The Scientific Revolution PDF

Chapter 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism Isaac Newton (d. 1727) changed the way we do science, by putting in place an experimental method aimed at finding universal laws, such as the law of universal gravitation. ( © SSPL/ The Image Works.) ...

Chapter 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism Isaac Newton (d. 1727) changed the way we do science, by putting in place an experimental method aimed at finding universal laws, such as the law of universal gravitation. ( © SSPL/ The Image Works.)  I Medieval Cosmology n the fifteenth century, the medieval view of the world began to disintegrate. By the late A New View of Nature seventeenth century, educated Europeans no The Newtonian Synthesis: longer believed in it. Thus, the collapse of medi- eval institutions such as feudalism and serfdom had Experiment, Mathematics, an intellectual parallel. No movement was as im- and Theory portant in shaping the modern worldview as the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. It Biology, Medicine, and Chemistry made physical nature a valid object for experimen- Bacon and Descartes: Prophets tal inquiry and mathematical calculation. For the of the New Science new science to arise, a philosophical break with the medieval conception of nature had to occur. The The Social Implications of the medieval approach to nature sought to explain na- Scientific Revolution ture’s appearances. To the naked eye, the earth seems to be in the center of our universe. Medi- The Meaning of the Scientific eval philosophy explained how and why the earth Revolution was in the center; how and why heavy bodies fell toward it and light ones rose away from it. The philosophical revolution of the seventeenth century demolished such explanations. At the heart of the Scientific Revolution was the assumption that ap- Focus Questions pearances could lie, that truth lay in conceptualiz- ing the universe as an abstract entity: as matter in 1. What were the basic features of the motion, as geometrical shapes, and as weight and medieval view of the universe? number. The universe became a mechanism. 2. Who were the leading figures of the The Scientific Revolution brought a new, me- Scientific Revolution, and what were chanical conception of nature that enabled west- their accomplishments? erners to discover and explain the laws of nature mathematically. They came to see nature as com- 3. What was the relationship between posed solely of matter, whose motion, occurring in science and magic during this period? space and measurable by time, is governed by the 4. Why was the Scientific Revolution a push and pull of bodies and by laws of force. This decisive force in the shaping of the philosophically elegant construction unified nature modern approach to industry? as composed of atoms, knowable and even possibly manageable. It led to the formulation of a science of mechanics that could be employed in an indus- trial setting. The new science rested on a distinctive and replicable methodology. Because of successful ex- periments performed by scientists and natural philosophers such as Galileo Galilei, William Harvey, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, science acquired its still-characteristic methods of observa- tion, experimentation, and replication. By the late seventeenth century, no one could entertain a seri- This icon will direct you to interactive ous interest in the physical order without actually map and primary source activities on the doing—and recording—rigorous and systematic website college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e; experiments or without observing the behavior of words in bold direct you to the glossary that physical phenomena. The mechanical concept of also appears on the website. nature, coupled with a rigorous methodology, gave 401 402 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism modern scientists the means to unlock and explain most “natural” movement for them should be cir- nature’s secrets. cular, for it is perfect motion. Mathematics increasingly became the language Aristotle could put the earth at the center of of the new science. For centuries, Europeans had the universe and make it stationary because he pre- used first geometry and then algebra to explain cer- sumed its absolute heaviness; all other heavy bod- tain physical phenomena. With the Scientific Rev- ies that he had observed fell toward it. Aristotle olution came a new mathematics, the infinitesimal believed that everything in motion had been moved calculus. Even more important, philosophers be- by another object that was itself in motion—a came increasingly convinced that all nature— continuing chain of movers and moved. By infer- physical objects, as well as invisible forces—could ence, this belief led back to some object or being be expressed mathematically. By the late seven- that began the motion. Christian philosophers of teenth century, even geometry had become so com- the Middle Ages argued that Aristotle’s Unmoved plex that even the gifted philosopher John Locke Mover must be the God of Christianity. Aristotle, (1632–1704), a friend and contemporary