THETHE BIRTHBIRTH OFOF SCIENCESCIENCE Ancient Times to 1699 Ray Spangenburg Diane Kit Moser The Birth of Science: Ancient Times to 1699 Copyright © 2004, 1993 by Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser This is a revised edition of THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE FROM THE ANCIENT GREEKS TO THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION Copyright © 1993 by Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spangenburg, Ray, 1939– The birth of science : ancient times to 1699 / Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser. p. cm. — (The history of science) Rev. ed. of: The history of science from the ancient Greeks to the scientific revolu- tion, c1993. Summary: Discusses major scientists as well as scientific knowledge and discov- eries from ancient times through the seventeenth century. ISBN 0-8160-4851-7 1. Science—History—Juvenile literature. [1. Science—History.] I. Moser, Diane, 1944– II. Spangenburg, Ray, 1939– History of science from the ancient Greeks to the scientific revolution. III. Title. Q126.4.S62 2004 509—dc22 2003019470 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Text design by Erika K. Arroyo Cover design by Nora Wertz Illustrations by Sholto Ainslie and Patricia Meschino Printed in the United States of America MP Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. In Memory of Morgan Sherwood and his love of the ever-human struggle to become rational n CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction xvii PART I Precursors of Science: From Ancient Times to the Middle Ages 1 1 Ancient Peoples: Observation, Measurement, and Mythology 3 Time and Place: About 500 B.C.E. in Greece 5 Babylonia and Egypt 5 The Ancient Greeks: New Ways of Looking at Things 8 Aristotle—And “Why Things Happen” 18 2 From Aristotle to the High Middle Ages: (322 B.C.E.–1449 C.E.) 23 Archimedes and Direct Observation 23 Women in Science: Mathematics—Not Just for Men 25 The Cosmos 26 Side Roads of Science: Astrology and Its Roots 27 Hipparchus and Ptolemy 28 The Rise of Islamic Science 31 The Scholastics: Frozen in Time 35 Growth of Science in India and China 38 PART II The Scientific Revolution in the Physical Sciences 43 3 The Universe Turned Outside-In: Copernicus, Tycho, and Kepler 45 Copernicus and the Birth of a Revolution 46 Tycho Brahe: Observer of the Stars 53 Johannes Kepler and the Elliptical Orbit 58 Legacy of a Triad 61 4 A “Vast and Most Excellent Science”: Galileo and the Beginnings of Method 63 William Gilbert: Pioneer of Experimental Science 66 Discovering Laws of Motion 69 The Telescope: Seeing Is Believing 72 Lippershey and the Invention of the Telescope 74 Women in Science: The Missing Astronomers 76 Giordano Bruno: Martyr for Science? 78 Argument and Capitulation: The Trial 80 5 Boyle, Chemistry, and Boyle’s Law 83 Chemistry’s Beginnings 83 The Genius of County Cork 86 Shared Knowledge 86 An Absence of Gases 87 Understanding Gases 90 Building Blocks of Chemistry: Methods and Elements 92 6 Newton, the Laws of Motion, and the “Newtonian Revolution” 94 The Great Synthesizer 95 Fontenelle: The First Professional Popular Science Writer 100 Three Laws of Motion 102 The Nature of Light 105 Sir Isaac Newton, Hero of an Age 106 PART III The Scientific Revolution in the Life Sciences 109 7 The Anatomists: From Vesalius to Fabricius 111 Galen’s Mixed Legacy 111 Vesalius the Anatomist 115 The Seeds of Change 120 8 Paracelsus, Pharmaceuticals, and Medicine 123 Paracelsus, the Physician 125 Paracelsus, the Alchemist 127 Sanctorius (Santorio Santorio) 130 9 The Heart of the Matter 133 Early Ideas About Blood 133 Big Ideas in a Small Book 137 Harvey and Animal Reproduction 141 Blood and Air 142 10 The Amazing Microscopic World 145 Malpighi and the Capillary 146 Grew Views Plant Structure 148 Giovanni Borelli and the Mechanical Body 150 Swammerdam Examines Insects 151 Hooke, Master Illustrator 152 Leeuwenhoek’s “Wretched Beasties” 155 11 Understanding the Diversity of Life 161 The Vegetable Lamb on a Stalk 164 Francesco Redi and Spontaneous Generation 168 Konrad Gesner, Natural Historian 169 Fossils 170 John Ray and the Species Concept 172 PART IV Science, Society, and the Scientific Revolution 175 12 The Seventeenth Century: A Time of Transition 177 John Dee: Scientist and Magician 177 Royal Intrigues 181 A Time of Intertwined Beliefs 187 Secrecy and Power 190 Conclusion: An Evolving Legacy: The Scientific Method 195 Chronology 197 Glossary 217 