SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION (Magic Notes!

Were the forces for change stronger or the forces for continuity stronger? Was there actually a Scientific Revolution?
The Scientific Revolution did overturn centuries of authority, but only in a gradual and piecemeal fashion.
Forces for Continuity
1. Roman Catholic Church
In every country, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox alike, even ecclesiastical
reformers took it for granted that religion should be upheld and protected by the
law and the coercive apparatus of the state.

Monopoly over knowledge and wealth

Resistant to science that contradicted it
Predominance of theological thinking
Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the
Holy Spirit? (John Calvin)

Forces for Change

1. Protestant Reformation

Provided momentum to challenge church's authority

Beginning of dissidence against the RCC in the theological arena, e.g.

Faith vs. good deeds as a method to salvation, practice of purchasing
indulgences

Increased literacy reformers stressed importance of teaching believers

how to read the Bible

This can also be seen as a force for continuity because it triggers a

counterattack from the church against all dissidents, e.g. Galileo

2. Scientific Revolution Scientists

It [The Scientific Revolution] largely resulted from the work of a handful of great
This fool (Copernicus) wishes to reverse the entire science of
individuals.
astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun

Galileo
to stand still and not the earth. (Luther)

Copernicus

Bacon

Religion had a powerful psychological grip. People tend to want to

Newton
maintain status quo, and many prefer the psychological peace of
knowing there is life after death. Hence many are unwilling to change
3. Circumstances
their whole perception of science to accommodate Galileo & co. They

Emerging from Renaissance: Interest in Classical Greek teaching

rather hang on to their own comfortable, unchallenged beliefs.
revived

Believed we could only understand truth through revelation and faith

Originally Greek texts are used to justify what the RCC says, but later on

Medieval scholars believed you only needed to think to gain knowledge

people are beginning to derive other things from the Greek texts in the
scientific arena that actually challenge the church.
2. Geocentric system

Example of Da Vinci the typical Renaissance Man: scientist,

Creates idea that man is central, fits with church's theology that man is
mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect,
most important/ significant because he is created in the image of God
musician and writer. o_o;;

It gave people a distinct place in a world they could understand.

Following his example, people want to learn more and diversify

their interests
3. Society/Hierarchy

Diversification of Education: Although education is not made much

King, who is above the law and has the divine right to rule
more common, the kind of education that is offered changes from solely

1st Estate: Clergy

religious to include more disciplines, e.g. Alchemy

2nd Estate: Nobility

3rd Estate: Everybody else

Medieval Universities: study of ancient texts: Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy

Forces for Continuity

Forces for Change

Bourgeois (traders, teachers, lawyers, skilled artisans etc)

Sans Culottes (urban poor who had 'no culottes')
Peasants (who just plant things like carrots and don't really care
whether the earth or sun is in the centre of the universe... yet)

Characteristics of Society
Medieval science rested on assumptions which were untested, in part because
the means of testing them could not be grasped, in part because the wish to
test them did not exist.
Contented

They're all happy with their lot in life and have no desire to move up the
social ladder... generally. To medieval people, everything in nature and
society was connected: social system was a part of nature and God's
plan. This way of looking at the world did not encourage change.

They accept the Church as all knowing and all powerful.

The study of Aristotle: began to realise his errors

William Ockham. Ockham's Razor: idea that cut away the
surplus of much speculative thought - "Do not multiply entities
more than necessary" simpler explanations preferable

Heliocentric theory was simpler than Geocentric theory

Spread of printing: e.g. Technical knowledge was available in print very

quickly and specialists had to know how to read to keep up
Navigational problems in sea voyage generated scientific research.

4. Heliocentric System

Contradicts Church's depiction of the universe

If the church can be wrong about something as fundamental as the

position of the earth, what else are they wrong about?

Opens the door to erosion of the RCC's authority in other things e.g.
Knowledge, politics, tax reforms, etc

Education still not very important

5. Inventions

Education was not valued and largely restricted to the upper classes and

Inventions of microscope (revealed many previously unknown of

the bourgeois. This is why the bourgeois later become an important force
organisms), telescope, thermometer, bubble-level and screw-micrometer
for change: they are the relatively underprivileged portion of society that
is still educated about all these 'modern' ideas by Galileo and co.