of Isaac who had no conception of a personal God or an Newton, could not understand the sophisticated afterlife of rewards or punishments and who be- mathematics used by Newton in the Principia. A lieved that the universe was eternal rather than new scientific culture had been born. During the created at a specific point in time, would have eighteenth-century Enlightenment (Chapter 18), the found the Christian identification of the Mover model of science implied progress in the study of meaningless. nature, both human and physical. Although Aristotle’s cosmology never gained the status of orthodoxy among the ancient Greeks, by the second century a.d. in Alexandria, Greek as- MEDIEVAL COSMOLOGY tronomy became codified and then rigid. Ptolemy of Alexandria produced the Almagest (a.d. 150), The unique character of the modern scientific out- a handbook of Greek astronomy based on the look is most easily grasped through contrast with theories of Aristotle. The crucial assumption in the medieval understanding of the natural world the Almagest was that a motionless earth lay at the and its physical properties. It rested on Christian center of the universe and that the planets moved thought combined with theories derived from an- about it in a series of circular orbits, interrupted cient Greek writers, such as Aristotle and Ptolemy. by smaller circular orbits, called epicycles. The epi- Aristotle (384–322 b.c.) had argued that it was cycles explained why at certain times a planet was in the nature of things to move in certain ways. A visibly closer to the earth. As Ptolemy put it, if stone falls because it is absolutely heavy; fire rises the earth moved, “living things and individual because it is absolutely light. Weight is an inher- heavy objects would be left behind... [and] the ent property of a physical thing; therefore, motion earth itself would very soon have fallen com- results from the properties of bodies, and not from pletely out of the heavens.”1 By the Late Middle the forces that impinge on them. It follows (logi- Ages, Ptolemy’s handbook had come to represent cally but incorrectly) that if the medium through standard astronomical wisdom. As late as the which a body falls is taken as a constant, then the 1650s, more than a hundred years after the Polish speed of its fall could be doubled if its weight were astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus had argued math- doubled. Only rigorous experimentation could re- ematically that the sun was the center of the uni- fute this erroneous concept of motion; it was many verse, educated Europeans in most universities still centuries before such experimentation occurred. believed that the earth held the central position. Aristotle’s physics complemented his cosmology, In the thirteenth century, mainly through the or world picture. The earth, being the heaviest ob- philosophical efforts of Thomas Aquinas (1225– ject, lay stationary and suspended at the center of 1274), Aristotle’s thought was adapted to Chris- the universe. The sun, planets, and moon revolved tian beliefs, often in ingenious ways. Aquinas in circles around the earth. Aristotle presumed that emphasized that order pervaded nature and that because the planets were round themselves, al- every physical effect had a physical cause. The ten- ways in motion, and seemingly never altered, the dency in Aquinas’s thought and that of his follow-  A New View of Nature ❖ 403 ers, who were called scholastics, was to search for here to the person of the nobleman or noblewo- these causes—again, to ask why things move, rather man. The mechanical philosophy of Galileo, Boyle, than how they move. Aquinas insisted that nature and Newton, which was central to the Scientific proves God’s existence; God is the First Cause of Revolution, denied the very existence of forms. all physical phenomena. The world picture taught Matter was simply composed of tiny corpuscles, or by the scholastics affirmed the earth and human- atoms, hard and impenetrable, governed by the kind as the center of the Christian drama of birth, laws of impact or force. Such a conception of na- death, and salvation. ture threatened whole aspects of medieval and even Medieval thinkers integrated the cosmology of Christian doctrine; ultimately, in social terms its Aristotle and Ptolemy into a Christian framework implications proved to be democratic. that drew a sharp distinction between the world beyond the moon and the earthly realm. Celestial bodies were composed of the divine ether, a sub- A NEW VIEW OF NATURE stance too pure and too spiritual to be found on earth; heavenly bodies, unlike earthly bodies, were Renaissance Neo-Platonism immune to all change and obeyed different laws of motion. The universe was not homogeneous Italian Renaissance thinkers rediscovered the im- but rather was divided into a higher world of the portance of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato heavens and a lower world of earth. Earth could (c. 429–347 b.c.). Plato taught that the philoso- not compare with the heavens in spiritual dignity, pher must look beyond the appearances of things but God had nevertheless situated it in the center to an invisible