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The harder you try, the dumber you look

The harder you try, the dumber you look. FC.97 THE BIRTH OF MODERN PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY (c.1500-1687). Greeks’ observations w/o modern instruments (FC. 22) . Theory of 4 elements: 3 states of matter + fire. Objects seem to fall toward center of earth.

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The harder you try, the dumber you look

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  1. The harder you try, the dumber you look

  2. FC.97 THE BIRTH OF MODERN PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY (c.1500-1687) Greeks’ observations w/o modern instruments (FC. 22) Theory of 4 elements: 3 states of matter + fire Objects seem to fall toward center of earth Heavenly bodies seem to orbit earth in perfect circles Theory of geocentric (earth-centered) Univ. Aristotle’s theories of the universe & motion Aristotle’s theories of the universe & motion 5th element, ether, “perfect” circular orbits Theory of motion where terrestrial bodies in motion must stay in contact with “prime movers” Aristotle’s interlocking theories Must attack whole system in order to attack just 1 part New astron. data (e.g., comet & supernova) seem to contradict Aristotle Explanations, but still in context of Arist’s theories Ren. Find anc. Grks opposing Arist. (FC. 76) Church backs Arist’s theories (FC. 66) Copernicus’ heliocentric theory to simplify system of epicycles (1543) Kepler uses math & Tycho Brahe’s data to show orbits are elliptical not circular Galileo’s use of math & experiment Much more dynamic scientific method New questions & theories about universe: Why don’t planets fly out of orbit? Why don’t planets crash together Centrifugal force Descarte’s law of motion (inertia) Isaac Newton fuses these ideas w/calculus into theory of universal gravity Same laws apply on earth as in heavens Scientific method fusing math, experiment & Aristotelian logic  Belief we can understand, predict & manipulate laws of nature Scientific basis for rapid progress of Industrial Rev. in 1800s (FC. 117)

  3. FC.98 THE DISCOVERY OF THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM & BIRTH OF MODERN PHYSIOLOGY Galen’s medical theories Few willing to undergo surgery Limited research & knowledge Galen’s medical theories Taboos vs. surgery & dissection Nothing to kill pain in surgery Forced to rely on research on animals bled to death Aristotle’s theory of 4 elements (FC. 22) Incorrect analogies to human body Empty veins Idea air flows in them Various misconceptions synthesized into Galen’s theories: Theory of 4 humors Must be in balance to stay healthy Air goes from lungs to heart in order to cool it Blood goes from heart to body & is absorbed by it Blood & air mixPneuma Consciousness Belief that disease is purely a matter of internal balance of humors, not any external factors Purging, esp. bloodletting, will restore balance of humors & patient’s health Ren. Find anc. Grks opposing Galen (FC. 76) Ren. art Stress realistic anatomy (FC. 77A) Church & tradition back Galen (FC. 66) New findings contradicting Galen Explanations in context of Galen Vesalius (1514-1564): Paracelsus (1493-1541): Taught in vernacular Said factors outside the body caused disease Taught fr. experience Did his own dissections Anatomy book set standard of accuracy Made own instruments Mounting evidence contradicting Galen: Blood flows fr. arteries to veins & back toward heart Valves that prevent flow of blood out of the heart Air doesn’t flow naturally from the lungs to the heart William Harvey’s synthesis & book (1628) show blood constantly recirculates Further research on human anatomy

  4. An Age of Scientific Wonders People spend an evening studying new geographic discoveries

  5. “Nature and its laws lay hid in night God said ….

  6. “Nature and its laws Lay hid in night God said ‘Let Newton be,’ And all was light“ This short poem by Alexander Pope summarizes well the reverence in which people in the Enlightenment held Isaac Newton. As a result of Newton’s work and the growing belief in humanity’s ability to understand, predict, and manipulate the laws of nature, science nearly assumed the status of a religion in the 1700s. It was an age of scientific wonders, not just in astronomy, but also in the other sciences as well.

