TEMA 57.

La sociedad, el arte, la ciencia y las ideas en el siglo XVI en Europa y

especialmente en el Reino Unido.

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Enlightenment. Although the intellectual movement called "The
Enlightenment" is usually associated with the 18th century, its roots in fact go back
much further. But before we explore those roots, we need to define the term. This is one
of those rare historical movements which in fact named itself. Certain thinkers and
writers, primarily in London and Paris, believed that they were more enlightened than
their compatriots and set out to enlighten them.
They believed that human reason could be used to combat ignorance,
superstition, and tyranny and to build a better world. Their principal targets were
religion (embodied in France in the Catholic Church) and the domination of society by a
hereditary aristocracy.
Background in Antiquity
To understand why this movement became so influential in the 18th century, it is
important to go back in time. We could choose almost any starting point, but let us
begin with the recovery of Aristotelian logic by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. In
his hands the logical procedures so carefully laid out by the ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle were used to defend the dogmas of Christianity; and for the next couple of
centuries, other thinkers pursued these goals to shore up every aspect of faith with logic.
These thinkers were sometimes called "schoolmen" (more formally, "scholastics,") and
Voltaire frequently refers to them as "doctors," by which he means "doctors of
theology."
Unfortunately for the Catholic Church, the tools of logic could not be confined
to the uses it preferred. After all, they had been developed in Athens, in a pagan culture
which had turned them on its own traditional beliefs. It was only a matter of time before
later Europeans would do the same.
2. THE RENAISSANCE. The Renaissance Humanists
In the 14th and 15th century there emerged in Italy and France a group of
thinkers known as the "humanists." The term did not then have the anti-religious
associations it has in contemporary political debate. Almost all of them were practicing
Catholics. They argued that the proper worship of God involved admiration of his
creation, and in particular of that crown of creation: humanity. By celebrating the
human race and its capacities they argued they were worshipping God more
appropriately than gloomy priests and monks who harped on original sin and
continuously called upon people to confess and humble themselves before the Almighty.
Indeed, some of them claimed that humans were like God, created not only in his image,
but with a share of his creative power. The painter, the architect, the musician, and the
scholar, by exercising their intellectual powers, were fulfilling divine purposes.
This
celebration of human capacity, though it was mixed in the Renaissance with elements of
gloom and superstition (witchcraft trials flourished in this period as they never had
during the Middle Ages), was to bestow a powerful legacy on Europeans. The goal of
Renaissance humanists was to recapture some of the pride, breadth of spirit, and
creativity of the ancient Greeks and Romans, to replicate their successes and go beyond
2

them. Europeans developed the belief that tradition could and should be used to promote
change. By cleaning and sharpening the tools of antiquity, they could reshape their own
time.
Galileo
Galilei, for instance, was to use the same sort of logic the schoolmen had used-reinforced with observation--to argue in 1632 for the Copernican notion that the earth
rotates on its axis beneath the unmoving sun. The Church, and most particularly the
Holy Inquisition, objected that the Bible clearly stated that the sun moved through the
sky and denounced Galileo's teachings, forcing him to recant (take back) what he had
written and preventing him from teaching further. The Church's triumph was a pyrrhic
victory, for though it could silence Galileo, it could not prevent the advance of science.
But
before Galileo's time, in the 16th century, various humanists had begun to ask dangerous
questions. Franois Rabelais, a French monk and physician influenced by Protestantism,
but spurred on by his own rebelliousness, challenged the Church's authority in
his Gargantua and Pantagruel, ridiculing many religious doctrines as absurd.
2.1 Michel de
Montaigne
Michel de
Montaigne, in a much more quiet and modest but ultimately more subversive way,
asked a single question over and over again in his Essays: "What do I know?" By this
he meant that we have no right to impose on others dogmas which rest on cultural habit
rather than absolute truth. Powerfully influenced by the discovery of thriving nonChristian cultures in places as far off as Brazil, he argued that morals may be to some
degree relative. Who are Europeans to insist that Brazilian cannibals who merely
consume dead human flesh instead of wasting it are morally inferior to Europeans who
persecute and oppress those of whom they disapprove?
This shift
toward cultural relativism, though it was based on scant understanding of the newly
discovered peoples, was to continue to have a profound effect on European thought to
the present day. Indeed, it is one of the hallmarks of the Enlightenment. Just as their
predecessors had used the tools of antiquity to gain unprecedented freedom of inquiry,
the Enlightenment thinkers used the examples of other cultures to gain the freedom to
reshape not only their philosophies, but their societies. It was becoming clear that there
was nothing inevitable about the European patterns of thought and living: there were
many possible ways of being human, and doubtless new ones could be invented.
The other
contribution of Montaigne to the Enlightenment stemmed from another aspect of his
famous question: "What do I know?" If we cannot be certain that our values are Godgiven, then we have no right to impose them by force on others. Inquisitors, popes, and
kings alike had no business enforcing adherence to particular religious or philosophical
beliefs.
It is one of the great
paradoxes of history that radical doubt was necessary for the new sort of certainty called
"scientific." The good scientist is the one is willing to test all assumptions, to challenge
all traditional opinion, to get closer to the truth. If ultimate truth, such as was claimed by
religious thinkers, was unattainable by scientists, so much the better. In a sense, the
strength of science at its best is that it is always aware of its limits, aware that
3