They are not able to move up the social ladder despite their educational
qualifications/ amount they are contributing to society.

Hence they begin to doubt how right the Catholic Church is.
Based on birthright

Your lot in society is dependent largely on who your parents are. If

they're noble, you become noble. If they're peasants who plant carrots,
you become a peasant who plants carrots.

This is largely akin to the society in the Bible though not necessarily
derived from it. Notice large portions of the Bible devoted to genealogy,
and which tribes people came from as different tribes had different jobs,
e.g. Levites were priests and in charge of the Tabernacle and the such,
so if you're born a Levite that's automatically what you grow up to do.

Nobody has experienced meritocracy and therefore nobody yearns for it,
as it still is with almost any civil liberty today.

What were the effects of the Scientific Revolution in the way people thought?
Effects on Man's Worldview
Copernicus

Heliocentric universe (very important! Because without him there

would be no Kepler and no Galileo etc and no Scientific Revolution!
And we'd all be studying Bede and mysterious heavenly lights shining
on martyrs)
Bear in mind that Copernicus did not 'come up' with the heliocentric
theory: rather, he developed/ proposed it.
Why is this so revolutionary?
1. Challenged the Church

Challenged traditional Christian view of humanity as the centre

of God's universe
REMEMBER: you cannot challenge the authority of only one part of
the church's teachings! By implication you are attacking Every Other
Part, like the way removing a single card from a pyramid card tower
makes the whole thing fall down.
'To attack any part of this anomalous and fossilized structure was to
attack by implication every other part, including royal power itself
(Thomson)
2. Challenged People's Thinking

If people are not centre of the universe, does that mean we are
not centre to God's creation?

Does that notion contradict the Biblical version of creation? Of

man's role in the universe? Of the idea of life being a constant
struggle between the forces of good and evil? (Ok I just made
it sound like Star Wars. But this is really how people saw the
world think Shakespeare, for example. There's heaven,
there's hell, and there's us in the middle.)

If science can explain the rotation of the earth around the sun,
then what else can it explain? Can it explain why humans have
souls and consciences (something commonly attributed to
God)? If science can explain everything, then what is God's

Effects on Methodology/ Thinking

Inference/Deduction Versus Observation/Experience
Copernicus also believed that knowledge did not just have to come
from observation and experience, but could be derived from inference,
reasoning, logical deduction. This contradicts Aristotle who placed a lot
of emphasis on the senses and observations that one can make.

Effects on Man's Worldview

Effects on Methodology/ Thinking

role? (since we humans tend to attribute the unknown to the

supernatural)
Hence the church was fed up.
Galileo

Father of Science - recognised a need to separate science from

Improved Precision and Accuracy
religion. He would rather believe his experimental results than what the

Emphasised experiments that focused on mathematical

Church declared as truth.
precision

Understood the rift between theory and practice, and

Discovered: mountains and craters on the moon, four moons revolving
recognised assumptions that needed to be made, etc.
around Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and sunspots.

Content to create conclusions from mathematical reasoning

alone others had to confirm his theories by observation and
1. Challenged the Church
practical experiment

Yet while adamant that the earth moved around the sun,
Galileo insisted that it was not incompatible with the Bible's
passages that seemed to suggest otherwise. He suggested
that these passages were to be taken as poetry/song.
2. Challenged People's Thinking (Similar to Copernicus)

Does this mean the heavens are no longer a spiritual thing but
something that can be defined in the physical realm?

If 'the heavens' are accessible by physical means, where is

Heaven, and is it a physical place or a spiritual place? Does it
even exist?
Galileo remained a Catholic even after developing the heliocentric
theory; he attacked dogmatism, not he Church.

Bacon (15211626)

Impact of Empiricism on History

1. Makes History more objective
People start observing the world around them to gain knowledge.
Previously Bede's historical accounts talking about bodies floating
upstream and heavenly lights shining upon them were taken as gospel
truth. Now people notice things don't flow upstream and heavenly lights
don't exactly always shine down on dead bodies, so they begin to
question previously accepted accounts of the past. Using this
approach, all accounts of History ought not to contradict the laws of

Empiricism
It is the philosophical belief that knowledge is based on experience and
observations, mainly through the five senses.
Bacon also explored the difference between rationalism (branch of
philosophy where truth is determined by reason) and empiricism.
Until common prejudices are eliminated from the mind of the scientist,
they will constantly interfere with an objective approach. These are the
prejudices, called "idols":

Idols of the Tribe: These are any prejudices that arise from

Effects on Man's Worldview

Effects on Methodology/ Thinking

Science in the world around us, in order to have credibility.

