Chapter 16: Scientific Revolution
Chapter Summary
Although much of the 17th century European experience was one of inflation, wars of religion and religious persecution, civil wars, and foreign invasion, the century was also marked by the appearance of a new species of philosopher. The natural philosophers, or scientists, of the 17th century had an immense task at hand. That task was nothing less than creating a new knowledge based on the observation of the world of Nature. Their observations were justified by mathematical proof, and all of this within a world which God had created but left to man to discover. A new world view emerged from this age -- mechanistic and materialistic -- a scientific world view which shapes our view of the cosmos today.
This Scientific Revolution, as it has been called, did not appear in a vacuum. Building on centuries of scientific endeavor, the new scientific revolutionaries -- men like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle and Newton -- knew they were "standing on the shoulders of giants." They also understood the ramifications of their discoveries. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of this revolution of science was the increasing speed at which scientific discovery was put into action in the practical sphere. The essence of modern technology was born in the spirit of the 17th century natural philosopher.
Of course, the Church found the New Science at odds with its theology and in the early 17th century Galileo was brought to trial for teaching Copernican theory. He was tried as a heretic and found guilty. At his trial he recanted all of his opinions in a display that emphasized the correctness of the Church and the errors of the New Science. The revolution in science had to find a new home and it did in northern Europe, especially England, the Low Countries, Germany and France. There, it seemed, the spirit of philosophical and scientific enquiry was less restricted and more favorable to its growth. And there we find Leibniz, Descartes, Bacon and Isaac Newton.
Few of us today would doubt the revolutionary essence of modern science -- few of us question that something like a scientific revolution took place between Copernicus' De Revolutionibus (1543) and Newton's Principia (1687). But did all Europeans read these treatises at the time? The answer is no. Then how could the work of Copernicus and Newton have been so revolutionary? The answer, simply stated, is this: if Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and others could use Human Reason to unlock the mysteries of heavenly bodies, then it was a very short step indeed to apply that same Human Reason to the problems of man and society. And from that great realization, came the program and "faith" of the philosophe of the 18th century Enlightenment.
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