History of Western Civilization-102
1000-1789
“The Scientific Revolution 101”
Instructor: Mason Tattersall
The Scientific Revolution (Mid 15th to Late 17th Centuries)
A Structural Definition:
The Scientific Revolution was a great instance of change in the methods, content, and
philosophy of knowledge production that took place between the mid sixteenth and late
seventeenth centuries that turned medieval methods and views upside down and created
the dominant system of knowledge production that remains in place to the present day.
What was the nature of this revolution in knowledge production?
To answer this we need to ask about the nature of science and the nature of knowledge
itself
What is “Science?”
Literally, “science” is knowledge
The Latin word “Scientia” means knowledge, but it also means skill.
Science is then both knowledge and know-how; it is knowledge and skill.
This begs the question: What is knowledge?
Knowledge is that which we recognize, it is a body of information composed of
propositions and significations (relations). To know something is to recognize it.
Science then is both knowledge (it is a body of information that allows us to recognize, to
order, explain, and understand our world) and it is a skill (a method whereby we can
arrive at this knowledge).
Science, as knowledge, is a way of understanding the world around us. It is a way of
ordering our experience in order to recognize features of it (in order to know it). It is also
a way of approaching the phenomena we encounter in the world in order to make sense of
them (religion is another way of approaching and ordering the phenomena found in the
world in order to make sense of them). Science is both this knowledge that allows us to
make sense of the world and it is the skill that produces this particular knowledge.
Science, as a skill, is a way or producing knowledge. The knowledge that this skill
produces allows us to make sense of the disparate phenomena we find in the world
around us. But because of the special nature of scientific knowledge, it also allows us to
make predictions about the behaviour of phenomena as well, and this predictive aspect of
science is of crucial importance for understanding science’s impact and power.
Science is also a method of inquiry. Part of the versatility of the scientific approach is
that it is systematic. Science is both a systematic approach to knowledge production, and
the knowledge that it produces, by this very nature, is itself systematic. The scientific
method developed over a long period of time, and no one figure during the Scientific
Revolution used it in its entirety, but this is where the method developed into something
like its modern form.
Observation and experiment had been important methods for investigation in the ancient
world and the middle ages. What changed with the Scientific Revolution was a strict
focus on scientific methods as the only acceptable way to arrive at truth about the
natural world. The ancient’s practice of relying on the authority of tradition, upheld
during the middle ages, to which was added revelation, became invalid as an explanatory
mechanism.
The Scientific Method is a procedural approach to knowledge production,
classification, and verification. Scientific knowledge, which the method aims to
produce, consists of conceptual models of a given subject matter, from which accurate
predictions about that subject matter can be made. The scientific method represents the
way in which these models are produced and tested against the actual subject matter
itself. The scientific method is not a specific set of practices (which vary with the subject
matter of the individual sciences) but the broadly construed underlying process by nature
of which disciplines as different as astrophysics and zoology are seen as being part of a
common enterprise.
How does it work?
1 – A problem of understanding is perceived
2 – A conceptual model (an hypothesis) is devised based on observation
This model is an attempted explanation of the problem of understanding
And this model allows for prediction of future behaviour
3 – The model is tested through experiment and observation
This is the process of verification
4 – Finally the model is either accepted, adjusted and re-tried, or rejected based on
the findings of step 3
Again, this method evolved over time and in reality is never followed exactly. But this
method, as it developed during the Scientific Revolution has become the dominant model
for the production, classification, and verification of knowledge of the natural world
down to our own time.
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A key to the success of the scientific approach is its systematic nature, which allows
for the ability to predict events in the natural world with great accuracy. The
demonstrative accuracy of the predictions based on scientific knowledge won this system
many converts, which, along with other secularising trends already in place since the late
middle ages has come to shape the modern world.
The Scientific Revolution then was the period where this methodological approach
to knowledge production, classification, and verification began to take on its modern
form, and it is also the period where this method became the dominant mode of
explanation for phenomena in the natural world and the dominant mode of valid
knowledge production.
How then did this come about?
The roots of the Scientific Revolution lie in the great changes that occurred in the
wake of the downfall of the medieval synthesis. The processes of secularisation and the
rise of rationalistic explanation played a key role, as did the great cultural transformations
of the Renaissance. Other key ingredients were a renewed interest in Plato and
Pythagoras and the idea that simple and elegant answers lay hidden beneath the seeming
complexity of disparate phenomena that came out of the Renaissance and an interest in
magic, centred around the vogue for the texts of the Hermetic corpus that also arose
around the same time. Technological innovations also played a key part (such as
innovations in lens grinding leading to telescopes and microscopes) and the practical
results of scientific work fed back into more technological innovation.
A Brief Timeline of the Scientific Revolution:
1543
1609
1610
1628
1632
1637
1638
1661
1687
1704
Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Kepler’s Astronomia Nova
Bacon’s Novum Organum
Galileo’s Starry Messenger
Harvey’s …Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Descartes’ Discourse on Method
Galileo’s Two New Sciences
Boyle’s The Sceptical Chemist
Newton’s Principia
Newton’s Optiks
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Some Key Features/Important Trends:
Reason and Logic held in high regard – The powers of inductive and deductive logic,
as well as common sense experience are relied on rather than the weight of tradition
Testing hypotheses and theories by experiment and observation – Verification by
experiment and observation becomes the ultimate criterion for valid propositions about
the natural world
Empiricism – Measurement and quantification become extremely important for the
enterprise of science
Mathematical explanation – Mathematical knowledge of phenomena, particularly in the
physical sciences, becomes the standard by which all other scientific knowledge is judged
Mechanical explanation – Mechanical, rather than vitalistic or essential models become
the preferred basis for explanation of natural phenomena
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