knowledge is always growing, always subject to change, never absolute. Because

knowledge depends on evidence and reason, arbitrary authority can only be its enemy.
3.
TH
SOCIETY AND IDEAS IN THE 16 CENTURY
In order to understand the Reformation's cultural influence on the sixteenth
century one must take a quick glance at Europe's cultural situation in 1500.
Unfortunately in an article of this size, one can present only a few broad generalizations,
without being able to bring out the many subtle nuances.
At the time of the Reformation European culture was in serious trouble,
suffering from conflicts of interests and classes, and from a breakdown in its historic
patterns of thought and action. For this one may find many causes. The repeated
epidemics of bubonic plague, The Black Death, that struck parts of "Europe about every
ten years from 1346, undoubtedly had an important effect. It helped to push Europe
farther into an economic depression that had begun a little earlier and lasted until 145070. Only at the end of the fifteenth century did the European economy begin to
experience something of the general recovery which helped to revive the influence of
the middle class. Along with economic problems went the rise of national states ruled
over by usually despotic monarchs who often sought to conform themselves to
Machiavelli's Prince. Naturally these developments had a telling influence also on the
church which was so much involved in society. European culture was thus in a constant
state of conflict and confusion.
This situation was reflected most obviously in contemporary currents of thought.
To a large extent the Thomistic synthesis of a sacramental Christianity and Aristotelian
philosophy had been rejected in many quarters, in favor of the "via moderna" of
Nominalism. The trend away from Acquinas's concept of universals to sheer
individualism had received support from Renaissance classical humanism, which
stressed the autonomy of the virtuoso. This in turn led to a concept of an irrational
universe which came to full expression in the works of men such as Machiavelli,
Castiglione and Benvenuto Cellini. Although many not classed among the
"intellegentsia" still held to the old ways, extreme individualism was also gradually
spreading to the middle class and to the aristocracy.
Evidence of the penetration of society by such thinking is not hard to find. After
all, with an expanding economy enterprising merchants and rulers felt that such
individualism provided them with assurance that they were on the right track.
Consequently, in business, in government, in church and in private life one can see the
constant erosion of medieval moral standards. This became most obvious, as is often the
case, within the church where the papal court under the Borgias provided a spectacular
example. The literary works of the period also show the trend of the day. Humanistic
philosophy of the day was leading to an intellectual and moral breakdown of culture.
Yet while one recognizes the chaos of the times, one must always remember that
cross currents of reform were also flowing. Not only did such extra-ecclesiastical
groups as the Hussites and the Waldenses call for reform of church and society, but
Roman Catholics within the church were making the same demands and working for the
4