reality, which is abstract, simple, of the universe. Earth deserved this position of im- rational, and best expressed mathematically. For portance; only here did Christ live and die for hu- Plato, the greatest achievements of the human mind mankind. This concept of the physical universe was were mathematics and music; both revealed the in- to be shattered by the Scientific Revolution. herent harmony and order within nature. Also shattered by the natural philosophy artic- Renaissance Platonists interpreted Plato from ulated in the seventeenth century was the belief a Christian perspective, and they believed that the that all reality, natural as well as human, could be Platonic search for truth about nature, about described as consisting of matter and form. Fol- God’s work, was but another aspect of the search lowing Aristotle, the scholastics argued that mat- for knowledge about God. The Italian universities ter was inchoate, lifeless, and indistinguishable and and academies became centers where the revival of that form gave it shape and identity. A table, for Plato flourished among teachers and translators, instance, possessed a recognizable shape and could who came to be known as Neo-Platonists. Central be identified as a table because it possessed the to their humanist curriculum was the study of phi- form of tableness. A human being existed only be- losophy, mathematics, music, Greek and Latin, and cause the matter of the body was given life by the in some cases Arabic. Those languages made avail- soul, by its form. This doctrine was central to me- able the world of pagan, pre-Christian learning dieval philosophy and theology. Important beliefs and its many different philosophies of nature. The were justified by it. For example, the church leading thinkers of the Scientific Revolution were taught that the priest, when performing the sacra- all influenced by Renaissance Neo-Platonism. They ment of the Eucharist, had the power to transform revered Plato’s search for an abstract and mathe- bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. matically elegant truth, and they explored the an- This was possible because, theologians argued, the cient writers and their theories about nature. Some matter of the bread and wine looked the same, but of the ancients had been atomists; a few had even its form was changed by the power of the priest. argued that the sun might be at the center of the Consequently, the Mass could be explained with- universe. They had also invented geometry. out recourse to magic, which was highly suspect. With the impulse to mathematize nature came Similarly, medieval people believed that the king’s the desire to measure and experience it. The redis- power resided within him; kingness was part of his covery of nature as mappable and quantifiable essence. Likewise, nobility was a quality said to ad- found expression in the study of human anatomy, college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e 404 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism as well as in the study of objects in motion. Ren- simultaneously mathematical, experimental, and aissance art shows the fruits of this inquiry, for magical. Although the achievements of modern sci- artists tried to depict the human body as exactly as ence depend on experimentation and mathematics, possible yet to give it ideal form. The revival of the impulse to search for nature’s secrets presumes artistic creativity associated with the Renaissance a degree of self-confidence best exemplified and is linked to an interest in the natural world and to symbolized by the magician. Neo-Platonism. The Copernican Revolution Magic and the Search for Nature Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473. The thinkers of the Scientific Revolution also drew As a young man, he enrolled at the University of on a body of magical and mystical thought put in Kraków, where he may have come under the influ- place during the first and second centuries a.d. ence of Renaissance Platonism, which was spread- Many of these anonymous students of magic be- ing outward from the Italian city-states. Copernicus lieved that there had once been an ancient Egyptian also journeyed to Italy, and in Bologna and Padua priest, Hermes Trismegistus, who had possessed he might have encountered ancient Greek texts secret knowledge about nature’s processes and the containing arguments for the sun being the center ultimate forces at work in the universe. Hermetic of the universe. We know very little about his early literature stated that true knowledge comes from education. a contemplation of the One, or the Whole—a spir- Copernicus’s interest in mathematics and astron- itual reality higher than, yet embedded in, nature. omy was stimulated by contemporary discussions Some of these ancient writings argued that the sun of the need for calendar reform, which required a was the natural symbol of this Oneness, and such thorough understanding of Ptolemaic astronomy. an argument seemed to give weight to a heliocen- The mathematical complexity of the Ptolemaic sys- tric picture of the universe. The Hermetic approach tem troubled Copernicus, who believed with the to nature also