The Scientific Revolution Flashcards
Why was the Scientific Revolution so revolutionary?
The implications of the discoveries changed the way Europeans viewed the world and had serious effects on religion, political thought, and warfare.
What were some of the reasons why the Scientific Revolution occurred?
The discovery of the New World, the invention of the printing press, rivalry among nation-states, the reformation, and Renaissance humanism.
How did the discovery of the New World influence the conditions for the Scientific Revolution?
The period of exploration led to the discovery of new plants and animals, possibly encouraging greater interest in the natural sciences. Navigation and astronomy associated with sailing also prompted interest in the stars.
How did the invention of the printing press influence the conditions for the Scientific Revolution?
There were many books and newsletters keeping people informed on recent scientific discoveries.
How did rivalry among nation-states influence the conditions for the Scientific Revolution?
The warfare between different nation-states placed increasing importance on technology. Europe also had many leaders who funded scientific development.
How did the Reformation influence the conditions for the Scientific Revolution?
Worldly asceticism in Protestantism helped create capitalism and therefore the Scientific revolution. The Protestant Revolution also increased the reading public, and the opposition to the Catholic Church established a tradition of challenging authority.
How did Renaissance Humanism influence the conditions for the Scientific Revolution?
Humanist interest in the writings of the classical world also extended to ancient Greek texts. Certain texts like Archimedes’s mathematic texts and Galen’s anatomical studies were rediscovered in the Renaissance.
What was the pre-scientific world view?
Most people adhered to Scholasticism, which was a synthesis of Christian theology and the scientific beliefs of ancient authors.
Who was the main philosopher of Scholasticism?
Thomas Aquinas took the works of Aristotle and harmonized them with the teachings of the Church. Knowledge of God remained the supreme act of learning and was attained through reason and revelation. The value of science was to gain a greater understanding of God.
What were the teachings of Aristotle?
Aristotle taught that the world was composed of earth, fire, air, and water. This notion of the four elements gave rise to alchemy, or the transformation of compounds from a proportion of their elements. The same understanding composed medicine: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile were the four humours, and an imbalance in them produced personal characteristics.
What were the teachings of Ptolemy?
Ptolemy taught that the Earth was a stationary object around which heavenly bodies moved, while the stars were fixed in their orbits, called the Geocentric system.
Who was Nicolas Copernicus?
He was a Polish mathematician and astronomer (1473-1543) who wrote Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, which stated that the Earth moved in circular motion around the sun, or a Heliocentric system.
Who was Johannes Kepler?
He (1571-1630) found that planets described by Copernicus’s moved in elliptical orbits, but could not explain why.
Who was Galileo Galilei?
He (1564-1642) was an Italian scientist who built upon the work of Copernicus by using a telescope to observe the moon, stars, and Jupiter’s moons, concluding that the Earth was not pure, the stars were very far away, and there was not a unique relationship with earth and its moon. He observed the law of inertia and the equal accelerations of gravity without knowing their true nature. His work was condemned by the Catholic Church and he was forced to recant many of his claims.
Who was Sir Isaac Newton?
He (1642-1727) was a English scientist who in his paper Principia discovered that all objects in the universe operated under the effects of gravity, which explained the elliptical orbits of the planets and their moons. He began experiments with optics and showed that white light was a mixture of colors. He also was the father of calculus and led the British Royal Society.
