CHAPTER 6

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AT ITS ZENITH (1620-1720)

Gerry Mae T. Silvero

INTRODUCTION

During the 17th century, Europe experienced a series of changes in thought, knowledge and

beliefs that affected society, influenced politics and produced a cultural transformation. It

was a revolution of the mind, a desire to know how nature worked, to understand the natural

laws. The advances in knowledge resulted in a powerful wave that, emerging from

astronomy and mathematics, swept the habits, the culture, and the social behaviour of an

era.

This period in the history of Europe is known as the Scientific Revolution. The expression is

controversial, as historians are still debating when the revolution started and finished, who

were the main actors, and how it developed [Hatch 2002-03]. Although some historians

favour the figure of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and the heliocentric theory to mark the

beginning of the Scientific Revolution, others situate the origin in Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

and his description of the scientific method. Some other key figures of this period

were Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Johannes Kepler (1571-

1630), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727).

During centuries, the study of the universe and the understanding of the world was founded

on deep thinking, on mulling over different questions trying to unearth the reasons or

explanations that gave clues to understanding the phenomena. By the 16th and 17th

centuries, the paradigm started to shift as some natural philosophers were rejecting

unproven theories and using precise tools to obtain exact measurements to base their

discoveries on observation and experimentation [Hakim 2005, 19].

This was the idea that Francis Bacon defended in his work The New Organon (1620). Bacon

was a philosopher who did not perform any experiment himself but showed the way and

paved the road to knowledge with his vision. René Descartes, a French mathematician and

philosopher, expanded the scientific method proposed by Bacon introducing the concept of
analysis and describing its method in his book The Discourse on the Method of Rightly

Conducting the Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences (1637).

There, Descartes proposes that any problem in science, despite its complexity, can be

solved by breaking the problems into parts and solving each part separately, because the

parts would help to understand the whole. Reason and mathematical proof would shed light

on almost any question.

A. Rise of the Scientific view of the world

 René Descartes (1596–1650)

of the first order, an important scientific thinker, and an

original metaphysician. During the course of his life, he was

a mathematician first, a natural scientist or ―natural

philosopher‖ second, and a metaphysician third. In

mathematics, he developed the techniques that made

possible algebraic (or ―analytic‖) geometry. In natural

philosophy, he can be credited with several specific achievements: co-framer of the sine law

of refraction, developer of an important empirical account of the rainbow, and proposer of a

naturalistic account of the formation of the earth and planets (a precursor to the nebular

hypothesis). More importantly, he offered a new vision of the natural world that continues to

shape our thought today: a world of matter possessing a few fundamental properties and

interacting according to a few universal laws. This natural world included an immaterial mind

that, in human beings, was directly related to the brain; in this way, Descartes formulated the

modern version of the mind–body problem. In metaphysics, he provided arguments for the

existence of God, to show that the essence of matter is extension, and that the essence of

mind is thought. Descartes claimed early on to possess a special method, which was

variously exhibited in mathematics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, and which, in the

latter part of his life, included, or was supplemented by, a method of doubt.
Descartes presented his results in major works published during his lifetime: the Discourse

on the Method (in French, 1637), with its essays, the Dioptrics, Meteorology, and Geometry;

the Meditations on First Philosophy (i.e., on metaphysics), with its Objections and Replies (in

Latin, 1641, 2nd edn. 1642); the Principles of Philosophy, covering his metaphysics and

much of his natural philosophy (in Latin, 1644); and the Passions of the Soul, on the

emotions (in French, 1649). Important works published posthumously included his Letters (in

Latin and French, 1657–67); World, or Treatise on Light, containing the core of his natural

philosophy (in French, 1664); Treatise on Man (in French, 1664), containing his physiology

and mechanistic psychology; and the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (in Latin, 1701), an

early, unfinished work attempting to set out his method.

