transforming the society through science scientific revolution essay

Ch. 20 The Age of Enlightenment

The scientific revolution, 19.3: the scientific revolution, 19.3.1: roots of the scientific revolution.

The scientific revolution, which emphasized systematic experimentation as the most valid research method, resulted in developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, and chemistry. These developments transformed the views of society about nature.

Learning Objective

Outline the changes that occurred during the Scientific Revolution that resulted in developments towards a new means for experimentation

• The scientific revolution was the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy), and chemistry transformed societal views about nature.
• The change to the medieval idea of science occurred for four reasons: collaboration, the derivation of new experimental methods, the ability to build on the legacy of existing scientific philosophy, and institutions that enabled academic publishing.
• Under the scientific method, which was defined and applied in the 17th century, natural and artificial circumstances were abandoned and a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted throughout the scientific community.
• During the scientific revolution, changing perceptions about the role of the scientist in respect to nature, and the value of experimental or observed evidence, led to a scientific methodology in which empiricism played a large, but not absolute, role.
• As the scientific revolution was not marked by any single change, many new ideas contributed. Some of them were revolutions in their own fields.
• Science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences, and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of the development of free speech and thought.

The scientific revolution was the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy), and chemistry transformed societal views about nature. The scientific revolution began in Europe toward the end of the Renaissance period, and continued through the late 18th century, influencing the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment. While its dates are disputed, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium  ( On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres ) is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution.

The scientific revolution was built upon the foundation of ancient Greek learning and science in the Middle Ages, as it had been elaborated and further developed by Roman/Byzantine science and medieval Islamic science. The Aristotelian tradition was still an important intellectual framework in the 17th century, although by that time natural philosophers had moved away from much of it. Key scientific ideas dating back to classical antiquity had changed drastically over the years, and in many cases been discredited. The ideas that remained (for example, Aristotle’s cosmology, which placed the Earth at the center of a spherical hierarchic cosmos, or the Ptolemaic model of planetary motion) were transformed fundamentally during the scientific revolution.

The change to the medieval idea of science occurred for four reasons:

• Seventeenth century scientists and philosophers were able to collaborate with members of the mathematical and astronomical communities to effect advances in all fields.
• Scientists realized the inadequacy of medieval experimental methods for their work and so felt the need to devise new methods (some of which we use today).
• Academics had access to a legacy of European, Greek, and Middle Eastern scientific philosophy that they could use as a starting point (either by disproving or building on the theorems).
• Institutions (for example, the British Royal Society) helped validate science as a field by providing an outlet for the publication of scientists’ work.

New Methods

Under the scientific method that was defined and applied in the 17th century, natural and artificial circumstances were abandoned, and a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted throughout the scientific community. The philosophy of using an inductive approach to nature (to abandon assumption and to attempt to simply observe with an open mind) was in strict contrast with the earlier, Aristotelian approach of deduction, by which analysis of known facts produced further understanding. In practice, many scientists and philosophers believed that a healthy mix of both was needed—the willingness to both question assumptions, and to interpret observations assumed to have some degree of validity.

During the scientific revolution, changing perceptions about the role of the scientist in respect to nature, the value of evidence, experimental or observed, led towards a scientific methodology in which empiricism played a large, but not absolute, role. The term British empiricism came into use to describe philosophical differences perceived between two of its founders—Francis Bacon, described as empiricist, and René Descartes, who was described as a rationalist. Bacon’s works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or sometimes simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. Correspondingly, Descartes distinguished between the knowledge that could be attained by reason alone (rationalist approach), as, for example, in mathematics, and the knowledge that required experience of the world, as in physics.

Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley, and David Hume were the primary exponents of empiricism, and developed a sophisticated empirical tradition as the basis of human knowledge. The recognized founder of the approach was John Locke, who proposed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) that the only true knowledge that could be accessible to the human mind was that which was based on experience.

Many new ideas contributed to what is called the scientific revolution. Some of them were revolutions in their own fields. These include:

• The heliocentric model that involved the radical displacement of the earth to an orbit around the sun (as opposed to being seen as the center of the universe). Copernicus’ 1543 work on the heliocentric model of the solar system tried to demonstrate that the sun was the center of the universe. The discoveries of Johannes Kepler and Galileo gave the theory credibility and the work culminated in Isaac Newton’s Principia, which formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that dominated scientists’ view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.
• Studying human anatomy based upon the dissection of human corpses, rather than the animal dissections, as practiced for centuries.
• Discovering and studying magnetism and electricity, and thus, electric properties of various materials.
• Modernization of disciplines (making them more as what they are today), including dentistry, physiology, chemistry, or optics.
• Invention of tools that deepened the understating of sciences, including mechanical calculator, steam digester (the forerunner of the steam engine), refracting and reflecting telescopes, vacuum pump, or mercury barometer.

The Shannon Portrait of the Hon. Robert Boyle F. R. S. (1627-1691) Robert Boyle (1627-1691), an Irish-born English scientist, was an early supporter of the scientific method and founder of modern chemistry. Boyle is known for his pioneering experiments on the physical properties of gases, his authorship of the Sceptical Chymist, his role in creating the Royal Society of London, and his philanthropy in the American colonies.

The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

The scientific revolution laid the foundations for the Age of Enlightenment, which centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and emphasized the importance of the scientific method. By the 18th century, when the Enlightenment flourished, scientific authority began to displace religious authority, and disciplines until then seen as legitimately scientific (e.g.,  alchemy and astrology) lost scientific credibility.

Science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences, and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of the development of free speech and thought. Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought, and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress. At the time, science was dominated by scientific societies and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centers of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were also the backbone of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population. The century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine, mathematics, and physics; the development of biological taxonomy; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline, which established the foundations of modern chemistry.

Isaac Newton’s Principia, developed the first set of unified scientific laws

Newton’s Principia  formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, which dominated scientists’ view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. By deriving Kepler’s laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, and then using the same principles to account for the trajectories of comets, the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos. This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles. His laws of motion were to be the solid foundation of mechanics.

Attributions

• “Age of Enlightenment.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “René Descartes.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Scientific method.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Baconian method.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Royal Society.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Galileo Galilei.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Science in the Age of Enlightenment.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Age_of_Enlightenment . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Scientific revolution.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Jo Kent, The Impact of the Scientific Revolution: A Brief History of the Experimental Method in the 17th Century. June 12, 2014.” http://cnx.org/content/m13245/1.1/ . OpenStax CNX CC BY 2.0 .
• “NewtonsPrincipia.jpg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution#/media/File:NewtonsPrincipia.jpg . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 2.0 .
• “The Shannon Portrait of the Hon Robert Boyle.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Shannon_Portrait_of_the_Hon_Robert_Boyle.jpg . Wikipedia Public domain .
• Boundless World History. Authored by : Boundless. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

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World History Project - 1750 to the Present

Course: world history project - 1750 to the present   >   unit 3.

• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Origins of the Industrial Revolution
• WATCH: Origins of the Industrial Revolution
• READ: Scale of the Industrial Revolution

READ: The Scientific Revolution

• READ: The Industrial Revolution
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Coal, Steam, and the Industrial Revolution
• WATCH: Coal, Steam, and the Industrial Revolution
• Origins of the Industrial Revolution

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Second read: key ideas and understanding content.

• What is the usual story of the Scientific Revolution?
• How does the author challenge the usual story of the Scientific Revolution?
• Who participated in the Scientific Revolution?
• What were some negative social effects of the Scientific Revolution?
• Does the author think the Scientific Revolution caused the Industrial Revolution?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

• You just read an article about scale and the Industrial Revolution. In that article, the author questioned whether the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain because of local or global factors. What do you think explains the emergence of the Scientific Revolution in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Was this the result of local or global processes?
• Using the networks frame, explain why the Scientific Revolution happened in Europe and how it might have led to the Industrial Revolution.

The Scientific Revolution

Was it revolutionary, was it european, whose revolution, did it cause the industrial revolution.

• The word other can refer to the otherness of marginalize people. Anyone not belonging to the most powerful or privileged class can be a type of “other” due to race, gender, religion, socio-economic status, etc.
• It’s hard to say exactly when people started thinking about race, but it’s definitely not a natural and ancient idea. Of course, people had a sense of others outside their community, who they often looked down upon, but that wasn’t the same as seeing people as different races. For Europeans in the medieval period, humans were sorted into Christians, Jews, and heathens.

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The Scientific Revolution and the Social Sciences

Cite this chapter.

• I. Bernard Cohen 3  

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science ((BSPS,volume 150))

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Ever since the great revolution which produced modern science there has been a hope that a science of society would be created on a par with the sciences of nature. Two early heroes of the Scientific Revolution, Galileo and Harvey, created radical transformations of science — respectively, a physics of motion and a physiology based on the circulation of the blood — which became paradigms for a new social science. 1 Scientific precepts of Bacon and of Descartes were available as guides in this new venture. A primary challenge was to accommodate a new social science to mathematics: either to use classical mathematics for a non-traditional purpose or to introduce a kind of mathematics other than geometry on the Greek pattern. Would-be social scientists could thus find novel ways of dealing with their subject that would transfer to their endeavors the authority of mathematics and the new natural sciences.

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Throughout this chapter, I use the term “social science” anachronistically to designate a science of any organized aspect of society. This rubric therefore includes thoughts about society in terms of organization or improvement, international law, statecraft and civil polity, theories of government or the state, and so on. The term “social science” did not come into being until late in the eighteenth century and, as is well known, “sociology” was invented by Comte in the early nineteenth century. See, further, Appendix on Social Science at the end of this volume.

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In using the word “science” in the discourse of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we must remember that this term did not exclusively designate the area of the natural sciences or mathematics but could be used for any organized branch of knowledge. See §1.1 supra.

Some of the scientists who hoped for a second “Newton” were such diverse special- ists as the anatomist and paleontologist Baron Georges Cuvier and the physical chemists Otto Heinrich Warburg, Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff, and Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald; see I.B. Cohen: The Newtonian Revolution (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 294.

See my discussion of “Newton and the Social Sciences: The Case of the Missing Paradigm,” to appear in Philip Mirowski (ed.): Markets Read in Tooth and Claw (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993) [in press].

In producing this list I gladly acknowledge the influence of Alexander Koyré. See his Etudes galiléennes (Paris: Hermann, 1939); trans. John Mapham as Galilean Studies (London: Harvester Press; Atlantic Highlands [N. J.]: Humanities Press, 1978). Also, Koyré’s Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). H. Floris Cohen has made a study of the different major interpretations of the causes of the Scientific Revolution; his book on this subject (titled The Banquet of Truth) is currently being readied by publication.

The telescope showed that Venus exhibits a sequence of phases which could not occur in the Ptolemaic system. See I.B. Cohen: The Birth of a New Physics (revised ed., New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985), ch. 4.