  7. The big name in astronomy in the 1700s was William Herschel, who made some 2500 discoveries, such as the planet Uranus, the Milky Way’s vastness, and the Andromeda Nebula. While Uranus had been observed previously, it was considered a star. Herschel, however, judged it to be a comet because it moved too fast in relation to other stars. Because of its nearly circular orbit, it was eventually classified as a planet. Because of its nearly featureless appearance, Uranus is considered the most boring of the planets.

  8. Calcuating the speed of light. The Danish astronomer, Ole Christensen Rømer first calculated the speed of light by measuring the time it took for Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, to reappear from behind the planet. When his calculations were 8-10 minutes off from his prediction, he concluded the difference was either due to variations in the speed of light or the different distances between Jupiter and earth at the two times. Figuring (correctly) that the speed of light was constant, he came up with the figure of 138,000 miles per second. Although his figure was 48,000 miles too slow, his reasoning was correct and, along with Herschel’s discoveries, helped give a much bigger impression of the size of the universe. Below: The Louvre & Alps caught together in some kind of space/time warp triggered by incorrect calculations of the speed of light. Note the panicking 17th century crowds

  9. A major problem for transoceanic navigation was time-keeping on ships so that navigators could calculate longitude. Finally the Royal Society of London offered a large reward of £25,000 to anyone who could solve this problem. Left: Huygens’ pendulum clock which helped lead to Harrison’s invention of the chronometer.

  10. In 1761, this man, John Harrison, won the contest with the invention of the chronometer, building upon Huygens’pendulum clock to create the grasshopper escapement, thus opening a whole new age in global navigation.

  11. Milkmaids and cowpox Edward Jenner’s inoculation against smallpox, although drawing upon older practices by the Chinese and other cultures, was the first successful inoculation against a major disease in Europe. However, it would not be until the 1800’s that germ theory would be developed so that doctors actually understood how diseases worked. The line of reasoning leading to this discovery was the observation that milkmaids who contracted cowpox, a milder disease similar to smallpox, would henceforth be immune to the more deadly disease.

  12. Jenner’s inoculation consisted of scraping the pus from underneath cowpox scabs and introducing it through a small cut in healthy subject. While they may get cowpox, they were immune, or at least resistant, to smallpox for much, if not the rest of, their lives.

  13. Naturally, such a treatment met with initial popular resistance but was gradually accepted. Thomas Jefferson gained public acceptance for vaccination by having his entire household, including slaves, inoculated, while Napoleon ordered vaccination for his entire army. In 1979, the World Health Organization declared smallpox extinct (except for a few specimens kept in selected labs). While plagues and epidemics would grab the headlines, it is estimated that before Jenner, smallpox was consistently responsible for as many as one in fourteen deaths year in and year out. As a result, some people claim that Jenner saved more lives than anyone else in history. Left: a smallpox victim from Bangladesh in 1973

  14. Despite Jenner’s work, the theory of Humours and the use of purgatives would still dominate medicine for years. Below: Jan AntoonGaremijn, The Enema, 1778

  15. One of the landmark experiments in chemistry was performed by Antoine Lavoisier who created water, which Aristotle claimed was an element, by combining two alleged compounds, oxygen and hydrogen, in this jar and striking a spark. Of course, creating an “element” by combining two “compounds” by definition is impossible, which discredited the Aristotelian theory of the elements and set the stage for the revolution in chemistry in the 1800s.

  16. One of the landmark events of the Enlightenment was the publication in 1751 of Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedie. Its purpose was to summarize in its 36 volumes the rapidly expanding fields of human knowledge that the Scientific Revolution was creating. It covered a wide and diverse array of topics ranging from history and philosophy to practical arts and crafts such as stitching nets, infantry training, & handwriting.

  17. More than 200 scholars assisted in this work, which included 11 volumes of plates to illustrate its topics. Clockwise from below: measuring the dimensions of the Laocoonand The Discus Thrower, a paper mill, and an alchemist’s shop with a table of elements they imagined.