Descartes was known among the learned in his day as a top mathematician, as the

developer of a new and comprehensive physics or theory of nature (including living things),

and as the proposer of a new metaphysics. In the years following his death, his natural

philosophy was widely taught and discussed. In the eighteenth century aspects of his

science remained influential, especially his physiology, as did his project of investigating the

knower in assessing the possibility and extent of human knowledge; he was also

remembered for his failed metaphysics and his use of skeptical arguments for doubting. In

the nineteenth century he was revered for his mechanistic physiology and theory that animal

bodies are machines (that is, are constituted by material mechanisms, governed by the laws

of matter alone). The twentieth century variously celebrated his famous ―cogito‖ starting

point, reviled the sense data that some alleged to be the legacy of his skeptical starting

point, and looked to him as a model of the culturally engaged philosopher. He has been

seen, at various times, as a hero and as a villain; as a brilliant theorist who set new

directions in thought, and as the harbinger of a cold, rationalistic, and calculative conception

of human beings. Those new to the study of Descartes should engage his own works in

some detail prior to developing a view of his legacy.

Another Frenchman of the 17th Century, Pierre de

Fermat, effectively invented modern number

theory virtually single-handedly, despite being a

small-town amateur mathematician. Stimulated

and inspired by the ―Arithmetica‖ of

the Hellenistic mathematician Diophantus, he went

on to discover several new patterns in numbers

which had defeated mathematicians for centuries,

and throughout his life he devised a wide range of conjectures and theorems. He is

also given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus, and for early

progress in probability theory.

Although he showed an early interest in mathematics, he went on study law at

Orléans and received the title of councillor at the High Court of Judicature in

Toulouse in 1631, which he held for the rest of his life. He was fluent in Latin, Greek,

Italian and Spanish, and was praised for his written verse in several languages, and

eagerly sought for advice on the emendation of Greek texts.

Fermat‘s mathematical work was communicated mainly in letters to friends, often

with little or no proof of his theorems. Although he himself claimed to have proved all

his arithmetic theorems, few records of his proofs have survived, and many

mathematicians have doubted some of his claims, especially given the difficulty of

some of the problems and the limited mathematical tools available to Fermat.

 Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630)

Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician,

and astrologer. He is a key figure in the 17th-

century scientific revolution, best known for his laws of

planetary motion, and his books Astronomia

also provided one of the foundations for Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became

an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to

the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician

to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also

taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally,

he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of

the refracting (or Keplerian) telescope, and was mentioned in

the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei. He was a

corresponding member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.

Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction

between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between

astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch

of natural philosophy). Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning

into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created

the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light

of reason. Kepler described his new astronomy as "celestial physics", as "an

excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics", and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the

Heavens", transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating

astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.

 Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) is considered the

father of modern science and made major

contributions to the fields of physics, astronomy,

cosmology, mathematics and philosophy. Galileo

invented an improved telescope that let him

of Venus, sunspots and the rugged lunar surface. His flair for self-promotion

earned him powerful friends among Italy‘s ruling elite and enemies among

the Catholic Church‘s leaders. Galileo‘s advocacy of a heliocentric universe

brought him before religious authorities in 1616 and again in 1 633, when he

was forced to recant and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life .

In 1609 Galileo built his first telescope, improving upon a Dutch design. In

January of 1610 he discovered four new ―stars‖ orbiting Jupiter —the

planet‘s four largest moons. He quickly published a short treatise outlining

his discoveries, ―Siderius Nuncius‖ (―The Starry Messenger‖), which also

contained observations of the moon‘s surface and descriptions of a

multitude of new stars in the Milky Way. In an attempt to g ain favor with the

powerful grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de Medici, he suggested

Jupiter‘s moons be called the ―Medician Stars.‖

―The Starry Messenger‖ made Galileo a celebrity in Italy. Cosimo II

appointed him mathematician and philosopher to the Medicis, offering him a

platform for proclaiming his theories and ridiculing his opponents.

Galileo‘s observations contradicted the Aristotelian view of the universe,

then widely accepted by both scientists and theologians. The moon‘s

rugged surface went against the idea of heavenly perfection, and the orbits

of the Medician stars violated the geocentric notion that t he heavens

revolved around Earth.

 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German philosopher,

mathematician, and political adviser, important both as a

metaphysician and as a logician and distinguished also for his

independent invention of the differential and integral calculus.

Isaac Newton, in full Sir Isaac Newton, (born

December 25, 1642 [January 4, 1643, New Style],

Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England—died March 20

[March 31], 1727, London), English physicist and

mathematician, who was the culminating figure of

the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics,

his discovery of the composition of white

light integrated the phenomena of colours into the science of light and laid the

foundation for modern physical optics. In mechanics, his three laws of motion, the

basic principles of modern physics, resulted in the formulation of the law of universal

gravitation. In mathematics, he was the original discoverer of the

infinitesimal calculus. Newton‘s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia

Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687) was one of the

most important single works in the history of modern science.

