“The Scientific Revolution”:
From Narrative to Numeracy
Week 10 – Lecture 01
12 November 2004
1000-1350: “Gothic”
1350-1500: “Renaissance”
1500-16??: “Reformation” [1600? 1648?]
16??-1730: “Baroque”
1730-1800: “Enlightenment”
F 12: Science – Mathematics, Astronomy, Epistenological Certainty?
W 17: Race – From Heathenism to Racialism
F 19: Class – The “Third Estate” evolves a “Middle Class”
I.
HISTORIOGRAPHY:
HOW HAS THE CONCEPT OF “SCIENCE”
BEEN USED IDEOLOGICALLY ACROSS CENTURIES?
W 01: Absolutism: Totalitarian Modernity, Centralization, Efficiency
F 03: Enlightenment/s: Epistemological Totalizing or Modesty?
W 08: Revolutions: Individualism & Community / John Adams & Karl Rove
OLD STORY: “Scientific Revolution”:
A Cosmic Heroic Struggle
between SCIENCE and RELIGION *
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/
* Superstition
1
Week 04_Lect01: Renaissance Italy:
The “Birthplace of Modernity”?
ca. 1632
Cf. Jerome!
• Jacob Burckhardt, 1858:
Civilization of the Renaissance
• Renaissance “Italy”--- all that
was “modern” [realism; science;
republicanism]
NB: Galileo had to kneel to make his act of abjuration!
• NB!!!
– Invention of “Germany”: 1870
– Invention of “Italy”: 1861 / 1871
Cristiano Banti: Galileo before the Inquisition [1857]
(18 February 1861: Kingdom of Italy proclaimed)
Galileo appears before the Inquisition
Again: 19th-century:
Banti, 1857
Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury
French Republicans v. Catholicism
18 February 1861: Kingdom of Italy
Burckhardt, 1858
Bertolt Brecht: (Communist exiled in 1933; 1941 in Hollywood; 1949 East Berlin
1941: Mother Courage and Her Children ( Thirty Years’ War)
1966
1943: Life of Galileo
2
Galileo appears before the Inquisition [BAM production, NYC, 2002]
Galileo Galilei --- opera by Philip Glass. Brooklyn Academy of Music [BAM] 2002.
Galileo
Inquisitors
OLD STORY: SCIENCE v RELIGION
Modern State v. Traditional Religion
Individual v. Community / Authority
3
NEW STORY:
O’Neill Media:
Q125 .D39x 1986
(Part 5)
CHURCH WAS
PRIMARY PATRON OF
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
New Story:
the “hidden agenda of modernity”
is
the repression of fluid ambiguities
<low boundaries: religion-science>
and
the invention of absolute certainties
<thick boundaries: science vs. religion>
• See chronology:
• 1543: Copernicus dies
• 1545-1563: Council of
Trent loves his book “On
the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres”
– sets accurate date of
Easter
Luther d. 1546
Calvin d. 1546
Loyola d. 1556
16th century:
1555 --- Peace of Augsburg
1598 --- Edict of Nantes
1603 --- Elizabethan I dies; James I
• 1616 --- Inquisition
condemns Copernicus
• Question: what happens
between 1543-1616?
17th century:
1618-1648: Thirty Years’ War
1648 --- Peace of Westphalia
4
Theory of “non-overlapping magisteria” [NOMA]
NEW STORY: Post-Thirty Years’ War MODERNITY as
Stephen Jay Gould [Harvard]:
REPRESSION OF RENAISSANCE FLUIDITY [e.g., religion-science]
1942 -- May 20, 2002
A. Traditional Cosmology
II.
WHAT WAS THE “COPERNICAN REVOLUTION” ?
