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What Was Being Overthrown? What Was Known? How Was It Known? For What Purposes? Who Were Those Guys? Legacies, Remnants, and Relevance of The Past?
What Was Being Overthrown? What Was Known? How Was It Known? For What Purposes? Who Were Those Guys? Legacies, Remnants, and Relevance of The Past?
overthrown?
What was known?
How was it known?
For what purposes?
Who were those guys?
Legacies, remnants, and
relevance of the past?
Scientific Revolution(s)
The Scientific Revolution is a term commonly referring to
the transformation of thought about nature through which
the Aristotelian tradition was replaced by so-called
"modern" science.
Most see it as a series of events focused in the period 16th
and 17th century or, more precisely, from 1543 (De
Revolutionibus of Copernicus) to 1687 (Principia of
Newton). Others grant it some status from 1300 to 1800.
Still others, see revolutions all around, Glorious, American,
French, Industrial, Chemical, Darwininan, Freudian,
Russian, Quantum, and Plate Tectonics.
Revolution, revolutions, or evolution of ideas, it depends on
who you read.
History of Science…
I don’t know the practical budgetary pressures you are facing, but I do wish to make the case for
understanding science and science policy by studying its history. We are all 21st century citizens
and our social trajectory is aimed squarely at the future, yet our knowledge is shaped by what we
have and have not done in the past.
Historians study change over time and the underlying causes of these changes. They identify
events, trends, and common shared experiences that place people and their environment in larger
contexts. History matters. It shapes collective identities and consciousness on all temporal and
spatial scales from personal to national to global. Framed properly, history is an essential and
accessible component of informed decision-making and interdisciplinary communication, and
serves as a resource for future innovation and citizen involvement.
I study Climate, Climate Change, and Climate Dynamics by examining “Science Dynamics,” the
complex web of intellectual, social and technical influences surrounding science. My recent
work on the history of weather and climate control is serving to inform decision makers in
Washington, including the US House Committee on Science and Technology, chaired by Bart
Gordon, where I testified last year; the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO), which uses
my work in its study of geoengineering; and the National Academy of Sciences Government,
University, Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) in which I participated as a historian just last
month. My historical work on Earth observations from space is documented in a 2007 NRC
report. Many of my colleagues do similar work at the cutting edge of public policy.
If we don’t study the past, then every decision we face will seem unprecedented. If we don’t
study the history of science and apply its lessons, then I don’t think we can say we really
understand science. I hope you will act to maintain a robust STS Program within NSF.
Sincerely,
James R. Fleming
Professor and Program Director of Science, Technology, and Society
Aristotelian natural philosophy
Aristotelian Cosmology
Sublunar realm:
Natural place and natural motion
Generation and corruption
Four elements: earth, water, air, and fire
Cold, hot, most, dry, affinity and opposition
Heavens:
Uniform circular motion
Perfect and incorruptable
Quintessence or aether
The sub-lunar realm
Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places
De Motu Cordis
1628
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Natural Philosopher
Government Official
Lord Chancellor
Novum Organon
Great Instauration
New Atlantis
Compass, Gunpowder,
Printing
The ant, the spider, the
bee
William Gilbert
De Magnete (1600)
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Kinematics and Astronomy
Telescope
Sunspots, Phases of Venus, Lunar craters, Moons
of Jupiter, Milky way made of stars
Support of Heliocentrism
Experiments with falling bodies
Mathematics of motion
Galileo explains his discovery to the Pope
René Descartes (1596-1650)
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy
Analytic geometry
Le monde (1633)
L’Homme (1637)
Discours de la Méthode (1637)
Principia philosophia (1644)
Les Passions de l’âme (1649)
Dynamics
Evangelista Torricelli’s Experiment (1644)
Nature does not “abhor a vacuum” and the air has weight.
Blaise Pascal and Florin Périer
On September 19, 1648, Florin Périer and some friends perform the
Torricelli experiment on top of Puy de Dôme in central France. The
height of the mercury column is 85 mm less than in Clermont-Ferrand
at the base of the mountain, about 1000 meters below.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
Experimental Method, Natural Philosophy
Air Pump
Skeptical Chymist (1661)
Boyle’s Law
Royal Society of London
Public Verification of Science
An experiment on a bird in the air pump, by
Joseph Wright
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Theory of Light
Theory of Motion
Theory of Gravity
Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica
(1667)
Dynamics
Alchemy
Theology
Master of the Mint
Newtonian World System
Mechanical Philosophy
Natural law
Reductionistic
Mathematical
Materialistic
Anti-teleological
Inductive
Observation
Experimental method
Clockwork universe
Herbert Butterfield (1949)
Since the Scientific 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 Reformation to the realm
of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within
the system of medieval Christendom.
Historian Alexandre Koyre had first used the term
Scientific Revolution in 1943 when he called it, “the
most profound revolution achieved or suffered by the
human mind.”
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature.