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A Brief History of Science

Lecture 6 – The
Renaissance
THOMAS OSIPOWICZ|GEH1018
The Renaissance
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 Get an impression of the social and historical context of the Renaissance and its
accompanying technological advancements.
 See how humanist movement arose, and its implications on scientific tradition and
thought.
 Appreciate how improvements in travel, trade and cartography enabled the spread
of ideas across different cultures.
 Understand how the invention of the printing press enabled the widespread
dissemination of ideas.
 See how the reformation played a major part in the both the liberation and the
polarization of European culture.
 Look at a few Renaissance Men: Pico della Mirandola, Francis Bacon , Johannes
Gutenberg, Leonardo da Vinci , Michelangelo, Botticelli, Luther, and their
significance in later scientific (and general) culture.
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Luther
 The re-birth of Europe
 The Scientific Revolution was triggered by the Renaissance, so we need to look at
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what it was and how it started.
 The Renaissance was the time in which people finally lost their awe of the ancient
Greeks (Aristotle, Plato etc).
 These ancients did not expect great improvements of earthly affairs soon. For
example, Plato described the ages of man as such:
Golden Age ( The ideal time)  Silver Age (still excellent)  Bronze Age (disorder
prevails)  Iron Age (our age, dire trouble)
 The Christian tradition also expected a downward trajectory, certainly until the
second coming of Christ, which many expected soon.
 Now there was a break with this, people realized that they could contribute to, and
even improve, the science and civilization. Gradual development of technology,
improvements in agriculture, and a Europe free from devastation by invasion did
contribute to this development.
 Other driving forces that triggered the Renaissance :

Humanism The printing Press The Reformation The voyages of discovery

Humanism I

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 The humanist movement was, at least initially, fascinated by classical antiquity.
There was a love of texts and elegant literary style, and greater interest in the
“humanities” (history, literature, and so on).
 People started considering humans to be the centre of life, not God. People
were no longer viewed as a sinful creatures, expelled from paradise, but as
great and valuable in their own right. Genius was worshipped, possibilities were
considered endless.
 Humanist views included strong critiques of medieval (often associated with
Aristotelian) notions. Humanists also preferred the ideal of an active civic life
over the medieval ideal of contemplative scholarship.
 Humanists assailed the traditional authority of the universities, claiming that they
did not understand the ancients, wrote in bad Latin, and had (along with the
Arabs) corrupted the classical heritage by introducing “barbarisms.”
 Everything was questioned, not just in science. Painting, sculpture (Raphael,
Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci), architecture, music, new developments
were seen in many fields.
 The human body, even nudes, were in fashion (as in antiquity) and were
painted and sculpted.
Humanism II

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 Many new texts, particularly Greek ones, were sought out and studied. The church had
controlled and supressed the translation and circulation of works by Plato and other
classical authors throughout the Middle ages, Now many books of Plato, Ptolemy (his
Geography), Lucretius (see slide 12), and several Hellenistic mathematicians and
natural philosophers were rediscovered.
 The humanist love of the “purity” of ancient sources naturally led to a search for the
oldest possible documents.
 Antiquity became a stamp of value and reliability. Older classical authors could
“trump” later classical authors. It was fashionable to learn Greek and acquire ancient
Greek knowledge.
 Later on, this was questioned and people gradually came to see that they could do
better than “the old”.
 Petrarch (1304–1374), an early Italian humanist, felt that all of Medieval culture was
uniformly barbarous (the “dark ages”), and sought inspiration through the study of Plato
(Aristotle had inspired medieval scholarship).
 Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) made full translation (to Latin) of Plato’s work, with support
from the Medicis.
Humanism III
This text has been
To give you a flavor of the new spirit, here is a quote from: called the
Manifesto of the 7
Renaissance,
The Oration on the Dignity of Man (De hominis dignitate) but as always,
opinions differ
We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment
properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever
gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and
possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other
creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down;
you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will,
to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of
your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that
from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you Pico della Mirandola
on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of (1463 –1494)
heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as
the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form Pico likely died of arsenic
you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms poisoning, possibly at the
of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the order of Lorenzo's
superior orders whose life is divine.' successor, Piero de'
Medici
Dignitas, more in the sense of authority of a man, was used in ancient Rome, eg by Cicero.
In Humanist thought it used for all, as dignity (being worthy of honor or respect).
Humanism IV

 If you are interested in a more detailed introduction to Humanist thought:

Poggio
 Greek philosopher Epicurus (~ 307 BC) was an atomic materialist, following in the steps
of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine
8 Bracciolini

intervention.
 De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), is the only known work by the Roman
philosopher Lucretius (99-55BC), an Epicurean. It is about the tenets and philosophy of
Epicureanism.
 The “Swerve" refers to a key conception in the ancient atomistic theories (introduced
by Epicurus) according to which atoms moving through the void are subject to
clinamen: while falling straight through the void, they are sometimes subject to a slight,
unpredictable swerve (possibly allowing something like “free will”).
 Greenblatt uses it to describe the history of Lucretius' own book: "The reappearance of
his poem was such a swerve, an unforeseen deviation from the direct trajectory—in
this case, toward oblivion—on which that poem and its philosophy seemed to be
traveling. (Won Pulitzer Prize).
 The poem had disappeared in Middle Ages. Poggio Bracciolini (1380 – 1459), an Italian
scholar/early humanist, was looking for such ancient manuscripts in many places,
among them the Benedictine abbey of Fulda (Germany). He was working for the
pope as Apostolicus Secretarius (papal secretary).
 Poggio knew that Rabanus Maurus (780 - 856), a teacher and writer of the Carolingian age, had been an abbot
in Fulda. Maurus had studied with Alcuin, who is considered the premier scholar in the days of Charlemagne (see
L5), he certainly knew where to get his hands on important ancient manuscripts, and might have brought them
to Fulda. It is almost certain that among these Poggio found a 9th century copy of “De rerum natura”.
An Aside: The voyages of discovery – China (1405-1433)

 In 1405 Admiral Zheng He led an expedition of 30,000 men, 300 ships to explore East 9
Africa, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
 During this period, China had by far the largest navy in the world, dwarfing anything in
Europe.

Admiral Zheng He
1371 - 1433
Comparison of Columbus’s ship
Santa Maria (front, 85 feet long)
and Admiral Zheng He’s treasure
ship (400 feet long !)
https://zhengheproject.weebly.com/
The route of the voyages of Zheng He's fleet.
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Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

The voyages of discovery
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 Great voyages of discovery (America in 1492, Cape of Good Hope to
India in 1497).
 In particular, the discovery of the New World of the Americas raised
awkward questions along the lines of “If the ancients Greeks did not
know about America, what else did they not know, or got wrong?”
 These voyages of discovery pushed the limits of existing knowledge,
and also greatly increased the wealth of Europe.
 These voyages of discovery spurred innovations in technology, such as
new methods for determining latitude and longitude, better gunnery
for defence, and new mining technology for exploiting the New World.
 Gog – Goth -
The voyages of discovery - maps nomadic tribes?
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 Typical medieval map T-O (terrarum orbis)
map, a T inside an O.
 Shows the three continents (Europe, Asia, and
Africa), separated by T-shaped waters:
 Mediterranean
 Nile
 Don (Latin: Tanais)).
 The O is the encircling ocean
 Jerusalem was generally represented in the
centre of the map.
 Clearly not very useful for traveling.
 People in the Middle Ages did not make
them for our use - they had their own
questions and motives, perhaps as a Reconstruction of medieval world map
representation of structure and order of the (from Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1895)
world.
 Portolan charts
 Portolan charts are 13
navigational maps
based on compass
directions and
estimated distances –
no internal details, for
ship travel only.
 First
made in the 13th
century in Italy, and
later in Spain and
Portugal.
 With the advent of
widespread
competition among
the nations during
the Age of Discovery,
Portugal and Spain
considered such
maps to be state
secrets.

Portolan chart of 1541

 Voyages of Discovery 1441 - 1611

 From the 15th century onwards, the Portuguese

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(rapidly followed by everyone else) started sending
out ships to explore the known and unknown world.
 This was possible because of great improvements in
ship design which led to better navigation, and the
ability to safely travel out of sight of the coast, and
even (nearly) into the wind.
 It was also made possible by other technological
inventions during the Middle Ages, such as the
compass and better firearms, which made it possible
to dominate other civilizations they encountered.
 This led to the discovery of many new places, great
wealth, slaves and slavery.
 The country that undertook the most ambitious
voyages of discovery and commerce was Portugal.
This was due to a single person, Prince Henry the
Navigator, 1394-1460.
 From these voyages Europeans reached the entire
coastline of Africa, then the Americas, then a route to
India and Asia, all within the few decades.
European Voyages of
Discovery
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 Columbus and America - 1492

