Discussion 6

Lecture 12: The Scientific Revolution, 1642-1730

If I have seen further it is because I have stood on y e shoulders of giants.

---Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke (1676)

Fortunate Newton, happy childhood of science! He who has time and

tranquility can by reading this book live again the wonderful events which

the great Newton experienced in his young days. Nature to him was an

open book, whose letters he could read without effort. The conceptions

which he used to reduce the material of existence to order seemed to flow

spontaneously from experience itself, from the beautiful experiments which

he ranged in order like playthings and describes with an affectionate

wealth of detail. On one person he combined the experimenter, the

theorist, the mechanic and, not least, the artist in exposition.

--- Albert Einstein (1931)

The end result of my study of Newton has served to convince me that with

him there is no measure. He has become for me wholly other, one of the

tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of the

human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria by which we

comprehend our fellow beings.

---Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980)

We can't imagine that the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries

took place in a vacuum. That is, we can't assume that modern science simply

came to be in a momentary flash of brilliance, nor that Copernicus or Kepler or

Galileo just woke up one morning and pronounced their discoveries to a world

which became somehow instantaneously different. Past historians have looked

at the history of modern science from precisely this point of view. Like the

Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution has been interpreted as explosive, a

surge forward, a watershed. On this score, John Herman Randall once remarked

that:

One gathers, indeed, from our standard histories of the sciences, written

mostly in the last generation, that the world lay steeped in the darkness

and night of superstition, till one day Copernicus bravely cast aside the

errors of his fellows, looked at the heavens and observed nature, the first

man since the Greeks to do so, and discovered . . . the truth about the solar

system. The next day, so to speak, Galileo climbed the leaning Tower of

Pisa, dropped down his weights, and as they thudded to the ground,

Aristotle was crushed to earth and the laws of falling bodies sprang into

being. [The Career of Philosophy, vol 1, 1962]

The scientists of the seventeenth century -- those mathematicians,

astronomers, and philosophers -- had the enormous weight of centuries of

thought resting on their shoulders. Even Isaac Newton was aware of the debt

he owed to the past. Although this tradition was based largely on the work of

Aristotle, St. Augustine, Aquinas and Dante, the scientific revolutionaries

sought to break free from these traditional beliefs. They had to forge a new

identity. The scientific revolutionaries needed to transcend Plato, Aristotle,

Galen, Ptolemy or Aquinas -- this was their conscious decision. They not only

criticized but replaced the medieval world view with their own. And this quest

for identity would culminate in a world view that was scientific, mathematical,

methodological and mechanical.

However, this revolution was accomplished by utilizing the medieval roots of

science which, in turn, meant the science of the classical age of Greece and

Rome as well as the refinements to that science made by Islamic scholars.

They used what they found at hand to create a new outlook on the cosmos, the

natural world and ultimately, the world of man. The antecedents to this

revolution in thought are found in the 11th and 12th centuries when most of

the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers were wed together into a new body

of beliefs. These beliefs were living and vital. We encounter them in the 12th

century Renaissance. We find them at the school of Chartres in the mid-12th

century, or at the medical school at Salerno near Naples in 1060. At Toledo in

Spain, 92 Arabic works had been translated along with Ptolemy in 1175. By the

12th century, Arabic science and mathematics had found its way to Oxford in

England and to Padua in Italy. From the early 12th century, then, there existed

in Europe a continuous tradition of scientific endeavor. And although this

science was temporarily overshadowed by the intellectual bulk of Aristotle in

the mid-13th century, this tradition was living in the 15th and 16th centuries

and well into the 17th. (See my Lectures on Ancient and Medieval European

History, especially Lectures 23-28.)

This was the background and education of the scientific revolutionaries. We

must see their discoveries as shaped and formed by this core of accepted ideas

and not just spinning out of empty space. The revolution in science did not

occur quickly. It developed over time. Although the medieval Church earned

absolute power, authority and obedience, science and scientific thinking did

flourish during the five centuries preceding that watershed we call the

Scientific Revolution.

By the 17th century, science, scientific thinking and the experimental method

had become the territory of more men, and by the mid-18th century,

increasing numbers of women would be included as well. For instance, in 1649

René Descartes yielded, after much hesitation, to the requests of Queen

Christina of Sweden that he join the distinguished circle she was assembling in

Stockholm and personally instruct her in philosophy.

The New Science spread rapidly through education in universities such as

Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Padua and Paris. Science was also diffused to a

large audience through books. Each time a Galileo, Descartes, or Newton

published their findings, a wave of replies followed. And each of these replies

was followed by other replies so that what quickly resulted was an ever

growing body of scientific literature. And, of course, there was at the same

time, an increasing number of men and women who were eager for such

knowledge.

