The Role Of Historians During The Scientific Revolution

Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution provides a comprehensive breakdown of the discoveries that defined the Scientific Revolution and the history behind them. The story of the scientific revolution truly begins with a separation between the Catholic Church and the denizens of Europe brought on by the Protestant Reformation. This separation led directly to the questioning of the church and what they deemed to be true. The growing suspicion of the church applied not only to the politics and religious views but the scientific “facts” the church was built upon. The suspicion of these scientific facts quickly grew to an open challenging of these facts, The Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is something we have all studied in our grade school years and the discoveries of people such as Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei are well documented and arguably common knowledge but Jardine’s book Ingenious Pursuits encapsulates the scientific revolution in a new light. Jardine accomplishes this by telling the stories of some of the greatest achievements of the Scientific Revolution. These stories reveal the collaborations of some of histories most brilliant minds as well as the secrecy amongst them and uncover the motives that fueled many of these accomplishments.

Tits The Scientific Revolution of the fifteen and sixteen hundreds heralded the progression towards a new era of rational and mathematical thinking. Instead of relying on the ideas of the ancient Greeks as Renaissance philosophers did, the contributors of the Scientific Revolution began to look to the world around them for answers. The scientists and philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were surrounded by an amalgam of social, political, and religious factors that would influence the method in which they introduced their theories and findings to the world. These factors often supported and promoted the growth of the Sciences, but only when they adhered to the motives of a higher power. Oftentimes, scientific inquiry was suppressed by powerful forces determined to maintain their grip

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” This quote is from one of the most prominent scientists during the Scientific Revolution, Galileo Galilei. This quote means that anyone can discover the facts about the universe, all they have to do is discover them. This is an important theme during this period of time. Scientists and philosophers were making discoveries about the world around them that revealed truths about the universe that were the foundations for the modern day world. Because of this, the philosophers and scientists had the greatest impact on society.The scientists and philosophers were those that most helped to push the Scientific Revolution forward.

In the Middle Ages, medieval people believed that God was the center of truth and experience; because of this, they greatly doubted human perception. Human perception was very inconsistent and deceitful, but this was because the material world itself was known to be misleading and illusive. Instead of it being a path that leads to truth and veracity, the material world was a distraction to people and directed them away from the actual truth. On the contrary, humanism was a mode of thought devoted to humans and their values and dignities instead of God; this system was focused around the importance of humans and reason instead of supernatural matters and religion. Humanism broke away from supernaturalism and believed that human perception and creativity were a truthful and reliable source for knowledge.

Science in the Seventeenth Century In this paper, I will discuss the different viewpoints taken by scientists and philosophers such as Rene Descartes, Hero of Alexandria, Nicholas Steno, and Isaac Newton during the seventeenth century regarding their explanations of nature or the use of the forces of nature. Descartes and Hero of Alexandria studied and wrote papers prior to 1640; Steno and Newton wrote papers after 1640. Rene Descartes, the “Father of Modern Philosophy” and a scientist, believed that the world consisted of particles of matter, and that these particles of matter always filled the empty spaces of the world.

As we have discussed in class, read from our textbooks and read from primary sources we have learned that Europe has transformed a lot throughout history. Europe has gone through the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and many other turning points. The most important turning point in European history is the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is important because the way people understood the universe, medicine, anatomy and chemistry changed. It also led to the Enlightenment, which brought about human reason as well as changes in government and social life.

During the seventeenth century, the scientific revolution in Europe was at its peak, changing people’s lives through the new techniques of the scientific method. Citizens of western civilizations had previously used religion as the lens through which they perceived their beliefs and customs in their communities. Before the scientific revolution, science and religion were intertwined, and people were taught to accept religious laws and doctrines without questioning; the Church was the ultimate authority on how the world worked. However, during this revolution, scientists were inspired to learn and understand the laws of the universe had created, a noble and controversial move toward truth seeking. The famous scientists of the time, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, were known to be natural philosophers, intending to reveal God’s mystery and understand (through proof) the majesty of God. Throughout previous centuries, people had hypothesized how the world and natural phenomenon may work, and new Protestant ideals demanded constant interrogation and examination. Nevertheless, some of these revelations went against the Church’s teachings and authority. If people believed the Church could be wrong, then they could question everything around them, as well. As a result, the introduction of the scientific method, a process by which scientists discovered and proved new theories, was revolutionary because it distinguished what could be proved as real from what was simply

In the beginning God created the heavens with the Earth along with man in his own image. For over 1500 years, Christian followers were heavy believers of the bible, seeing it as the primary source for knowledge. Then came the scientific revolution in the 1500s, a movement which challenged the Christian view of the universe. It was a time when people were looking for a new way of thinking about the world. Since then and to this day, there has been several instances in which scientific inquiry and religious belief have collided in their ideologies.