church's rejuvenation. Savonarola, the Brethren of the Common Life and others provide
a few of the most obvious examples. At the same time at the level of the lower classes in
both town and country, medieval pietistic movements were gaining influence by their
calls for Christians to live a truly Christian life by separating themselves entirely from
society. Many of the middle class, on the other hand, were turning from the church in
search of a vital, dynamic religion which would give meaning to their life in society.
One finds, therefore, that the early sixteenth century was a time of confusion and
contrast. In certain areas such as Italy, the Netherlands, southern Germany and France it
was a time of vigorous artistic development and in some of these areas great economic
expansion. The rise of an affluent society was very obvious. But at the same time, at the
heart of all this apparent progress was conflict, change, a sense of frustration and a fear
of what the future might bring forth. European society was in a state of uncertainty. It
could perhaps go on as it was, but it looked more as though it would disintegrate into
anarchic conflict of opposing individual entities. That it was saved from the latter fate to
advance to greater cultural achievements, was due at least partially to the Reformation,
and in particular to the cultural influence of Calvinism.
3.1The Calvinistic View of Culture
Luther, as most of the other reformers acknowledged, sowed the harvest which
they reaped. Through his doctrines of justification by faith, the priesthood of all
believers and the final authority of the Bible for faith and life, he laid the foundation for
not only a religious but also a cultural reformation. Yet he never carried his own
principles through to their logical conclusions. Living in a conservative society, he
himself was a strong conservative, who sough to retain everything that he could from
the past. John Calvin, on the other hand, coming from the pushing middle class, trained
in the somewhat heady atmosphere of Paris humanism, and facing the opposition of one
of the greatest kings of his day, Francis I of France, adopted a more radical attitude. He
had a greater appreciation of the need for change than did Luther. At the same time his
more systematically articulated theology obliged him to think through the whole matter
of the Christian's cultural responsibility and formulate ideas on this subject.
Basic to all of Calvin's thought is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.
According to the first paragraph of The Institutes of the Christian Religion it is the
presupposition of man's whole existence. But God's sovereignty does not merely
involve a concept of power. It also involves love which God expresses within the tri-une
personal existences of the Godhead, and outwardly to men in His sovereign justice and
grace. Thus God works all things according to His will, but His will is determined by
his whole being.
In His sovereignty, according to Calvin, God has created all things, including
man, according to His own will. All that has come into existence owes that existence to
His sovereign power and purpose. Furthermore, all that He has created, God also
sustains, and governs so they accomplish His will. All things, therefore, are His, for
nothing has come into existence nor continues in that state apart from His sovereign
action. All aspects of the first man's culture, therefore, ultimately traced their origins
and continuance back to Him.
Man as created recognized his position as God's creature and had fellowship
5

