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Toward a New Worldview 1540–1789

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Toward a New Worldview 1540–1789 CHAPTER 17 Toward a New Worldview 1540–1789 CHAPTER LEARNING 2. One of the most important disciplines— natural philosophy, based primarily on the OBJECTIVES ideas of Aristotle—focused on After reading and studying this chapter, students fundamental questions about the nature of should be able to: the universe, its purpose, and how it 1. Critique the changing attitudes toward the functioned. natural world that constituted the scientific 3. According to the revised Aristotelian revolution and what made those attitudes view, a motionless earth was fixed at the revolutionary. center of the universe and was 2. Analyze how the new worldview known as the encompassed by ten separate concentric Enlightenment affected the way people thought spheres that revolved around it. about society and human relations. 4. Aristotle’s views also dominated thinking 3. Discuss the impact the new way of thinking about physics and motion on earth. had on political developments and monarchical 5. The earth was believed to be made up of absolutism. four imperfect, changeable elements: the air, fire, water, and earth. 6. Aristotle’s ideas were accepted because ANNOTATED CHAPTER they offered an understandable, OUTLINE commonsense explanation for the natural world, and they also fit neatly with The following annotated chapter outline will help Christian doctrines. you review the major topics covered in this chapter. B. Origins of the Scientific Revolution I. How did European views of nature change in 1. The scientific revolution drew on long- this period? term developments in European culture, as A. Scientific Thought in 1500 well as borrowings from Arabic scholars. 1. Prior to the scientific revolution, many 2. The development of universities boosted different scholars and practitioners were philosophers’ inquiries as they pursued involved in aspects of what came together limited but real independence from to form science. theologians. 298 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 299 3. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 1. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) gained the leading universities established new support of the king of Denmark to build the professorships of mathematics, astronomy, most sophisticated observatory of his day. and physics within their faculties of 2. For twenty years Brahe observed the stars philosophy, bringing the application of and planets with the naked eye, compiling critical thinking to scientific problems. much more complete and accurate data 4. The Renaissance also stimulated scientific than ever before, but he died in 1601 progress through the recovery of ancient before he could make much sense out of works. his mass of data. 5. Renaissance patrons played a role in 3. Brahe’s young assistant, Johannes Kepler funding scientific investigations, as they (1571–1630), examined Brahe’s did for art and literature. observations and from them developed 6. The rise of printing provided a faster and new and revolutionary laws of planetary less expensive way to circulate knowledge motion. across Europe. 4. Kepler demonstrated that the orbits of the 7. Navigational problems were critical in the planets around the sun are elliptical rather development of many new scientific than circular and that the planets do not instruments, which permitted more move at a uniform speed in their orbits. accurate observations and often led to 5. Whereas Copernicus had speculated, important new knowledge. Kepler proved mathematically the precise 8. Centuries-old practices of astrology, relations of a sun-centered (solar) system. magic, and alchemy remained important 6. In contrast to his scientific achievements, traditions for participants in the scientific Kepler also cast horoscopes as part of his revolution. duties as court mathematician; his own C. The Copernican Hypothesis diary was based on astrological principles, 1. The Polish cleric Nicolaus Copernicus an irony that exemplifies the complex (1473–1543) felt that Ptolemy’s interweaving of ideas and beliefs in the cumbersome and occasionally inaccurate emerging science of his day. rules of astronomy detracted from the 7. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) also majesty of a perfect creator. challenged the old ideas about motion, 2. Copernicus theorized that the stars and using mathematics in examining motion planets, including the earth, revolved and mechanics in a new way and around a fixed sun, but he did not publish formulating new laws such as the law of his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly inertia. Spheres until 1543, the year of his death. 8. Galileo’s great achievement was the 3. Protestant leaders Martin Luther and John elaboration and consolidation of the Calvin attacked the idea that the earth experimental method, which he applied to moved but the sun did not, and they astronomy as well as to motion. condemned Copernicus. 9. After making his own telescope, Galileo 4. In 1572 a new star appeared and shone quickly discovered the first four moons of very brightly for almost two years, which Jupiter, which provided new evidence to seemed to contradict the idea that the support the Copernican theory. heavenly spheres were unchanging and 10. In 1616 the Holy Office placed the works therefore perfect. of Copernicus and his supporters, D. Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo: Proving including Kepler, on a list of books Copernicus Right Catholics were forbidden to read. 300 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 11. Galileo silenced his beliefs until the F. Bacon, Descartes, and the Scientific Method publication in 1632 of his Dialogue on the 1. Scholars in many fields sought answers to Two Chief Systems of the World, which long-standing problems, sharing their defended the views of Copernicus. results in a community that spanned 12. Galileo was tried for heresy by the papal Europe and developing better ways of Inquisition. obtaining knowledge about the world. 13. Imprisoned and threatened with torture, 2. The English politician and writer Francis the aging Galileo recanted, “renouncing Bacon (1561–1626) was the greatest early and cursing” his Copernican errors. propagandist for the new experimental E. Newton’s Synthesis method. 1. Despite the efforts of the church, by about 3. Bacon argued that new knowledge had to 1640 the work of Brahe, Kepler, and be pursued through empirical research and Galileo had been largely accepted by the set about formalizing the empirical scientific community. method into the general theory of 2. English scientist Isaac Newton (1642– inductive reasoning known as empiricism. 1727) united the experimental and 4. In an intellectual vision in 1619, René theoretical-mathematical sides of modern Descartes (1596–1650) saw that there was science to explain the forces behind the a perfect correspondence between movement of the planets and objects on geometry and algebra and that geometrical Earth. spatial figures could be expressed as 3. Newton arrived at some of his most basic algebraic equations and vice versa. ideas about physics between 1664 and 5. Descartes’s discovery of analytic 1666, including his law of universal geometry provided scientists with an gravitation and the concepts of centripetal important new tool. force and acceleration. 6. All occurrences in nature could be 4. Not realizing the significance of his analyzed as matter in motion and, findings, it wasn’t until 1684 that Newton according to Descartes, the total “quantity returned to physics and the preparation of of motion” in the universe was constant. his ideas for publication. 7. Descartes’s greatest achievement was to 5. In Philosophicae Naturalis Principia develop his initial vision into a whole Mathematica, Newton, using a set of philosophy of knowledge and science; mathematical laws that explain motion his reasoning ultimately reduced all and mechanics, laid down his three laws substances to “matter” and “mind,” a of motion. view of the world known as Cartesian 6. The key feature of the Newtonian dualism. synthesis was the law of universal 8. Although insufficient on their own, gravitation: every body in the universe Bacon’s and Descartes’s extreme attracts every other body in the universe in approaches are combined in the modern a precise mathematical relationship based scientific method, which began to on the objects’ matter and the distance crystallize in the late seventeenth century. between them. G. Science and Society 7. Newton’s synthesis of mathematics with 1. The rise of modern science had many physics and astronomy prevailed until the consequences, including the formation of twentieth century and established him as an international scientific community. one of the most important figures in the 2. The new scientific community became history of science. closely tied to the state and its agendas, as CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 301 governments intervened to support and 3. Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius sometimes to direct research. (1516–1564) studied anatomy by 3. At the same time, scientists developed dissecting human bodies, and the two a critical attitude toward established hundred precise drawings in his authority that would inspire thinkers masterpiece On the Structure of the to question traditions in other Human Body (1543) revolutionized the domains. understanding of human anatomy. 4. New “rational” methods for approaching 4. English royal physician William Harvey nature did not question traditional (1578–1657) discovered the circulation of inequalities between the sexes, however, blood through the veins and arteries and and the new academies that furnished was the first to explain that the heart professional credentials did not accept worked like a pump. female members. 5. Following Paracelsus’s lead, Irishman 5. Noteworthy exceptions included Robert Boyle (1627–1691) undertook universities and academies in Italy that experiments to discover the basic elements offered posts to women, who worked as of nature and founded the modern science botanical illustrators, and female of chemistry; in the process, he discovered intellectuals who fully engaged in the Boyle’s law (1662), which states that the philosophical dialogue of the time. pressure of a gas varies inversely with 6. Because science had relatively few volume.
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