The famous experiment of dropping uneven weights from a tower could prove the falsity of the doctrine that heavy bodies fall with speeds proportional to their weights, but could not reveal the laws of motion.

The possible experimental basis of Galileo’s discovery of the laws of motion remained secret (that is, confined to Galileo’s manuscripts) until our own times, when Stillman Drake began to study the unpublished manuscripts.

Galileo’s final presentation of the laws of motion appears in his Discourses and Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1642). In this work, general discussions are in Italian, the language suited for a dialogue in prose, while the mathematical demonstrations are in Latin, and thus set apart from the discussion of general principles.

I have called this method the “Newtonian style,” since it was brought to fulfillment and used most effectively by Newton, even thought its roots can be traced back to Galileo. On this subject see the work cited in n. 3 supra and also § 1.4 supra.

Although Descartes’s contributions to mathematics are presented in every history of the subject, there has never been until recently a full-length and adequate study of Descartes as a physicist. See William R. Shea: The Magic of Numbers and Motion: The Scientific Career of René Descartes (Canton [Mass.]: Science History Publications, 1991). On Descartes and the science of motion see René Dugas: Histoire de la Mécanique (Neuchâtel: Editions du Griffon, 1950), trans. J.R. Maddox as A History of Mechanics (Neuchâtel: Editions du Griffon; New York: Central Book Company, 1955). Also R. Dugas: La mécanique au XVIle siécle: des antécédents scolastiques à la pensée classique (Neuchâtel: Editions du Griffon, 1954), trans. Freda Jacquot as Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century: From the Scholastic Antecedents to Classical Thought (Neuchâtel: Editions du Griffon; New York: Central Book Company, 1958).

Descartes expressed this belief in a letter of 15 June 1646 to Pierre Chanut, the French ambassador to Sweden and brother-in-law of Claude Clerselier, the translator of Descartes’s works into French and editor of the first collection of Descartes’s letters. In this letter, Descartes explained how his “knowledge of physics” has been “a great help to me in establishing sure foundations in moral philosophy.” He declared that he had “found it easier to reach satisfactory conclusions on this topic than on many others concerning medicine on which I have spent much more time.” Accordingly, “instead of finding ways to preserve life,” he had “found another, much easier and surer way, which is not to fear death.” Quoted from Descartes’s Philosophical Letters , trans. Anthony Kenny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), p. 196. On Descartes’s physiology, see his Treatise of Man , trans. Thomas Steele Hall, with introduction and commentary (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).

William Harvey: An Anatomical Disputation concerning the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Living Creatures , trans. Gweneth Whitteridge (Oxford/London: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1976), p. 75; see also The Anatomical Exercises of Dr. William Harvey: De Motu Cordis, 1628; De Circulatione Sanguinis, 1649: the First English Text of 1653 , ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1928), reprinted (without “The Circulation of the Blood”) in William Harvey: Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus: Being a Facsimile of the 1628 Francofurti Edition, Together with the Keynes English Translation of 1928 (Birmingham: The Classics of Medicine Library, 1978), p. 58; also “An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals,” trans. Robert Willis (n. 105 infra), p. 46; also Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals: An Anatomical Essay by William Harvey , trans. Kenneth J. Franklin (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1957), p. 58. These are cited as Whitteridge trans., Willis trans., and Keynes. On the role of quantitative considerations in the genesis of Harvey’s discovery of the circulation, see §2 of the introduction to the Whitteridge translation; also Gweneth Whitteridge: William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood (London: Macdonald; New York: American Elsevier, 1971 — cited as Whitteridge). Also Frederick G. Kilgour: “William Harvey’s Use of the Quantitative Method,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine , 1954, 26: 410–421.

Cf. Keynes 1928 (n. 13 supra), pp. vii—viii; Keynes 1978 (n. 13 supra), pp. v—vi; see also Whitteridge trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 3; Willis trans. (n. 13 supra), pp. 3–4; Franklin trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 3. The Latin text of 1628 is reprinted in facsimile as the first half of Keynes 1978, pp. 3–4. In quoting this passage I use a combined version including some corrections introduced from the original Latin and inclining towards the English translation of 1653, the text which, together with the Latin, would have been available to readers, such as James Harrington, in the seventeenth century.

Whitteridge trans. (n. 105 infra), p. 359; also Willis trans. (n. 105 infra), p. 485. On the significance of the “punctum saliens” in a political context, see §4.5 infra.

Whitteridge (n. 13 supra), pp. 214, 235. Harvey’s own description of this episode is given in his De Generatione Animalium , Whitteridge trans. (n. 105 infra), pp. 249–251; also Willis trans. (n. 105 infra), pp. 382–384.

On the body politic, see David George Hale: The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance Literature (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1971), a valuable study even though Hale never considers the relation of the socio-political concept of the body politic to the reigning physiological theories of the body’s functioning.

From “The Prologue to the Reader,” in John Halle (compiler): A Very Frutefull and Necessary Briefe Worke of Anatomie, or Dissection of the Body of Man..., with a commodious order of notes, leading the chirurgien’s hande from all offence and error.., compiled in three treatises (London: Thomas Marshe, 1565), published as part of A Most Excellent and Learned Worke of Chirurgerie, called Chirurgia parva Lanfranchi... (London: Thomas Marshe, 1565).

On Harvey’s attitude towards the liver, see Whitteridge (n. 13 supra), esp. p. 142. On the difference between the status assigned to the heart and to the blood by Harvey in De Generatione and in De Motu Cordis , see n. 21 infra.

Whitteridge trans. (n. 105 infra), p. 242; see also Willis trans. (n. 105 infra) pp. 374–375.

Whitteridge trans. (n. 13 supra), pp. 120, 129–30. In De Motu Cordis ,Harvey was almost exclusively concerned with the function of the heart as the primary agent producing the circulation and not with the question of whether the heart comes into being in the embryo before the blood. In various other works, and notably in the De Generatione Animalium , Harvey made it plain that the blood appears in the development of the embryo before the heart or the liver or any other organ. On Harvey’s views concerning the status of the heart and of the blood, especially the difference between De Generatione and De Motu Cordis and between Harvey’s and Aristotle’s positions on this topic, see Whitteridge (n. 13 supra), pp. 215–235, and §4.5 infra. This issue is debated in a set of three articles in Past and Present : an original presentation of “William Harvey and the Idea of Monarchy” by Christopher Hill (no. 27, April 1964), a rebuttal by Gweneth Whitteridge (no. 30, April 1965: “William Harvey: A Royalist and No Parliamentarian”), and a reply by Hill (no. 31, July 1965: “William Harvey (No Parliamentarian, No Heretic) and the Idea of Monarchy.” These articles are reprinted in Charles Webster: The Intellectual Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 160–181, 182–188, 189–196. Hill’s final disclaimer undermines his statement (p. 112) that Harvey’s later views have implications which “can only be described as republican — or at best they suggest a monarchy based on popular consent.” There is no evidence that Harvey changed his political position from staunch Royalist to supporter of the Commonwealth.

Jacob ter Meulen and P.J.J. Diermanse: Bibliographie des écrits imprimés de Hugo Grotius (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), no. 407; Christian Gellinek: Hugo Grotius (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983), pp. 40, 128 n.78; Hamilton Vreeland: Hugo Grotius: The Father of the Modern Science of International Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1917; reprint, Littleton, Colorado: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1986), p. 29; M.G.J. Minnaert: “Stevin, Simon,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography , vol. 13 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 49; Ben Vermeulen: “Simon Stevin and the Geometrical Method in De Jure Praedae, ” Grotiana , 1983, 4 : 63–66. Dirk J. Struik: The Land of Stevin and Huygens: A Sketch of Science and Technology in the Dutch Republic during the Golden Century (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981), pp. 47, 53, 56. On Grotius’s life and career, see William S.M. Knight: The Life and Works of Hugo Grotius (Reading: The Eastern Press, 1925). See also E.H. Kossmann: “Grotius, Hugo,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , vol. 6 (New York: The Macmillan Company & The Free Press, 1968); The World of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645 ): Proceedings of the International Colloquium Organized by the Grotius Committee of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Rotterdam, 6–9 April 1983 (Amsterdam & Maarsen: APA-Holland University Press, 1984); Stephen Buckle: Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Hedley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury, and Adam Roberts (eds.): Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Edward Dumbauld: The Life and Legal Writings of Hugo Grotius (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969); Charles S. Edwards: Hugo Grotius: The Miracle of Holland: A Study in Political and Legal Thought (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981). The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has published a good translation by Francis W. Kelsey of De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Humphrey Milford, 1925 — The Classics of International Law, no. 3, vol. 2); in the same series (no. 3, vol. 1) is a facsimile reproduction of the Latin edition of 1646 (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1913). See also Hugo Grotius: De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres , ed. and trans. William Whewell, 3 vols. (Cambridge: John W. Parker, London, 1853). In this edition, the English translation (an abridged version) appears at the bottom of the page underneath the Latin text.

Galileo Galilei: Le Opere , vol. 16 (Florence: Tipografia Barbera, 1905 and later reprints), pp. 488–489, a letter from Hugo Grotius in Paris to Galileo, written in September 1636; also in Hugo Grotius: Briefwisseling , vol. 7, ed. B.L. Meulenbroek (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969 — Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, Grote Series, 130), pp. 398–399. Grotius wanted to find an asylum for Galileo when the latter had been condemned by the Inquisition. See Hugo Grotius: Briefwisseling , vol. 5, ed. B.L. Meulenbroek, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966 — Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien Grote Serie 119), pp. 489–490. See also Giorgio de Santillana: The Crime of Galileo (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1955; Midway reprint, 1976), p. 214 n. 17.

Kelsey trans. (n. 22 supra), pp. 23, 29–30; also Whewell trans. (n. 22 supra), vol. 1, pp. lxv, lxxvii.

Hugo Grotius: De Jure Praedae Commentarius: Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty , vol. 1: A Translation of the Original Manuscript of 1604 by Gladys L. Williams with the collaboration of Walter H. Zeydel (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press; London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1950 — Publications of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington; The Classics of International Law, no. 2, vol. 1; also reprinted, New York: Oceana Publications; London: Wiley & Sons, 1964), p. 7; Hugo Grotius: De Jure Praedae Commentarius , vol. 2: The Collotype Reproduction of the Original Manuscript of 1604 in the Handwriting of Grotius (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press; London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1950 — Publications of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington; The Classics of International Law, no. 2, vol. 2), f. 5’; Ben Vermeulen (n. 22 supra), p. 63 (with specific mention of his not discussing “the non-juridical chapters XIV and XV); cf. also Alfred Dufour: ”L’influence de la méthodologie des sciences physiques et mathématiques sur les fondateurs de l’Ecole du Droit naturel moderne (Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf),“ Grotiana , 1980, 1: 33–52, esp. 40–44; Alfred Dufour: ”Grotius e le droit naturel du dix-septième siècle,“ in The World of Hugo Grotius (n. 22 supra), pp. 15–41, esp. 22–23; Peter Haggenmocher: ”Grotius and Gentili: A Reassessment of Thomas E. Holland’s Inaugural Lecture,“ in Bull (n. 22 supra), pp. 142–144, 162; C.G. Roelofsen, ”Grotius and the International Politics of the Seventeenth Century,“ in Bull, pp. 99, 103–111. It must also be said that the mathematical aspect should not be overemphasized; Knight (n. 22 supra), for example, thinks of the procedure in De Jure Praede as scholastic (p. 84). The revised twelfth chapter of De Jure Praedae was published in 1609 as Mare Liberum . The manuscript of De Jure Praedae was discovered in 1864 and finally published in full as De Jure Praedae Commentarius , ed. H.G. Hamaker (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1868). See Meulen and Diermause (n. 22 supra), nos. 541, 684. It should be noted that the geometrical form of De Jure Praedae is much less striking than that of Leibniz in his Specimen (n. 36 infra). The two documents are comparable, however, because of their invocation and use of mathematical method, their addressing of a specific contemporary crisis, and the youth of their authors.