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 The discovery of the American continent had nothing to do with intellectual curiosity or
human courage. It was entirely about one thing: money. And it was by mistake...
 Spain wanted to control the fabulously wealthy spice trade with India. After the fall of
Constantinople, the Silk Road became difficult to maintain. Portuguese navigators tried to
find a sea way to Asia, and in 1488 Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope.
 Christopher Columbus, a Genuese (1451-1506) had the maps according to Ptolemy. He used
them to persuade his financiers (the king and queen of Spain) that there was a faster route
to India by heading westwards, shorter than having to go all the way round Africa.
 He mistakenly believed that the Earth was much smaller than it is, and that it would only take
a few weeks to reach India heading westwards. He was, of course, completely mistaken and
had he not bumped into the Americas, he and his men would have starved or died of
dehydration, just as everyone back in Europe knew they would.
 Most Europeans immediately believed that a new continent had been discovered in 1492
and they called it the New World. As for Columbus, he never acknowledged or believed
that the Americas were anything other than Asia, hence the name West Indies.
 He was pretty much the only European who subscribed to this view and he died, still
convinced of this.
 Eratosthenes (276 BC– 195 BC) – 3rd librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria
Columbus could have known better: The circumference of the earth was known for quite a
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while: 17
 Every year at summer solstice at local noon in Syene, in Egypt, now Aswan, on the tropic of
cancer, the sun is in the zenith, directly above.

 He measured the angle of the sun in Alexandria

to be 1/50 of a full circle (7°12‘) at the same time
(local noon).
 Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene
then the arc distance from Alexandria to Syene
must be 1/50 of the total circumference of the
earth.
 The distance between the cities was about 5000
stadia (about 800 km, estimated from travel time
by camel).

 Assuming that Eratosthenes used the "Egyptian stadion“ of about 157.5 m and 700
stadia/degree, this gives 39,690 km, an error of less than 1%.
 Clearly, the Gnomon (vertical stick) is very useful.
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First “Global” Definition of the Meter:

 On March 30, 1791, the French Academy of Sciences

defined one meter as:
 one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to
the North Pole
 The earth is approximately a sphere, so the Equator
would be 4 x107 meters long, i.e. 40,000 km.
 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype
meter bar.
 Cantino world map: earliest surviving map showing Portuguese
The Cantino planisphere geographic discoveries in the east and west.
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Line dividing the non-Christian world between
Castile (Spain) and Portugal: the 1494
Tordesillas meridian, as decided by the pope.
Made in 1502 and smuggled out of Lisbon by
an Italian spy eager to learn about Portugal’s
commercially lucrative discoveries.
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 Next Side:
 Martin Waldseemuller, 1507, first use of America on map, after explorer
Amerigo Vespucci. The Pacific was not confirmed until six years after map
made.
 See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8328878.stm
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 Francis Bacon 1561 - 1626
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 Lord Chancellor of England
 Criticized Scholastic methods but also showed little
interest in the mathematical methods used by Kepler
and Galileo.
 He preferred a compilation of descriptive
observations, which he called a natural history.
 He has been called the father of empiricism.
 My only earthly wish is to stretch the deplorably
narrow limits of man’s dominion over the universe to
their promised bounds. Nature will be bound into Portrait of Bacon by
service, hounded in her wanderings, and put on the Frans Pourbus (1617)
rack and tortured for her secrets.
The Printing Press: Johannes Gutenberg (1400 – 1468)
 Hand-held wooden block printing (carving whole pages of fixed text) had been used for 23
decades, but they were very slow and inefficient.
 Moveable type printing with wooden characters was developed in China (14th century) but had
little impact on the outside world.
 Gutenberg independently developed the printing press with moveable metal letter molds in
Mainz, Germany. His family had an ideal background in minting and metal working. In his press
(which was adapted from a wine press) each letter was separated and could be re-used after
printing.
 In 1456 he printed a German language Bible, some
copies of which still exist (Guttenberg Bible).
 This revolutionized printing and the spread of
information. Consider the impact: Suddenly printed
works were widely available, no-one had to rely on
monks to copy, and decide on, what was
circulated. This led to the rapid dissemination of
knowledge and ideas.
 By the end of the 15th century there were many
thousands of books in existence, setting the stage
for the scientific revolution.

