Scientific Revolutions: Historical Perspective

1. Scientific Revolutions: Historical Perspective  What was the Scientific Revolution?

2. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) TychoBrahe(1546-1601) Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630) Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) Issac Newton (1643 - 1727)

6. 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) De revolutionibusorbiumcoelestium Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) De humanicorporisfabrica

7. 1543 Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) De humanicorporisfabrica

8. 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) De revolutionibusorbiumcoelestium 1616 De revolutionibusis placed in the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books 1633 Galileo condemned for “teaching, holding and defending” the Copernican theory

9. 1496 -  Bologna – beginning of ecclesiastical career as a canon Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) 1503 -  Doctor in Canon Law + studies of astronomy 1532-  Manuscript of De Revolutionibusessentially completed 1533 – Rumors about Copernicus’ ideas start to circulate among Catholic and Protestant intellectual circles in Europe

10. The Heliocentric Theory 1533 - Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter (German humanist) delivers talks in Rome about the system. The Pope and the Cardinals interested in the theory. 1536-  Archbishop of Padua writes to Copernicus: I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject.

11. The Heliocentric Theory 1533 - Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter (German humanist) delivers talks in Rome about the system. The Pope and the Cardinals interested in the theory. 1536-  Archbishop of Padua writes to Copernicus: I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject.

12. 1543 De revolutionibus… Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III Copernicus (1473-1543) I can reckon easily enough, Most Holy Father, that as soon as certain people learn that in these books of mine which I have written about the revolutions of the spheres of the world I attribute certain motions to the terrestrial globe, they will immediately shout to have me and my opinion hooted off the stage.  …

13. 1543 De revolutionibus… Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III Copernicus (1473-1543) When I had meditated upon this lack of certitude in the traditional mathematics concerning the composition of movements of the spheres of the world, I began to be annoyed that the philosophers, who in other respects had made a very careful scrutiny of the least details of the world, had discovered no sure scheme for the movements of the machinery of the world, …

14. 1543 De revolutionibus… Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III Copernicus (1473-1543) Wherefore I took the trouble to reread all the books by philosophers which I could get hold of, to see if any of them even supposed that the movements of the spheres of the world were different from those laid down by those who taught mathematics in the schools.  …

15. 1543 De revolutionibus… Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III Copernicus (1473-1543) I found first in Cicero that Nicetas thought that the Earth moved. And afterwards I found in Plutarch that there were some others of the same opinion: … “Some think that the Earth is at rest; but Philolaus the Pythagorean says that it moves around the fire with an obliquely circular motion, like the sun and moon. Herakleides of Pontus and Ekphantus the Pythagorean do not give the Earth any movement of locomotion, but rather a limited movement of rising and setting around its centre, like a wheel.” …

16. 1543 De revolutionibus… Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III Copernicus (1473-1543) Therefore I also, having found occasion, began to meditate upon the mobility of the Earth. And although the opinion seemed absurd, nevertheless becauseI knew that others before me had been granted the liberty of constructing whatever circles they pleased in order to demonstrate astral phenomena, I thought that I too would be readily permitted to test whether or not, by the laying down that the Earth had some movement, demonstrations less shaky than those of my predecessors could be found for the revolutions of the celestial spheres.

17. Scientific Revolutions: Historical Perspective  What was the Scientific Revolution? The abandonment of an existing world view (Aristotelian-Scholastic) and the rise of a new one

18. Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (1996) There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.

19. De revolutionibus… 1543 1633 Galileo’s Condemnation 1083: Spanish reconquista of Toledo 1328 – 1452: 100 year war 1348: Black Death 1453: Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans 1456: Guttenberg’s printing press 1492: Columbus reaches America 1517: Beginning of the Protestant Reformation 1545-1563: Council of Trent