with Him on that basis. In that fellowship God revealed to man that He had a unique
purpose for him: the use and development both of his own faculties and also of the
environment in which He had placed man. The later Calvinistic thinkers have referred to
this as man's "cultural mandate". Man was not to disregard his talents nor to ignore his
environment but to use them both to the glory of God.
Sin, however, entered into the picture. Man denied God's sovereignty, and so his
own responsibility to develop himself and his world for God's glory. Man attempted to
appropriate everything for himself and for his own gratification. Such action brought
God's curse and rejection. Consequently man, alienated from God, could no longer build
a sound and durable culture, for inevitably his sinful nature and desires caused it to
disintegrate under his own hands. To Calvin sin, the destroyer of culture, brought all
man's works to nought. While he acknowledged the great accomplishments of men such
as Plato, he had to point out that after all, without acknowledging the ultimacy of God's
crown rights, they were as men spinning around in a glass bowl.
Yet God in His grace has not left man in his sin. He has brought to him
redemption through Jesus Christ, who brings him back to a proper relationship to God,
thus removing God's curse and giving man a true perspective upon himself and his
work. The Christian believer no longer sees himself as simply in this world to work his
own will and to exalt himself economically, socially or politically for his own glory. The
objective is the service of God in all that he does, that is in all his cultural activity.
But what of the cultural achievements of the unbeliever? Calvin acknowledged
quite freely that much that the Christian possessed, he owed to unbelievers. Calvin saw
this as a result of God's benevolence even to the most violent opponent of the Gospel
such as Cain or Lamech. Man despite his opposition to God must of necessity continue
his cultural activity which one might call one of his most basic drives. It is this cultural
development that forms the environment of the Church as it seeks to bring men out of
the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light. The Church consequently speaks
within and to the environment in which it lives.
This immediately raised the question of the Christian's cultural responsibility.
The Anabaptists adopted the position that the Christian's responsibility was to separate
himself from his cultural environment and set himself up in an environment that was
perfectly Christian. The Lutheran tendency was to go along with the environment as far
as it did not contravene the divine commandments. The Christian should witness to his
environment in order that men might believe the Gospel, but there was no idea of a
specifically Christian cultural responsibility. Calvin, on the other hand, insisted that the
Christian has a cultural duty and responsibility from which he sought to escape only at
the cost of disobedience.
Growing out of this view of Christian cultural obligation Calvin set forth his
doctrine of vocation. God had called all men to serve Him in this life, having given to
them vocations. The non-Christian does not recognize this, but the Christian should, and
in fulfilling his cultural responsibility he is to use and develop his talents to the very
best of his ability. Furthermore, he is to use the attainments even of non-Christians,
recognizing that all that they have accomplished is a gift of God. In this way, the
Christian carries out the cultural responsibility laid upon man by his Creator.
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Man's development of a culture and all that it includes: material wealth, social
organization and artistic refinement, is for man's use. He does not create a culture and
put it in a glass case. Calvin made his emphasis upon the practical importance of human
culture clear on more than one occasion. In his enjoyment of culture, man glorifies God
and should recognize this fact, for he manifests the glory of God's grace and power in
the exploitation of creation. Here Calvin differed radically from the medieval point of
view that regarded nature as something almost evil, and certainly not usable for the
glory of God because man had to forsake it in order to draw near to God. Also, he
differed from the Renaissance humanist who thought of the world as his own possession
which he could use for his own glory and satisfaction. Calvin laid down new principles,
and provided a perspective that was to exercise a wide influence upon European
development in the years to come.
3.2 The Effect of Calvin's View of Culture
In attempting to evaluate the influence which Calvin had on the thought and
action of his time in the realm of cultural development, it may be convenient to indicate
something of the nature of culture. Professor Herman Dooyeweerd has pointed out that
the cultural mandate applies to two entities: persons and things. Man's cultural
responsibility involves, therefore, society in all its ramifications and the material world
in all its aspects. Man is to develop and use both for his own benefit and blessing, and to
the glory of God. In this context the term culture includes every aspect of man's activity
in this life.
That Calvin and his followers had a very strong influence upon the theological
thought of his own day, even among those who disagreed with him, is recognized by
most historians. But his ideas soon began to make their presence felt in other fields.
Christians began to recognize that all their cultural activity was part of their service of
God in this life. To serve God one did not need to enter a monastery or a nunnery or the
ranks of the clergy. Thus all that man did had a moral background, even in his use of
things indifferent. He was responsible to do all things even the most routine and
mundane to the glory of God. This meant a radical change in outlook on life and its
meaning.
Calvinism, however, went further, for it also brought about an alteration in man's
views of "things". Calvin's emphasis upon God as creator, sustainer and ruler over all of
nature meant a new approach to the physical universe. For one thing Calvin gave a new
dimension to the idea of natural law. It was not something that existed by itself, but had
been created and was sustained by God through the Holy Spirit at all times. Therefore,
if man wished to know about nature he should not follow Aristotle's rationalistic
method, nor even the medieval technique of seeking explanations of physical
phenomena from the Bible. Rather, man must go to nature itself for his answers. As a
result he gave theological support to an empirical method of investigation of the
physical and social worlds. Of equal importance was his insistence that all knowledge
must be used for man's benefit and to God's glory, Since cultural activity should always
be applied to life and used in life, mere rationalizing, speculation or even observation
for their own sakes meant nothing. Man had the responsibility of using God's good gifts
which he had found.
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Such cultural activity had two sides. For one thing there was the investigation
and use of the physical environment. Calvin, himself, did not bother too much about this
as he was primarily a theologian and ecclesiastical leader, but his point of view was not
lost on others. The second aspect of cultural development was the study and
organization of human relationships. On this subject Calvin, trained as a lawyer, had
much to say which has had its effect down to the present day. In these ways he sought to
bring all man's activity under the rule of the risen Christ.
In recent years many historians such as Professor Herbert Butterfield of Oxford
and others, have constantly reiterated that much more important than the Protestant
Reformation was the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. They do not seem
to realize, however, that without the work of Peter Ramus, Bernard Palissy, Ambrose
Pare, Francis Bacon and others, all imbued with Calvin's concept of nature and man's
cultural responsibility to study and use nature to God's glory, there might have been no
such revolution. Copernicus, Vesalius, Galileo and others like them, all seem to have
approached science more as philosophers, craftsmen or technicians than scientists,
Copernicus, for instance, devised his theory of a helio-centric universe not on the basis
of observation, but because the old Ptolemaic system seemed so untidy! It was men
such as van Huygens, Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, coming out of a Calvinistic
background and building on the foundations laid by earlier Calvinistic scientific
thinkers, who brought about the radically new scientific developments.
Similarly in the field of art, literature and music Calvin had stressed the
empirical and the practical. Man should write about the things he knew, and should do
so that men might easily understand. Even theologians dealing with eternal verities must
stick to what the Scriptures had to say and write comprehensibly for the uneducated. In
the field of the representational arts, again the artist should not paint pictures of what he
has not seen, such as angels, but rather those things of God's creation or of man's history
which he can verify empirically. Hence came the genre painting of the Netherlands,
Palissy's pottery decorated with molluscs, fish and the like, and the portraits and
landscapes of seventeenth century English and Scottish artists. Even music, whose
primary object was to glorify the sovereign God for His power and grace was to have
the same characteristics: melody, sonority and dignity. The composers Bourgeois,
Goudamel, Sweelinck, Purcell and many others owed much to this viewpoint.
In what one might call the field of social action also, Calvinism not only had
very clear ideas, but also a very strong influence. Since all of life is under God's
sovereignty, man's cultural activity involves his relations with his fellow man. Under the
influence of Calvin's teachings family life took on a new dimension. A wife did not exist
merely for the purpose of bearing children and keeping house. She was the man's
partner and helpmate in life. Education became not something merely for the few, but
for all as far as possible, and it should be practical and applicable in everyday life. In the
spheres of economic activity and political action the same was true. Many books have
been written on these subjects, so that one only needs to point to the liberating effect
that Calvin and his followers had upon economic and political developments in
sixteenth century Europe.
To sum it all up, what was the contribution of Calvinism to the cultural
8

