1. The “New Scientific Thinking”
Europe after 1500
Between 1500 and 1750 a revolution in human understanding of humanity’s place in the universe began in Europe
Partly a child of Renaissance thinking and partly a development of independent thinking on the part of several people, science became a full blown component of human knowledge.
Several factors may account for this

2. Factors accounting for the advance of Science
Science became as important to understanding human life as philosophy and the arts.
Science also increasingly began to affect practical issues which redounded on economics, war, business, production and population.
Science enhanced human life in many ways but presented new problems as well
Science also affected other domains of thought. People began to use scientific explanations (even if poorly understood) to describe their relationships to each other and the world.

3. Science and the world
Science also changed ideas of religion and of God.
Spread the idea that the universe is orderly and harmonious, that human reason can understand the workings of the cosmos.
Science is most likely responsible for the idea that reason and rational thinking can overcome most issues laying a foundation for political changes that characterized this period and the following centuries

4. Science
The word itself, science, became linked with the idea of “modern”.
Scientific reasoning shaped many non scientific areas of human endeavor and thought.
Became the most important and prestigious avenue for transmitting ideas
The Scientific Revolution became the basis for the Modern World

5. Science and the its prophets
Renaissance thinkers such as Da Vince explored science very thoroughly. We know he studied mechanics, anatomy, and was interested in almost everything.
But, Da Vinci did not publish his work, his ideas dying with him.
Science depends on the propagation of ideas; it needed a systemic way to communicate and spread.
The 16th century was in many ways irrational with a current of rationality below the surface

6. Science and its Prophets
Europe in this time period was a curious mixture of strands of thought.
One current doubted that humans could ever know any truths about the universe, that all knowledge was derived from custom and not veracity
Another current was strongly supernatural there being no line between the magical and the real. Alchemy and chemistry, astrology and astronomy were comingled into arcane mysteries practitioners of which were the only ones who could behold the mystery, ie. Nostradamus and Paracelsus.

7. Science and its Prophets
Curiously, it was during this age of agitation in religion, philosophy, and science that the idea of witchcraft became embedded in European thought. Perhaps the turmoil of the century was the cause.
The war against witches developed simultaneously with science in the 17th century. No area in Europe (Protestant or Catholic) was proof against this unmitigated supernatural onslaught. The witch craze did not die out until the early 18th century and has persisted as a cult of sorts since that time. Witness outbursts about “satanic” cults in the 20th and 21st century when people are confronted with things that they cannot explain or will not explain rationally.

8. Science and its Prophets
Bacon-rejected old ways of thinking. Derided the tendency to put faith in old ways branding almost all beliefs (except religion) to be worthless. Bacon attacked earlier ways of gaining knowledge, scholasticism, the academic tradition of the universities, and deductive reasoning in general. In this he was joined by Descartes.
Deduction derives knowledge from the acceptance of definitions and propositions and deducing what can be derived from them. Bacon and Descartes believed this to be a barren and invalid method of seeking knowledge

9. Science and its Prophets
Bacon and Descartes created new methodology for thinking
They believed there was a true and reliable method of knowledge and once this was understood, people could and would be able to use this for their own purposes, control nature, make useful inventions, improve mechanics and engineering and add to the comfort and quality of human existence. No one had ever had thoughts like this before.

10. Bacon Developed and utilized the “inductive” reasoning in thought
I will give an example from the text to show the difference from the old “deductive” reasoning
Bacon advised to look at the world in a new way, to put aside preconceptions and bias, to see the world as it actually is as we perceive them.
Formalized empiricism-the founding of knowledge on observation and experience
The patterns of thought should be shaped by actual observed facts

11. Bacon
Science thus fortified will link particular facts to general principles and uniting with deductive reasoning produce what we today generally call the scientific method.
Bacon also linked useful knowledge with true knowledge.
The aphorism “Knowledge is power” is derived from Bacon’s principles
The modern idea of progress stems from this understanding
However, it must be stated that with knowledge comes great power for good and for ill.

12. Descartes
Descartes was a great mathematician. He believed and helped to develop the belief in the ideas that most of nature could be explained mathematically.
He believed in the principle of systematic doubt
This allowed him to develop a dualistic system of thinking that there are two realities fundamental to the universe. One was subjective including human experience; the other objective including everything outside the human mind.
Cogito ergo sum- I think therefore I am

13. Descartes
Cartesian thinking had as its basis the idea that space was infinite and mathematically explicable.
Descartes shared Bacon’s belief that knowledge and science ( in this case mathematics) created useful progress in human affairs.
Both men believed and expatiated on the ideas that science is an avenue to a better world for humans in all facets of existence which is something philosophy could not do.