incorporated elements of the Pythag- Neo-Platonists that truth was the product of ele- orean and Neo-Platonic traditions, which empha- gance and simplicity. In addition, Copernicus knew sized the inner mathematical harmony pervading that Ptolemy had predecessors among the ancients nature. A follower of Hermeticism might approach who philosophized about a heliocentric universe nature mathematically as well as magically. For ex- or who held Aristotle’s cosmology and physics in ample, Johannes Kepler (see below) was both a fine little regard. Thus, a Renaissance education gave mathematician and a believer in the magical power Copernicus not a body of new scientific truth, but of nature. Though not directly influenced by Her- rather the courage to break with traditional astro- meticism as a system of belief, Isaac Newton for nomical truth taught in the universities. much of his life saw no contradiction in searching Copernicus became convinced that the sun was for the mathematical laws of nature while prac- at the center of the universe. So he began a life- ticing alchemy—the search for a way to transform long task to work out mathematical explanations ordinary metals into gold—which was also the ori- of how a heliocentric universe operated. Unwilling gin of modern chemistry. to engage in controversy with the followers of Aris- In early modern Europe, the practitioners of totle, Copernicus did not publish his findings un- alchemy and astrology could also be mathemati- til 1543, the year of his death, in a work titled On cians and astronomers, and the sharp distinction the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Legend drawn today between magic and science—between says that his book, which in effect began the Scien- the irrational and the rational—would not have tific Revolution, was brought to him on his death- made sense to many of the leading natural philos- bed. Copernicus died a Catholic priest, hoping only ophers who lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth that his book would be read sympathetically. centuries. The treatise retained some elements of the The Renaissance revival of ancient learning con- Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system; for example, Co- tributed a new approach to nature, one that was pernicus kept Aristotle’s basic idea of the perfect  A New View of Nature ❖ 405 COPERNICAN SYSTEM. In his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model in which the planets orbit around the sun. (The Granger Collection, New York.) circular motion of the planets and the existence of But because most thinkers of the time were com- crystalline spheres within which the stars revolved. mitted to the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system and to He also retained many of Ptolemy’s epicycles— biblical statements that they thought supported it, orbits within the circular orbits of the sun and plan- they rejected Copernicus’s conclusions. They also ets. But Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model raised specific objections. The earth, they said, is of the universe that was mathematically simpler too heavy to move. How, some of Copernicus’s col- than Ptolemy’s earth-centered universe. His model leagues asked, can an object falling from a high eliminated some of Ptolemy’s epicycles and cleared tower land directly below the point from which it up various problems that had troubled astrono- was dropped if the earth is moving so rapidly? mers who were geocentric in their thinking. Copernicus’s genius lay in the pursuit of an idea—the concept of a sun-centered universe— The Laws of Planetary Motion: and in bringing to it a lifelong dedication as well as Tycho and Kepler brilliance in mathematics. By removing the earth from its central position and by giving it motion— Copernicus laid the foundation for the intellectual that is, by making the earth just another planet— revolution that gradually overturned the medieval Copernicus undermined the system of medieval conception of the universe and ushered in modern cosmology and made possible the birth of modern cosmology. But it fell to other observers to fill in astronomy. the important details. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e 406 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism never accepted the Copernican system, but he saw demonstrated that the velocity of a planet is not it as a challenge to astronomers. Aided by the king uniform, as had been believed, but increases as its of Denmark, Tycho built the finest observatory in distance from the sun decreases. Kepler’s third Europe. In 1572, he observed a new star in the law—that the squares of the times taken by any heavens. Its existence offered a direct and serious two planets in their revolutions around the sun are challenge to the Aristotelian and scholastic assump- in the same ratio as the cubes of their average dis- tion of unalterable, fixed, and hence perfect heav- tances from the sun—brought the planets into a ens. To this discovery of what eventually proved unified mathematical system. to be an exploding star, Tycho added his observa- There was immense significance in Kepler’s tions on the comet of 1577. He