  18. With the vast numbers of new plants being discovered in Europe and abroad came a growing need for a system of classifying all this new data. That system was the brainchild of Carolus Linnaeus, who identified 12,100 species of plants himself, dividing them by sexual characteristics and placing them into 24 categories. Out of this came his system of binary nomenclature: giving first the genus or family name and second the species name. Linnaeus' SystemaNaturae would go through twelve editions in his lifetime. Please Come Over For Gross Sponges Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species

  19. Science after Newton - Huygens' pendulum clock (1656) ->Harrison's chronometer (1761) - Carolus Linnaeus: binary nomenclature Genus Oryctolagus Species cuniculus Genus gallus Species domesticus

  20. Bovus Duocorpores Felinus Incognito Science after Newton - Huygens' pendulum clock (1656) ->Harrison's chronometer (1761) - Carolus Linnaeus: binary nomenclature - Georges Buffon:44 vol. natural hist. Ursus Saluticus Pisces Major

  21. Theory of evolution. In the realm of Natural History, Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon published a 36-volume Natural History (1749-88). Among his more radical ideas: animals vary according to their natural environments; the earth is 75,000 years old, rather than 6,000; animals have changed since creation and climate change has been partly responsible. He did stop short of claiming common descent with apes (even though he had a trained chimp). The University of Paris forced Buffon to issue a public apology for such preposterous ideas. Despite that, he is seen as the most influential name in natural history in the 1700s and a precursor to the idea of evolution.

  22. In the age’s spirit of scientific experimentation, a group of people watches a lark suffocate under a bell jar as it is deprived of oxygen in Joseph Wright’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. The bird being suffocated is a cockatoo, probably a family pet based on the older daughter’s reaction.If only it were a pigeon.

  23. “Blinded by Science” Nobles on a scientific outing. Notice how they are looking through the wrong ends of their telescopes.

  24. Even the most brilliant minds of the day could have some rather eccentric beliefs, at least by today’s standards. For example, Isaac Newton was a firm believer in alchemy and wasted a good deal of time trying to create gold out of base metals. Therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many people were duped into believing the most outrageous claims, be they ridiculous scientific theories, financial scams, or just reports of women giving birth to rabbits. Below: A giant lens constructed for studying combustion. In 1738, the fire generated by this contraption burned a hole through the earth so that people in Europe could jump in and emerge on the other side in Australia. Luckily, the newly formed EPA had the hole filled up before any permanent damage was done beyond the creation of a mutant species known as the platypus.

  25. The Great Lunar Man-Bat Hoax

  26. In 1835, a reporter, Richard A. Locke,under the false name of Dr. Andrew Grant, a supposed companion of the astronomer, John Herschel, published a six part article in the New York Sun describing life on the moon, including unicorns, bipedal beavers and bat-winged humanoids as seen through Herschel’s giant telescope. Locke also claimed That Herschel believed there was life on other planets, including the sun, whose people had abnormally large heads, since small heads would explode from the heat.

  27. Unfortunately, according to Locke, he couldn’t show these wonders to anyone because the sun caused Herschel’s giant telescope to act as a burning lens that caught the observatory on fire and burned it down. Meanwhile, circulation for the New York Sun skyrocketed, establishing it as a major newspaper from the time on. Although the hoax was revealed several weeks later, the Sun never retracted the story. .

  28. Yet another unfortunate hazard of life before the Enlightenment: giant chickens kidnapping children and trying to hatch them.

  29. A popular pseudo-science of the age was physiognomy, and its offshoot, phrenology, which claimed to tell a person’s character by his or her facial features and how they compared to other animals. For example, according to the 18th century phrenologist, Johann Lavater, the eagle’s “lightning glance” showed a regal character, the camel’s jaw showed dullness & lack of courage. The man’s strained grimace revealed his stupidity, while the elephant’s broad forehead indicated a retentive memory. Phrenologists claimed to have identified what characteristics were located in various parts of the brain, as seen by the chart on the right.

  30. A scam of a different sort was that by Mary Tofts who allegedly gave birth to rabbits. Her story was that, while pregnant, she had an intense craving for roast rabbit. Even after a miscarriage, she still was obsessed with the little critters until one day in1726 she “gave birth” to nine of them. Based on her story, doctors explained the births as a result of "maternal impressions", claiming a pregnant woman's experiences could be imprinted directly on a fetus at conception & cause birth defects. The “rabbit woman” confessed only after a porter admitted to being part of the hoax.