development of the sixteenth century? In a culture that was becoming sceptical and
irrationalistic in outlook, the first effect of Calvinism was to return man to the belief in a
coherent universe governed by law. The physical and social worlds operated not by
chance, but according to their God-created structures or patterns. For this reason man
could achieve an understanding of them by observation and experience. Not by some
rationalistic deduction from general principles, not even by mystical contemplation, but
by empirical research alone could man attain a knowledge of his world. This meant, that
when man had attained to such understanding, he should then use his knowledge for the
benefit of himself and his neighbor, to the glory of God. The long roll of Calvinistic
thinkers during the last half of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth
century, bears witness to the widespread influence of this interpretation of cultural
activity.
As one looks back over the last half of the sixteenth century, therefore, one
cannot but recognize that Calvin inaugurated what amounted to almost a cultural
revolution. Sometimes, particularly in the political spheres it resulted in violence and
civil war, but even where this did not take place, the changes in society and outlook
were frequently striking. Scotland and the Netherlands are two very good examples.
Furthermore, in Lutheran and Roman Catholic areas, in order to combat Calvinism, the
latter's ideas received careful consideration and often had important effects, as for
instance in France. Thus among both Calvinists and anti-Calvinists, Calvin's cultural
influence bore fruit that has lasted until today.
In our own age, however, radical changes are taking place. Much of the inherent
Calvinistic basis is being cut away, its place being taken by a nominalistic existentialism
which leads only to cultural despair and disintegration. We have returned to the situation
of the late fifteenth century, having turned the full circle. What the modern world needs,
therefore, is not merely evangelistic preaching, but the setting forth of a full-orbed
world and life view that gives twentieth century life and cultural activity meaning. The
so-called "hippies" finding that existence according to modern thought has no meaning
or purpose, have risen in revolt and wish to separate themselves from contemporary
society.
The Reformed
position, to this writer's way of thinking, offers the only answer. Yet the answer cannot
be found merely in turning back to the sixteenth century. As the Reformers themselves
did, those who profess to be Reformed in their thinking today must go forward into the
twenty-first century. While not cutting themselves off from their own roots, they must
ever seek to apply their basic principles to the present and the future, in order that they
may present a relevant cultural alternative to the contemporary irrationalism: Soli Deo
gloria.
4. ARTS IN THE 16TH
CENTURY
4.1
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th
century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest
of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the
changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the
term. As a cultural movement, it encompassed a flowering of literature,
science, art, religion, and politics, and a resurgence of learning based
9

