scientific awakening a directional change in thinking

Scientific AwakeningA directional change in

thinking

Scientific Awakening

• Definition:– Period of time when

people began to define scientific method and apply it to search for truth

Basic Definitions

• Science: A process of understanding and organizing knowledge– Described nature

• Technology: A combination of skills and creativity which are mastered in their environment– Art and technology were identical

Scientific Awakening – Steps

• Merging science and technology– Technology previously independent of science

• Use of mathematics• Use of experimentation and inductive

reasoning• Science separated from philosophy

– Basic ancient truths were questioned– Focus on physics, not ethics and metaphysics

• History viewed as progressive

"The rise of the scientific spirit was a notable feature of the Renaissance [and, especially, just afterwards]: men no longer accepted without question the opinions of the ancients about the universe and the laws governing the natural world; dogma was subjected to experiment, and when it failed to survive the test it was rejected and new theories were formulated. Thus science in the modern sense was born, and rapid progress was made in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. But the immediate consequences for technology were confined to a few specialized fields; in the main, technological progress still depended upon the use of empirical methods by practical men. On the whole, up to 1750 science probably gained more from technology than vice versa."

– T.K. Derry and T. I. Williams, A Short History of Technology

Scientist Contributions

Copernicus Challenged a basic theory

Galileo Linked experiments and math

Bacon Scientific Method

Descartes Theoretical Science

Newton Applied laws to the universe

Lavoisier Quantification of experiments

Scientific Awakening (Overview)

Earth

Moon

Mercury

Motion of Mercury

Ptolemy Model of the Universe

Tycho Brahe’s Model

Earth not at center of

circles

Copernicus• Realized the earth turns on an axis• Proposed a solar centered system

– Book of Revolutions

Copernicus

• Problems– Not all epicycles could be eliminated– Common sense seems to contradict

• 1000 mph wind• No sense of spinning

– Scriptures seem to contradict

“And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”

– Joshua 10:13

“And thus, according to his word the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that the sun standeth still; yea, and behold, this is so; for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun.”

- Helaman 12:15

“According to the church, propositions which are stated but not rigorously demonstrated, such as the Copernican system itself, were not condemned outright, if they seemed to contradict Holy Scripture; they were merely relegated to the rank of ‘working hypotheses’ with an implied: ‘wait and see; if you bring proof, then, but only then, we shall have to reinterpret Scripture in the light of this necessity.”

— Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p442

Galileo

• Called the successor to Archimedes

• Study of pendulums– Chandelier in a cathedral

Galileo’s Contributions

• Linked science and math with observation

• Established math as language of science

“Truth cannot be found in the book of Aristotle but in the book

of Nature; and the book of Nature is written in the language

of mathematics.”

- Galileo

Galileo

Galileo’s Contributions

• Linked science and math with observation

• Established math as language of science

• Engineering skills• Manufacturing• Music and art capabilities• Optic developments

– Founded modern astronomy

• Secularized science

“God is the author of two great books—the book of scripture and the book of nature. These cannot be in conflict; so any apparent contradictions come from fallible human interpretations…Scripture is a book about how to go to heaven; not a book about how heaven goes.”

- Galileo

Galileo

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has

intended us to forgo their use.”

- Galileo Galilei

Galileo

Galileo’s Trial

• Court scientist to the Medici family– Many discussions about Copernican theory

• Taught Copernican theory widely as truth• Ordered by the church to teach it as a

theory• Wrote a book on the theory

– Three people discussing

• Court on defiance of previous church order• Sentenced to house arrest and silence

Kepler's Laws of Planetary MotionI. The orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse.

II. The line joining the planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times as the planet travels around the ellipse.

III. The ratio of the squares of the revolutionary periods for two planets is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their semi-major axes (half the major axis).

Major axis

Francis Bacon

• Court Chancellor• Development of

scientific method• Died from pneumonia

"Method is like a pathway and if the pathway leads in the right direction, you will eventually get to the truth. [Bacon's pathway was induction combined with experimentation]... Genius [like Aristotle] is the ability to run quickly. However if a genius is on the wrong pathway, he will never be able to come to the truth since he will just move more quickly in the wrong direction."

