Scientific Revolution - New Ideas

New Ideas

The scientific revolution was not marked by any single change. The following new ideas contributed to what is called the scientific revolution:

• The replacement of the Earth as center of the universe by Heliocentrism
• Deprecation of the Aristotelian theory that matter was continuous and made up of the elements Earth, Water, Air, and Fire because its classic rival, Atomism, better lent itself to a "mechanical philosophy" of matter.
• The replacement of the Aristotelian idea that heavy bodies, by their nature, moved straight down toward their natural places; that light bodies, by their nature, moved straight up toward their natural place; and that ethereal bodies, by their nature, moved in unchanging circular motions with the idea that all bodies are heavy and move according to the same physical laws
• Inertia replaced the medieval impetus theory, that unnatural motion ("forced" or "violent" rectilinear motion) is caused by continuous action of the original force imparted by a mover into that which is moved.
• The replacement of Galen's treatment of the venous and arterial systems as two separate systems with William Harvey's concept that blood circulated from the arteries to the veins "impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion"

However, according to Galileo, the core of what came to be known as the scientific method in modern physical sciences is stated in his book Il Saggiatore to be the concept of a systematic, mathematical interpretation of experiments and empirical facts:

"Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth."

Many of the important figures of the scientific revolution, however, shared in the Renaissance respect for ancient learning and cited ancient pedigrees for their innovations. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), Kepler (1571–1630), Newton (1642–1727) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) all traced different ancient and medieval ancestries for the heliocentric system. In the Axioms Scholium of his Principia Newton said its axiomatic three laws of motion were already accepted by mathematicians such as Huygens (1629–1695), Wallace, Wren and others, and also in memos in his draft preparations of the second edition of the Principia he attributed its first law of motion and its law of gravity to a range of historical figures. According to Newton himself and other historians of science, his Principia's first law of motion was the same as Aristotle's counterfactual principle of interminable locomotion in a void stated in Physics 4.8.215a19–22 and was also endorsed by ancient Greek atomists and others. As Newton expressed himself:

All those ancients knew the first law who attributed to atoms in an infinite vacuum a motion which was rectilinear, extremely swift and perpetual because of the lack of resistance... Aristotle was of the same mind, since he expresses his opinion thus..., speaking of motion in the void where there is no impediment he writes: 'Why a body once moved should come to rest anywhere no one can say. For why should it rest here rather than there ? Hence either it will not be moved, or it must be moved indefinitely, unless something stronger impedes it.'

As Newton attests, the Principia's first law of motion was known in antiquity, even by Aristotle, although its significance, as such, went unappreciated. This refutes Kuhn's thesis of a scientific revolution in dynamics.

The geocentric model was nearly universally accepted until 1543 when Nicolaus Copernicus published his book entitled De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and was widely accepted into the next century. At around the same time, the findings of Vesalius corrected the previous anatomical teachings of Galen, which were based upon the dissection of animals even though they were supposed to be a guide to the human body.

Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) was an author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica, also in 1543. French surgeon Ambroise Paré (c.1510–1590) is considered as one of the fathers of surgery; he was leader in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially the treatment of wounds. Partly based on the works by the Italian surgeon and anatomist Matteo Realdo Colombo (c. 1516–1559), the anatomist William Harvey (1578–1657) described the circulatory system. Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738) is sometimes referred to as a "father of physiology" due to his exemplary teaching in Leiden and textbook 'Institutiones medicae' (1708).

It was between 1650 and 1800 that the science of modern dentistry developed. It is said that the 17th century French physician Pierre Fauchard (1678–1761) started dentistry science as we know it today, and he has been named "the father of modern dentistry".

Pierre Vernier (1580–1637) was inventor and eponym of the vernier scale used in measuring devices. Evangelista Torricelli (1607–1647) was best known for his invention of the barometer. Although Franciscus Vieta (1540–1603) gave the first notation of modern algebra, John Napier (1550–1617) invented logarithms, and Edmund Gunter (1581–1626) created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based. It was William Oughtred (1575–1660) who first used two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division; and thus is credited as the inventor of the slide rule in 1622.

