Upload
caren-fisher
View
248
Download
0
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Revolution and Enlightenment
The Scientific Revolution
Background to Revolution
• Medieval scientists only relied on ancient authorities, Aristotle, for knowledge. 14 & 15 hundreds forced changes in views.
• Renaissance humanists studied newly discovered works of Ptolemy and Plato who disagreed with Aristotle and others.
• How much weight can a ship hold? This stimulated scientific activity. Telescope and microscope invented. Printing press helped spread ideas.
• Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and others developed new theories
Revolution in Astronomy
• Born in 2nd century, Ptolemy was greatest astronomer of time. Medieval philosophers constructed geocentric model of universe called Ptolemaic system. Motionless Earth in center.
• Matched teaching of the church
• Copernicus of Poland, 1543, thought heliocentric more accurate
• Many rejected
• All human knowledge might be called into question
• Kepler supported view and each planet had own special orbit
Johannes KeplerCopernicus
• Galileo, Italian scientist, first to make regular observations with telescope
• Got into trouble with Catholic Church since it contradicted idea of Bible. Most scientists however sided with Galileo.
• 1633 tried for his ideas and forced to recant
Scientific Method
• People concerned about how to best understand physical universe. Francis Bacon created this method.
• Emphasized arriving at conclusions using inductive reasoning, or making generalizations from particular observations and experiments organized to test hypotheses
• Believed science was to give human kind new discoveries and power to serve human purpose by conquering “nature in action”
Descartes and Reason
• Rene Descartes, French philosopher, asserted he can rationally be sure of only one thing- his own existence
• Bacon and Rene Descartes rejected Aristotle • Descartes (day kahrt) emphasized human
reasoning to understanding• “I think, therefore I am”, material
world different from mental world• Father of modern rationalism,
reason chief source of knowledge
• Isaac Newton, Englishman, mathematics professor at Cambridge University
• Universal law of gravitation: everyobject is attracted to every otherobject by a force called gravity
• Created calculus• Same force helps control the planets• Ideas dominated until Einstein’s theory of
relativity
Medicine and Chemistry
• Late Middle Ages, ideas of medicine still dominated by Greek Galen (2nd century). Views on anatomy wrong due to using animals
• 16th century based on work of Andreas Vesalius. Dissected human bodies as a professor of surgery at University of Padua
• William Harvey showed heart center of blood’s circulation, showed same blood runs through veins and arteries with complete circuit of body
• Robert Boyle, chemist, Boyle’s Law about gases- volume of gas varies with pressure exerted on it
• 18th century Antoine Lavoisier, founder of modern chemistry made system of naming chemical elements
Boyle Vesalius
William Harvey
Antoine Lavoisier
• Ambroise Pare, French physician, ointment for preventing infection and closing wounds with stitches
• Dutch inventor Anthony van Leeuwenhoek perfected microscope and first to see cells and microorganisms
Women and Origins of Modern Science
• Margaret Cavendish, criticized belief that humans, through science, were maters of nature
• Maria Winkelmann, astronomer, assisted husband- famous Prussian astronomer Gottfried Kirch, she discovered a comet
• 17th century most people thought scholarship conflicted with domestic roles women were expected to fulfill