To begin with, people back then and still today don’t think certain subjects are important or necessary to have a life or live successfully. During the Seventeenth Century there were many political issues, in addition to that they needed to add an intellectual challenge. It arrived to the people The Scientific Revolution, it challenged conceptions and beliefs about the nature of the world, it made people have their differences. With the Reformation and the subsequent religious wars it had created an environment in which Europeans became more comfortable challenging both of the ecclesiastical and political realms. The Europeans taught that with The Scientific Revolution people should view the universe in a new way. The Scientific Revolution changed the Eighteenth Century it made a major impact and it popularized in the Eighteenth Century. During The Scientific Revolution many roles changed, many more subjects were invented that changed and helped society:

What was the Scientific Revolution and why was it so important to Europe? What did the scientific revolution help develop during time? These are some of the questions that many ask themselves when asked to define scientific revolution and enlightenment in the 17th/ 18th century. The terms “Scientific Revolution” and “Enlightenment” are used to describe two important phases that Europe came across during the 1500s to the 1800s. The 17th century scientific revolution left a huge impact on Europe leading it to the 18th century enlightenment. The Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th century was the start and new beginning to the modern science. The new discoveries that were being developed during this period led to a more clear way of understanding why things happened. The scientific revolution removed a state of ignorance and error, which eventually led to the age of enlightenment in the 18th century. There were many people who disbelieved the improvements and changes that Europe was going through. Instead of taking the new material as an advantage to the society many people were receiving it as something evil. Thankfully there were some people who approved of the changes and helped with the process. The scientific revolution and enlightenment brought new ideas into how people lived, thought, and worshipped.

Another important figure in the Scientific Revolution was Galileo Galilei. He was an Italian born professor of mathematics who had a great interest in the workings of the universe. Galileo served as a professor at the University of Padua, and it was during this time that he began to question the accuracy of the Churches representation of the world. Galileo’s approach towards knowledge was much different then the afore mentioned Copernicus. Where as Copernicus presented his finding to the mercy of the church, Galileo wrote his conclusions and left the Roman Catholic Church interpret them as they chose. The very nature of his findings pitted him as an opponent of the church.

Isaac Newton had a great impact on eighteenth-century intellectuals such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Smith and others. They believed that Isaac Newton’s scientific methods could be used in discovering natural laws,

In the book “ The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction”, Lawrence Principe discusses the general occurring events of the scientific revolution, and overviews various in-depth details in relation to those events. People at the time highly focused on the meanings and causes of their surrounds, as their motive was to “control, improve and exploit” (Principe 2) the world. In his work, Principe has successfully supported the notion that the Scientific Revolution stood as a period in time where one's innovation would drive improvements towards change and continuity of future innovations, along with changes of tradition. His statement is strongly backed by his detailed and particular order of events throughout the book. Nevertheless, certain details that lead beyond the necessary background are found, as they do not appertain to the general line of the book, but rather for background knowledge.

At its climax the scientific revolution would bring enormous change with the revolutionary contributions made by Isaac Newton. Newton, building on previous works produced the concepts of gravity, and he developed the three laws of motion which could be accurately proved through mathematical calculations. These discoveries about the natural world would serve to mend past uncertainties which in turn gave people real hope. It was the beginning of an end of Europe’s dark times and the birth of many new innovations and developments that were to come in the eighteenth century. It was truly a new age where through reason one could become fully become enlightened.

The moments when I write these words are history, so we could say history deals with the past. However, the past has not passed completely. The future will also be history. History is a very dynamic notion and concept. What is history is really hard to define. Change is central to history. Yet, history is not only about details. There are certain things that demonstrate true history. These events have varied in time and space. Among them are the Agricultural Revolution, the founding of Greek Philosophy, the first Sumerian city-state, the scientific revolution, Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution. It would be extremely hard to select one of these events as the most influential. Yet, there is always a choice to make. I would say that the Scientific Revolution is the most important event in history. There are a number of reasons that pertain to this conclusion. The first reason is that it gave the humans a new outlook towards their place in the universe. Another reason lies in the fact that the Scientific Revolution destroyed the older social structures. One more aspect pertaining to this conclusion is that the Scientific Revolution opened the way for females to raise their voices and challenge patriarchy.