1. The Scientific Revolution (1500s-1700s)

2. What was the Scientific Revolution?
Beginning of modern science
Scientific method: Depends upon logic, observation, and reason rather than faith
Created the technologies and techniques that built the modern world
Created paradigm of our solar system

3. Revolution in Epistemology and Philosophy
Universities formed
Rediscovery of classical science
Leading figures
Bacon
Brahe
Copernicus
Descartes
Galileo
Kepler
Newton

4. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
Earth revolves around the sun
Book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Heliocentric theory:
Sun is the center of the universe

5. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) Danish royal astrologer
Follower of Ptolemaic system
Observed and mapped over 700 stars in a 20-year period

6. What did Brahe place an emphasis on?
“To deny the power and influence of the stars is to detract from divine wisdom and influence. What more prejudiced or what sillier thought could one have about God than that He had made the most enormous and extraordinary of all heavens and a theatre of so many shining stars in vain and to no useful purpose, when no human being does even the most worthless task except for a particular purpose?”
Tycho Brahe, De disciplinis mathematicis oratio, 1574

7. Sir Francis Bacon ( )
Preferred inductive reasoning and facts over theory
Invented the scientific method

8. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) “I recant”
Invented the pendulum clock, thermometer, water pump, and sector
Created his own telescope based on another model
Discovered speed of acceleration for gravity

9. Johann Kepler (1571-1630) Brahe’s student for 20 years
Living during 30 years of war
Loved the planets and made it his life’s work to explain the motion of planets
Invented Three Laws of Planetary Motion
Included religious arguments and reasoning into his work
God’s geometrical plan for the universe?

10. What scientific theory did Kepler support?
“ Firstly, therefore, let my readers grasp that today it is absolutely certain among all astronomers that all the planets revolve around the sun, with the exception of the moon, which alone has the Earth as its centre: the magnitude of the moon’s sphere or orbit is not great enough for it to be deliniated in this diagram in a just ratio to the rest. Therefore, to the other five planets, a sixth, Earth, is added, which traces a sixth circle around the sun, whether by its own proper movement with the sun at rest, or motionless iself and with the whole planetary system revolving.”
Johannes Kepler, Harmonices Mundi (The Harmonies of the World), 1619

11. Rene Descartes (1595-1650) Deductive logic
Deduced the existence of God
Invented Cartesian geometry (xy axis)
“I think therefore I am”
Perception is unreliable- deduction is only tool

12. How does Descartes describe the ‘laws of nature’?
“Note, in the first place, that by ‘nature’ here I do not mean some goddess or any other sort of imaginary power. Rather, I am using this word to signify matter istelf, in so far as I am considering it taken together with all the qualities I have attributed to it, and under the condition that God continues to preserve it in the same way that he created it. For it follows of necessity from the mere fact that he continues thus to preserve it, that there must be many changes in its parts which cannot, it seems to me, properly be attributed to the action of God (because that action never changes), and which therefore I attribute to nature. The rules by which these changes take place I call the ‘laws of nature.’”
Rene Descartes, The World, 1664

13. Who does Descartes ultimately trust?
“Nevertheless, mindful of my own weakness, I make no firm pronouncements, but submit all these opinions to the authority of the Catholic Church and the judgment of those wiser than myself. And I would not wish anyone to believe anything except what he is convinced of by evident and irrefutable reasoning.”
Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, 1644

14. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) The Principia
Tied up the loose ends of Kepler and Galileo
Three Laws of Motion
Defined gravity and its laws
Invented optics and calculus
Royal Society

15. What scientific principle is Newton describing?
“Then the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea are deduced from these forces by propositions that are also mathematical. If only we could derive the other phenomena of nature from mechanical principles by the same kind of reasoning! For many things lead me to have a suspicion that all phenomena may depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by causes not yet known, either are impelled toward one another and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled from one another and recede.”
Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia), 1687.

16. What is the “divine arm” in the passage below?
“In my former I represented that the diurnal Rotations of the Planets could not be derived from Gravity, but required a divine Arm to impress them. And tho’ Gravity might give the Planets a Motion of Descent towards the Sun, either directly or with some little Obliquity, yet the transverse Motions by which they revolve in their several Orbs, required the divine Arm to impress them according to the Tangents of their Orbs.”
Letter from I. Newton to R. Bentley, 11 February 1693, Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy and Related Documents

17. Rise of the Scientific Community
Developed the modern scientific method
Universe ordered according to natural laws
Discovered that scientific laws can be discovered by human reason
Took the role of a deity or god out of the study of the universe
Mechanical views of the universe
Deistic view of God

18. Review Questions Describe the Scientific Revolution.
What astronomer, author of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, believed that the earth revolves around the sun?
Who is credited with inventing the scientific method?
Who came up with the Three Laws of Planetary Motion?
What famous Italian astronomer was convicted of heresy by the Inquisition?
What English scientist defined gravity?