– Bacon

"This is the foundation of all, for we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover what nature does or may be made to do."

– Bacon, Novum Organum

Francis Bacon

1. Some people are like ants: they just build up a store of supplies (information or facts).

2. Some are like spiders: they build a complex system that is beautiful to behold (but it is made from the spider's own internal stuff and not materials from nature. It is not related to the real world.)

3. Some are like honey bees: they take materials from nature and convert it into materials that are useful for humankind (this is the model we should all pursue.)

– Bacon

Francis Bacon

1. Sensory perception (empirical knowledge) more reliable in examining the world than pure logic or theology.

2. Manipulation of the world instead of just observation.

3. Principle of cause and effect accepted as inviolate.

4. Theory developed after experiments were interpreted. (Inductive reasoning given precedence over deductive reasoning.)

5. Interpretation of data to be unbiased.

6. Well supported and accepted theories become laws.

Bacon’s Truths

Renè Descartes

• Foundations of analytical geometry

• Discourse on Method– Cogito ergo sum

(I think, therefore I am)– Dualism (mind-body

problem) • Reductionism• Banned by Catholic

Church

Renè Descartes

• Results of Descartes philosophy– Basis of French science (theory)– Scrutiny of ancient philosophers– Excitement in scientific investigation

“To be is to do”-Socrates

“To do is to be”-Descartes

“Do be do be do”-Sinatra

"Being and Doing"

Descartes

Blaise Pascal

• Skeptic who recognized limits of empiricism– Pensées

• Converted to science by Descartes

• Strong experimentalist• Discoveries perpetuate

human progress• Contributions

"In the Thoughts it is fully expounded as the difference between the geometrical and the intuitive temperaments. By geometrical, Pascal means the mind when it works with exact definitions and abstractions in science or mathematics; by intuitive, the mind when it works with ideas and perceptions not capable of exact definition. A right-angle triangle or gravitation is a perfectly definite idea; poetry or love or good government is not definable. And this lack of definition is not due to lack of correct information; it comes from the very nature of the subject."

– Barzun, Jacques, From Dawn to Decadence, Perennial, 2000, p216-218.

Isaac Newton

• The greatest scientist who ever lived

• Disinterested student• Time at the farm• Cambridge—professor of

math• Never married• Manic depressive

Isaac Newton

• Avoided publishing findings due to criticism

• Principia Mathematica– Discovery of gravity– Greatest scientific work

• Discoveries in math and optics– Developed Calculus

• Introduced Modeling

“In the preceding books I have laid down the principles…[that] are the laws of certain motions, and power or forces…It remains that from the same principles I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.”

- Newton

Isaac Newton

“If I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the

shoulders of Giants.”

-Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

"Newton was driven with a zeal that would unnerve the most devoted scholar: experimenting for days without food or sleep; staring at the sun until the image continued to burn unrelievedly in his head; probing his eye with a darning needle to investigate optical effects. He set out to test the limits of the physical world and in the process often discovered his own."

– Isacoff, Stuart, Temperament, Vintage Books, 2001, p. 10.

Isaac Newton's belief in God and the concept of gravity

To clarify his thoughts on the subject, sometime around 1720 Newton wrote what he perceived as a personal credo, a form of amalgamation of science and religion–a guide, perhaps, for future explorers. This included a clear picture of the role he saw for Christ in the universal scheme of things–not least the function of the spiritual body of Jesus as the medium by which celestial mechanics was maintained. ‘Jesus was beloved of God before the foundation of the world,’ he wrote, ‘and had glory with the father before the world began and was the principle of the creation … the agent by whom God created all things in this world.’ To summarise, the spiritual body of Jesus, the first created, was the facilitator for the creation of the physical universe, provided the means via which the cosmos continued to function mechanically, and acted as a medium via which forces acted at a distance without any visible, tangible, measurable mechanism. –John White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer

Chemistry

• Alchemists• Robert Boyle• Antoine Lavoisier

"Not for nothing has Lavoisier become known as the Newton of chemistry. Yet he was no single-minded pioneer. During his brief fifty years of life he not only established modern chemistry, but also found time to occupy (simultaneously) several top-level administrative positions, as well as contributing technological advances in a number of disparate fields: ballooning, the mineralogical mapping of France, urban street lighting, the Paris water supply, the efficiency of gunpowder and a full-scale model farm, to name but a few."