Kelsey trans. (n. 22 supra), p. 29; also Whewell trans. (n. 22 supra), vol. 1, p. lxxvii. Voisé (n. 30 infra), p. 86.

Kelsey trans. (n. 22 supra), pp. 40, 13; Whewell trans. (n. 22 supra), vol. 1, pp. 12, xliv—xlvi. See also Ernst Cassirer: The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 172; reprint (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company [Doubleday Anchor Books], 1955), p. 216; also, e.g., Hendrik van Eikema Hommes: “Grotius on Natural and International Law,” Netherlands International Law Review , 1983, 30: 61–71, esp. 67.

Voisé (n. 30 infra), p. 86. Cf. Jerzy Lande, Studia z filozofii prawa , ed. Kazimierz Opalek & Jerzy Wr6blewski (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1959), pp. 537–543.

Johan Huizinga: Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance , trans. James S. Holmes and Hans van Marle (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), pp. 332–333, 337–338; and Voisé (n. 30 infra), p. 85.

Hugo Grotius: The Rights of War and Peace , trans. A.C. Campbell (Washington/London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979). Cassirer (n. 27 supra, p. 165), of course, was aware of Grotius’s admiration for Galileo and Grotius’s reliance on the method of mathematics, but even he did not deal in full with these topics. The only work which I have encountered which seriously addresses this aspect of Grotius’s career is Waldemar Voisé: La réflexion présociologique d’Erasme à Montesquieu (Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowy Imienia Ossolinskich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1977), esp. pp. 84–87. But even Voisé does not explore fully the consequences of Grotius’s choice of a mathematical model.

Voisé (n. 30 supra), p. 88.

Ibid., pp. 88–89.

Spinoza’s Ethics , published posthumously, is available in a number of different English editions. A good, recent reference work on Spinoza’s Ethics is Jonathan Bennett: A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1984). Spinoza’s work on Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy was translated by Halbert Hains Britan (Chicago: The Open Court, 1905).

Benedict Spinoza: The Political Works ,ed. and trans. A.G. Wernham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 263. This volume contains a very valuable historical and critical study plus the complete text of the Tractatus Politicus and a translation of the major portions of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus .

See John Maynard Keynes: A Treatise on Probability (London: Macmillan and Co., 1921; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1979), p.v.; also reprinted as vol. 8 of The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes (London: Macmillan for the Royal Economic Society, 1973), p. xxv. Leibniz’s Specimen Demonstrationum Politicarum pro Eligendo Rege Polonorum novo scribendi genere ad claram certitudinem exactum is published in the original Latin in Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe , series 4, vol. 1, ed. Prussian Academy of Sciences (Darmstadt: Otto Reichl Verlag, 1931,), pp. 3–98; for editorial comment, see this volume, pp. xvii—xx, and vol. 2, ed. German Academy of Sciences at Berlin (Berlin: Academie-Verlag, 1963), pp. 627–635. This text is not included in Patrick Riley (ed.): Political Writings of Leibniz (Cambridge/London/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), nor is there a reference to it in the editor’s introduction and notes. An exception to the general rule is Eric Aiton: Leibniz: A Biography (Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1985), which has a brief discussion of the Specimen ; more typical of those works on Leibniz that mention the Specimen at all is C.D. Broad: Leibniz: An Introduction , ed. C. Lewy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 3: “Among his minor achievements was to produce a geometrical argument to prove that the electors to the monarchy of Poland ought to choose Philip Augustus of Neuburg as king.” I have completed a full-length study of Leibniz’s Specimen and its significance, to be published (in 1992) in History and Philosophy of Science .

Godfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Die Philosophischen Schriften , ed. C.I. Gerhardt, vol. 7 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchandlung, 1890), p. 200 (trans. mine). The strength of Leibniz’s conviction is revealed by the number of versions which he made of this passage: cf., e.g., ibid., pp. 26, 64–65, 125; Eduard Bodemann: Die Leibniz-Handschriften der Königlichen Öffentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover (Hanover: Hahn, 1895 [not 1889]; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966), p. 82; Leibniz: Opera Omnia ,ed. Ludovicus Dutens, vol. 6, part 1 (Geneva: Apud Fratres De Tournes, 1768; also reprint, Hildesheim/Zurich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1989), p. 22; Leibniz: Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz: extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque royale de Hanovre , ed. Louis Couturat (Paris: Félix Alcan, Éditeur, 1903), pp. 155–156, 176. See also Louis Couturat: La logique de Leibniz d’après des documents inédits (Paris: Félix Alcan, Éditeur, 1901), p. 141.

Hyman Alterman: Counting People: The Census in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), esp. pp. 45–47.

Henry Guerlac: “Vauban,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography , vol. 13 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 590, 591; on Vauban’s work on “statistique et prévision,” see Michel Larent: Vauban: un encyclopédiste avant la lettre (Paris: BergerLevrault, 1982), pp. 132–160. Vauban’s Dixme royale , originally published in 1707, is available in a scholarly edition, based on the original printing plus various manuscripts, E. Coornaert (ed.): Projet d’une dixme royale, suivi de deux écrits financiers (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1933).

Francisque Bouiller (ed.): Eloges de Fontenelle (Paris: Gamier Frères, 1883), p. 28. 41 See Alterman (n. 38, supra); also Helen M. Walker: Studies in the History of the Statistical Method: With Special Reference to Certain Educational Problems (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1929; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975), p. 32. This valuable work should be supplemented by Stephen M. Stigler: The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900 (Cambridge/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986); and John A. Koren: The History of Statistics: Their Development and Progress in Many Countries (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918; reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1970).

For an understanding of the numeracy of the age of Graunt and Petty, see especially John Brewer: The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989; paperback reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), ch. 8, “The Politics of Information: Public Knowledge and Private Interest.” The Knopf edition is used here; there are also two British editions: London: Century Hutchinson, 1988; London/Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. See, further, Keith Thomas: “Numeracy in Early Modern England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , 1987, 37 : 103–132.

A thorough account of the Bills of Mortality may be found in Charles Henry Hull (ed.): The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, together with Observations upon the Bills of Mortality more probably by Captain John Graunt , 2 vols. continuously paginated (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899; reprint, Fairfield [N.J.]: Augustus M. Kelley, 1986), pp. lxxx—xci.

The fifth edition (London, 1676) of Graunt’s Observations is reprinted in Hull’s edition of Petty, pp. 314–435. The first edition (London, 1662) has been reprinted in facsimile (New York: Arno Press, 1975). Hull (pp. xxxiv—xxxviii) has assembled all the information about Graunt’s life and on the authorship of the Observations upon the Bills of Mortality . Hull concludes that Graunt was “in every proper sense the author of the Observations, ” ; but he assembles evidence that Petty had an important role in the actual composition of the book, in addition to providing Graunt with medical and other information. A later analysis of this question by Major Greenwood: Medical Statistics from Graunt to Farr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1977), contains (pp. 36–39) an updated discussion of whether Graunt wrote “the book published over his name.” Greenwood reviews the history of the question and lists in chronological order some studies relating to this controversy from 1925 to 1937. He concludes that Graunt was indeed the author but that a life-table in Graunt’s Observations may have originated with Petty, the argument being that it is “far too conjectural to have been the work of so cautious a reasoner as Graunt.”

The importance of climate and air for health was a major feature of medical thought from the time of Hippocrates, whose treatise on “Airs, Waters, Places” continued to exert a significant influence up to the end of the eighteenth century.

Hull (n. 42 supra) discusses “Graunt and the Science of Statistics” on pp. lxxxv—lxxix. Stigler (n. 41 supra), p. 4, remarks that Graunt’s Observations “contained many wise inferences based on his data, but its primary contemporary influence was more in its demonstration of the value of data gathering than on the development of modes of analysis.”

Petty’s Political Arithmetick is reprinted in volume one of Hull’s edition (n. 42 supra). An important recent study of Petty is Peter H. Buck: “People Who Counted: Political Arithmetic in the Eighteenth Century,” Isis , 1982, 73 : 28–45. Petty’s work is also discussed in histories of probability and statistics, e.g., Walker (n. 41 supra). Petty is esteemed today for his writings on economics as much as for his work on demography and political arithmetic. In economics, Petty is noted for an early statement of the doctrine of “division of labor.” See William Letwin: The Origins of Scientific Economics: English Economic Thought, 1660–1776 (London: Methuen & c o., 1963; reprint, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1963), ch. 6. An extremely valuable resource for Petty studies, containing a wealth of information drawn from otherwise unused manuscript sources, is Lindsay Gerard Sharp: Sir William Petty and Some Aspects of Seventeenth Century Natural Philosophy (Unpublished D. Phil. Thesis, Faculty of History, Oxford University, deposited in the Bodleian Library 2.2.77). Scholars in many fields will regret that this important study was never published. A useful reference source is Sir Geoffrey Keynes: A Bibliography of Sir William Petty, F.R.S., and of Observations on the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt, F.R.S . (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

Quoted from Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice: Life of Sir William Petty, chiefly from Private Documents hitherto unpublished (London: John Murray, 1895), p. 158. Petty used the term “political arithmetick” even earlier, in print, in his Discourse of Duplicate Proportion (London, 1674), and, at an earlier date, in a letter to Lord Anglesey, 17 December 1672. See Hull (n. 42 supra), p. 240n.

Political Arithmetick , preface, in Hull (n. 42 supra), p. 244.

In a letter to Edward Southwell, 3 November 1687, Petty described at length what algebra is. After giving an explanation of the principles and a number of examples, he concluded with a brief history, tracing the origins to Archimedes and Diophantus but noting that “Vieta, DesCartes, Roberval, Harriot, Pell, Outread, van Schoten and Dr. Wallis have done much in this last age.” He then noted that algebra “came out of Arabia by the Moores into Spaine and from thence hither, and W[illiam] P[etty] hath applyed it to other then purely mathematicall matters, viz: to policy by the name of Politicall Arithmitick , by reducing many termes of matter to termes of number, weight, and measure, in order to be handled Mathematically.” These two remarks of Petty are excerpted from the Petty-Southwell Correspondence in The Petty Papers: Some Unpublished Writings of Sir William Petty ,ed. by Marquis of Lansdowne, 2 vols. (London: Constable & Company; Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927), vol. 2, pp. 10–15; cf. pp. 3–4.

