific revolution, and was in fact the creed of the emerging movements of scientific intellectuals everywhere. . . .

The scientists of the seventeenth century swept away the miserable universe of death, famine, and the torture of human beings in the name of God. They took a world that had been peopled with demons and devils, and that superstition had thronged with unseen terror at every side. They cleansed it with clear words and plain experiment. They found an ethic that advised people to renounce their desires, and to cultivate in a hostile universe the humility which befitted their impotence, and they taught men instead to take pride in their human status, and to dare to change the world into one which would answer more fully to their desires. . . .

The scientific movement in the seventeenth century was not the byproduct of an increase of repression or asceticism. It was the outcome of a liberation of energies; it derived from a lightening of the burden of guilt. With the growing awareness that happiness and joy are his aims, man could take frank pleasure in the world around him. Libidinal interest in external objects could develop unthwarted; the world was found interesting to live in - an unending stage for fresh experience. Energies were no longer consumed in inner conflicts. With an awakened respect for his own biological nature, self-hatred was cast off. Empiricism was the expression of a confidence in one's senses; the eyes and ears were no longer evidences of human corruption but trusted avenues to a knowledge of nature. The body was not the tainted seat of ignorance, but the source of pleasures and the means for knowledge. Human energies, hitherto turned against themselves, could reach out beyond concern for exclusive self.

The Scientific Role: A Sociocultural Interpretation of the Scientific Revolution

Joseph Ben-David

During the seventeenth century, new institutions such as the Royal Society were formed that helped create a sense of community and permanence among scientists. The achievements of scientists were increasingly recognized, and scientists gained both respect and acceptance into high social circles. These sociological aspects of the scientific revolution are stressed in the following selection by Israeli sociologist Joseph Ben-David. Ben-David argues that step by step scientists gained legitimacy and permanence to the point where science became a "self-perpetuating domain of culture. "

Consider: How science was facilitated by nonscientific segments of society; how Ben-David might have used the ideas of Feuer to support his argument; how Ben-David's argument could be used to explain the previous lack of scientific achievement.

Traditionally, natural science was subordinated to theology and philosophy. A first step towards the modern efflorescence occurred when it began to become more differentiated from theology and philosophy with respect to its subject-matter and procedures. Even when this point was reached, science continued to be a peripheral and secondary interest, but once its continuity was assured by its patent singularity and the steadiness of the concern which it attracted, it ceased to be subject to intermittent deterioration and there was even a probability of some slow but regular accumulation of scientific knowledge. The next step occurred when this peripheral subject, which had had a low status, relative to other intellectual fields, came to be regarded by groups, with class, religious and political interests opposed to the established order, as intellectually more meaningful to them than the existing theological, philosophical and literary culture. For these groups, the sciences became a central part of their culture. Under these circumstances, men interested in science were impelled to redefine their roles as philosophers in such a way that science became increasingly central instead of peripheral to their conception of what they were doing. With the enhancement of the wealth, power and status of the classes which adopted an outlook sympathetic to science and in opposition to the inherited outlook, the status of the new type of philosopher was elevated. With the advancement of the status of scientific activity, the numbers of intellectuals of the highest quality moving into the field increased. The final steps occurred in the seventeeth century when the political success of the classes adopting the scientistic outlook, combined with the intellectual success of the new philosophers, led to a more elaborate organisation of science and the establishment of scientific journals. In the course of these developments, men who did scientific work came to regard themselves and to be regarded by others as different from philosophers. They came to regard themselves as carrying on a significantly distinctive category of activity, disjunctively separated from the intellectual activity of philosophers and theologians. Increasing in numbers and having more occasion to meet and discuss with each other, they developed their own culture, their own norms and traditions in which their scientific work was embedded. The motivation and curiosity sustained by the stabilised stimulus inherent in such intensified and persistent scientific activity made for a greater continuity in scientific development. With a larger number of persons convinced of the value of science and devoting themselves actively and fully to its cultivation, science became, in a sense, a self-perpetuating domain of culture, and more independent than before of the variations in its environment.

A further contributory factor was the relative openness and decentralisation of the social system of European intellectual life. The Continent, including England, constituted a cultural whole, as a result of the unity of the church and its adoption of Roman traditions; persons and writings travelled across political borders with relative ease. Ideas evolved in one place would be readily appreciated in another. At the same time the various political units were sufficiently different from each other to permit beginnings, which were constricted in their places of origin (because they clashed with important vested interests), to be developed elsewhere, where the same vested interests were for some reason weaker.

Science Questions

1.    What were the main ways in which the science of the seventeenth century constituted a break from the past? What were some of the main problems facing seventeenth-century scientists in making this break? How did they handle these problems?

2.    How would you explain the occurrence of the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century rather than in the sixteenth or eighteenth century?