demonstrated that work. He gave sound mathematical proof to Co- it moved unimpeded through the areas between pernicus’s theory; forever eliminated the use of epi- the planets and passed right through the crystalline cycles, which had saved the appearance of circular spheres. This finding raised the question of whether motion; and demonstrated that mathematical re- such spheres existed, but Tycho himself remained lationships can describe the planetary system. But an Aristotelian. Although his devotion to a literal Kepler left a significant question unresolved: What reading of the Bible led Tycho to reject the Coper- kept the planets in their orbits? Why did they not nican sun-centered universe, he did propose an fly out into space or crash into the sun? The answer alternative system, in which the planets revolved would be supplied by Isaac Newton, who synthe- around the sun but the sun moved about a motion- sized the astronomy of Copernicus and Kepler with less earth. the new physics developed by Galileo. Ultimately, Tycho’s fame rests on his skill as a practicing astronomer. He bequeathed to future generations precise calculations about the move- Galileo: Experimental Physics ments of heavenly bodies. These calculations proved invaluable. They were put to greatest use by Jo- At the same time that Kepler was developing a hannes Kepler (1571–1630), a German who col- new astronomy, his contemporary, Galileo Galilei laborated with Tycho during the latter’s final years. (1564–1642), was breaking with the older physics Tycho bequeathed his astronomical papers to Kep- of Aristotle. A citizen of Pisa by birth, Galileo lived ler, who brought to these data a scientific vision for many years in Padua, where he conducted some that was both experimental and mystical. of his first experiments on the motion of bodies. Kepler searched persistently for harmonious Guided by the dominant philosophy of the Italian laws of planetary motion. He did so because he Renaissance—the revived doctrines of Plato— believed profoundly in the Platonic ideal. Accord- Galileo believed that beyond the visible world lay ing to this ideal, a spiritual force infuses the phys- certain universal truths, subject to mathematical ical order, beneath appearances are harmony and verification. Galileo insisted that the study of mo- unity, and the human mind can begin to compre- tion entails not only the use of logic (as Aristotle hend that unity only through gnosis—a direct and had believed) but also the application of mathe- mystical realization of unity—and through mathe- matics. For this Late Renaissance natural philoso- matics. Kepler believed that both approaches were pher, mathematics became the language of nature. compatible, and he managed to combine them. He Galileo also believed that only after experimenting believed in and practiced astrology (as did Tycho) with the operations of nature can the philosopher and throughout his lifetime tried to contact an an- formulate harmonious laws and give them mathe- cient but lost and secret wisdom. matical expression. Moreover, Galileo was trained In the course of his observations of the heav- in the practices of Renaissance art, in using shades ens, Kepler discovered the three basic laws of plan- and shadows to represent the placing of bodies rel- etary motion. First, the orbits of the planets are ative to one another. When he first looked at the elliptical, not circular as Aristotle and Ptolemy had moon through his telescope, that training became assumed, and the sun is one focus of the ellipse. very important. Unlike Tycho, Kepler accepted Copernicus’s the- In his mechanical experiments, Galileo discov- ory and provided proof for it. Kepler’s second law ered that, all other things being equal, bodies of un-  A New View of Nature ❖ 407 in a treatise called The Starry Messenger, he pro- claimed to the world that the moon “is not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical as a great num- ber of philosophers believe it and the other heav- enly bodies to be, but is uneven, rough, and full of cavities... being not unlike the face of the earth, relieved by chains of mountains and deep val- leys.”2 In addition, Galileo noticed spots on the sun, providing further evidence that heavenly ob- jects, like earthly objects, are physical bodies sus- ceptible to change. Nature is the same throughout. When he saw shadows through his telescope, he assumed that actual bodies were casting them, just as they do on an earthly landscape. Galileo’s art and science were of a piece. Through his telescope, Galileo also observed moons around Jupiter—a discovery that helped support the Copernican hypothesis. If Jupiter had moons, then all heavenly bodies did not orbit the earth. The moons of Jupiter removed a fundamen- tal criticism of Copernicus and opened up the pos- sibility that the earth, with its own moon, might be just like Jupiter and that both might in turn re- volve around a central point—the sun. With Galileo, the science of Copernicus and the assault on Aristotle entered a new phase. Scholas- tic priests began to attack Galileo from their pul- pits in Florence. In Galileo’s public notoriety and in his following among the