1. Great Chain of Being
[Aristotle]
•
•
•
GREAT CHAIN OF BEING
A hierarchical ladder of Being
“Lower” beings “participate” in Being to a lesser degree than “higher” beings
•
NO EVOLUTION --- no “linear motion” -- DEVOLUTION
– God is independent; human is dependent
– perfect motion is circular;
– if you start with perfection, and you move, you move to the imperfect
• Everything in
universe touches
something else:
gradations,
interconnections,
mediations
5
Hierarchy: in terms of matter/spirit; estates [class]; gender
“Biology is destiny” [political fascism embraces organic order]
2. Motion
– All things have their proper
“end” and they all “seek” their
proper place [essence]
• They are not pushed
[efficient causality]
• They are “pulled” by
desire for implanted aim
[final causality]
• Contrast with Darwin’s “evolution”:
– Darwin: things get better over time
– Medieval: things get worse the farther away from
their source [“devolution”]
– Medieval: “being” better than “becoming”
– Modern: “change” is a good thing
3) Geocentric / Anthropocentric:
Earth [not a planet]
vs.
the “Heavens”
• EARTH: UNMOVING CENTER OF UNIVERSE
– On surface: imperfect; corruptible; becoming;
objects travel in straight lines
– At core: Hell
– Genesis: “In the beginning God made the
heavens and the earth.”
• All things aim to realize
their given “potential”
– Heavenly bodies [planets]
revolve around the earth
– “eternal” [circular] motion,
non-corruptible, perfect motion
GEOCENTRIC
VIEW
(Aristotle-Ptolemy)
• perfect/unchanging [cf. “nimbus”;
wedding ring]
• made of perfect materials: air
and fire [go up]
– Here on earth: linear motion
Peter Apian,
Cosmographia
(1524)
• change/ corruption
6
1543:
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
• Nicolai Copernicus:
B. THE TURN TO A
– Sun is at center: it does not move
– Earth becomes a “heavenly body”
[planet] which moves in perfect
circles around the sun
HELIOCENTRIC VIEW
Copernicus,
On the Revolutions of
the Heavenly Spheres
(1543)
Geocentric: 1524
O’Neill Media:
Q125 .D39x 1986
(Part 5)
Heliocentric: 1543
Nicolaus Copernicus, Poland
1473-1543
First studies in Krakow
1543
1524
1545
Luther: Birth of the Roman Curia
7
• Engraving 1684
– NB: after condemned
– Copernicus as humble and
saintly priest
• Bottom Latin:
– “Give to me only what you
gave thief on the cross.”
<Pope Pius II>
Geometry: eternal things
Copernicus: On the Revolutions
of the Heavenly Spheres (1543)
8
9
Not religion v. science
but rather a shift in language / worldviews:
from narrative to numeracy
•
Notice shifts in language:
• NARRATIVE: no longer
“biblical” [narrative;
subject to irreconcilable
interpretations]
• MATHEMATICAL
[numerical; objective
certainty]
NARRATIVE
NUMERACY
“What makes an Equation Beautiful?”: NYT 24 October 2004
From
narrative
to
numeracy
Numbers abstract from all contingent particulars –
2 apples / 2 bananas / 2 CDs / 2 DVDs / 2 SUVs –
they are pure form, eternal, always certain,
10
Aristotle/Aquinas: Synthesis: we know both
Nominalist: “Two truths” approach: God (unknowable) and the
world (knowable)
Without collapse of faith in ability to know God – i.e.,
nominalism -- no science.
16th -c. Narrative Æ 17th-c. Numeracy
• Anecdotal / “stories”
• Model / “data” [cf NOMINALISM]
• Stories uncertain: can
be interpreted
variously [Bible]
• Mathematics certain: can
only be interpreted one
way
• “Subjective” --->
leads to skepticism /
wars of religion
• “Objective” ---> any
rational subject arrives at
same conclusion; against
skepticism
III. Galileo: The 17th century
11
Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]
Florence / Venice
Far from Poland! Extends Italian Renaissance
• 1543: Copernicus dies
• 1564: Galileo born
– 1572: St.
Bartholomew’s
Massacre
– 1589: Henry IV
Galileo’s first telescopes
Museum of Science, Florence, Italy
• 1609: First telescope
arrives in Italy from
Holland
– Sees the surface of moon
filled with craters!