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) invented the mechanical calculator in 1642. The introduction of his Pascaline in 1645 launched the development of mechanical calculators first in Europe and then all over the world. He also made important contributions to the study of fluid and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665) on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), building on Pascal's work, became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators ; he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the binary number system, foundation of virtually all modern computer architectures.

John Hadley (1682–1744) was mathematician inventor of the octant, the precursor to the sextant. Hadley also developed ways to make precision aspheric and parabolic objective mirrors for reflecting telescopes, building the first parabolic Newtonian telescope and a Gregorian telescope with accurately shaped mirrors.

Denis Papin (1647–1712) was best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine. Abraham Darby I (1678–1717) was the first, and most famous, of three generations with that name in an Abraham Darby family that played an important role in the Industrial Revolution. He developed a method of producing high-grade iron in a blast furnace fuelled by coke rather than charcoal. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the Industrial Revolution. Thomas Newcomen (1664–1729) perfected a practical steam engine for pumping water, the Newcomen steam engine. Consequently, he can be regarded as a forefather of the Industrial Revolution.

In 1672, Otto von Guericke (1602–1686), was the first human on record to knowingly generate electricity using a machine, and in 1729, Stephen Gray (1666–1736) demonstrated that electricity could be "transmitted" through metal filaments. The first electrical storage device was invented in 1745, the so-called "Leyden jar", and in 1749, Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) demonstrated that lightning was electricity. In 1698 Thomas Savery (c.1650–1715) patented an early steam engine.

German scientist Georg Agricola (1494–1555), known as "the father of mineralogy", published his great work De re metallica. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) was credited with the discovery of Boyle's Law. He is also credited for his landmark publication The Sceptical Chymist, where he attempts to develop an atomic theory of matter. The person celebrated as the "father of modern chemistry" is Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) who developed his law of Conservation of mass in 1789, also called Lavoisier's Law. Antoine Lavoisier proved that burning was caused by oxidation, that is, the mixing of a substance with oxygen. He also proved that diamonds were made of carbon and argued that all living processes were at their heart chemical reactions. In 1766, Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) discovered hydrogen. In 1774, Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) discovered oxygen.

German physician Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566) was one of the three founding fathers of botany, along with Otto Brunfels (1489- 1534) and Hieronymus Bock (1498–1554) (also called Hieronymus Tragus). Valerius Cordus (1515–1554) authored one of the greatest pharmacopoeias and one of the most celebrated herbals in history, Dispensatorium (1546).

In his Systema Naturae, published in 1767, Carl von Linné (1707–1778) catalogued all the living creatures into a single system that defined their morphological relations to one another: the Linnean classification system. He is often called the "Father of Taxonomy". Georges Buffon (1707–1788), was perhaps the most important of Charles Darwin's predecessors. From 1744 to 1788, he wrote his monumental Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, which included everything known about the natural world up until that date.

Along with the inventor and microscopist Robert Hooke (1635–1703), Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), English scientist and astronomer Edmond Halley (1656–1742) was trying to develop a mechanical explanation for planetary motion. Halley's star catalogue of 1678 was the first to contain telescopically determined locations of southern stars.

Many historians of science have seen other ancient and medieval antecedents of these ideas. It is widely accepted that Copernicus's De revolutionibus followed the outline and method set by Ptolemy in his Almagest and employed geometrical constructions that had been developed previously by the Maragheh school in his heliocentric model, and that Galileo's mathematical treatment of acceleration and his concept of impetus rejected earlier medieval analyses of motion, rejecting by name; Averroes, Avempace, Jean Buridan, and John Philoponus (see Theory of impetus).

The standard theory of the history of the scientific revolution claims the 17th century was a period of revolutionary scientific changes. It is claimed that not only were there revolutionary theoretical and experimental developments, but that even more importantly, the way in which scientists worked was radically changed. An alternative anti-revolutionist view is that science as exemplified by Newton's Principia was anti-mechanist and highly Aristotelian, being specifically directed at the refutation of anti-Aristotelian Cartesian mechanism, as evidenced in the Principia quotations below, and not more empirical than it already was at the beginning of the century or earlier in the works of scientists such as Benedetti, Galileo Galilei, or Johannes Kepler.