Science

• Modern vision of science emerged between 1500 and 1700.
• Science in the modern sense simply did not exist.
• Early Modern people had sophisticated practices for understanding natural phenomena
• Early Modern people would agree on science was the job of philosophers.
• Alexandre Koyre and Hebert Butterfield saw a radical transformation in how science was carried out, and what the sources of authority were in the book 'A scientific revolution' in 1500-1700.
• Medieval Universities based their curriculum on Christianized ancient texts - Greek Philosopher Aristotle and Romano Greek Doctor, Galen.
• Andreas Vesalius 'De Humani corporis Fabrica' - based on the anatomy of the human body.
• Corpenicus Orbium celestium - the idea that the sun was the centre of the universe.
• Vesalius - Famous anatomist at work in Europe during the 16th century. Pictured as a figure as a modern way of looking at the world, based on direct experience rather than textual authority.
• Vesalius emphasized direct experience. Shown in Illustration of him touching a hand
• Vesalius built on Galens ideas, and extension of Galen.
• Vesalius critized medieval anatomists for relying too much on sources of authority. Vesalius himself would reject some of Galens descriptions but remained respectful of his ideas. For e.g Galen was critized for only dissecting animal bodies, not humans.
• De Revolutionibus - Wrote by Nicolus Copernicus - He argued that the motions of the heavenly bodies (planets) could be explained by putting the earth in orbit around the sun.
• Before Copernicus the standard position based on the physics of Aristotle and Astronomy of Ptolemy put the earth at the centre of the Universe.
• Christian Church stood away in Scientfic progress.
• Evaluation of Religion staying in the way of Scientific Progress - Pioneers of Science still integrated gods into their explanations of natural phenomena. For e.g Newton 'must come from an intelligent being'
• Another Problem of early modern science - excludes people from outside Europ.
• In the 16th and 17th centuries - Europeans encountered European plants that changed how doctors approached the cure of diseases back in Europe. - Contributions of indigenous peoples left unrecorded.
• Galileo aruged that the Earth was in motion, orbiting around the sun. He thus rejected the then more common position that the earth was at the centre of the cosmos.
• In 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Roman Inquisiton for holding his position, spending the rest of the rest of his life under house arrest.
• Galileo went under house arrest because he went against the spiritual paradigm in the medieval period by Copernicus.
• Source on Galileo 1 - Letter from Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine to Paolo Antonio Foscarini
• Letter 1 - Bellarmine found no problem with heliocentrism as long as it was treated as a purely hypothetical calculating device and not as a physically real phemonemon.
• Heliocentrism - Is an astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the sun at the centre of the Universe.
• In Source 1 on Galileo, Cardinal Rob warned Galielo not to publicily advocate the heliocentric position.
• The Catholic Church had been trying to suppress the idea that the earth moved since the time of Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543).
• Copernicus' book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" was published posthumously in 1543.
• Cardinal Roberto believed that Galileo's heliocentric hypothesis would injure the holy faith and irritate all philosophers and scholastic theologians.
• Galileo was told by the Inquisition to abandon his theory or face imprisonment.