Video:
Audio:
Recommended Reading:
- Powerpoint presentation
- The Soul of Science by Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton presents the thesis of competing ancient philosophies as the impetus of the Scientific Revolution at greater length than I was able to do in the lecture.
- Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason develops the thesis that Christianity’s emphasis on reason underlay Europe’s rise in the early modern world (including the Scientific Revolution).
- Tom Woods’s How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization includes a lengthy discussion of the problematic way in which Galileo is used by moderns in discussions of religion and science.
- Complete texts of works cited in the lecture:
- Novum Organum by Francis Bacon
- Discourse on Method by René Descartes
- On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies by William Gilbert
- Anatomical Disquisition by William Harvey
- On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Nicolas Copernicus
- Principia by Isaac Newton
- Novum Organum by Francis Bacon
- Discourse on Method by René Descartes
- On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies by William Gilbert
- Anatomical Disquisition by William Harvey
- On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Nicolas Copernicus
- Principia by Isaac Newton
Scientific Revolution – Quiz
- Summarize the “modernist fairy-tale” discussed in the lecture and identify problems with it.
- Identify the three competing ancient philosophies that helped spur new ideas in the 17th century.
- The most prominent champion of induction during the Scientific Revolution was ______________, whereas the most prominent champion of deduction was _______________.
- Copernicus hypothesized a __________________ model of the solar system, partially under the influence of the _______________ philosophy.
- Explain how Galileo’s theory that the same mathematical laws applied to the motion of all heavenly bodies challenged the medieval cosmology.
- Identify at least three major achievements of Sir Isaac Newton.
- The ________________ in London was an institution illustrating the appeal of science to the educated classes of the 17th century.
- Summary: no scientific progress in the Middle Ages because of society’s Christian character. Problems: there were scientific advances in the M.A., most scientists in the early modern world were Christians, and Christianity provided a favorable background for the development of scientific thinking.
- Platonism, Aristotelianism, Mechanism
- Francis Bacon; René Descartes
- heliocentric; Platonic
- Medieval thought held that heavenly bodies weren’t necessarily composed of physical substance the same way earthly bodies were, and thus they would have been subject to different laws.
- discovery of calculus; theory of gravity; laws of motion; breakthroughs in optics
- Royal Society