laity, they saw a threat NOTEBOOK SKETCHES OF THE PHASES OF THE to their own power. A secret group of priests and MOON, BY GALILEO GALILEI, 1609–1610. Galileo academics, named the Liga, formed with the ex- saw only shadows when he looked into his telescope. press purpose of silencing Galileo; they used Aris- But because he was trained as an artist in the prin- totle and the Bible to attack him. But Galileo was ciples of light and dark coloring to emphasize or also a courtier with friends in high places, so he shorten distance, he knew that what he saw repre- dared to challenge the clergy and to offer his sci- sented real objects, in this case mountains and valleys. ence directly to the laity. He argued publicly with Somewhat satirically, he compared the moon to Bo- the theologians. In the early seventeenth century, hemia. (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence.) the Catholic church saw danger on every front: Protestants in Germany, Jews and Muslims in the equal weight will experience a uniform acceleration East, and a laity demanding new schools that would (due to gravity). He demonstrated that bodies fall provide practical education for their children. Now with arithmetic regularity. Motion, therefore, obeys Galileo offered a view of the universe that con- laws that can be expressed mathematically. flicted with certain scriptural texts. Galileo established a fundamental principle of Historians used to believe that the church at- modern science: the order and uniformity of na- tacked Galileo solely because he was a Copernican, ture. No distinctions in rank or quality exist be- that is, because he believed the sun to be at the cen- tween the heavens and earth; heavenly bodies are ter of the universe. New evidence from the recently not perfect and changeless as Aristotle had believed. opened Vatican archives suggests that the church In 1609, Galileo built a telescope through which also may have worried about his theory of matter he viewed the surface of the moon. The next year, and his abandonment of the scholastics’ view of the college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e 408 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism relationship between matter and form. That view In 1666, Newton formulated the mathematics went to the heart of the doctrine of the Eucharist, for the universal law of gravitation, and in the same and the church saw, rightly, that the new science year, after rigorous experimentation, he determined threatened the philosophical foundations of certain the nature of light. The sciences of physics and op- key doctrines. tics were transformed. However, for many years, In 1632–1633, Galileo’s teachings were con- Newton did not publish his discoveries, perhaps demned, and he was placed under house arrest. because he feared controversy. Finally, another These actions cut short the open pursuit of science mathematician and friend, Edmund Halley, per- in many Catholic countries of the seventeenth cen- suaded him to publish under the sponsorship of the tury. Wherever the Inquisition was strong, the new Royal Society. The result was the Principia Math- science would be viewed as subversive. Censorship ematica of 1687. In 1704, Newton published his worked to stifle public intellectual inquiry. By mid- Opticks and revealed his theory that light was cor- century, science had become an increasingly Prot- puscular or atomic in nature and that it emanated estant and northern European phenomenon. from luminous bodies in a way that scientists later described as waves. Of the two books, both monumental achieve- Primary Source: Galileo Discovers the ments in the history of science, the Principia made Moons of Jupiter the greater impact on contemporaries. Newton offered universal mathematical laws, as well as a philosophy of nature that sought to explain the THE NEWTONIAN SYNTHESIS: essential structure of the universe: matter is always EXPERIMENT, MATHEMATICS, the same; it is atomic in structure, and in its essen- tial nature it is dead or lifeless; and it is acted on by AND THEORY immaterial forces that are placed in the universe by God. Newton said that the motion of matter By 1650, the works of Copernicus and especially could be explained by three laws: inertia, that a of Galileo had dethroned the physics and astron- body remains in a state of rest or continues its mo- omy of Aristotle and Ptolemy. A new philosophy tion in a straight line unless impelled to change by of nature tied to observation and Neo-Platonism forces impressed on it; acceleration, that the change had come into existence; its essence lay in the in the motion of a body is proportional to the force mathematical expression of physical laws that de- acting on it; and that for every action there is an scribe matter in motion. Yet no single overriding equal and opposite reaction. law had been articulated that would bring to- Newton applied his laws not only to observable gether the experimental successes of the new sci- matter on earth but also to the motion of planets ence, its mathematical sophistication, and its in their orbits. He showed that planets remain in philosophical revolution. This law was supplied their