Being Human: Lecture 3 - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Being Human: Lecture 3

Famous Stories We Tell Ourselves (part II): The ‘Scientific Revolution’Slide2

Def. Scientific Revolution:

An term that describes a

period in Western history in which the way people

thought about

and investigated nature

changed significantly.

The

publication of

Nicolaus

Copernicus's

De

revolutionibus

orbium

coelestium

(

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly

Sphere, 1543s

) is often cited as marking the beginning of the

Scientific

R

evolution

, and its completion is attributed to the "grand synthesis"

of Isaac

Newton's 1687

Principia

published in 1687.Slide3

The Whig Interpretation of History

( 1931)

The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800

(1948)

Herbert Butterfield, 1900-1979Slide4

Dome of ScienceSlide5

‘Since

that revolution, overturned the authority in science not only of the middle

ages

but of the ancient world – since it ended not only in the eclipse of

scholastic

philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics – it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and the Reformation

to

the rank of mere episodes, mere internal

replacements

, within the system

of

Christendom.

Since it changed the character of men’s habitual mental operation

even

in the conduct of the non-material

sciences

, while transforming the whole

diagram

of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, it

looms

so large as the real origin of the modern world and of modern mentality that

our

customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and

an

encumbrance. There can hardly be a field in which it is of greater moment to

us

to see at somewhat closer range the precise operations that underlay a

particularly

historical

transition, a particular chapter of intellectual development.’

(

Henry Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, p. 7-8)Slide6

The ‘Scientific Revolution’ according to Butterfield:

1. His revolution refers to an abrupt change, after which nothing is the same – and this is said to happen from around the mid 16

th

century.

2. In terms of what this abrupt change constituted – For Butterfield it was a change in thinking about the natural world (so ideas, rather than practices are his main concern).  

3. Finally it is a story of progress and breakthroughs in science - a series of great thinkers, with great ideas who progressively changed the world. So it hails the

‘Scientific Revolution’

as the triumph of a fearless, rational mind over the superstition and backward reasoning of the middle ages.Slide7

Revisionist thinking on the ‘Scientific Revolution’

A desire to question stories of triumphal progress.

Was it really ‘revolutionary’

?

To what extent did ideas about man and the natural world really change?

Did changes solely take places in Northern Protestant Europe?

Should we assess ‘great thinkers’ as isolated geniuses who saw beyond the restricted horizon of their own time; or is it more fruitful to embed these individuals within their precise social and cultural context?

Peter Dear: “

If there was

a ‘Scientific Revolution’

it must by necessity have overthrown a previous

orthodoxy …

but

it is

unclear to what extent an old, unchallenged orthodoxy had actually existed, or to what extent the ways of thought that replaced it were themselves truly novel and truly

unified”.Slide8

Why still use the term ‘Scientific Revolution’?

Steven

Shapin

:

“we

can say that the seventeenth century witnessed some self-conscious and large scale attempts to change belief, and ways of securing belief, about the natural world. And a book about the Scientific Revolution

can legitimately tell a story about those attempts, whether or not they succeeded, whether or not they were contested in local culture, whether or not they were wholly

coherent”.Slide9

Some of his writings:

On the heavens

On sleep and sleeplessness

On animals

On the soul

Virtues and vicesMeteorology

Metaphysics

On

Longlivity

and Shortness of Life

Poetics

Generation and Corruption

And many, many more …

Aristotle, 384 BC – 322 BCSlide10

Def. Natural philosophy:

A category also known as ‘physics’. It refers to systematic

knowledge of all aspects of the physical world, including

l

iving things, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

routinely understood as being God’s creation. It therefore possesses strong theological implications. Slide11

Aristotelian cosmosSlide12
Slide13

Micro-Macrocosm – Man as the mirror of the wider cosmosSlide14
Slide15

What do natural philosophers do?

Collecting and cataloguing the wonders of God’s creation – all the things we

have forgotten due to the fall

To explain why things were the way they were; they were not about ‘discovery’

But about the question. Why did God make things the way they are?

Natural philosophical reasoning:

The method is ‘deductive’ – from what we know to why it is the way it

is.

T

hey

follow a particular logic called syllogism - This takes the form of a logical deductive structure derived from incontestable basic statements or premises.

It is derived

from Aristotle’s writings on

logic - consisting

of a ‘major premises’ (all As are B), a ‘minor premise’ (C is A)

, and

a ‘conclusion’ (therefore C is B

)/

Example:

All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.Slide16

Scholasticism; scholastic: Scholasticism is a term applied to the intellectual and academic style of the medieval universities, a style stressing debate, disputation, and the effective use of

cannonical

texts (such as those of Aristotle) in the making of arguments. A ‘scholastic’ is a practitioner of that style of thinking.

Syllogism: the central technical device in formal logic in the universities of the

Middle Ages and early modern period, derived from Aristotle’s writings on

l

ogic, and consisting of a ‘major premises’ (all As are B), a ‘minor premise’ (C is A),

And a ‘conclusion’ (therefore C is B)

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man

Therefore Socrates is mortal

Example: Slide17

‘Science’ or ‘scientia

’ in scholastic understanding:

A true science demonstrated its conclusion from premises that were

a

ccepted as certain or true (in the sense of universally true for all times).

Conclusions would be certain as long as they were deduced correctly from starting points that were themselves certain or true (in the sense of

Universally true for all times).

(see Dear, p. 5

)

Scholasticism; scholastic:

is

a term applied to the intellectual and academic style of the medieval universities, a style stressing debate, disputation, and the effective use of

cannonical

texts (such as those of Aristotle) in the making of arguments. A ‘scholastic’ is a practitioner of that style of thinking. Slide18

‘

Experience’ in scholasticism :

Experience

for

scholastics

amounted to knowledge that be gained by someone who had perceived ‘the same thing’ countless times, so as to become thoroughly familiar

with it.

(

e.g

the

rising of the

sun)

When an Aristotelian philosopher claimed to base his knowledge on experience, he meant that he was

familiar

with the behaviours and properties of the things he discussed. Ideally his audience would be too

.

(

D

ear, p. 5)