2. People start looking for patterns in history
Just like in a science experiment, where people look for patterns
through repeated experiments, people are beginning to look for
patterns in history. They begin to study History like a Science, by
applying the Scientific Method to history.
For example, if they are studying the causes of various revolutions,
they list down all the ingredients that caused each one. This gradually
forms a pattern. Hence when they see similar ingredients being stirred
together Now, they predict a revolution again.

human nature
Idols of the Cave: Any prejudices that come from the
psychological state of the human mind
Idols of the Marketplace: Prejudices that result from social
relationships
Idols of the Theater: These are prejudices that derive from
false ideological systems

The Scientific Method

The first step involved careful experimentation and observation

The next step called for the use of reason to interpret the
experiment's results

From this, scientists could draw valid conclusions, which in turn

might be tested through further experimentation.

This approach revolutionises history, resulting in theories like Marxism,

which take a very scientific approach to the study of history.
Inductive Reasoning: philosophers would arrive at truth by combining
evidence from a huge number of particular observations to draw
general conclusions. In inductive reasoning, you can make your
argument more convincing the more experiments you conduct.
This opposed Deductive Reasoning (Ancient Greeks' method)
Deductive reasoning accepted generalisations, using reason to arrive
at specific details. In deductive reasoning, no experimentation is
involved; everything is derived by logical conclusion.
Impact
(a) Quickened pace of scientific discovery

Better, faster way of finding out how nature actually worked

(b) Changed the way knowledge was judged and accepted (very
significant!)

Most educated people no longer accepted explanations based

on miracles, supernatural power, or magic (i.e. No more Bede
and bodies floating upstream and heavenly lights etc)

Now focus was on reasoning, logic, etc

Descartes

Many of his theories were wrong, unfortunately.

1. Very firmly against anything that could not be proved with

scientific evidence; emphasised scepticism
2. Didn't think experimentation was very important believed
reason and rationality were more important (a bit like

Effects on Man's Worldview

Effects on Methodology/ Thinking

Copernicus I think)
3. He believed that outside the human mind, everything worked
according to rational and natural laws
I think, therefore I am. (Descartes)

Kepler (not very

important)

Published 3 laws of planetary motion

1. He believed the orbits of the planets around the sun were not
circular but elliptical in shape. Galileo made a mistake by
disagreeing.
2. The speed of a planet is greater when it is closer to the sun
3. The square of a planet's period of revolution is proportional to
the cube of its average distance from the sun.

Newton

Discovered:Gravity
Earth and Sun not perfect spheres
Challenged the church

Broke their monopoly of knowledge

Truth did not depend on what the Church/ State said at all:
truth was now to be established by the methods that operated
independently of them.

The secrets of the natural world could be known by human

investigation and not what the Church said.

Any description of reality had to incorporate the reality revealed

by science
Any account of the nature of knowledge itself, and of the way it
was arrived at, and its foundations, had to apply to science if it
was to command credibility.
Newton is also important because he combined the works of
Bacon and Descartes to give a more modern Scientific
Method. He combined Inductive and Deductive reasoning,
thereby making it easier to conduct experiments etc.

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:

Challenged People's Thinking
God said, 'Let Newton be!' and all was light.

If the movements of all matter in space are known, what about

-Alexander Pope
our own bodies? Are all their movements subject to scientific
laws? If so, does this mean there is no such thing as free will? Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the
magicians... (JM Keynes)
Are we not in control of our own bodies? If there is no such
thing as free will, does this mean there is no such thing as
morality? And if an exhaustive and accurate explanation of all
physical phenomena can now be provided by science, what
need is there to believe in God?
Overall

Mechanistic World View: People began to see the universe operated

according to fixed rules like a machine. They began to see God as the
divine watchmaker, who set the clock of the universe into place and
then retired from worldly affairs. Now it was up to people to discover
the rules that governed the machinelike workings of the universe.