Johannes Gutenberg in his workshop

Encyclopædia Britannica
 Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
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 The model of the Renaissance Man: He is widely considered to be one of
the greatest painters of all time and a good candidate for the most
diversely talented person ever.
 His paintings include ‘The Last Supper’ and the ‘Mona Lisa’.
 He worked as a military engineer and architect. He was not regarded as a
natural philosopher or scientist in his own time, he was more of an
artist/engineer.
 His studies included astronomy, geography, paleontology, geology, botany,
zoology, hydrodynamics, optics, aerodynamics, anatomy (the human body
had not been studied in the last 1000 years).
 One of his most important contributions was his systematic approach of
nature, particularly after a 1000 years of religious superstition.
 His designs for inventions outstripped contemporary intellectual grasp and
technology so as to make them ‘useless’ at the time.
Self Portrait
 He sketched out flying machines, a helicopter, a parachute, a bicycle, a
tank and a submarine !
Leonardo da Vinci - sketches

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Design for a tank

Design for a
flying machine

Studies of the arm, showing the

movements made by the biceps
 Leonardo da Vinci - Vitruvian man
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 This picture represents a cornerstone of
Leonardo's attempts to relate man to nature.
 It exemplifies the blend of art and science
during the Renaissance and provides the
perfect example of Leonardo's keen interest
in proportion.
 He believed the workings of the human body
to be an analogy for the workings of the
universe.
 Note, Leonardo wrote in mirror writing, look at
the slant of the letters in the notes around this
picture.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (80 –15 BC), was

a Roman author, Leonardo based his
drawing on his anatomical texts.

Leonardo da Vinci - Vitruvian Man

Leonardo da Vinci - The Last Supper (1498)

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 Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)
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 An Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect,

poet and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond
the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was
of such a high order that he is often considered a
contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance
man, along with Leonardo da Vinci.
 Two of his best-known works, the Pieta and the David,
were sculpted before he turned thirty.

Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra

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The Pieta David

Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510): The birth of Venus
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The Reformation (1517-1648)
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 This was a movement in Europe that started with Martin Luther
in Germany in 1517, in an attempt to reform the Catholic
Church and led to the splitting of the Christian Church.
 Many Christians were troubled by what they saw as false
doctrines and malpractices within the Catholic Church.
 Two particular practices were the teaching and sale of
indulgences (paying money for remission of certain sins) and
the buying and selling church positions. Great corruption
existed within the Church hierarchy.
 In defence of the Catholic Church, it was desperately in need
of money at this time to pay for the building of St Peters
Cathedral in Rome (between 1506 and 1626) now the heart of
the Vatican, and still the largest Cathedral in the world.
Portrait of Martin Luther,
Kranach, Wittenberg
The Reformation (1517-1648)
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 It is held that on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther nailed his thesis ‘Ninety-Five Theses On
the Power of Indulgences’ to the door of Wittenberg Church.
 Indulgence: in the Roman Catholic Church, a grant by the Pope of remission of the
temporal punishment in purgatory still due for sins after absolution. The unrestricted sale
of indulgences by pardoners was a widespread abuse during the later Middle Ages.
 Other men, such as Jan Hus and John Calvin, soon followed Luther's lead. The most
important Protestant groups to emerge from the reformation were Lutherans, Calvinists,
Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and the Anglicans.
 Many wars were fought about this, the worst was the Thirty Years' War, a series of wars in
Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. It was one of the longest and most destructive
conflicts in European history, as well as the deadliest European religious war, resulting in
(estimated) eight million casualties.
 This war is considered the reason for many later calamities: Much of the war was fought
in Germany, which was pushed back in development. This may have been part of the
underlying reasons for the world wars, much later, in the 20th century.
Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation (1560-1648)

 During this period the (now Roman Catholic) Church responded to the threat
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posed by the rise of Protestantism.
 The Catholic Church reformed some aspects of itself with the aim of reducing the
loss of the people to Protestantism, and/or ending Protestantism altogether.
 Two key strategies adopted were: The Inquisition, to root out and burn heretics,
and censorship of prohibited books.
 New religious orders were formed, such as the Jesuits, who went on to do much to
spread Christianity around the World.
 Another important aspect was reform of the calendar. By the sixteenth century the
Julian calendar was about ten days (11 minutes per year for 1582 years) out of step
with the seasons and the movements of the heavenly bodies.
 Among the astronomers who were asked to work on the problem of how the
calendar could be reformed was Nicolaus Copernicus.
 So, in some sense, an attempt by the Catholic Church to strengthen its position
through calendar reform led to a monk publishing a book which would eventually
spark off the Scientific Revolution.