on classical sources, the development of linear perspective in painting, and gradual but
widespread educational reform. Traditionally, this intellectual transformation has
resulted in the Renaissance being viewed as a bridge between the Middle Ages and
the Modern era. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in
many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best
known for its artistic developments and the contributions of
such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term
"Renaissance man".
There is a general consensus that the Renaissance began in Florence, Tuscany in
the 14th century. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and
characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic
peculiarities of Florence at the time; its political structure; the patronage of its dominant
family, the Medici.
The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and there has been
much debate among historians as to the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a
historical delineation. Some have called into question whether the Renaissance was a
cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism
and nostalgia for the classical age, while others have instead focused on the continuity
between the two eras. Indeed, some have called for an end to the use of the term, which
they see as a product of presentism the use of history to validate and glorify modern
ideals. The word Renaissance has also been used to describe other historical
and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of
the 12th century.
The Renaissance as it occurred in Northern Europe has been termed the
"Northern Renaissance". While Renaissance ideas were moving north from Italy, there
was a simultaneous southward spread of some areas of innovation, particularly
in music. At the end of the 16th century Italy again became a center of musical
innovation, with the development of the polychoral style of the Venetian School,
which spread northward into Germany around 1600.
The paintings of the Italian Renaissance differed from those of the Northern
Renaissance. Italian Renaissance artists were among the first to paint secular scenes,
breaking away from the purely religious art of medieval painters. At first, Northern
Renaissance artists remained focused on religious subjects, such as the contemporary
religious upheaval portrayed by Albrecht Drer. Later on, the works of Pieter
Bruegel influenced artists to paint scenes of daily life rather than religious or classical
themes. It was also during the Northern Renaissance that
Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck perfected the oil painting technique,
which enabled artists to produce strong colors on a hard surface that could survive for
centuries. A feature of the Northern Renaissance was its use of the vernacular in place
of Latin or Greek, which allowed greater freedom of expression. This movement had
started in Italy with the decisive influence of Dante Alighieri on the development of
vernacular languages; in fact the focus on writing in Italian has neglected a major source
of Florentine ideas expressed in Latin. The spread of the technology of the German
invention of movable type printing boosted the Renaissance, in Northern Europe as
10

elsewhere; with Venice becoming a world center of printing.

In England, the Elizabethan
era marked the beginning of the English Renaissance with the work of writers William
Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Sir Thomas More, Francis
Bacon, Sir Philip Sidney, John Milton, as well as great artists, architects (such as Inigo
Jones who introduced Italianate architecture to England), and composers such
as Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, and William Byrd. Some important dates are:
1525 William Tyndale's The New Testament in
English printed in Germany and shipped into England against official hostility.
1525 An anonymous herbal, an English
translation of an unknown manuscript, published by the London printer, Richard
Banckes, was the first English printed herbal. It was small, without illustrations, and
therefore relatively cheap.
1559: earliest surviving map of
London.
1593 to 1597 Richard
Hooker published the first five volumes of his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. These
argued that the Bible is not the only guide to truth that God has provided, because God
has established the universe according to laws and provided human beings
with reason by which they can discover those laws. Three other volumes were published
after Hooker's death. Locke's arguments in his Two Treatises of Government, and
elsewhere, have strong similarities with Hooker's.
Shakespeare (1564-1615) 1597 William Shakespeare, in Merchant of
Venice describes the music that the heavenly spheres create as they circle the earth.
1597 John Gerard's (1545 - 1611 or 1612)'s Great Herball, or Generall Historie of
Plantes. Enlarged and revised by Thomas Johnson (Died 1644, probably aged under 44)
in 1633 (also re-published 1636).
1598 James 6 of Scotland (James 1 of England) published The True Law of Free
Monarchies.
1599 In his play, As You Like It, William Shakespeare said that the whole social world is
a stage on which the same people play different parts at different times. This is the basic
idea of role theory, later developed by social scientists. The same passage defines
the seven ages of men.
5. SCIENCE
We can't imagine that the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries
took place in a vacuum. That is, we can't assume that modern science simply came to be
in a momentary flash of brilliance, nor that Copernicus or Kepler or Galileo just woke
up one morning and pronounced their discoveries to a world which became somehow
instantaneously different. Past historians have looked at the history of modern science
from precisely this point of view. Like the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution has
been interpreted as explosive, a surge forward, a watershed.
The scientists of the seventeenth century -- those mathematicians, astronomers,
and philosophers -- had the enormous weight of centuries of thought resting on their
shoulders. Even Isaac Newton was aware of the debt he owed to the past. Although this
tradition was based largely on the work of Aristotle, St. Augustine, Aquinas and Dante,
the scientific revolutionaries sought to break free from these traditional beliefs. They
11