This gave rise to a quest for objectivity: the presentation of the TRUTH
apart from emotion, intuition or supernatural forces. But of course we
are never completely objective. In other words, objectivity is like an
asymptote that we can tend to but never quite reach.

Effects on Man's Worldview

Effects on Methodology/ Thinking

Prior to the SR, the attitude of questioning was not present.

How could belief in God be reconciled with Science?
How could morality function in a world governed by scientific laws?
How could there be free will in a deterministic1 universe?

What were the effects of the Scientific Revolution in other areas?

Arena
Philosophy

Effects
Science had originally evolved as a branch of philosophy, so its impact on this discipline can be observed. It involved the application of scientific
ideas on human behaviour and society.
Newton's Rules of Reasoning
Rule 1: Rule of Parsimony
"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."

Newton tells us philosophers say 'less' is better, and that simplicity pleases Nature
Scientists should make no more assumptions or assume no more causes than are absolutely necessary to explain their
observations.

Rule 2: Rule of Cause and Effect

"As to the respiration in a man and in a beast, the descent of stones [gravity] in Europe and in America, the light of our culinary
fire and of the sun, the reflection of light in the earth and in the planets."

The belief that what occurs in nature is the result of cause-and-effect relationships, and where similar effects are seen then the
same cause must be operating.

Rule 3: Principle of Universal Qualities

the belief that those qualities, such as mass or length, that describe bodies exposed to our immediate experience also describe
bodies removed from our immediate experience, such as stars and galaxies.
This rule insists that if observational or experimental evidence conflicts with any theories I have put forward then I must
1 A deterministic universe is the idea whereby people use scientific methodology to observe patterns in history, and then believe they can predict the future. They believe the future
is predetermined according to a certain pattern. This idea is known also as historical inevitability (ie. Something is bound to happen in Marxism, it is the revolution of the
proletariat, in Christianity, the 2nd coming of Christ, for example). Hence if such events are bound to happen, then how does it affect our impressions of everyday life? Free will
loses its importance: after all, regardless of what we do, certain life changing events are bound to happen. Moreover, if everything, even history, acts in accordance with the laws
of science, why does morality exist?

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Effects

accept the evidence of observations and experiments

It also implies that if a simple and a complex theory explain the evidence then I accept the simpler option.

Rule 4: Principle of Induction

The process of deriving conclusions about a class of objects by examining a few of them
Reasoning from the particular to the more general.
The rule states that concepts, hypotheses, laws, and theories arrived at by induction should be assumed as universal both in
time and place until new evidence proves the contrary to be true.
This rule says that I must make my theories fit the facts and not try to adjust the facts to fit my theory.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Mechanistic view of universe

Translated Galileos ideas of motion, and applied it on his views of psychology. He believed that all human motivation could be
explained through motion (pushing & pulling). Through this, he rationalised that humans form societies as a result of their repulsion for
death

Advocating absolutist government in his book Leviathan (1651)

He saw chaos as worse than tyranny
John Locke (1632-1704)

Empirical view of nature

His understanding of humans was restricted to their physical and observable qualities

Did not believe that there were any such thing as innate ideas
Did not agree with Descartes

Propagated the notion that humans are blank slates, and everything is acquired subsequently. As such, people could be liberated from
oppressive social systems by education.
Social Sciences
(LIKE HISTORY)

"This (the scientific way of approaching History) is the Holy Grail of the social sciences, at least under the model of Levi-Strauss, which seeks to
find immutable laws or patterns of behaviour. And in classifying history as a 'science', arguably historians are also seeking this aim." (D Leong)
The Social Sciences include:

Anthropology

Communications

Economics, production and allocation of wealth

Linguistics

Political Science

Psychology, human mind and behavior

Sociology
History of Social Sciences

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Effects

There wasnt always a distinction between the study of philosophy and mathematics
With the proliferation of scientific thought and application of mathematical equations as proof of theories, there generated a pressure to
apply similar mathematical foundations to explain human relationships.
Ideas were now expressed in the form of mathematical relationships and such relationships were called laws.

Economics as Social Science

Economic activity was not always quantifiable or viewed statistically.

Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) published The Wealth of Nations in 1776; studied economic activities in more quantifiable means.

