In the process, they invented the modern idea of the fact — reliable information that could be checked and tested. Finally, there was the new claim by mathematicians to be better at understanding the world than philosophers, a claim that was grounded in their development of the experimental method. If the scientific revolution is properly called a revolution, it is because of that: the mathematicians seized power and prestige from the philosophers.
The frontispiece shows ancient Greek mathematician Euclid holding the gate through which one must pass to attain true knowledge, announcing the new ambition of mathematicians to interpret the world. With the exceptions of Boyle and anatomist Andreas Vesalius, all the scientists I mention here were mathematicians, and even Boyle is remembered for a law on the behaviour of gases that he discovered with the help of mathematicians.
This was no easy or rapid victory: philosophy, particularly Aristotelianism, had long had a powerful hold over Europe's intellectual life. It was widely held that Aristotle had known everything worth knowing about nature, and that to recover that knowledge one had only to study his texts with exquisite care, rather than explore what Galileo and others called the book of nature.
The key question is: did the Protestant Reformation encourage the turn from the books of Aristotle to the book of nature? Certainly, Aristotelian philosophy was embedded in Catholic theology. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation — that in the Mass, bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ — was propounded through Aristotelian ideas about essence and appearance.
The mechanical philosophy of Descartes and others became the intellectual underpinning of much of the new science in the second half of the seventeenth century, but was always suspect in Catholic countries. However, in the real world, things were not so simple. The first powerful advocate of the mechanical philosophy was a Catholic priest and professor of mathematics , Pierre Gassendi; Descartes never wavered in his Catholicism, although he did choose to live in the Protestant Netherlands.
Both Catholic and Protestant theologians knew that Aristotle had denied the immortality of the soul and the creation of the Universe, and were accustomed to making a sharp intellectual distinction between his philosophy and Christian theology. Even in the Netherlands, the Cartesians were able to establish themselves in universities only by insisting that they, too, were entitled to keep their philosophy distinct from their theology.
Protestants did not reject Aristotelianism. Their universities outside the Netherlands were as wedded to it as Catholic ones. In England, a chair in natural philosophy was established in at Oxford, one of the universities most open to the new science. Yet until the end of the century, its holders were required to teach Aristotle; Oxford's mathematicians taught the new physics and astronomy of Galileo, Kepler and Newton. Moreover, Catholics were often just as willing as Protestants to make intellectual space for the new science.
And among both Catholics and Protestants, religious commitment sometimes clashed with scientific activity. Pascal gave up science after a religious experience; so did the Protestant Jan Swammerdam, one of the first great microscopists.
And although Protestants had a tradition of disputing authority and undertaking radical change, Protestantism as a state religion could be as conservative as Catholicism. If England led the way in promoting the new science, the relative openness and intellectual diversity of its culture after the restoration of the monarchy in is more significant than the religion of its scientists.
What fatally weakened the hold of the old Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy was the voyages of discovery, followed by the invention of the telescope and the barometer.
It was not the Reformation: the scientific revolution would have taken place without that. Indeed, progress might even have been more rapid, because the Church would have been less dogmatic in responding to novelty. The Council of Trent —63 , assembled by the Catholic Church in reaction to Luther's bombshell, tightened up doctrine, requiring it to conform to long-established tradition.
This led directly to the condemnation of Copernicanism and its heliocentric cosmos as heretical. One only has to think of the continuing clash between Protestant fundamentalism and Darwinism to see that there is no straightforward match between Protestantism and scientific values. The Catholic Church has never condemned Darwinism. So, let's for a moment imagine again that there had been no Ninety-Five Theses , no Reformation, no Protestantism.
Brahe would have observed the supernova of and the comet of ; the telescope would still have been invented; and Galileo would have observed the phases of Venus and discovered the law of free fall. The intellectual problems that led to Kepler's new astronomy, and made possible the Newtonian synthesis, would still have been in place by the early seventeenth century. There had always been people who had complained about the Catholic Church. But in the early 16 th century, the criticism became stronger.
There were reports that priests, monks and nuns did not behave as well as they should. Some felt that the Catholic Church was more interested in money and power than in saving souls.
For a fine, paid to the church, your sin would be forgiven and when you died, the Church said that you would go to heaven. Even sins like murder could be forgiven, and the church made plenty of money through this. In , the German priest Martin Luther attacked this practice as corrupt — nothing in the Bible said that you could buy forgiveness and it was wrong to let rich people buy their way into heaven.
Protestantism was born. Around the same time, the development of the printing press meant that books and pamphlets could be produced quickly and cheaply.
There were many differences between Protestants and Catholics. These are three major ones:. They felt that the church was corrupt. They believed that the Catholic Church simply used them to make money. They were supporters of mystery plays and entertainment, for religious celebration. The Protestants especially the later Puritans were opposed to all forms of religious entertainment and religious celebration.
This meant that only a few people could read the Bible or understand fully what happened in church. Protestants believed that everyone should have the chance to read the Bible, and everyone should understand religious services.
They called for Bibles to be printed in the languages of ordinary people, like English or Welsh, and for services in these languages. The first English Bibles began to appear.
However, Henry condemned Protestant beliefs and, where he could, destroyed copies of the English Bible. Everything changed in the late s when Henry wanted a divorce. They had many children but only one child survived. That was their daughter, Mary. Henry was desperate to have a son to inherit his throne, and unfortunately Catherine could no longer have children. Henry was also in love with an English courtier, Anne Boleyn. He was determined to divorce Catherine, marry Anne, and have a son with her.
Henry had to ask the Pope to give him a divorce, and sent his chief minister, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey , to arrange it. But also witnessed the birth of a new religion, Protestantism. Since the early 14 th century, reformation experiments were attempted in the Catholic church and paved the way for the Protestant Reformation in the 16 th century, which caused a lasting split.
Another way of being a Christian appeared in Germany, and then spread all over Europe: Protestantism. In the 16 th century, Martin Luther and Jean Calvin were the best known reformers.
They wanted to change the Church. They were scholars who studied the Bible. They translated it themselves, or had it translated into ordinary languages, they also taught, preached and wrote.
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