  31. A cartoon by William Hogarth satirizing the South Sea Bubble, one of the biggest financial swindles of the 18th century, with Satan to the left urging on the human greed and gullibility.

  32. Another major financial bubble of the 1700s that popped with disastrous results for investors was the Mississippi Bubble Galli domestici

  33. The “Birth” of Electricity

  34. Let’s start with the heavy plow, which dramatically improved agricultural production…

  35. Let’s start with the heavy plow, which dramatically improved agricultural production… Which led to dramatic population growth in Europe…

  36. Let’s start with the heavy plow, which dramatically improved agricultural production… Which led to dramatic population growth in Europe… That could support the rise of towns…

  37. Let’s start with the heavy plow, which dramatically improved agricultural production… Which led to dramatic population growth in Europe… That could support the rise of towns… That led to the rise of kings… Louis XI of France

  38. Let’s start with the heavy plow, which dramatically improved agricultural production… Which led to dramatic population growth in Europe… That could support the rise of towns… That led to the rise of kings… That led to bigger armies wars between nation states…

  39. That led to the development of gunpowder…

  40. That led to the need for more $$$$$...

  41. That led to a mining boom in Germany, such as the one seen in this German mine near Joachimsthal in late 1400s…

  42. But this led to another problem: water seepage in mines and the fact that a suction pump could only raise water 32 feet. But why? A student of Galieo’s, Evangelista Toricelli, thought he had the answer: the weight of air pressure pushing down on the water.

  43. Since 32-foot long tubes were unwieldy, Toricelli used 6-foot tubes of mercury, which is fourteen times the weight of water. He upended these tubes in a vat of mercury, calculating the air pressure would stop the mercury from dropping at about 30 inches (one-fourteenth of 32 feet). Not only was he correct in that prediction, but also that what was left at the top of the upended tube was a vacuum, which Aristotle and Galileo thought were theoretically impossible, because an accelerating object in a vacuum would continue accelerating indefinitely to infinite speed, which is ridiculous. Not only had Toricelli invented the barometer, he also triggered all sorts of experiments with vacuums and, by extension, electricity.

  44. One experiment was Von Guericke’s demonstration of the power of the vacuum in 1650 where he had two teams of horses try to pull apart two metal hemispheres joined together by a vacuum. They couldn’t do it. Even more intriguing, what would happen if you spun a barometer around in the air?

  45. That’s what this man, the famous French astronomer, Jean Picard, did while strolling down a Paris street in 1675. The result: the barometer started glowing, what people called the barometric light or the “glow of life.” What Picard had done was generate an electrical charge, which he didn’t understand. But it still excited people all over Europe and inspired all sorts of fun experiments with primitive electrical generators, such as Hauksbee’s Influence Machine.

  46. People even went on tour, putting on cheap “dog & pony” shows with Hauksbee’s Influence Machine, demonstrating the power of electricity. Such traveling shows were popular in the 1700s. A common stage trick was to charge up a girl on stage and have a man from the audience come up to kiss her, giving him a shock that would knock him off his feet. This also inspired more substantial experiments with electricity.

  47. One serious problem concerned all the fires and explosions (of powder magazines) caused by lightning strikes. Previously, a common belief and practice on how to drive off lightning storms was to ring a town’s church bells. Unfortunately, a bunch of young men hanging from giant pieces of metal in the highest part of town led to a lot of “dead ringers” (which, by the way, is not the true etymology of the expression). After hundreds of deaths caused by lightning hitting church bells over the years, the French government outlawed this practice. Still, the problem of lightning starting fires, and especially detonating towns’ powder magazines, persisted.

  48. Along came Ben Franklin with the idea of flying a kite with a metal key attached to the string during an electrical storm. Franklin was lucky and went on to invent the lightning rod. Things didn’t work out so well for a Russian who was also trying to show the connection between lightning and electricity by carrying a metal pole in an open field during an electrical storm.

  49. Besides saving people from a lot of lightning strikes, Franklin’s lightning rod inspired a new fashion trend in lightning rod bonnets & umbrellas. There are no reliable figures on how many lives they saved.

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