By the end of the 17th century, new societies and academies devoted to

science were founded. There were many who agreed with Francis Bacon (1561-

1626) that scientific work ought to be a collective enterprise, pursued

cooperatively by all its practitioners. Information should be exchanged so that

scientists could concentrate on different parts of a project rather than waste

time in duplicate research. Although it was not the first such academy, the

Royal Society in England was perhaps the first permanent organization

dedicated to scientific activity. The Royal Society was founded at Oxford during

the English Civil War when revolutionaries captured the city and replaced many

teachers at the university. A few of these revolutionaries formed the Invisible

College, a group that met to exchange information and ideas. What was most

important was the organization itself, not its results: the group only included

one scientist, Robert Boyle (1627-1691). In 1660, twelve members, including

Boyle and Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), formed an official organization,

the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. In 1662, the

Society was granted its charter by Charles II.

The purpose of the Royal Society was Baconian to the core. Its aim was to

gather all knowledge about nature, particularly that knowledge which might be

useful for the public good. Soon it became clear, however, that the Society's

principal function was to serve as a clearing center for research. The Society

maintained correspondence and encouraged foreign scholars to submit their

discoveries to the Society. In 1665 the Society launched its Philosophical

Transactions, the first professional scientific journal. The English example was

followed on the continent as well: in 1666 Louis XIV accepted the founding of

the French Royal Academy of Sciences and by 1700, similar organizations were

established in Naples and Berlin.

The New Science was also diffused by public demonstrations. This was

especially the case in public anatomy lessons. Scientist and layman alike were

invited to witness the dissection of human cadavers. The body of a criminal

would be brought to the lecture hall and the surgeon would dissect the body,

announcing and displaying organs as they were removed from the body.

Throughout major European cities there were wealthy men who, with lots of

free time on their hands, would dabble in science. These were the virtuosi --

the amateur scientists. These men oftentimes made original contributions to

scientific endeavor. They also supplied organizations like the Royal Society with

needed funds.

By 1700, science had become an issue of public discourse. The bottom line, I

suppose, was that science worked! It was wonderful, miraculous and

spectacular. For the 17th century scientist -- a Galileo, a Newton or the virtuosi

-- science produced the Baconian vision that anything was indeed possible.

Science itself gave an immense boost to the general European belief in human

progress, a belief perhaps initiated by the general awakening of European

thought in the 12th century.

It was the achievement of men like Copernicus and Galileo to sift through

centuries of scientific knowledge and to create a new world view. This was a

world view based as much on previous science and knowledge as it was on

new developments derived from the scientific method.

The greatest scientific achievement of the 17th

century was clearly the mathematical system of the

universe produced by ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727).

It was Newton who went far beyond Galileo by

taking observations of the heavens and turning

them into measured and irrefutable fact. Thanks to

Newton, the western intellectual tradition would now

include a concrete and scientific explanation of the

motion of the heavens. Because of his greatness,

the 17th century could almost be called the Age of

Newton.

Newton was in his own lifetime not regarded as a

genius by his contemporaries. His fellow scientists

respected him and admired him but they also

disliked him. The reason is clear -- Newton was not a happy man. He was dour,

sour and made absolutely no attempt to befriend anyone. Whenever someone

happened to get too close to him, he retired to his study. His thoroughgoing

Puritanism meant that he constantly subjected himself to self-examination.

Isaac Newton was born premature on Christmas Day, 1642, the year of

Galileo's death. His family belonged to the gentry. He was educated at

Cambridge and was also a member and president of the Royal Society.

Although the Society was responsible for the publication of his major writings,

his relationships with its members was strained. In the 25-30 years that

Newton was a member he attended its meetings only a handful of times. In

terms of religion he accepted the Church of England only partially. Over time,

he came to see the Bible more as an allegory than as undisputed fact.

He was an unlikable man -- a solitary genius. He worked in short bursts of

energy and was always hesitant to publish his findings. He had to be coaxed

and encouraged to make those simplifications necessary to communicate a

considerable body of thought. He quarreled violently with those men (e.g.,

Robert Hooke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and John Flamstead) who questioned

his priority and superiority in fields he dominated.

Modern biographers have pretty much agreed that Newton -- our "sober, silent,

thinking lad" -- suffered a troubled childhood. His father died in early October

1642, a month before Isaac was born. For the first three years of his life he was

sent out to a wet nurse and then lived with his grandmother. During this time

his mother remarried, an act that did much to alienate Newton from his mother.

As a child, Newton was never shown much love or affection. This may explain

why he was always so isolated, detached and unemotional.

Between 1660 and 1690, Newton devoted himself to an academic life at

Cambridge. As the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics he was expected to lecture

on a weekly basis, lectures which he frequently delivered to empty classrooms.

He embraced a number of academic interests but the ones which interested

him most were alchemy, theology, optics and mathematics. No field of study

took precedence over another and he so he devoted as much of his energy and

intellect to alchemy as he did to theology and mathematics.