– Strathern, Paul, Mendeleyev's Dream, New York: Berkley Books, 2000, p.225.

Consequences of Scientific Revolution

• Community of scientists formed– Royal Society– Papers were read and published

• Scientists subjected to critical audience

• Science accepted as the preferred method of getting "truth"

Thank You

Scientific Awakening

Discipline Physics Metaphysical Ethics

Philosophy Logic Forms Seek happiness

Theology RevelationScriptures

God Be obedient

Science Empiricism Sensory perceptions

Inalienable rights

Aesthetics Emotions Beauty and symmetry

Unity with life

Euclid vs. RiemannEuclidean geometry a priori assumptions:1. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.2. Two parallel lines never cross.3. Two non-parallel lines cross at one and only one point.- Newton then derived that mass is a constant that

relates time, length, and speed or acceleration.

Riemann geometry a priori assumptions:1. The shortest distance between two points is a curve.2. Two parallel lines cross at infinity.- Einstein then derived that mass is a variable that

depends upon time, length, and speed or acceleration.

— From H. Clay Gorton, “The Transitory Nature of Telestial Knowledge”

"All over Europe, from Poland to southern Italy, a new mindset was gelling [at the time of the scientific revolution]. An indication of this is that several important discoveries were made, all but simultaneously, by different individuals who could not possibly have known of each other's work, let alone resorted to plagiarism. Here indeed was a new development. Science didn't just advance as a result of great discoveries by great men. Just as important as these individual geniuses was the advent of a new way of thinking – which could lead several thinkers to the same discovery at once... One example will suffice. Galileo completed his geometric sector for calculating the trajectory of projectiles (cannon balls) in 1597. Just a year later, an uncannily similar device was produced independently in London by the Elizabethan mathematician Thomas Hood... Meanwhile the Dutch mathematician Dirk Borcouts, who corresponded with Descartes, was also working on his own bronze sector for calculating projectiles."

– Strathern, Paul, Mendeleyev's Dream, New York: Berkley Books, 2000, p.132.

"Science was developing into a body of knowledge which frequently prompted those working within it in the same direction. This has led to the understanding that scientific discovery is to a certain extent predetermined. If 'inflammable air' had not been discovered by Cavendish (or Boyle, or whoever), it would sooner or later have been discovered by someone. Science could now be viewed as a cultural-historical phenomenon, rather than simply the creation of individual geniuses working alone."

– Strathern, Paul, Mendeleyev's Dream, New York: Berkley Books, 2000, p.216-217.

And now as I said concerning faith— faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope fort things which are not seen, which are true.

- Alma 32:21

Faith and Empiricism

"An ambitious young journalist had submitted a paper to the Academie, in the hope of gaining election to this prestigious body. The paper had been on the nature of fire... According to the paper, this [the extinguishing of a flame in an enclosed space] happened because the air heated by the flame expanded, and thus pressure mounted around the flame, diminishing its size, until finally it disappeared... It fell to the Academician Lavoisier to inform the misguided journalist that his paper was [wrong]. The journalist felt deeply insulted by Lavoisier's dismissive rejection. The journalist's name was Jean-Paul Marat. By 1791 Marat had become one of the leading members of the Jacobins, the extremist advocates of what would soon become the Terror. In 1791 Marat publicly attacked Lavoisier in the Jacobin newspaper... Lavoisier was arrested. Despite the frantic efforts of Mme Lavoisier, her husband was brought to trial. The judge expressed his opinion that 'The Republic has no need of scientists', and sentenced Lavoisier to death. He was guillotined the same day."