Hull (n. 42 supra), p. 460.

Ibid., p. lxvii, n. 6.

Ibid., p. lxviii.

Brewer (n. 41 supra), p. 223.

Hull (n. 42 supra), pp. 451–478, esp. p. 473.

Ibid., p. 501.

Ibid., pp. 521–544.

Of all the thinkers presented in this chapter, Hobbes is the one most familiar to students of social or political thought. Furthermore, it is generally known that Hobbes based his system on the new physics of motion, but less attention has been paid to his use of Harveyan physiology. Hence my presentation of Hobbes’s use of the natural sciences stresses the biomedical basis of his political thought rather than his use of mathematics and the physical sciences. There are many good presentations of the thought of Hobbes, among them Leo Strauss: The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Birth and Its Genesis , trans. from the German manuscript by Elsa M. Sinclair (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1936; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); Arnold A. Rogow: Thomas Hobbes: A Radical in the Service of Reaction (London/New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986). There is much to be learned from two volumes by C.B. Macpherson: The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), and Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). Especially important in the present context is an essay by J.W.N. Watkins: “Philosophy and Politics in Hobbes,” Philosophical Quarterly , 1955, 5 : 125–146; expanded into the book Hobbes’s System of Ideas: A Study in the Political Significance of Philosophical Theories (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1965; 2d ed., 1973). Also Thomas A. Spragens: The Politics of Motion: The World of Thomas Hobbes (London: Croon Helm, 1973); and M.M. Goldsmith: Hobbes’s Science of Politics (London/New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). Also David Johnston: The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Tom Sorell: Hobbes (London/New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986 — The Arguments of the Philosophers); Richard Tuck: Hobbes (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 — Past Masters); and Frithiof Brandt: Thomas Hobbes’ Mechanical Conception of Nature (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1928).

Hobbes’s Leviathan , his major work, is available in many editions and reprints, among them the Pelican Classics edition, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968). The most recent edition, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) has indexes of subjects and of names and places and a concordance with earlier editions. The writings of Hobbes have been collected in two sets — Sir William Molesworth (ed.): The English Works of Thomas Hobbes , 11 vols. (London: John Bohn, 1839–1845; reprint, Aalen [Germany]: Scientia, 1962); Sir William Molesworth (ed.): Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera Philosophica Quae Latine Scripsit Omnia, 5 vols. (London: John Bohn, 1839–1845; reprint, Aalen [Germany]: Scientia, 1961). There are also articles on Hobbes in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences , vol. 4 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), and the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , vol. 6 (U.S.A.: The Macmillan Company & The Free Press, 1968).

English Works (n. 60 supra), vol. 7, pp. 470–471.

On Hobbes’s optics, se Alan E. Shapiro: “Kinematic Optics: A Study of Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences , 1973, 11: 134–266.

“Epistle Dedicatory,” De Corpore, in English Works (n. 60 supra), vol. 1, p. viii.

Ibid. It should be noted that in these two referrences to his own place in history, Hobbes refers specifically to his De Cive , not to Leviathan .

On the Cartesian notion of inertia, see A. Koyré: Galilean Studies (n. 5 supra), part 3, “Descartes and the Law of Inertia.” See also the works by R. Dugas and W. Shea cited in n. 11 supra.

English Works (n. 60 supra), vol. 6, p. 3.

Leviathan ; ch. 4, Tuck ed. (n. 60 supra), p. 28. Hobbes learned geometry only late in life and was never a real master of the subject.

On the style of the writers on mechanics of the late Middle Ages, see Marshall Clagett: The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959); also John E. Murdoch and Edith D. Sylla: “The Science of Motion,” pp. 206–264 of David C. Lindberg (ed.): Science in the Middle Ages (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

The mathematician John Wallis kept up a continual exposure of Hobbes’s attempts to square the circle. Although it had not then been proved that the squaring of the circle was impossible, no mathematician “worthy of his salt” in the seventeenth century would believe such a feat to be possible. On Wallis’s attack on Hobbes for his attempts to square the circle, see J.F. Scott: The Mathematical Work of John Wallis (London: Taylor and Francis, 1938), pp. 166–172.

Goldsmith (n. 59 supra), p. 228.

English Works (n . 60 supra), vol. 1, pp. 406–407; see Leviathan , Tuck ed. (n. 60 supra), p. 3; Spragens (n. 59 supra), p. 69.

Leviathan , ch. 5; Tuck ed. (n. 60 supra), p. 36.

Ibid., p. 31.

Ibid., p. 34.

Ibid., p. 35.

English Works (n. 60 supra), vol. 3, p. 35.

Ibid., vol. 2, p. iv.

See Brandt, Goldsmith, Sorell, Tuck, Watkins (see n. 59 supra).

Spragens (n. 59 supra), De Corpe, I . vi, 7, English Works, vol. 1, p. 74.

Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics (Ep. Ded.), English Works (n. 60 supra), vol. 7, p. 184.

Leviathan , ch. 29; Tuck ed. (n. 60 supra), pp. 228–230.

Ibid., ch. 24; Tuck ed. (n. 60 supra), pp. 174–175. Although Hobbes does say that the blood that passes through the heart, before being pumped out again into the arteries, “is made Vitall,” he does not indicate that the blood entering the heart from the parts of the body is made to pass out into the lungs and then back again into the heart before going out into the parts of the body once again. He does not make use of Harvey’s observation that the alteration of the blood does not occur as it passes through the heart but is a result of the pulmonary transit or passage through the lungs in what is sometimes known as the lesser circulation or pulmonary circulation. Nor does Hobbes indicate that there is an observable physical difference between the blood entering the heart from the lungs and the blood coming into the heart from the various other parts of the body.

Leonora Cohen Rosenfield: From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941).

Tom Sorell: “The Science in Hobbes’s Politics,” pp. 67–80 of G.A.J. Rogers & Alan Ryan (eds.): Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), esp. p. 71.

C.B. Macpherson: “Harrington’s ‘Opportunity State,”’ reprinted from Past and Present (no. 17, April 1960) in Webster (n. 19 supra), pp. 23–53, esp. p. 23. This essay is essentially reproduced as pp. 160–193 of Macpherson’s Possessive Individualism (n. 59 supra).

Richard H. Tawney: “Harrington’s Interpretation of His Age,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 1941, 27 : 199–223, esp. p. 200.

Harrington’s influence on American political organization is presented in H.F. Russell Smith: Harrington and His Oceana: A Study of a 17th Century Utopia and Its Influence in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914). See also Theodore Dwight: “James Harrington and His Influence upon American Political Institutions and Political Thought,” Political Science Quarterly , 1887, 2 : 1–44.

Charles Francis Adams (ed.): The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author , vol. 4 (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851 — reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1971), p. 428.

James Harrington: Works: The Oceana and Other Works , ed. John Toland, with an appendix containing more of Harrington’s political writings first added by Thomas Birch in the London edition of 1737 (London: printed for T. Becket, T. Cadell, and T. Evans, 1771; reprint, Aalen [Germany]: Scientia Verlag, 1980); cited here as Toland. For a brief listing of printings and editions of Toland’s collection, see Blitzer (n. 93 infra), pp. 338–339, and for a fuller account see J.G.A. Pocock (ed.): The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge/London/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. xi—xiv; this edition by Pocock is cited here as Pocock and is used for quotations from Harrington’s text. Examples of the kinds of changes which Toland made in Harrington’s text are given in n. 97 infra. Of the Toland editions, I have consulted, in addition to the reprint listed above, the original collection by John Toland: The Oceana of lames Harrington and His Other Works (London: Printed [by J. Darby], and are to be sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1700); The Oceana and Other Works of lames Harrington , 3rd ed., with Thomas Birch’s appendix of political tracts by Harrington (London: Printed for A. Millar, 1747); The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington (the London edition of 1771 as noted above); and The Oceana of James Harrington, Esq., and His Other Works , with the addition of Plato Redivivus (Dublin: Printed by R. Reilly for J. Smith and W. Bruce, 1737). Adams’s library contained two printings of Toland’s Harrington: The London edition (3rd ed.) of 1747 and the London edition of 1771; see Catalogue of the John Adams Library in the Public Library of the City of Boston , ed. Lindsay Swift (Boston: published by the Trustees, 1917).

Works (see n. 90 supra), p. xv.

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 164; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 37; also James Harrington: Oceana , ed. S.B. Liljegren (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1924 — Shifter utgivna av Vetenskaps-societeten i Lund, no. 4; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979), p. 15; also Works (n. 90 supra), p. 37. This last edition is cited as Liljegren. I have also consulted James Harrington: The Common-Wealth of Oceana (London: printed by J. Streater for Livewell Chapman, 1656); on this and the other “first edition,” see Pocock (n. 90 supra), pp. 6–14. The text of Oceana and A System of Politics from Pocock’s edition of all of Harrington’s political works (1977; n. 90 supra), have been reprinted, with a new introduction, as James Harrington: The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics ,ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). There is also a useful edition by Charles Blitzer of The Political Writings of James Harrington: Representative Selections (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1955).

Judith N. Shklar: “Harrington, James,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , vol. 6 (New York: The Macmillan Company & The Free Press, 1968), p. 323; Russell Smith (n. 88 supra). Charles Blitzer’s An Immortal Commonwealth: The Political Thought of James Harrington (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960) is the best informed and most authoritative work on Harrington and is cited as Blitzer; a convenient list of Harrington’s publications is given on pp. 337–339. Also worth consulting is Charles Blitzer’s doctoral thesis: “The Political Thought of James Harrington (1611–1677)” (Harvard University, 1952). A useful briefer presentation is given in Michael Downs: James Harrington (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977). An important critical survey of interpretations of Harrington is given in J.G.A. Pocock: Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), ch. 4, “Machiavelli, Harrington, and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century” Harrington opposed the idea that the state should be modelled on a machine or constructed on mathematical principles. His attack was obviously directed at Hobbes, who appears in Oceana as an almost omnipresent target under the name “Leviathan.” It has recently been argued, however, that Harrington was, to a considerable degree, a follower of the Helmontian philosophy, that he “appears Helmontian in his scorn for the use of mathematics in the ‘new mechanical philosophy.’” Thus when Wren attacked Harrington for having assumed a perpetual mechanics, Harrington replied that “in the politics there is nothing mechanic or like it” and that to suppose so “is but an idiotism of some mathematician.” See Wm. Craig Diamond: “Natural Philosophy in Harrington’s Political Thought,” Journal of the History of Philosophy , 1978, 16 : 387–398 esp. pp. 390, 395. Diamond argues further (e.g., p. 397) that not only was the concept of a Helmontian spiritus important in Harrington’s philosophy of nature; “Harrington incorporated a number of related conceptions of spiritus within his political philosophy.” Exploring Harrington’s philosophy of nature from a new scholarly perspective, the author of this original and important analysis does not mention Harrington’s concept of political anatomy nor does he explore Harrington’s use of the science of William Harvey.

