The Scientific Revolution and Universities

HEDDA, 12.11.2007, vidar.enebakk@iakh.uio.no

Clearly, the question of the contribution of universitiesto this Scientific Revolution must hinge upon preciselyhow that revolution is viewed. (Porter 1996, 536)

1. When ? 1543 or 1300-1800?

2. Who ? Copernicus, Bacon, Newton?

3. What ? Worldview, Method, Institution?

4. What for ? Religion, Technology, Power?

5. Western ? ’The West and the Rest’

Ptolemy (100 AC) Copernicus (1543)

Tycho Brahe (1588) Johannes Kepler (1609)

Galileo Galilei (1632)Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Intervening and Inventing

Caravaggio (1602)The Incredulity of Thomas

Vesalius (1543)On the fabric of the human body

Robert Boyle (1660)New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and their Effects

Ancients VS

Modern

’The Battle of the Books’Jonathan Swift (1697)

The Great Restauration

Nicolas Copernicus (1627) Temple of Astronomy

Francis Bacon (1620)Instauratio Magna

Standing on the Shoulders of Giant

Chartres Cathedral (1225)’South Rose Window’

TheScientific ’Revolution’

Nicolas Copernicus (1543) On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

Execusion of Charles I in 1649Restoration of Charles II in 1660

1. Koyré Thesis

• Koyré (1939) Galileo Studies”The Scientific Revolution”

• Copernicus (1543) -> Newton (1687)

• ”Newtonian Synthesis” Mechanism + Mathematization

Isaac Newton (1687) Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

2. Duhem Thesis

• Pierre Duhem (1913) Galileo’s Parisian Predecessors

• Continuity (Catholicism)

• University of Paris:Buridan and Oresme

Nicole Orseme and the Earth

3. Crombie Thesis

• Alistair Crombie (1953)Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100–1700

• Grosseteste & Roger Bacon at Oxford University

• Rationalism –> Empiricism

Roger Bacon of Oxford

4. Shapiro Thesis

• Barbara Shapiro (1983):Probability and certainty in seventeenth-century England

• Humanist attack on Scholasticism

The attack on scholasticism was perhaps the most important intellectual contribution of the humanists to the scientific movement.

Galileo Galilei (1632)Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems

5. Yates Thesis

• Frances Yates (1964) Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition

• Alchemy and Mysticism

• Science as Experiment

Joseph Wright (1771)The Alchemist, in Search

of the Philosopher’s Stone

6. Zilsel Thesis

• Edgar Zilsel (1942) ”The Sociological Roots of Scientific Thought”

• Science from Craftsmen or ”Artist-Engineers”

Leonardo da Vinci (1505)

Albrecht Dürer (1525)

7. Merton Thesis• Robert K. Merton

(1938)Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England

• Science and Puritanism(Weber)

• The Other Merton Thesis(Marx)

Thomas Sprat (1667)

History of the Royal Society

Leonhard Zubler (1607)Novum instrumentum geometricum

8. Hessen Thesis

• Boris Hessen (1931) ”The Social Roots of Newton’s Principia”

• Foci of Interest

The brilliant successes of natural science during the sixteenth and seventeenth century were conditioned by the disintegration of the feudal economy, the development of merchant capital, of international maritime relationships and of heavy (mining) industry.

F.J. Henckel (1725), Pyrotologia William Roy (1790) Account of the trigonometrical operation

9. Needham Thesis

Joseph Needham (1954-)Science and Civilization in China

Compass Paper Print Gun Powder=Four Great Inventions of Ancient China (四大发明 )

Francis Bacon (1620) Novum Organum :Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

Karl Marx (1861-63) Economic Manuscripts :Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder blew up the knightly class, the compass discovered the world market and founded the colonies, and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general; the most powerful lever for creating the intellectual prerequisites.

Navigation and Construction

Zheng He ( 1371 – 1433)

10. Islamic Science

The Muslim Heritage

Arabic NumbersFibonacci (1202) Liber abbaciI II III IV V VI VII VIII XI X1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (0)

Astrolabe

Roy Porter (Part 1)

Between Internalism and Externalism

[If] the broad sociological explanations of the Scientific Revolution assumed to much, this idealist account, surely, denies too much. (p. 542)

None of the above readings of the Scientific Revolution can allow any major initiatory or formative role to the university. (p. 540)

Porter (Part 2)

Between Everything and Nothing

If the universities were not oases of science, neither were they utter deserts (Porter 1996, 533)

Examining the evidence– Education– Employment– Conseptual Change

The great scientific revolutionaries rejected Aristotle; but it was their academic grounding in Aristotle that gave them the ability to do it (Porter 1996, 551)

Porter (Part 3)

A Scientific Revolution – from within

[The] Scientific Revolution involved a revolution ’from within’, in theorethical and academic science. (Porter 1996, 551)

[The] essence of the Scientific Revolution lies in fundamental transformations made in conceptualizations of nature (Porter 1996, 559)

[The] early modern university did not, as an institution, habitually forster collective scientific investigation. (Porter 1996, 547)

Thenceforth, the university shared the advancement of science with other plants for intellectual production, such as the courtly academy, the voluntary society, and specialized research centers like observatories. (Porter 1996, 560)