Like most scholars of the period, Newton had an amanuensis, a young student

named Humphrey Newton, who served him as an assistant who provided

Newton with meals as well as transcriptions of his lecture notes. Newton was

an absent-minded man. Stories of Newton's behavior are, of course, well

known. Newton was a deliberate thinker, always hesitant to publish, always

hesitant to move too quickly. A call to dinner might have taken Newton an hour

to act upon. If, on his way to sup, his fancy was struck by some book lying on

the table, the meal would simply have to wait. He ate poorly, slept irregularly

and for the most part found the outside world a terrible irritant from which he

needed to escape. As Humphrey Newton once wrote:

I never knew him to take any recreation or pastime either in riding out to

take the air, walking, bowling, or any other exercise whatever, thinking all

hours lost that was not spent in his studies, to which he kept so close that

he seldom left his chamber unless at term time, when he read in the

schools as being Lucasianus Professor, where so few went to hear him, and

fewer understood him, that ofttimes he did in a manner, for want of

hearers, read to the walls. . . . So intent, so serious upon his studies that he

ate very sparingly, nay, ofttimes he has forgot to eat at all, so that, going

into his chamber, I have found his mess untouched, of which, when I have

reminded him, he would reply -- "Have I!" and then making to the table,

would eat a bit or two standing, for I cannot say I ever saw him sit at table

by himself. . . . he very rarely went to bed till two or three of the clock,

sometimes not until five or six, lying about four or five hours, especially at

spring or fall of the leaf, at which times he used to employ about six weeks

in his laboratory, the fire scarcely going out either night or day; he sitting

up, one night as I did another, till he had finished his chemical

experiments, in the performances of which he was the most accurate,

strict, exact. What his aim might be I was not able to penetrate into, but his

pains, his diligence at those set times made me think he aimed at

something beyond the reach of human art and industry. [quoted in Frank E.

Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton (1968), p. 105.]

In 1687, Newton finished his greatest work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia

Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural

Philosophy), the last "great" work in the western intellectual

tradition to be published in Latin. It was this work, commonly

called the Principia, which secured Newton's place as one of

the greatest thinkers in the intellectual history of Europe. The

PRINCIPIA is a dense work, but not totally incomprehensible.

He wanted to explain why the planets were held in their

orbits -- he wanted to know why an apple fell to the earth. His

answer was, of course, gravity. Newton not only described the

laws which explained gravity, he also invented the calculus to

explain the laws of gravity.

Even for those people who could not understand Newtonian physics or

mathematics, Newton had an amazing impact, since he had offered irrefutable

proof -- mathematical proof -- that Nature had order and meaning, an order and

meaning that was not based on faith but on human Reason. With Newton, we

find the important combination of two important concepts -- Nature and

Reason. His scientific discoveries and his spirit (together with the ideas of

Francis Bacon and John Locke) dominated the thought of the 18th century -- a

century the thinkers of the period itself called the Age of Enlightenment.

On March 20, 1727, Newton died and was buried at Westminster Abbey. The

English poet, Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who was then busy translating

Homer's Iliad, composed an epitaph for Newton. It was short and precise and

illustrates the importance of this solitary genius. Pope wrote:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:

God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

How can it be that a poet who was then translating Homer, should come to

write Newton's epitaph? Was Pope also a mathematician? Hardly. The point is

that Pope knew that Newton had discovered something which would in the

18th century become universally applicable to the new science of man. If man,

using his Reason, could deduce the laws of Nature, then it seemed only a short

step to apply those laws to man and society. Is it any accident that the modern

social sciences were founded in the 18th century and in the wake of Newton's

achievement?

The Scientific Revolution gave the western world the impression

that the human mind was progressing toward some ultimate

end. Thanks to the culminating work of Newton, the western

intellectual tradition now included a firm believe in the idea of

human progress, that is, that man's history could be identified

as the progressive unfolding of man's capacity for perfectibility.

From this point on, man the believer was now joined by man the

knower. It was man's destiny to both know the world, and create

that world.

But, the Scientific Revolution also showed man to be merely a small part of a

larger divine plan. Man no longer found himself at the center of the universe --

he was now simply a small part of a much greater whole. The French thinker

BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662), gave perhaps the greatest expression to the

uncertainties generated by the Scientific Revolution when, in his Pensées, he

wrote:

For, after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with the

infinite, an absolute in comparison with nothing, a central point between

nothing and all. Infinitely far from understanding these extremes, the end

of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an

impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness

from which he came, and the infinite in which he is engulfed. What else

then will he perceive but some appearance of the middle of things, in an

eternal despair of knowing either their principle of their purpose? All things

emerge from nothing and are borne onwards to infinity. Who can follow this

marvelous process? The Author of these wonders understands them. None

but he can.