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 656; also James Harrington: The Art of Law-Giving: In iII Books; The Third Book: Containing a Model of Popular Government (London: Printed by J. C. for Henry Fletcher, 1659), p. 4; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 403.

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 656; also The Art of Law-Giving (n. 94 supra), p. 4; also Toland (n. 90 supra), pp. 402–403.

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 162; also Liljegren (n. 92 supra), p. 13; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 36. Cf. Harrington’s Politicaster, in Pocock, p. 723 (and see also Toland, p. 560), where Harrington insists that “in the politics,” as in anatomy, what counts is “demonstration out of nature”; politics must follow “the known course of nature.”

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 287; also Liljegren (n. 92 supra), p. 149; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 149. In his edition Toland has changed “store” to “matter,” “gusheth” to “spouts,” and “life blood” to “vital blood.” That Toland and not a later editor is the author of these changes is indicated by their appearing in his edition of 1700 (n. 90 supra), p. 161. Earlier in Oceana ,Harrington compares the Council of Trade to the Vena Porta (Pocock, p. 251; also Liljegren, p. 110; also Toland, p. 118).

Judith N. Shklar: “Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington,” The American Political Science Review , 1959, 53 : 689–691.

René Descartes, Discours de la méthode , ed. Charles Adam and Paul Taunery, vol. 6 (Paris: Léopold Cerf, Imprimeur-Éditeur, 1902; reprint, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1965), p. 47. Descartes’s discussion of Harvey appears in part 5 of the Discours de la méthode . See René Descartes: Treatise of Man , French text with trans. and comm. by Thomas Steele Hall (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).

Walter Pagel: William Harvey’s Biological Ideas: Selected Aspects and Historical Background (Basel/New York: S. Karger, 1967), p. 233.

See I.B. Cohen: “A Note on Harvey’s ‘Egg’ as Pandora’s ‘Box,”’ pp. 233–249 of Mikulds Teich & Robert Young (eds.): Changing Perspectives in the History of Science: Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham (London: Heinemann, 1973).

See F.J. Cole: Early Theories of Sexual Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930).

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 839; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 470.

William Harvey: Disputations touching the Generation of Animals , trans. Gweneth Whitteridge (Oxford/London: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1981), pp. 96, 99; see also William Harvey: “Anatomical Exercises in the Generation of Animals,” in The Works of William Harvey , trans. Robert Willis (London: printed for the Sydenham Society, 1847; reprint, New York/London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965 — The Sources of Science, no. 13; reprint, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989 — Classics in Medicine and Biology Series), pp. 235, 238; also William Harvey: Anatomical Exercitations concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , trans. (London: Printed by James Young for Octavian Pulleyn, 1653), pp. 90, 94.

Whitteridge trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 96, 101; also Willis trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 235, 241; also 1653 trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 89, 97.

Whitteridge (n. 13 supra), p. 218.

Pocock (n . 90 supra), p. 839; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 470.

Pocock (n . 90 supra), p. 840; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 470.

The Prerogative of Popular Government: A Political) Discourse in Two Books (London: Printed for Tho. Brewster, 1658 [1657]), p. 20; also Works (n. 90 supra), p. 232.

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 412; also Prerogative (n . 110 supra), p. 21; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 232.

Whitteridge trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 8–10; also Willis trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 152–153.

Whitteridge trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 12–13; also WIllis trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 157–158.

Quoted in Kenneth D. Keele: William Harvey: The Man, the Physician, and the Scientist (London/Edinburgh: Nelson, 1965), p. 107.

On Harvey’s method see especially Walter Pagel (n. 100 supra).

Pagel (see n. 100 supra), pp. 24, 331 (with qualifications, e.g., on pp. 24–25, 330–331). See also Charles Singer: The Evolution of Anatomy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), pp. 174–175; Keele (n. 114 supra), p. 190.

Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 310; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 170.

Blitzer (n. 93 supra), p. 99; Pocock (n. 90 supra), p. 723; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 560.

Keynes 1928 (n. 13 supra), pp. 165–166, 145; also “A Second Disquisition to John Riolan, Jun., in Which Many Objections to the Circulation of the Blood Are Refuted,” trans. Robert Willis (n. 105 supra), pp. 123, 109. Whitteridge trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 7; also Willis trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 7; also Keynes 1928, p. xiii; also Keynes 1978 (n. 13 supra), p. xi.

Harrington was dismayed by the fact that certain “natural philosophers” (Bishop Wilkins, for example, in his Mathematical Magick) wrote of machines or devices that could either not be constructed or that could never in practice work exactly as proposed in theory; see the excellent presentation in Blitzer (n. 93 supra), pp. 90–95.

Pocock (n. 90 supra), pp. 198–199; also Liljegren (n. 92 supra), p. 50; also Toland (n. 90 supra), p. 65. Cf. Politicaster in Pocock, p. 716; also Toland, p. 553.

Keynes 1928 (n. 13 supra), p. 179; also Willis trans. (n. 120 supra), p. 132. (In De Motu Cordis Harvey did call “the heart of creatures” the “prince of all, the sun of their microcosm” (see n. 14 supra), but that does not mean that he favored the heliocentric system of Copernicus; cf. Whitteridge trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 76; Keynes (n. 13 supra), p. 47; Franklin trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 59. In De Generatione Animalium , Harvey did not compare the heart to a central sun. Rather, adopting a geocentric position (which could be Ptolemaic or Tychonic, etc.), he called the blood “the sun of the microcosm” and compared it further to “the superior luminaries, the sun and the moon,” which “give life to this inferior world by their continuous circular motions.” See Whitteridge translation (n. 105 supra), pp. 381–382; also Willis trans. (n. 105 supra), pp. 458–459.

Keynes 1928 (n. 13 supra), p. 168; also Willis trans. (n. 120 supra), p. 124.

A wholly new interpretation of Harrington’s disdain for physics (mechanics) and mathematics has been suggested by Williamm Craig Diamond: “Natural Philosophy in Harrington’s Political Thought,” Journal of the History of Philosophy , 1978, 16 : 387–398. Diamond provides convincing evidence that in this regard Harrington was, to a considerable degree, a follower of the Helmontian philosophy. That is (pp. 390, 395), Harrington may have been “Helmontian in his scorn for the use of mathematics in the ‘new mechanical philosophy. — Diamond argues further (e.g., p. 397) that not only was the concept of a Helmontian spiritus important in Harrington’s philosophy of nature; ”Harrington incorporated a number of related conceptions of spiritus within his political philosophy.“ Exploring Harrington’s philosophy of nature from a new scholarly perspective, the author of this original and important analysis does not, however, mention Harrington’s concept of political anatomy, nor does he explore Harrington’s use of the science of William Harvey in either forming a philosophy of nature or a system of political thought.

Whitteridge trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 7; also Willis trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 7; Franklin trans. (n. 13 supra), p. 7; Keynes 1928 (n. 13 supra), p. xiiil; Keynes 1978 (n. 13 supra), p. xi. Harrington made other references to Harvey, even – as Robert Frank noted – using “the discovery of the circulation to argue society’s need for an innovator, in this case a single legislator to lay down a plan of government”; see Robert G. Frank, Jr.: “The Image of Harvey in Commonwealth and Restoration England,” pp. 103–143 of Jerome J. Bylebyl (ed.): William Harvey and His Age: The Professional and Social Context of the Discovery of the Circulation (Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), esp. p. 120. In this context Frank quotes from Harrington’s The Prerogative of Popular Government: “Invention is a solitary thing. All the Physicians in the world put together invented not the circulation of the bloud, nor can invent any such thing, though in their own Art; yet this was invented by One alone, and being invented is unanimously voted and embraced by the generality of Physicians.” This treatise by Harrington is included in Pocock (n. 90 supra).

Petty and Graunt are exceptions in that almost all of their writings are devoted to topics in science or mathematics in relation to general polity.

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Cohen, I.B. (1994). The Scientific Revolution and the Social Sciences. In: Cohen, I.B. (eds) The Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 150. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3391-5_4

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9.1: Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment

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Introduction

The Age of Science of the 1600s and the Enlightenment of the 1700s, also dubbed the Age of Enlightenment, introduced countless new concepts to European society. These ideas continue to permeate modern society. Many modern institutions have much of their foundations in the ideals of these times.

An Era of Enlightened Despotism

A new form of government began to replace absolutism across the continent. Whilst monarchs were reluctant to give up their powers, many also recognized that their states could potentially benefit from the spread of Enlightenment ideas. The most prominent of these rulers were Frederick II the Great Hohenzollern of Prussia, Joseph II Hapsburg of Austria, and Catherine II the Great Romanov of Russia.

In order to understand the actions of the European monarchs of this period, it is important to understand their key beliefs. Enlightened despots rejected the concept of absolutism and the divine right to rule. They justified their position based on their usefulness to the state. These despots based their decisions upon their reason, and they stressed religious toleration and the importance of education. They enacted codified, uniform laws, repressed local authority, nobles, and the church, and often acted impulsively and instilled change at an incredibly fast rate.

Catherine the Great 1762-1796

Catherine the Great came to power because Peter III failed to bear a male heir to the throne and was killed. Her enlightened reforms include:

• Restrictions on torture

• Religious toleration

• Education for girls

• 1767 Legislative Commission, which reported to her on the state of the Russian people

• Trained and educated her grandson Alexander I so that he could progress in society because of his merit rather than his blood line

She was friends with Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire. However, Catherine also took a number of decidedly unenlightened actions. In 1773 she violently suppressed Pugachev’s Rebellion, a massive peasant rebellion against the degradation of the serfs. She conceded more power to the nobles and eliminated state service. Also, serfdom became equivalent to slavery under her.

Foreign Policy

Catherine combated the Ottoman Empire. In 1774, Russia gained a warm water port on the Black Sea.

Frederick II the Great 1740-1786

Frederick II Hohenzollern of Prussia declared himself “The First Servant of the State,” believing that it was his duty to serve the state and do well for his nation. He extended education to all classes, and established a professional bureaucracy and civil servants. He created a uniform judicial system and abolished torture. During his tenure, Prussia innovated agriculture by using potatoes and turnips to replenish the soil. Also, Frederick established religious freedom in Prussia.