17th CENTURY MATHEMATICS

In the wake of the Renaissance, the 17th Century saw an unprecedented explosion of

mathematical and scientific ideas across Europe, a period sometimes called the Age of

Reason. Hard on the heels of the ―Copernican Revolution‖ of Nicolaus Copernicus in the

16th Century, scientists like Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler were making

equally revolutionary discoveries in the exploration of the Solar system, leading to Kepler‘s

formulation of mathematical laws of planetary motion.

The invention of the logarithm in the early 17th Century by John Napier (and later improved

by Napier and Henry Briggs) contributed to the advance of science, astronomy and

mathematics by making some difficult calculations relatively easy. It was one of the most

significant mathematical developments of the age, and 17th Century physicists like Kepler

and Newton could never have performed the complex calculatons needed for their
innovations without it. The French astronomer and mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace

remarked, almost two centuries later, that Napier, by halving the labours of astronomers, had

doubled their lifetimes.

The logarithm of a number is the exponent when that number is expressed as a power of 10

(or any other base). It is effectively the inverse of exponentiation. For example, the base 10

logarithm of 100 (usually written log10 100 or lg 100 or just log 100) is 2, because 102 = 100.

The value of logarithms arises from the fact that multiplication of two or more numbers is

equivalent to adding their logarithms, a much simpler operation. In the same way, division

involves the subtraction of logarithms, squaring is as simple as multiplying the logarithm by

two (or by three for cubing, etc), square roots requires dividing the logarithm by 2 (or by 3 for

cube roots, etc).

Although base 10 is the most popular base, another common base for logarithms is the

number e which has a value of 2.7182818… and which has special properties which make it

very useful for logarithmic calculations. These are known as natural logarithms, and are

written loge or ln. Briggs produced extensive lookup tables of common (base 10) logarithms,

and by 1622 William Oughted had produced a logarithmic slide rule, an instrument which

became indispensible in technological innovation for the next 300 years.

Napier also improved Simon Stevin‘s decimal notation and popularized the use of the

decimal point, and made lattice multiplication (originally developed by the Persian

mathematician Al-Khwarizmi and introduced into Europe by Fibonacci) more convenient with

the introduction of ―Napier‘s Bones‖, a multiplication tool using a set of numbered rods.
Although not principally a

mathematician, the role of the

Frenchman Marin Mersenne as a

sort of clearing house and go-

between for mathematical thought

in France during this period was

crucial. Mersenne is largely

remembered in mathematics today

in the term Mersenne primes –

prime numbers that are one less Graph of the number of digits in the known
than a power of 2, e.g. 3 (22-1), 7 Mersenne primes
3 5 7
(2 -1), 31 (2 -1), 127 (2 -1), 8191

(213-1), etc. In modern times, the

largest known prime number has almost always been a Mersenne prime, but in actual fact,

Mersenne‘s real connection with the numbers was only to compile a none-too-accurate list of

the smaller ones (when Edouard Lucas devised a method of checking them in the 19th

Century, he pointed out that Mersenne had incorrectly included 267-1 and left out 261-1, 289-1

and 2107-1 from his list).

The Frenchman René Descartes is sometimes considered the first of the modern school of

mathematics. His development of analytic geometry and Cartesian coordinates in the mid-

17th Century soon allowed the orbits of the planets to be plotted on a graph, as well as

laying the foundations for the later development of calculus (and much later multi-

dimensional geometry). Descartes is also credited with the first use of superscripts for

powers or exponents.

Two other great French mathematicians were close contemporaries of Descartes: Pierre de

Fermat and Blaise Pascal. Fermat formulated several theorems which greatly extended our

knowlege of number theory, as well as contributing some early work on infinitesimal

calculus. Pascal is most famous for Pascal‘s Triangle of binomial coefficients, although
similar figures had actually been produced by Chinese and Persian mathematicians long

before him.

It was an ongoing exchange of letters between Fermat and Pascal that led to the

development of the concept of expected values and the field of probability theory. The first

published work on probability theory, however, and the first to outline the concept of

mathematical expectation, was by the Dutchman Christiaan Huygens in 1657, although it

was largely based on the ideas in the

letters of the two Frenchmen.

