The Rise of
Science: The
rise of science, otherwise known as the scientific revolution, took place in
the early modern period, 17th century, following the Italian Renaissance where development
in
, physics,
mathematics, biology and chemistry transformed views of society
and nature. Historically, the rise of science began in Europe towards the end
of the 16th century and continued well into the 18th century. Further along in
the 18th century we come to what is known universally as the period of
Enlightenment – however, the true start date of the scientific revolution are
highly debated as people believe that the publications of Copernicus’s “On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” and then the publication by Vesalius’s “On
the Fabric of the Human Body” are what really set the rise of science in motion
which were both published in 1543. The creation of science wouldn't have been
possible without the profound insight of 4 great men – Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo and Newton.
Copernicus: Copernicus’s
book “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” paved the way for modern astronomy. This is because his “heliocentric model”,
with the Sun at the centre of the universe, demonstrated that the motions of
celestial objects can be explained without putting Earth at rest in the centre
of the universe. The heliocentric model depicts the earth and planets revolving
around a stationary sun at the centre of the solar system. This theory was
opposed by Geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the centre of the solar
system. However, the idea of the earth and other planets revolving the sun had
been the proposed thousands of years ago but received no real support from any
of the ancient astronomers. Thanks to Copernicus’s additions to science in the
16th Century, he managed to invent a way to predict this movement
through his full mathematical model of the heliocentric system; this really set
the groundwork which ultimately leads to the rise of the scientific method.
Despite the profound impact of
Copernican theory, there arose many problems – the most prominent of these is
the absence of a Stellar Parallax. A Parallax is a difference in the position of an
object viewed along two different lines of sight; therefore a stellar parallax
is the effect of a difference in sight on
distant stars. It is a way to measure on an interstellar scale, and it can be
used to determine the distance of Earth to another star, however this only
become possible in the 19th century and this was still only in the case of the
nearest stars, making it almost impossible to measure accurately, without the
help of a telescope.
Kepler: Kepler was one of the first important astronomers to adopt
Copernicus’s heliocentric theory and he was highly influenced by Pythagorean
theory. Kepler was a German mathematician and astronomer, and is named a key figure
in the scientific revolution. His most influential work was published eponymously; this was called the laws of
planetary motion. In terms of astronomy, Kepler's three laws of
planetary motion had a highly profound impact on science and astronomy,
with his three scientific
laws describing orbital motion,
detailing the motion of planets revolving around the sun.
The first of Kepler’s laws was that the planets move in ellipses – it
was generally understood by all astronomers that all celestial motions are
circular and these are called epicycles. Therefore this means that the orbit of
every planet is an ellipsis with the sun at one time or another. The second law
details the varying velocity of the planet at different points of its orbit – I
believe this explains how much the planets would move around the sun in their
orbit and at what speeds. The third law was very important as it detailed and
compared the movements of different planets while the first two laws were all
about individual planets which had a mathematical formula to work it out – for
example Russell states that “if R is the average distance of a planet from the
sun and T is the length of its year, then R3 divided by T2 is the same for all
the different planets”.
Galileo: Galileo is viewed as the greatest of the founders of modern
observational astronomy, the father of modern physics and the father of modern
science, he was only matched in credibility possibly by Newton – he very
important as an astronomer and maybe even as the founder of dynamics. His work
about dynamics allowed him to discover acceleration and this is defined as a
change in velocity. Galileo believed that everyone, if they were left alone
would continue to move in a straight line with uniform velocity.
Galileo was
the first to discover the law of falling bodies, which is tied in closely with
acceleration states that when you are free falling, the acceleration is
constant, but the effects of wind resistance would hinder you slightly and that
regardless of how heavy, tall or small the body is – it will always fall at the
same speed; the acceleration would not change because of these aspects; this
could only be fully proved with the invention of the air pump in 1654. Before
the profound insight of Galileo, it was generally agreed that if something was
larger, then it would fall faster solely on that aspect of it being bigger.
Furthermore,
he delved into the study of projectiles – it was generally thought that if an
object was fired horizontally it would travel like that for a while and then
fall vertically; now Galileo detailed that this would not be the case, he
stated that the horizontal velocity would remain constant in accordance with
the law of inertia but vertical velocity would be added which ties in with the
law of falling bodies The law of inertia explained issues that before Galileo,
the Copernican system was unable to confront, for example if you are at the top
of a tower and dropped a stone it would fall at the foot of the tower not to
the east or west, you would think that if the earth is rotating then during the fall it should move a small
amount. This does not happen because the stone would retain the velocity of
rotation which at the time of being released is being shared with the rest of
the earth’s surface.
Newton: Isaac Newton built upon all the groundwork towards this
scientific revolution that had been put in place by the other three great
theorists, the work put in by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo had set the stage
for Newton to shine. Newton details in his work the three laws of motion. The
first law – if an object experiences no force, then its velocity is always going
to be constant – for example if the object is in rest, its velocity will be 0,
or if it moves in a straight line with constant speed then its velocity is going to be above zero.
The second law states that the acceleration of a body is similar and directly
proportional of the remaining force, called F, acting on the body, is in the
direction of the net force and is inversely proportional to the mass of the
body. Finally, the third law explains that when a body exerts force on a second
body, the second body will exert force at the same time on the first body; this
means that the force of the two bodies is equal in magnitude and opposing in
direction.
Newton’s
most important work is called “The Principia”
and this is
generally deemed to be one of the most important scientific books ever written.
This is stated because it is independently detailed to the specific physical
laws the work successfully. Newton is also highly credited and esteemed as he
managed to build the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour
purely by observing that a prism decomposes white light into the
many colours that form the visible spectrum. Newton also worked on
celestial mechanics, this concerned gravitation and its effect on the orbits
of planets. Here he greatly referenced Kepler's three laws of
planetary motion. And if that wasn't enough, he
went one step further and also formulated a law of cooling and greatly studied the speed of sound.
Francis
Bacon: Francis Bacon has been named the creator and pioneer of empiricism. His works
established inductive methodologies
for scientific inquiry, which is known famously as the scientific method. The scientific method is the
idea that you must always start a new theory from scratch - you must protect
yourself from ideas from the past that might influence your ideas – which means
it has to be original and it is a means of discovering new knowledge and a
process of understanding.
Francis Bacon’s most notable work is called the
“Novum Organum” which translates to “new instrument” or “New Organon” and this
is an allusion to Aristotle’s work called the Organon, which was
his treatise on logic and syllogism. Bacon details a new system of
logic he believes to be superior to the outdated use of syllogism, he believed
that you had to
use the simple method of reduction and use inductive reasoning to gain
knowledge.
This 'New Organon' had 4 key themes, the first of
these being that knowledge is the source of human power, so we must harness and
navigate through all knowledge. Secondly, there must be a clear
separation of science and religion, as mixing if caused too many problems in
the past. Thirdly the idea "new knowledge" must be thought up from
scratch - these ideas or general theories must be then tested to see if they
can prove them, or more accurately in later years falsify them. And
finally science is dynamic - you must always admit to failure when you
encounter it as opposed to the archaic way of never admitting defeat or
failure, this is the way that you learn.