Electricity

• William Gilbert• Stephen Gray• Benjamin Franklin

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

- Hebrews 11:1



Perfect (Spiritual) Knowledge

Scientific (Empirical) Knowledge

What is hoped for

What is seen

Faith

"The development in the West of the concept of a unified natural science depended on the preparation of the ground through monotheism, so that one can understand more easily the reason that modern science arose in seventeenth-century Europe rather than, say, in China."

– Gerald Holton, Einstein, History, and Other Passions

“The heliocentric idea of the universe, crystallized in a system by Copernicus, and restated in modern form by Kepler, altered the climate of thought not by what it expressly stated, but by what it implied. Its implications were certainly not conscious in Copernicus’ mind, and acted on his successors by equally insidious, subterranean channels. They were all negative, all destructive to the solid edifice of medieval philosophy, undermining the foundations on which it rested.”

— Arthur Koestler, the Sleepwalkers, p. 218.

"It [Ptolemy's theory] made a very complex structure, and at last the mind rebelled at more and more contortions. William of Occam's principle of economy, that the best explanation is the one that calls for the least number of assumptions, was an argument against Ptolemy, in addition to the awkward facts. It impelled Copernicus to revise – not destroy – the system, by supposing the sun to be the center instead of the Earth. He was thereby able to reduce the epicycles from 84 to 30. But even his scheme is not quite sun-centered. His work, published in the mid-16C after his death, proposed an important change indeed, but it was not the shattering blow it is commonly taken for; it raised new difficulties, and those who rejected it were not simply diehards refusing evidence. Kopernik (to use his proper name) was a devoted admirer of the ancients and obsessed with the perfection of circles and spheres. Such notions (and several others) had to be abandoned before the modern planetary system could be suggested and tested; he did not bring this about single-handed."

– Barzun, Jacques, From Dawn to Decadence, Perennial, 2000, p192.

"What convinced him [Copernicus] to make this [the heliocentric model] the cornerstone of his argument, and eventually persuaded his followers, was that he thereby produced a model of the planetary system in which the relative locations and order of orbits were no longer arbitrary but followed by necessity. In short, Copernicus is a case study of the privileging of an aesthetically based theory – above all, the aesthetics of necessity – and even of the temporary disbelief in 'data' that would appear to disprove a favored theory...That is the meaning behind a remark Einstein made before the test of General Relativity: 'Now, I am fully satisfied, and I do not doubt any more the correctness of the whole system, may the observation of the eclipse succeed or not. The sense of the thing is too evident.'"


"Now man will at last measure the power of his mind on a true scale, and will realize that god, who founded everything in the world on the norm of quantity, also has endowed man with a mind which can comprehend these norms!"

– Kepler

"Galileo's invention amounted to secularizing science, submerging the qualitative in favor of the quantitative as the earmark of truth, and elevating experimental checks from illustrations of the value of a theory to the test of its probability."


Galileo

“Looking back, we see that two principles should have been considered by the theological judges of the new astronomy. First, the traditional interpretation was to be held unless solid reasons dictated otherwise. Second, in matters of pure physical science, the Scriptures are not the criterion for establishing one system or forbidding another, since they do not teach science. The correct theological procedure would have been to combine these two principles into a practical and valid norm for solving what appear to be discrepancies between Scripture and science. Had this been done, the opinion that the Scriptures confirmed the sun’s motion would have been held as more probable even after Galileo’s discoveries. By staying within the realm of probability, there would have been room left for another interpretation which would have been permissible, though less probable, namely, that the Scripture texts in no way represented scientific affirmations and thus were irrelevant to the scientific question.”

—Jerome J. Langford in Galileo, Science and the Church

“If a man’s proofs must be so overwhelming that others will speedily accept them against established authority, then few independent ideas, especially in science, will ever be brought forth, for most really new ideas require the research and the contributions of many men before rigorous proofs are to be found. I think that all that should be required is sufficient weight in the mind of the advocate himself that he will offer himself up to possible general ridicule. Galileo’s proofs had at least that much weight for him before he spoke out, and rightly so; his two attempted physical proofs, though not conclusive, were far stronger than many of his critics will allow them to be. I refer to the seasonal variation of sunspot paths and to Galileo’s theory of the tides. It would indeed be difficult to explain either of those phenomena without attributing some motion to the earth.”