The French mathematician and engineer

Girard Desargues is considered one of

the founders of the field of projective

geometry, later developed further by

Jean Victor Poncelet and Gaspard

Monge. Projective geometry considers

what happens to shapes when they are

projected on to a non-parallel plane. For

an ellipse or a hyperbola, and so these

curves may all be regarded as equivalent in projective geometry. In particular, Desargues

developed the pivotal concept of the ―point at infinity‖ where parallels actually meet. His

perspective theorem states that, when two triangles are in perspective, their corresponding

sides meet at points on the same collinear line.

By ―standing on the shoulders of giants‖, the Englishman Sir Isaac Newton was able to pin

down the laws of physics in an unprecedented way, and he effectively laid the groundwork

for all of classical mechanics, almost single-handedly. But his contribution to mathematics

should never be underestimated, and nowadays he is often considered, along

with Archimedes and Gauss, as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.
Newton and, independently, the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz,

completely revolutionized mathematics (not to mention physics, engineering, economics and

science in general) by the development of infinitesimal calculus, with its two main operations,

differentiation and integration. Newton probably developed his work before Leibniz,

but Leibniz published his first, leading to an extended and rancorous dispute. Whatever the

truth behind the various claims, though, it is Leibniz‘s calculus notation that is the one still in

use today, and calculus of some sort is used extensively in everything from engineering to

economics to medicine to astronomy.

Both Newton and Leibniz also contributed greatly in other areas of mathematics,

including Newton‘s contributions to a generalized binomial theorem, the theory of finite

differences and the use of infinite power series, and Leibniz‘s development of a mechanical

forerunner to the computer and the use of matrices to solve linear equations.

However, credit should also be given to some earlier 17th Century mathematicians whose

work partially anticipated, and to some extent paved the way for, the development of

infinitesimal calculus. As early as the 1630s, the Italian mathematician Bonaventura

Cavalieri developed a geometrical approach to calculus known as Cavalieri‘s principle, or the

―method of indivisibles‖. The Englishman John Wallis, who systematized and extended the

methods of analysis of Descartes and Cavalieri, also made significant contributions towards

the development of calculus, as well as originating the idea of the number line, introducing

the symbol ∞ for infinity and the term ―continued fraction‖, and extending the standard

notation for powers to include negative integers and rational numbers. Newton‗s teacher

Isaac Barrow is usually credited with the discovery (or at least the first rigorous statrement

of) the fundamental theorem of calculus, which essentially showed that integration and

differentiation are inverse operations, and he also made complete translations of Euclid into

Latin and English.

The relationship between mathematics and physics has been a subject of study

of philosophers, mathematicians and physicists since Antiquity, and more recently also

by historians and educators. Generally considered a relationship of great

intimacy, mathematics has been described as "an essential tool for

physics" and physics has been described as "a rich source of inspiration and insight in

mathematics".

In his work Physics, one of the topics treated by Aristotle is about how the study carried out

by mathematicians differs from that carried out by physicists. Considerations about

mathematics being the language of nature can be found in the ideas of the Pythagoreans:

the convictions that "Numbers rule the world" and "All is number", and two millennia later

were also expressed by Galileo Galilei: "The book of nature is written in the language of

mathematics".

Before giving a mathematical proof for the formula for the volume of

a sphere, Archimedes used physical reasoning to discover the solution (imagining the

balancing of bodies on a scale). From the seventeenth century, many of the most important

advances in mathematics appeared motivated by the study of physics, and this continued in

the following centuries (although in the nineteenth century mathematics started to become

increasingly independent from physics). The creation and development of calculus were

strongly linked to the needs of physics: There was a need for a new mathematical language

to deal with the new dynamics that had arisen from the work of scholars such as Galileo

Galilei and Isaac Newton. During this period there was little distinction between physics and

mathematics; as an example, Newton regarded geometry as a branch of mechanics. As time

progressed, increasingly sophisticated mathematics started to be used in physics. The

current situation is that the mathematical knowledge used in physics is becoming

increasingly sophisticated, as in the case of superstring theory.

http://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Science_17C.html

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/

https://www.storyofmathematics.com/17th_fermat.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/galileo-galilei

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz/The-Hanoverian-period

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isaac-Newton

https://www.storyofmathematics.com/17th.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_mathematics_and_physics