Joseph II Habsburg 1765-1790

Joseph II Habsburg (also spelled as Hapsburg) of Austria could be considered perhaps the greatest enlightened despot, and he was purely enlightened, working solely for the good of his country. He was anti-feudalism, anti-church, and anti-nobility. He famously stated, “The state should provide the greatest good for the greatest number.” He created equal punishment and taxation regardless of class, complete freedom of the press, toleration of all religions, and civil rights for Jews. Under Joseph II a uniform law code was established, and in 1781 he abolished serfdom and in 1789 ordered the General School Ordinance, which required compulsory education for Austrian children. However, Joseph failed because he angered people by making changes far too swiftly, and even the serfs weren’t satisfied with their abrupt freedom.

As a result of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, England already had a Parliament and thus enlightened despotism did not take hold in England.

After Louis XIV the “Sun King,” Louis XV took control from 1715 until 1774. Like his predecessor, he was an absolute monarch who enacted mercantilism. As a result of the influence and control of absolutism in France, France also did not encounter an enlightened despot. In order to consummate an alliance between his nation and Austria, Maria Theresa of Austria married her daughter, Marie Antoinette, to Louis XV’s heir, Louis XVI. Louis XV recognized that the fragile institutions of absolutism were crumbling in France, and he famously stated, “Après moi, le déluge”, or “After me, the flood.”

A War-Torn Europe

War of austrian succession.

The war of Austrian Succession of 1740 to 1748 pitted Austria, England, and the Dutch against Prussia, France, and Spain. Upon Maria Theresa’s acquisition of the Austrian throne, Frederick the Great of Prussia attacked Silesia, and war broke out. In 1748 peace came at the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle. The treaty preserved the balance of power and the status quo ante bellum. Austria survived but lost Silesia, which began “German Dualism” or the fight between Prussia and Austria over who would dominate and eventually unite Germany.

The Seven Years War

The peace in 1748 was recognized as temporary by all, and in 1756 Austria and France allied in what was known as the Diplomatic Revolution. The reversal of the traditional France versus Austria situation occurred as a result of both nation’s fear of a rising, militant Prussia. To consummate the marriage, Louis XVI married Marie Antionette. The Seven Years War engaged Austria, France, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Saxony against Prussia and England. The purpose of the war was to annihilate Prussia, and took place at a number of fronts: in Europe, in America (where American citizens know it as the French and Indian War) and in India. At the Peace of Paris in 1763, the war concluded, and Prussia retained all of its territory, including Silesia. France ceded Canada to Britain and the North American interior to Spain, and removed its armies from India. It did, however, get to keep its West Indies colonies. At this point, Great Britain became the supreme naval power and it began its domination of India.

The Partitioning of Poland

Poland was first partitioned on February 19, 1772, between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in an agreement between them to gain more land and power in Europe. Poland was able to be partitioned because it was weak and had no ability to stop the larger and more powerful nations. The balance of power was not taken into consideration by France or England because the partitioning did not upset the great powers of Europe. The second partition involved Russia and Prussia taking addition land from Poland. After the second partition, which occurred on January 21, 1792, the majority of their remaining land was lost to Prussia and Russia. The third partition of Poland took place in October of 1795, giving Russia, Prussia, and Austria the remainder of the Polish land. Russia ended up with 120,000 square kilometres, Austria 47,000 square kilometres, and Prussia 55,000 square kilometres. This took Poland off of the map.

Science and Technology

The Enlightenment was notable for its scientific revolution, which changed the manner in which the people of Europe approached both science and technology. This was the direct result of philosophic enquiry into the ways in which science should be approached. The most important figures in this change of thinking were Descartes and Bacon.

The philosopher Descartes presented the notion of deductive reasoning – that is, to start with a premise and to then discard evidence that doesn’t support the premise. However, Sir Francis Bacon introduced a new method of thought. He suggested that instead of using deductive reasoning, people should use inductive reasoning – in other words, they should gather evidence and then reach a conclusion based on the evidence. This line of thought also became known as the Scientific Method.

Changes in Astronomy

The Scientific Revolution began with discoveries in astronomy, most importantly dealing with the concept of a solar system. These discoveries generated controversy, and some were forced by church authorities to recant their theories.

Pre-Revolution: Aristotle and Ptolemy

Ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Ptolemy had a geocentric, or Earth-centred, view of the universe. Of the ten spheres of the heavens, Earth and heavy objects (such as sinners) were at the centre, and lighter objects (such as angels) were in the higher spheres. This view was adopted as Church doctrine.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

During the Renaissance, study of astronomy at universities began. Regiomontanus and Nicolas of Cusa developed new advances in mathematics and methods of calculation. Copernicus, although a devout Christian, doubted whether the views held by Aristotle and Ptolemy were completely correct. Using mathematics and visual observations with only the naked eye, he developed the Heliocentric, or Copernican, Theory of the Universe, stating that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)

Tycho Brahe created a mass of scientific data on astronomy during his lifetime; although he made no major contributions to science, he laid the groundwork for Kepler’s discoveries.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

Kepler was a student of Brahe. He used Brahe’s body of data to write Kepler’s Three Laws of Planetary Motion, most significantly noting that planets’ orbits are elliptical instead of circular.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Galileo is generally given credit for invention of the telescope; although the device itself is not of Galileo’s design, he was the first to use it for astronomy. With this tool, he proved the Copernican Theory of the Universe. Galileo spread news of his work through letters to friends and colleagues. Although the Church forced him to recant his ideas and spend the rest of his life under house arrest, his works had already been published and could not be disregarded.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Newton is often considered the greatest scientific mind in history. His Principia Mathematica (1687) includes Newton’s Law of Gravity, an incredibly ground-breaking study. Newton’s work destroyed the old notion of an Earth-centred universe. Newton also had a great influence outside of science. For example, he was to become the hero of Thomas Jefferson.

Developments in Medicine Andreas

Vesalius (1514-1564).

Vesalius studied human cadavers, a practice forbidden by church doctrine. His writing The Structure of the Human Body in 1543 renewed and modernized the study of the human body.

William Harvey (1678-1757)

William Harvey wrote On the Movement of the Heart and Blood in 1728, on the circulatory system.

Society and Culture

As a result of new learning from the Scientific Revolution, the world was less of a mystical place, as natural phenomena became increasingly explainable by science. According to Enlightened philosophers:

• The universe is a fully tangible place governed by natural rather than supernatural forces.

• Rigorous application of the scientific method can answer fundamental questions in all areas of inquiry.

• The human race can be educated to achieve nearly infinite improvement.

Perhaps most importantly, though, Enlightened philosophers stressed that people are all equal because all of us possess reason.

There were a number of precursors to the Enlightenment. One of the most important was the Age of Science of the 1600s, which presented inductive thinking, and using evidence to reach a conclusion. The ideas of Locke and Hobbes and the notion of the social contract challenged traditional thinking and also contributed to the Enlightenment. Scepticism, which questioned traditional authority and ideas, contributed as well. Finally, the idea of moral relativism arose – assailing people for judging people who are different from themselves.

The Legacy of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment began in France, as a result of its well-developed town and city life, as well as its large middle class that wanted to learn the ideas. The Enlightenment promoted the use of one’s reason, rather than accepting tradition. It rejected the traditional attitudes of the Catholic Church. Many “philosophers,” or people who thought about subjects in an enquiring, inductive manner, became prominent. Salons were hosted by upper-middle class women who wanted to discuss topics of the day, such as politics.

The Enlightenment stressed that we are products of experience and environment, and that we should have the utmost confidence in the unlimited capacity of the human mind. It stressed the unlimited progress of humans, and the ideas of atheism and deism became especially prominent. Adam Smith’s concept of free market capitalism sent European economics in a new direction. Enlightened despots such as Catherine the Great and Joseph II replaced absolute monarchs and used their states as agents of progress. Education and literacy expanded vastly, and people recognized the importance of intellectual freedoms of speech, thought, and press.

Conflict with the Church

Although the ideas of the Enlightenment clashed with Church dogma, it was mostly not a movement against the Church. Most Enlightened philosophers considered themselves to be followers of deism, believing that God created an utterly flawless universe and left it alone, some describing God as the “divine clockmaker.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• dies before the enlightenment

• English Revolution shapes his political outlook

• Leviathan (1651) – life is “nasty, brutish, and short” – people are naturally bad and need a strong government to control them.

• may be considered to be the father of the enlightenment: because of all the opposition he inspired.

John Locke (1632-1704)

• specifically refuted Hobbes

• humanity is only governed by laws of nature, man has right to life, liberty, and property

• there is a natural social contract that binds the people and their government together; the people have a responsibility to their government, and their government likewise has a responsibility to its people

• Two Treatises on Civil Government justified supremacy of Parliament

• Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) – Tabula rasa – human progress is in the hands of society

Philosophers

Voltaire (1694-1776).

• stressed religious tolerance

Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

• Spirit of the Laws – checks and balances on government, no one group having sole power

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• social contract

• “general will” – government acts for the majority

The Rococo Art movement of the 1700s emphasized elaborate, decorative, frivolous, and aristocratic art. Often depicted were playful intrigue, love, and courtship. The use of wispy brush strokes and pastels was common in Rococo Art. Rococo Art is especially associated with the reign of Louis XV Bourbon in France. The French artist Boucher painted for Madame Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. The most famous paintings of Boucher include Diana Leaving her Bath and Pastorale, a painting of a wealthy couple under a tree.

Article Sources and Contributors

European History/Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment  Source: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?oldid=2129260  Contributors: Adrignola, Belteshazzar, Booyabazooka, Derbeth, Emviki, Gmcfoley, Hagindaz, Herbythyme, Hotgoblin, Iamunknown, Joeybob12, Jomegat, Magicmonster, Mike.lifeguard, Panic2k4, QuiteUnusual, Recent Runes, Spongebob88, Ultimadesigns, Webaware, Wutsje, Xania, 94 anonymous edits

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Image:Boucher Diane sortant du bain Louvre 2712.jpg  Source: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?...ouvre_2712.jpg  License: Public Domain Contributors: User:Bibi Saint-Pol

• European History/Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. Provided by : Saylor. Located at : https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HIST312-2.2-European-History-Scientific-Revolution-and-Enlightenment.pdf . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Aristotle Altemps. Authored by : Jastrow. Located at : http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=File:Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg%20 . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright
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Article Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Framework to design and reflect on transformation research
• 3. Methodology
• 4. Scrutinizing transformation research in practice: TRAFIS results, design, and process
• 5. Lessons on and recommendations for transformation research in practice
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Transforming science and society? Methodological lessons from and for transformation research

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Katharina Hölscher, Julia M Wittmayer, Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers, Alfred Olfert, Jörg Walther, Georg Schiller, Benjamin Brunnow, Transforming science and society? Methodological lessons from and for transformation research, Research Evaluation , Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 73–89, https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvaa034

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Transformation research has in the past years emerged as a shared lens to study and support radical societal change towards sustainability. Given the nascent and exploratory—yet highly normative and ambitious—character of transformation research, we aim to enhance the understanding of transformation research: when do research designs qualify as transformation research, what is needed for putting transformation research into practice, and what are results? To this end, we develop a framework that identifies criteria for designing and reflecting on research results, design and processes as transformation research. We employ this framework to reflect on our work in a research project that was designed in the spirit of transformation research: The TRAFIS (Transformations towards resource-conserving and climate-resilient coupled infrastructures) project sought to understand and support the development of innovative coupled infrastructures to mobilize their critical role in achieving sustainability transformations. Our results yield lessons and recommendations about what transformation research looks like in practice and how it can be strengthened, focussing on 1, redefining and re-valuing research for societal impact; 2, redesigning research to integrate perspectives on radical societal change; and 3, re-equipping researchers and research partners for social learning. We conclude that while transformation research already contributes to framing and generating knowledge about real-world sustainability challenges, its transformative impact is still limited. Practicing transformation research requires far-reaching changes in the science system, but also continuous reflection about legitimacy, power relations, and impacts.