— Stillman Drake in the foreword of Galileo, Science and the Church.

"Galileo's description of his experiments was quite skimpy by today's standards...Reading his dialogs, you never quite know if you are reading about Aristotelian observations or Platonist thought experiments....He left historians of science wondering whether he actually did the experiment... What surprises us is what Galileo said happened just after he released the two balls. The lighter ball, he said, started out a little bit faster than the heavy ball. Then the heavy ball caught up. That sounds crazy in the light of known physics. So physicists reran the experiment in front of a slow-motion movie camera. An assistant held two four-inch-diameter iron and wooden balls at arm's length, as Galileo would have held them to clear the wide balustrade at the top of the Pisa tower. A close study of the film proved that when someone tries to drop both balls at once, their strained muscles fool them. They consistently let go of the lighter one first. So what Galileo accurately reported is what really would have happened, and we are left with no doubt that he actually did the experiment."

– John Lienhard, The Engines of Our Ingenuity, p.73.

"'So far as I know, no one has yet pointed out that the distances traversed, during equal intervals of time, by a body falling from rest, stand to one another in the same ratio as the odd numbers beginning with unity.'....To have put it this way means that what counted most for Galileo was after all not the limited and perhaps rather silly case of a falling stone or a rolling ball, but the demonstration that terrestrial phenomena, of which these are examples, can be explained by the operation of integers – just as the Pythagoreans had dreamed (and as quantum physicists have proved for atomic behavior). Galileo, too, was still engaged in a search for cosmic truths, a tendency which, for better or worse, had to be reined in as science evolved further."


"Without a theory the facts are silent.“

– F. A. Hayek (Quoted in John Keegan, A History of Warfare, 1993, 6)

Bacon stated that he wanted to bring about “the true and lawful marriage of the empirical and rational faculties, the unkind and ill-starred separation of which has thrown into confusion all the affairs of the human family.”

- Quoted in Stephen F. Mason A History of the Sciences

"It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of inventions, and these are nowhere to be seen more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origins, though recent, are obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For the three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world."

– Sir Francis Bacon (1620) [From McGrath, In the Beginning, Anchor Books, 2002, p.5.]

"These 'idols of the mind' [false notions or prejudices], as he [Bacon] called them, came in four distinct categories. The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself... For instance, there is a universal propensity for oversimplification. We assume a greater order in things that actually is the case. Likewise, spectacular or sensational occurrences, which may well be unrepresentative, tend to influence our judgment more than routine ones. The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual. These are prejudices and intellectual peculiarities which result from our particular upbringing, education and experience. For instance, when assessing things one person may concentrate on likenesses, another on differences; one on details, another on the whole... Idols of the Market Place result from our interaction with others... These are the errors due to our use of language. Such errors do not necessarily result from the misuse of language, they may even result from the language itself... Bacon's fourth false notion he named Idols of the Theatre. These consisted of the various dogmas of philosophies. He included amongst these idols many principles and axioms in science which by tradition, credulity, and negligence have come to be received."


“Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament and adversity is

the blessing of the New.”

– Sir Francis Bacon

“Now the empire of man over things is founded on the arts and sciences alone for nature is only to be commanded by obeying

her.”

- Sir Francis Bacon

“If you start with certainties you will end in doubts, but if you

begin with doubts, you will end in certainties.”

- Sir Francis Bacon

“Truth emerges more readily from error than from

confusion.”