Further Reading and Web Sites 223 Index 229 PREFACE What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can com- prehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking per- son with a feeling of “humility.” —Albert Einstein SCIENCE, OF ALL HUMAN ENDEAVORS, is one of the greatest adventures: Its job is to explore that “magnificent structure” we call nature and its awesome unknown regions. It probes the great mys- teries of the universe such as black holes, star nurseries, and quasars, as well as the perplexities of miniscule subatomic parti- cles, such as quarks and antiquarks. Science seeks to understand the secrets of the human body and the redwood tree and the retrovirus. The realms of its inquiry embrace the entire universe and everything in it, from the smallest speck of dust on a tiny asteroid to the fleck of color in a girl’s eye, and from the vast structure of a far-off galaxy millions of light years away to the complex dynamics that keep the rings of Saturn suspended in space. Some people tend to think that science is a musty, dusty set of facts and statistics to be memorized and soon forgotten. Others con- tend that science is the antithesis of poetry, magic, and all things human. Both groups have it wrong—nothing could be more growth- oriented or more filled with wonder or more human. Science is con- stantly evolving, undergoing revolutions, always producing “new words set to the old music,” and constantly refocusing what has gone before into fresh, new understanding. Asking questions and trying to understand how things work are among the most fundamental of human characteristics, and the history of science is the story of how a varied array of individuals, ix x The Birth of Science Looks can be deceiving. These two lines are the same length. teams, and groups have gone about finding answers to some of the most fundamental questions. When, for example, did people begin wondering what Earth is made of and what its shape might be? How could they find answers? What methods did they devise for coming to conclusions and how good were those methods? At what point did their inquiries become scientific—and what does that mean? Science is so much more than the strange test tubes and odd apparatus we see in movies. It goes far beyond frog dissections or the names of plant species that we learn in biology classes. Science is actually a way of thinking, a vital, ever-growing way of looking at the world. It is a way of discovering how the world works—a very particular way that uses a set of rules devised by scientists to help them also discover their own mistakes because it is so easy to mis- construe what one sees or hears or perceives in other ways. If you find that hard to believe, look at the two horizontal lines in the figure above. One looks like a two-way arrow; the other has inverted arrowheads. Which one do you think is longer (not includ- ing the “arrowheads”)? Now measure them both. Right, they are exactly the same length. Because it is so easy to go wrong in mak- ing observations and drawing conclusions, people developed a sys- tem, a “scientific method,” for asking “How can I be sure?” If you actually took the time to measure the two lines in our example, instead of just taking our word that both lines are the same length, then you were thinking like a scientist. You were testing your own observation. You were testing the information that both lines “are exactly the same length.” And you were employing one of the Preface xi strongest tools of science to perform your test: You were quantify- ing, or measuring, the lines. More than 2,300 years ago, Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, told the world that when two objects of different weights were dropped from a height, the heaviest would hit the ground first. It was a com- monsense argument. After all, anyone who wanted to try a test could make an “observation” and see that if you dropped a leaf and a stone together that the stone would land first. Try it yourself with a sheet of notebook paper and a paperweight in your living room. (There is something wrong with this test. Do you know what it is?) However, not many Greek thinkers tried any sort of test. Why bother when the answer was already known? And, since they were philosophers who believed in the power of the human mind to simply “reason” such things out without having to resort to “tests,” they considered obser- vation and experiments intellectually and socially beneath them.