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The Scientific Revolution: Science & Society from the Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment: Lesson Plans

The Scientific Revolution resulted from a monumental series of discoveries, especially those in astronomy and related fields, in the 16th and 17th centuries. The impact of these discoveries went far beyond the walls of the laboratory—it created a genuine revolution in the way Western people thought about the world. Participants in this institute will study how the revolution in science and technology was directly linked to revolutions in religion, politics, and society. They will read selections from Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, and see examples of the books they published to spread their ideas.

Here are some resources to help your students to analyze primary sources:

The File spiral_questions.pdf 42.68 KB ) Here is a Image Analysis Worksheet  (and again as a Word Document you can edit) . Here is an Click on the link to download  a PowerPoint Overview of the Scientific Revolution .   

Grade 5 Lesson Plans "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants": Major Figures of the Scientific Revolution Grade 6, 7, 8 Lesson Plans Go straight to the Source: Newton and Wilkins  

High school (9-12) lesson plans the scientific revolution: an overview the scientific revolution: picturing a worldview the scientific revolution: another overview lesson where in the universe is the earth walking the historical path: chemistry's journey from ancients to alchemy to modern science the development of atomic theory galileo and the scientific method “from white light to rainbow brite”: sir isaac newton and optics emblematic images in the scientific revolution witchcraft in salem religion and the scientific revolution: copernicus, kepler  galileo, and bacon the trial of galileo revolutionary thinkers from the scientific revolution to the enlightenment from scientific revolution to enlightenment the scientific revolution to the enlightenment: a baseball card project .

This project was made possible by a generous grant from the Ohio Humanities Council .

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Transforming our world: advancing society through science with a soul.

In September 2015, 193 countries agreed on a new development agenda, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its core. The Agenda, now in its third year of implementation, strives for a world that is just, equitable and inclusive, committing stakeholders to work together to promote sustained and inclusive economic growth, social development and environmental protection.

However, as of today, more than 760 million people continue to be undernourished and live on less than 1.90 USD a day; gender inequality remains deeply entrenched, and women and girls still face violence in all societies. Further attention also needs to be paid to migration, climate change and sustainable consumption and production, and it is essential to make quick progress towards sustainable energy systems.

So how valuable is the global roadmap, and can it foster the transformative change it aspires for a better world for people and planet? My answer is very firm. The global roadmap is incredibly important, and provided it is interpreted and implemented in a meaningful way, it will have enormous potential to facilitate transformative change towards the world we want.

But what does implementing in a meaningful way really mean, and how is science an indispensable part of this?

Sustainable Development Goals and the 5 P’s

By endorsing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world community reaffirmed its commitment to the three pillars of sustainable development, economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection, fostering peaceful societies through a new global partnership.

The 2030 Agenda is based on a principle of universality . This means that every country should contribute to achieving the larger vision of sustainable development. It encourages all of us to take bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. And it implies that all relevant actors must go beyond a business-as-usual approach to achieve this change.

The Agenda is a transformative, rights-based and concrete call to action. The Outcome Document of the 2030 Agenda, which is called “ Transforming our World ” touches on five dimensions - people , prosperity , planet , partnership and peace , also known as the 5P’s, as the essence of sustainable development. Genuine sustainability sits at the core of these five dimensions.

But what does this mean?

Dimensions of the New Agenda

It is fundamental to realize that the 2030 Agenda is about more than the 17 Goals alone.

Policy interventions and solutions that touch on one dimension inevitably affect other dimensions. For instance, a policy aimed at cutting carbon emissions within a city by encouraging the use of public transportation concerns more than just environmental issues. It also touches upon matters such as class divides, and public perception of safety, among others.

The idea of sustainable development means that for an intervention to be sustainable, it must take into account the social, economic, and environmental consequences it generates, and lead to conscious choices in terms of the trade-offs, synergies, and spin-offs it creates. In other words, action is to be guided by proper public policy with long-term gains in view, while protecting the worlds’ planetary boundaries. It requires us to reflect on both political and technical dimensions of choices, as there simply is no technical solution without an associated political solution; and the resolution of political problems will always require technical support and implementation.

Many believe this to be straightforward, but unfortunately current practice, particularly in the development domain, isn’t showing that in abundance. An enormous amount of human and financial resources is currently devoted to implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through relatively basic technical approaches to the SDGs, its targets and indicators, while ignoring the broader political economy, and the truly transformative notion of sustainable development itself.

The SDGs on their own do not represent the Agenda in its entirety .

They are not a summary of the Agenda, but rather focus areas necessary to achieve sustainable development. The SDGs are a network of interdependent, indivisible, mutually reinforcing targets, and they do constitute the DNA of the sustainable development agenda, but SDGs approached outside their broader context of sustainable development do not add up to the transformation that is asked for. Sustainable development is not merely about following a recipe with 17 ingredients, but is demanding a real paradigm shift.

The Rubik’s Cube

We have to change this one-dimensional approach, so let us now look at it from a “Rubik’s cube perspective.” What would happen if one handed out 17 Rubik’s Cubes in a classroom?

Chances are that several students could solve one side, or maybe two, but the likelihood that there will be a completed version is actually relatively small. This is exactly the situation we are facing in addressing sustainable development through all its dimensions. There is an incredible amount of knowledge available, but somehow we are still not consistently bringing it together. We cannot solve problems by focusing on one side or one dimension alone as action on one side immediately leads to a reaction on other sides. It means that we need to break out of our silos to work together, and particularly with those with whom we may not necessarily be familiar with.

In solving the Rubik’s cube, sometimes we even have to undo what we have already solved to get to the ultimate solution .

Innovation, trust, co-creation and collaboration are of paramount importance and things may even look or feel worse before getting better. But if we are to move forward in the true context of sustainable development we must be more open to think and act differently to reach our goal. It is by pursuing our economic, social and environmental goals separately that has resulted in repeated trade-offs between goals. Instead sustainable development is about addressing progress across all dimensions of the 2030 Agenda, while acting in concert with all segments of society. This is not to say that combining approaches is per se better than focusing on particular dimensions of a development challenge. What it means is that as we focus on a challenge we need to ensure that we think it through in terms of its environmental, social and economic dimensions as well as think about its governance structure and institutional set-up to ensure it can be long-lasting. We also need to identify who needs to be at the table in order to benefit from the means of capacities and knowledge required, while building trust and fostering synergies in order to address the issue under scrutiny successfully.

Moreover, the Agenda isn’t meant as a rigid prescription for technical assistance, but rather as a means to facilitate genuine guidance for priority setting. It inspires us to think creatively by leveraging innovative approaches and critically rethinking the way we approach the development challenges of today.

So can this be done in reality?

The Case of Eschweiler

We, at the UNSSC Knowledge Centre, use the case of the City of Eschweiler, a city heavily impacted by Germany’s decision to completely restructure the country’s energy sector through the so-called “Energiewende” (energy transition), as an illustrative case in our trainings for senior management. We believe it highlights some of the complexities in process and progress to achieve transformative change. The case demonstrates the interrelatedness of the different sides of the Rubik’s cube, and studying the case may help us further in determining which questions to ask, and what answers to seek to guide a transformative transition.

So what is the example all about?

The City of Eschweiler is a city of 58,000 inhabitants in the westernmost part of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Eschweiler and its surrounding region are rich in resources, particularly coal, limestone and ores; resultantly, mining has been the region’s economic foundation for centuries.

At present, the open cast lignite coal mine and the coal power plant contribute significantly to the city’s present-day economy. The open-pit mining site called Inden extends up to 1681 hectares, and is permitted to expand up to 4500 hectares. The lignite extracted in Inden is exclusively used for power production in the city’s Weisweiler coal power plant. Yearly, 19 tons of lignite are extracted in Inden, and according to estimates there are 320 million tons of coal still to be found in the mining site of Inden. Mining will end in 2030.

Along with the region, the city has developed a master plan to transform the surrounding area of Inden up to 2050. The plan aims at replacing fossil fuel with renewable energies and attracting new economic opportunities and innovation, as well as making the region more attractive from a touristic perspective. At the same time, the city and region aim to remain true to their character as a worker’s city in the Rhineland with its particular traditions.

The master plan was developed through various multi-stakeholder consultations . The stakeholders, being the city, civil society, academia, trade unions, nature conservationists, the mining company etc. determined an overall vision statement and development outcomes to harness the potential, leverage strengths and address weaknesses. Its aim is to bind the population to the Indeland by influencing the structural change foresighted and ensuring that the region remains attractive from a social, economic as well as environmental perspective. The plan identifies the development of the region’s touristic and research potential as part of the avenues to act as a model for resource-efficient economies and environmentally friendly infrastructure.

So let’s look at the complexities of transformational change with the 5 P’s and the Rubik’s cube in mind, taking in consideration the trade-offs and synergies.

Eschweiler through the lens of the five P's

The mining pit of Inden has shifted over the years, and the reclamation and restoration efforts have transformed the landscape of the city to a great extent. The damage caused to the environment in terms of loss of biodiversity, contamination of soil, groundwater and surface water by chemicals from mining processes cannot be ignored.

After the excavation at a site finishes, the company makes reclamation efforts to restore the ecological integrity of the disturbed mine land areas. However, this process takes many years before becoming home to different species of flora and fauna. Even after the mining pit is refilled with soil, residents have to wait several years before the soil is compact enough for agriculture or construction to resume.

Once all the coal is extracted, depending on the type of envisaged usage, different cultivation methods are applied: first, clay, sand and gravel are used to fill the former extraction site; for reforestation, a special layer of loose soil is then laid down.

This, however, does not yet suffice for agricultural activity. In a second step, farmers employed by the mining company will grow pioneer plants to root the soil and enrich it. Later, cereals and other crops are grown. After this preparatory phase of at least seven years, the new farmland is given to farmers, who previously had provided some of their terrain for mining activities.

Thinking of our Rubik’s cube, it isn’t hard to see the environment- economic growth nexus here.

Another consequence of the extension of the mining pit is that several villages have been abandoned and their population has been resettled. Today the population of the city is a mix of newly arrived refugees, original residents, and residents who had to relocate over the years because of the mine. Even though the power company compensates the inhabitants, the resettled families cannot escape the social and emotional consequences of resettlement.