Today, we have assumptions like 'ceteris paribus2' in economics because we want to make economics like a science where we can
hold certain factors constant. However, such theories or laws are often criticised for being unrealistic, because there is no 'ceteris
paribus' in real life. We can't control factors affecting human desires and wants so simply.
History of Social Sciences

Karl Marx was among the first to claim that his methods of research represented a scientific view of history.

By the 20th century, there was an ever increasing application of statistical study to understand human behaviour.

True, Marxism was later proved to be an inaccurate view of history, but the methodology that Marx used to arrive at his theory became
integral to the development of history as a subject - and this method originated from the Scientific Revolution.
"Those who fire away at its (Marxism's) redundancy must be unable to distinguish between the ideology and the methodology."
"This new 'utopia' shifted the focus of history away from the myopic study of politics, and put on equal status the many sub-disciplines such as
military history, cultural history and economic history."
But remember... history cannot always be scientific!
"While scientists can remove one gene from a rat to deduce what it does by observing the effects on the rat, historians are not allowed to
tamper with the genome of the past in the same way." (D Leong)
Human beliefs, like all natural growths, elude the barriers of system (Eliot)
Historians should not be seen as scientists; they should aspire to be so, but while scientific rigour is a requirement, it only forms the foundation
upon which the "craftsman" must sculpt an interpretation. (D Leong)
Politics

People started to apply the Scientific Method to Politics

In America 1776, the Declaration of Independence...
All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.

2 Ceteris paribus is a Latin phrase, literally translated as "with other things [being] the same," and usually rendered in English as "all other things being equal."

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Effects
In Europe, the Enlightenment...
... advocated a rational approach to problems, rejecting ideas that were based on superstition and theology, instead favouring explanations
based on observation, experiment, and logic. (Peter Gay)
Enlightenment Ideas that emerged
Rationality
Freedom of thought
Progress (believed 'golden age was in the future', not gone with the Renaissance)
Humanitarianism
Voltaire

Bitterly opposed religious persecution, especially that by the church

Supported Locke in his belief in individual human rights to life, liberty and property

Montesquieu
One of the founders of political science
Studied various forms of government
Introduced the idea of having executive, legislative and judicial departments in a government
Influenced the writing of the US constitution
Rosseau
Faith in the common people
'Man is born free and everywhere is in chains'
Human nature is basically good (unlike Hobbes who thought human life was 'nasty, brutish and short')
Catholicism as an ideology was rejected for its irrationalism, the Catholic Church as an institution was rejected for its wealth, power, corruption
and intolerance. (Blanning)
Together with the church, the other great culprit was the absolute monarchy, which was incapable of appearing before the court of reason.
(Furet)
Industry

Providing the Means

Rationalist Movement: Use of science and reason applied to human concerns
Because of the new emphasis on experimenting and scientific advances during the SR, the pace of invention increased
New machines were developed, making the Industrial Revolution possible
Providing the Will
Enlightenment popularised liberal attitudes towards profit motive (Adam Smith popularised profit maximising)
The SR laid the basis for the modern view of the world as a rational, ordered place. Forward looking, Progress oriented

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Effects

Nature was now viewed as mechanical, and could be harnessed to make economic profit

Porter: Science too was a mighty generator of optimism.

Langford: A nation of Newtons and Lockes became a nation of Boultons and Watts.
Effect of social sciences like Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

In the 18th century, attention focused, perhaps for the first time ever, on the future rather than the past, and the drive to create a better future
generated a belief in progress. The achievements of scientists like Isaac Newton [1642-1727] and John Locke [1632-1704] bred new faith in
mans right and power to achieve knowledge of himself and the natural world, and encouraged practical action in such fields as overseas
exploration, technology, manufactures, social science and legal reform.Progress proved the ultimate Enlightenment gospel (Porter)
James Watt
He began to study steam engines.
He managed to get hold of a model of a Newcomen Engine - which was broken - and tried to repair it.
Through the repair work, he noticed that it was inefficient.
He designed his own improved engine, and set to work producing a full-scale model for demonstration.
After a number of struggles, he was eventually able to complete the engine when he partnered with businessman Matthew Boulton.
Together, they were able to both build the machine - and battle through the legal problems trying to get it patented.
He died in 1819.