- Bacon

"Galileo did more than anyone to establish the methods of the new science, and Francis Bacon framed its philosophical stance. Bacon directly contradicted the Platonists' belief that truth is to be found in the human mind when he said, ‛That which nature may produce or bear should be discovered, not imagined or invented....' After 1600 Europe gained two new tools of inquiry, both of which led away from medieval thinking. The shift to observational science was certainly strengthened by new kinds of measuring instruments. [clocks, telescope, thermometer, microscope, etc.] But a second major force was also afoot, and its relation to the shift in scientific method was more complex. New forms of practical mathematics offered lay people means to perform calculations."

– John Lienhard, The Engines of Our Ingenuity, p.70.

Bacon’s Method

• Step 1—All known cases where phenomena occurs

• Step 2—Similar cases when phenomenon does not occur

• Step 3—Cases when phenomenon occurs in different degrees

• Step 4—Examine lists to discover cause

"[From Vico, the non-agreeing student of Descartes]. Mathematics is completely transparent to our minds, simply because it is our arbitrary creation. One can achieve a complete intellectual grasp only of things one has created oneself. We have made mathematics, but Nature was created by God. So perfect scientific certainty could be possessed by God alone and, in attempting to find a guarantee for his physical theories in the axioms of human mathematics, Descartes had been deceiving himself."

– Toulmin, Stephen and June Goodfield, The Discovery of Time, The University of Chicago Press, 1965, p.126.

PascalTruths of a different order [non-geometrical] are attainable by

finesse, even if consensus is lacking. The language itself recognizes the source of the distinction: to know and to know about express the difference between intimate awareness and things learned. Some languages in fact use different words for the contrast: wissen and kennen, savoir and connaître [saber and conocer]. Man as scientist has come to know a great deal, but as human being knows and feels intuitively love and ambition, poetry and music. The heart-and-mind reaches deeper than the power of reason alone... What, then, is the importance of Pascal's distinction?... As a true believer, Pascal had no need to revel in destruction; he was fond enough of his fellow men to want them saved, on any term – hence 'Pascal's Wager.' He pleads with the increasing number of freethinkers, atheists, who had been ;freed' by science and who were the first to be called Libertines. Pascal says to them: 'If you disbelieve in God, you have no eternal life – you yourselves say there is none. But if you believe, you have at least one chance out of two; for if there is not God, you are where you were before; and if there is, you have won salvation.'"

“Observation and experience can and must drastically restrict the range of admissible scientific belief, else there would be no science. But they cannot alone determine a particular body of such belief. An apparently arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical accident, is always a formative ingredient of the beliefs espoused by a given scientific community at a given time.”

- Thomas S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p5

William Harvey

• Practiced vivisection– Advanced understanding of

the heart– Text book on blood and

circulation

• Attacked by followers of Galen

• Elected to Royal Academy

“In the short term he [Lavoisier] appeared opportunistic, but in the long run he was remarkably consistent in maintaining a broad investigative program held together by multiple links between the sub problems it encompassed. I believe that his combination of flexibility and sustained purpose, the middle road between narrow concentration and scattered attention, was a characteristic of Lavoisier’s scientific style important to the overall success of his investigative enterprise.”

- Wallace and Gruber, Creative People at Work

"...[T]here is a closer connection between scientific creativity and scientific writing than has generally been noticed. It was in the process of composing his ideas on paper that Lavoisier sometimes came fully to grasp them, to see the flaws in them, to see how they could be further developed, or to perceive alternatives to what he had previously thought. Scientific papers are not merely reports of conclusions a scientist has already reached, but an important phase in the creative process itself."

– (Wallace and Gruber, Creative People at Work, 1989, 55.

Ptolemy

• The Almagest

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” (Isaac Newton, February 5, 1676) Let us explore Newton’s phrase a little further…Now if we think of building as a mere incremental process, brick on brick, it does not sound very romantic or exciting—this is hardly creative struggle or epiphany. Well, sometimes, we are sure, creative work is just that patient kind of building. Newton’s phrase allows for that, and he himself was certainly patient builder, sometimes. But Newton’s phrase allows for something else as well, the way a climber reaching one summit discovers unseen valleys and new higher ranges never seen before.

--Wallace and Gruber, Creative People at Work, 1989, 8-9

scientific awakening a directional change in thinking

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