With the anticipated closure of the mine, current mine workers and the refugees face uncertainties around their future and therefore, the city is making constant efforts to integrate the population and to ensure social cohesion.  The city of Eschweiler has attempted to improve its integration process by providing adequate housing opportunities as well as opening a community centre which is used by the residents to socialize and organize community gatherings. In order to help the younger population, efforts are made to meet their educational and language requirements so that they are qualified for professions in the region. Efforts for social cohesion are also evident in the residential complexes that have been created for the refugees who have arrived in the city. Vocational clubs and playgrounds have been created to keep citizens across all age groups engaged and active. The city is also strengthening collaboration with neighboring universities and research institutes to model itself as a resource efficient economy by investing in environmentally friendly infrastructure and by building a society that is forward-looking and efficient at the same time.

In other words, and please continue to keep the Rubik’s cube in mind, the transition requires the City, at the same time that it is reflecting upon several environmental-economic questions , to reflect on numerous socio-economic impacts of possible choices made.

Genuine progress requires a multi-dimensional mindset.

But that’s not all, as the city prepares for the time when the mining pits are re-filled or no longer actively used, it is implementing innovative ideas to boost its economy and to generate employment opportunities. On the one hand, it is attracting industries and research institutions in the area of renewable energy and on the other, it aims to become a popular tourist and recreation destination of the region.

‘Blausteinsee,’ an artificial lake, has already been created from a part of the mine pit with the intention of drawing tourists and locals to use it for leisure activities. The original plan was to use a major part of the land from this enormous pit for agriculture. But after realizing that the land would be too degraded for agriculture to be economically viable, creating a 100-hectare lake seemed to be a better option.

The Blausteinsee is a pilot to create a much bigger lake in the eastern part of the Inden open mining pit. This lake will be labelled ‘Indesee’. The expected time to complete the project is 25 years after the end of mining activities in 2030. From a layman’s perspective, while the approximate size of the Blausteinsee is about as big as ten football fields, the new Indensee is estimated to be more than ten times bigger - or three times the size of Central Park in New York.

The lake is expected to create investment incentives along with employment opportunities. Villages around the future lake will develop lakeside housing, restaurants as well as sports and leisure activities. Stakeholders envisage that the lake will improve the landscape of the area, provide new economic opportunities and boost the quality of life.

In essence, Eschweiler looks at the ultimate outcome of the transition as the completion of their Rubik’s cube.

Eschweiler isn’t approaching sustainable development as a linear process of implementing SDGs, but rather took the different dimensions of sustainable development to heart as it was felt to facilitate a better long-term solution towards transformative change. Using the Rubik’s cube analogy also changes the sustainable development narrative from one focused on “money changing hands” to one focused on “ideas changing minds.”

Finally, and let me then close on the example of Eschweiler, let us not lose sight of how all of this started. The energy transition in Eschweiler needs to be seen in the context of the “Energiewende,” which refers to a decision to completely restructure the country’s energy sector faster than most industrialized countries. As a part of this plan for restructuration, nuclear power and fossil fuels will be phased out step by step, and will allow renewable energies to take over. Moving forward in its transition from non-renewable to renewable sources of energy, Eschweiler also welcomed solar and wind energy. The Indeland Wind Farm was inaugurated in 2017, and the city’s collaboration with Rurenergie, a private sector energy company has also resulted in the creation of the Solar Park Inden.

In summary, Eschweiler provides an interesting example of a city, exploring its sustainable development policy space in partnership with stakeholders and institutions at all levels, aiming to reach vertical and horizontal policy coherence through the political compromises it negotiates. To borrow some of the words found in Scotland’s Climate Change Plan of February 2018; Its’ focus has been one of “maximizing opportunities and minimizing disruption while leaving no one behind”.

So where does science, and particular science with a soul come into play?

Science with a Soul

Through our work at the UNSSC Knowledge Centre for Sustainable Development with a diverse group of stakeholders such as Governments, the private sector as well as the UN itself, we have learnt a few interesting lessons that bring us very close to an express need for what Tilburg University’s Impact Program has coined “Science with a Soul.”   We fully subscribe to the notion that advancing society requires specialist social and technological knowledge and an innovative mindset, collective commitment and co-creation by all stakeholders.

For people to fully support the idea of sustainable development they need to be convinced and genuinely believe in and understand the need for change. This can only be done once arguments are fully backed up by science and grounded in evidence, and when people are allowed to arrive at their own conclusions on what changes need to happen. Over and above that, we must make sure that we also have the right tools to make the change.

Science can help to identify what the sustainability challenges are in different contexts, what are the root causes and how they relate to other challenges. It can help ensure coherence in implementing the SDGs, and universities can also offer a neutral forum for cross-sector dialogue. But science also has a key role in, for instance, the provision of data and models, as well as in the process of tracking progress. It can reflect on matters of scalability and foster innovation, as we simply do not yet have all the solutions we need to make this agenda a reality.

All of our wonderful efforts risk being in vain if people do not genuinely believe in the need for change. In fact, unless we are in it for real, we are unlikely to witness the transformative change that we all hope for. We must put dignity, prosperity and peace on a healthy planet at the centre of advancing society as well as recognize that while Governments must take the lead, they alone cannot deliver on the ambitious vision of the 2030 Agenda. Finally, we must not forget to team up with partners in the Global South in our efforts to facilitate our communities to think and act differently.

The Agenda isn’t a rigid technical prescription, but rather it is a call to action to rethink the right questions and to create innovative, holistic solutions for the development challenges of both today and tomorrow.

This blog is based on Patrick van Weerelt’s key note “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” at the Impact Conference Tilburg University 2018 “Advancing Society: Science with a Soul,” which took place on 14 June 2018.

A full overview of the UNSSC Knowledge Centre for Sustainable Development courses for 2018 is available  here .

Scientific revolution essay

Of all the innovations that Europe experienced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the most influential was intellectual transformation that we refer to as the “scientific revolution”. It must be noticed that precisely because there was a revolution, a lot of intellectuals still ignored or opposed the change going on around them. The key point of what happened in the seventeenth century was new discovery, scientists were able to break away from the classical tradition and make their own findings.

In Italy, Galileo Galilei first applied the telescope and microscope to scientific work and experimented with them. He showed that the improvement of investigatory instruments made the technical advance possible. On the basis of his own observations, he accepted the conclusion of Copernicus that the earth moved around the sun and not vice versa. He proved experimentally that Aristotle had committed an error in saying that heavy bodies would fall in a vacuum more rapidly than light bodies. In other words, he moved toward a proper understanding of gravity.

For Galileo made it impossible to believe in the old theory about earth as center of universe he was brought before the Italian inquisition as a potential heretic. Yet his achievements were vital to further astronomical knowledge. Galileo’s empirical work only confirmed that there were new ways of getting at truth, and this was really the foundation of the scientific revolution. A slightly different approach was taken by Rene Descartes, also in the early seventeenth century. He made major strides in developing mathematics.

Ultimately, the mathematical approach, combined with greater empiricism, such as Galileo’s, produced the modern scientific method, deduction. The third figure is Francis Bacon, who, like Descartes, made few actual scientific discoveries. He for the first time set forth a philosophy of empiricism. The way to knowledge was not through abstract reasoning, but through repeated experiments which, when they produced a predictable result, represented new truth. The interest in science boomed from the mid-seventeenth century onward.

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The scientific revolution made a considerable break with the medieval-Renaissance approach to knowledge. Galileo, Bacon, and Descartes displayed a mutual scorn for received knowledge. What had previously been said about the physical universe, needed to be re-reasoned, according to Descartes, or exposed to direct experimentation, according to Galileo and Bacon. The later seventeenth century saw steady advance in scientific knowledge. The gains in biology were great. Microscopes allowed new knowledge of invisible, unicellular organisms.

The knowledge in medicine was actively accumulated through medical practice: microscopic anatomy, the circulation of blood, inoculation and vaccination, and so on. The powerful breakthrough in chemistry also occurred in the seventeenth century. The discovery of oxygen, causative relation between oxygen and burning, water formula, and many other discoveries led to the important conclusion that the world consisted of “mixtures” of basic elements. The great developments in astronomy and physics became the basis for calling what happened an intellectual revolution.

Advances from Copernicus and Galileo accrued steadily, as observation showed elliptical instead of circular orbits of planets about the sun. In such work telescopic observation was combined with mathematical calculation. The culmination of physics development came with Isaac Newton and his explanation of universe completely through the use of mathematics with the help of which he could show that the universe operated in a completely rational way. Through his study and telescopic observations of the behavior of planetary bodies, Newton discovered a phenomenon of physical attraction between them, which is called gravity.

Speaking about scientific revolution in terms of intellectual development we must mention another prominent figure, John Locke. He was an important political philosopher, hostile to absolute rule and a defender of toleration and individual rights. He believed that government owed duties to its citizens and even assumed the right of revolution when these duties were not fulfilled. Locke rejected the medieval approach which posited knowledge by faith, which might then be followed by reason. He also rejected Descartes’ idea of innate knowledge.

Hence, he supported the idea of the newborn human mind as a blank sheet of paper, to be filled in by rational experience. The scientific revolution then, consisted of: immense new discoveries in physics and biology; of a related belief that nature was orderly and that human reason could progressively grasp more and more of how it works; of a denial of the necessity of faith. God might still be around, but he was just part of the rational order, who put the works together and then let them run.

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years, Christian followers were heavy believers of the bible, seeing it as the primary source for knowledge. Then came the scientific revolution in the 1500s, a movement which challenged the Christian view of the universe. It was a time when people were looking for a new way of thinking about the world. Since then and to this day, there has been several instances in which scientific inquiry and religious belief have collided in their ideologies. What is now called science, emerged around 4 centuries

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In the book “ The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction”, Lawrence Principe discusses the general occurring events of the scientific revolution, and overviews various in-depth details in relation to those events. People at the time highly focused on the meanings and causes of their surrounds, as their motive was to “control, improve and exploit” (Principe 2) the world. In his work, Principe has successfully supported the notion that the Scientific Revolution stood as a period in time where

The Scientific Revolution revolutionized the middle ages. The concepts of secularization, scientific method, heliocentrism, as well as the creation of major fields of science. The Scientific Revolution paved the way for modern science. Much of the work that created during the sixteenth and seventeenth century is still considered to be the foundation of many major fields such as chemistry, physics, astronomy and biology. During the revolution, science began to be excepted by both the Protestant and

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The Scientific Revolution was crucial for the development of science. During the 16th and 17th century, after the reformation, the scientific revolution had begun. The scientific methods and thoughts had seen change, however the members of the church did not like this. From the renaissance and the enlightenment, many individuals were interested in contributing to the world with their ideas ands many individuals were able to formulate conclusions. There were three men that were crucial in shaping

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