– Problem: Aristotle said
celestial bodies are
“perfect”
• 1592: Galileo professor
of mathematics at Padua
TELESCOPE:
From deduction to induction
• “Reason” [Descartes]
– clearer sense of God;
follows logically from
non-dependence of God
• Syllogistic:
– A is B; B is C;
therefore A is C
• Irony:
conclusions are
absolutely certain -- yet we are
skeptical [wars of religion]
Copernicus Crater seen by Apollo 17
• “Empirical observation”
[sense-data]:
• A behaves thus; so do B,
C, D, E, F ----> therefore
all dogs behave thus
• Irony: conclusions are highly
probable subject to
falsification: yet we trust in
probability as certainty
What does he see? Craters!
Celestial body is “imperfect”
• 1616: Seven years later:
Copernicus condemned!!!
– He’s been dead since 1543 !!!
• Jesuits start to attack Galileo
who defends Copernicus
1623
Galileo:
The Assayer [Il Saggiatore]
KEY: Italian, not Latin
Defends Copernicus
against the Jesuits
Problem of patronage
12
Patronage: herald of
Patronage: Papal coat of arms
Grand Duke of Tuscany [Florence]
Galileo [1632]:
“Nature is written in the
language of mathematics”
Patronage
What is revolutionary about
mathematical explanations?
Filosofica Naturale
[“Natural Philosophy”]
<------------ Narrative
Invisible causes in the world.
World is a clock… goes on its
own.
Significance of The Assayer:
DO WE NEED A GOD TO
EXPLAIN ANYTHING?
Mathematics (idealized/
unrealizable models) can
approximate natural world
and be used to explain it.
Compare Nonconformist
mechanical Newtownians
Matematica
[“Mathematics”]
Reality
Numeracy------------->
Model
13
• Controversy: are models and
reality the same?
– Tides: caused by physical
movement / splashing?
• 1633: G. condemned as
heretic by Inquisition
– Neither of his patrons --the Medicis of Florence
nor the Pope --- can save
G.
• 1642: Legend: G. says just
before he dies: “Yet, it
moves.” [i.e., the earth]
IV. NEWTON
• 1648: Thirty Years’ War
ends
1687: Sir Isaac Newton:
Principia Mathematica
Math. models = “reality”
Newton: God is the force that has made and conserves the world
running smoothly as a clock.
“Left Newtonians”: Nonconformist Mechanistic [atheistic/materialist]
-- yes the world runs like a clock. No need to invoke God.
A materialist world. [And so we can change it as we like.]
V. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: summary
“Right Newtonians”: Anglican Theological [religion-political alliance]
-- yes the world runs like a clock. God made it that way.
Everything has its proper place --- and should stay there!!!
14
1) Ideas spread by PRINTING PRESS
Note shift from “universal” clerical Latin to particular
popular vernacular of local culture
• 2) From narrative to numeracy
– from “reality” to “numbers” [models]
Copernicus: Latin
Galileo: Italian
3) IRONY: “Quest for certainty”
made possible by nominalism
[i.e., uncertainty!]:
-Things do not have “essences”
that we know
-We are the ones who invent
mathematical models
[“names”/ nomen] and
apply them to things
4) From
deduction
to
induction
6) PREDICTION /
CALCULATION /
CONTROL
THE ESSENCE OF
BOURGEOIS
CULTURE!!!
5) World is machine explained by mathematics
- a) Creator = “Deity”: a giant clockmaker
- b) evacuated of internal purpose and meaning:
How? questions replace Why? questions
- c) YOU CAN TREAT IT AS SOMETHING INSTRUMENTAL
e.g., body v. mindÆ anatomyÆ autopsy
15
Why the turn to the Heavens in 17th-c. quest?
e.g., not biology!
Turn to individual --->
Problem of interpretation and translation!!!
WHOSE???
You want to by-pass mediation with private reading;
Yet: instability at the center of the text
FROM SCIENCE TO COMMERCE: A MATTER OF NUMBERS
Promise of Mathematical Certainty:
Planets = UnchangingRevolutions
Numbers = universal language
(no translation)
“The Measurers” --- 16th-c. Flemish
“Revolution”– two senses:
Revolve!! = unchanging
Narrative --->
Revolt!!! = change everything
Numeracy
16