Eliana Josephine Hernandez Pages 500-505

Yellow: Names Blue: Dates Green: Concepts/Ideas Grey: Events

I.) The Scientific Method and the Spread of Scientific Knowledge 17th Century

A. Scientific learning and investigation began to increase dramatically. Royal and princely
patronage of individual scientists b/came an international phenomenon.
1. The king of Denmark constructed an astronomical observatory for Tycho Brahe,
Emperor Rudolf II hired Brahe and Kepler as imperial mathematicians, and the grand
duke of Tuscany appointed Galileo a similar post.

II.) The Scientific Method

A. Of great importance to the work of the science was establishing the proper means to examine
and understand the physical realm. This development of a scientific method was crucial to the
evolution of science in the modern world.

III.) Francis Bacon

A. Lawyer and lord chancellor; rejected Copernicus and Kepler and misunderstood Galileo.
Bacon did not doubt humans’ ability to know the natural world, but he believed that they had
proceeded incorrectly.
B. Bacon’s new foundation—a correct scientific method—was to be built on inductive
principles. Rather than beginning w/assumed 1st principles from which logical conclusions
could be deduced, he urged scientists to proceed from the particular to the general.
1. From carefully organized experiments and thorough, systematic observations, correct
generalizations could be developed.
2. His concern was more for practical than pure science.
3. He wanted science to contribute to the “mechanical arts” by creating devices that
would benefit industry, agriculture, and trade
C. The control and domination of nature became a central proposition and domination of modern
science and the technology that accompanied it.

IV.) Descartes

A. Descartes purposed a different approach to scientific methodology by emphasizing deduction

and mathematical logic.
B. He believed that one could start w/self-evident truths, comparable to geometric axioms, and
deduce more complex conclusions.

1. His emphasis on deduction and mathematical order complemented Bacon’s stress on

experiment and induction.

C. It was Newton who synthesized them into a single scientific methodology by uniting Bacon’s
empiricism w/Descartes’ rationalism
 1. Began w/systematic observations and experiments, which were used to arrive at
general concepts. New deductions derived from these general concepts could then be
tested and verified through precise experiments.

V.) The Spread of Scientific Knowledge

A. Also important to the work of science was the emergence of new learned societies and
journals that enabled the new scientists to communicate their ideas to each other and to
disseminate them to a wider, literate public.

VI.) The Scientific Societies

A. The 1st scientific societies appeared in Italy, but those in England and France were ultimately
of greater importance.
1. The English Royal Society evolved out of informal gatherings of scientists at London
and Oxford in the 1640s, although it didn’t receive a formal charter from King
Charles II until 1662. It received little government encouragement, and its fellows
simply co-opted new members.
2. The French Royal Academy of Sciences also arose out of informal scientific
meetings in Paris during the 1650s. They received abundant state support and
remained under government control;
3. Members were appointed and paid salaries by the state.
B. Both the English and French scientific societies formally emphasized the practical value of
scientific research.
1. The Royal Society created a committee to investigate technological improvements
for industry; the French Academy collected tools and machines.
2. This concern w/the practical benefits of science proved short-lived, however, as both
societies came to focus their primary interest on theoretical work in mechanics and
astronomy
C. German princes and city governments encouraged the foundation of small-scale societies of
their own. Sponsored by governments
D. Mainly devoted to the betterment of the state.
E. Although both English and French societies made useful contributes to scientific knowledge
in the 2nd ½ of the 17thc, their true significance arose from their example that science could be
a cooperative venture.
F. Scientific journals

VII.) Science and Society

A. Offered new ways to exploit resources for profit.

1. Some of the early scientists made it easier for these groups to accept the new ideas by
showing how they could be applied directly to specific industrial and technological
needs.

B. Political interests used the new scientific conception of the natural world to bolster social
stability.
 1. Puritans seized on the new science as a socially useful instrument to accomplish the
goal of reforming and renewing their society
2. The Puritan Revolution’s role in the acceptance of science, however, stemmed even
more from the reaction to the radicalism spawned by the revolutionary ferment.
C. By the 18thc, the Newtonian world-machine had been accepted, and Newtonian science would
soon be applied to trade and industry by a mercantile and landed elite that believed that they
could retain social order while improving the human condition.

VIII.) Science and Religion

A. It was natural that churches would continue to believe that religion was the final measure of
all things. To emerging scientists, however, it often seemed that theologians knew not of what
they spoke.
B. To Galileo, it made little sense for the church to determine the nature of physical reality based
on biblical texts that were subject to such radically different interpretations.

1. The church decided otherwise and lent its authority to one scientific theory: Ptolemaic-
Aristotelian cosmology, no doubt b/c it fit so well w/its own views of reality.
2. For educated individuals, this choice established a dichotomy b/w scientific
investigations and religious beliefs. As the scientific beliefs triumphed, it b/came almost
inevitable that religious beliefs would suffer, leading to a growing secularization in E
intellectual life—precisely what the church had hoped to combat by opposing
Copernicus.
3. Some believed that the split was largely unnecessary, while others felt the need to
combine God, humans, and a mechanistic universe into a new philosophical synthesis.

IX.) Spinoza

A. Spinoza was a philosopher who grew up in Amsterdam. After being excommunicated from
the synagogue, he lived a quiet life, refusing to accept a position in philosophy at the
University of Heidelberg for fear of compromising his freedom of thought.
B. He was unwilling to accept the implications of Descartes’ ideas, especially the separation of
mind of matter and the apparent separation of an infinite God from the finite world of matter.
1. He viewed humans as being part of a part of God or nature or the universal order as
much as natural objects.
2. Everything has a rational explanation, and humans are capable of finding it.
3. People can find true happiness.
4. Real freedom comes when they understand the order and necessity of nature and
achieve detachment from passing interests.

X.) Pascal

A. Pascal sought to keep science and religion united.

1. He excelled at both the practical, by inventing a calculating machine, and the
abstract, by devising a theory of chance and probability and doing work on conic
sections.
2. After a mystical vision which assured him of God’s care for the human soul, he
devoted the rest of his life to religious matters.
 3. Before his death, he left a series of notes for a large work, which in published form
was known as the Pensees, in which he tried to convert rationalists to Christianity by
appealing to both their reason and their emotions.
4. He argued that humans were frail creatures, often deceived by their senses, misled by
reason, and battered by their emotions. And yet they were beings whose very nature
involved thinking.
B. Pascal was very determined to show that the Christian religion was not contrary to reason. He
felt that it was the only religion that recognized that people’s true state of being was both
fallen and at the same time one of God’s creations.
1. Pascal refused to rely on the scientist’s world of order and rationality to attract people
to God. He believed that “finite man” was lost in the new infinite world, a realization
that frightened him. He believed that the world of nature could never reveal God.
2. Reason, he believed, could only take people so far. As a Christian, faith was the final
step.
C. More and more of the intellectual, social, and political elites began to act on the basis of
secular rather than religious assumptions.