had to forge a new identity. The scientific revolutionaries needed to transcend Plato,
Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy or Aquinas -- this was their conscious decision. They not only
criticized but replaced the medieval world view with their own. And this quest for
identity would culminate in a world view that was scientific, mathematical,
methodological and mechanical.
However, this revolution was accomplished by utilizing the medieval roots of
science which, in turn, meant the science of the classical age of Greece and Rome as
well as the refinements to that science made by Islamic scholars. They used what they
found at hand to create a new outlook on the cosmos, the natural world and ultimately,
the world of man. The antecedents to this revolution in thought are found in the 11th
and 12th centuries when most of the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers were wed
together into a new body of beliefs. These beliefs were living and vital. We encounter
them in the 12th century Renaissance. We find them at the school of Chartres in the
mid-12th century, or at the medical school at Salerno near Naples in 1060. At Toledo in
Spain, 92 Arabic works had been translated along with Ptolemy in 1175. By the 12th
century, Arabic science and mathematics had found its way to Oxford in England and to
Padua in Italy. From the early 12th century, then, there existed in Europe a continuous
tradition of scientific endeavor. And although this science was temporarily
overshadowed by the intellectual bulk of Aristotle in the mid-13th century, this tradition
was living in the 15th and 16th centuries and well into the 17th.
This was the background and education of the scientific revolutionaries. We
must see their discoveries as shaped and formed by this core of accepted ideas and not
just spinning out of empty space. The revolution in science did not occur quickly. It
developed over time. Although the medieval Church earned absolute power, authority
and obedience, science and scientific thinking did flourish during the five centuries
preceding that watershed we call the Scientific Revolution.
The New Science spread rapidly through education in universities such as
Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Padua and Paris. Science was also diffused to a large
audience through books. Each time a Galileo, Descartes, or Newton published their
findings, a wave of replies followed. And each of these replies was followed by other
replies so that what quickly resulted was an ever growing body of scientific literature.
And, of course, there was at the same time, an increasing number of men and women
who were eager for such knowledge.
There were many who agreed with Francis Bacon (1561-1626) that scientific
work ought to be a collective enterprise, pursued cooperatively by all its practitioners.
Information should be exchanged so that scientists could concentrate on different parts
of a project rather than waste time in duplicate research. Although it was not the first
such academy, the Royal Society in England was perhaps the first permanent
organization dedicated to scientific activity. The Royal Society was founded at Oxford
during the English Civil War when revolutionaries captured the city and replaced many
teachers at the university. A few of these revolutionaries formed the Invisible College, a
group that met to exchange information and ideas. What was most important was the
organization itself, not its results.
The purpose of the Royal Society was Baconian to the core. Its aim was to
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gather all knowledge about nature, particularly that knowledge which might be useful
for the public good. Soon it became clear, however, that the Society's principal function
was to serve as a clearing center for research. The Society maintained correspondence
and encouraged foreign scholars to submit their discoveries to the Society.
The New Science was also diffused by public demonstrations. This was
especially the case in public anatomy lessons. Scientist and layman alike were invited to
witness the dissection of human cadavers. The body of a criminal would be brought to
the lecture hall and the surgeon would dissect the body, announcing and displaying
organs as they were removed from the body.
Throughout major European cities there were wealthy men who, with lots of free
time on their hands, would dabble in science. These were the virtuosi -- the amateur
scientists. These men oftentimes made original contributions to scientific endeavor.
They also supplied organizations like the Royal Society with needed funds.
By 1700, science had become an issue of public discourse. The bottom line, I
suppose, was that science worked! It was wonderful, miraculous and spectacular. For
the 17th century scientist -- a Galileo, a Newton or the virtuosi -- science produced the
Baconian vision that anything was indeed possible. Science itself gave an immense
boost to the general European belief in human progress, a belief perhaps initiated by the
general awakening of European thought in the 12th century.
It was the achievement of men like Copernicus and Galileo to sift through
centuries of scientific knowledge and to create a new world view. This was a world
view based as much on previous science and knowledge as it was on new developments
derived from the scientific method.
The Scientific Revolution gave the western world the impression that the human
mind was progressing toward some ultimate end. Thanks to the culminating work of
Newton, the western intellectual tradition now included a firm belief in the idea of
human progress, that is, that man's history could be identified as the progressive
unfolding of man's capacity for perfectibility. From this point on, man the believer was
now joined by man the knower. It was man's destiny to both know the world, and create
that world. But, the Scientific Revolution also showed man to be merely a small part of
a larger divine plan. Man no longer found himself at the center of the universe -- he was
now simply a small part of a much greater whole.
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