orbits not because circular motion is “natu- by Isaac Newton. ral” or because crystalline spheres keep them in Newton was born in 1642, in Lincolnshire, Eng- place. Rather, said Newton, planets keep to their land, the son of a modest yeoman. Because of his orbits because every body in the universe exercises intellectual promise, he obtained a place at Trinity a force on every other body, a force that he called College, Cambridge, and there he devoted himself universal gravitation. Gravity is proportional to to natural philosophy and mathematics. Newton’s the product of the masses of two bodies and in- student notebooks survive and show him mastering versely proportional to the square of the distance philosophical texts while also trying to understand between them. It is operative throughout the uni- the fundamental truths of Protestant Christianity verse, whether on earth or in the heavens, and it is as taught at Cambridge. Combining Christian Neo- capable of mathematical expression. Newton built Platonism with a genius for mathematics, Newton his theory on the work of other scientific giants, produced a coherent synthesis of the science of notably Kepler and Galileo. No one before him, Kepler and Galileo, which eventually captured the however, had possessed the breadth of vision, math- imagination of European intellectuals. ematical genius, and dedication to rigorous obser-  Biology, Medicine, and Chemistry ❖ 409 vation to combine this knowledge into one grand synthesis. The universe now became matter in motion; it was governed by invisible forces that operated everywhere, both on earth and in the heavens, and these forces could be expressed mathematically. The medieval picture of the universe as closed, earthbound, and earth centered was replaced by a universe seen to be infinite and governed by univer- sal laws. The earth became simply another moving planet. Newtonian principles were taught by genera- tions of Newton’s followers as, in effect, applied mechanics. A revolution in thought had changed Western ideas about nature forever and also cre- ated a body of knowledge that could be practically applied to everyday bodies. But what was God’s role in this new universe? Newton and his circle la- bored to create a mechanical worldview dependent on the will of God. At one time, Newton believed that gravity was simply the will of God operating on the universe. As he wrote in the Opticks, the physical order “can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent.”3 Because of his strong religious convictions, Newton allowed his science to be used in the ser- vice of the established Anglican church, and his fol- lowers argued for social stability anchored in an SCIENCE AND BLOOD. For centuries, it was believed ordered universe and an established church. New- that blood carried character traits as well as nobility. ton, a scientific genius, was also a deeply religious The English experimenter William Harvey viewed thinker committed to the maintenance of Protes- blood as simply a liquid that circulated in the body tantism in England. Among his contemporaries, in a uniform way. Illustrations such as this one made however, freethinkers such as John Toland (see the point graphically. (© Bettmann/Corbis.) “Skeptics, Freethinkers, and Deists,” in Chapter 18, page 425) used his ideas to argue that nature can operate on its own, without the assistance of a providential God. Doctors clung to the teachings of the ancient practitioners Galen and Hippocrates. In general, Galenic medicine paid little attention to the discov- BIOLOGY, MEDICINE, ery of specific cures for particular diseases. As a fol- lower of Aristotle, Galen emphasized the elements AND CHEMISTRY that make up the body; he called their manifesta- tions humors. A person with an excess of blood The spectacular advances in physics and astronomy was sanguine; a person with too much bile was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were choleric. Health consisted of a restoration of bal- not matched in the biological sciences. Indeed, the ances among these various elements, so Galenic day-to-day practice of medicine throughout west- doctors often prescribed purges of one sort or an- ern Europe changed little in the period from 1600 other. The most famous of these was bloodletting, to 1700, for much of medical practice relied, as it but sweating was also a favorite remedy. Taught had since the Middle Ages, on astrology. devotedly in the medical schools of Europe, these college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e 410 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism methods were often as dangerous as the diseases slow, and the practical uses of his discovery were they sought to cure. not readily perceived. Despite the tenacity of Galenic medicine, The experimental method in medicine produced sixteenth- and seventeenth-century innovators and other innovations, among them systematic exami- reformers challenged and eventually overturned nation not only of corpses but also of patients. In medical orthodoxy. With an almost missionary the late 1600s, the finest doctor of the age, Herman zeal, Paracelsus (1493–1541), a Swiss-German phy- Boerhaave, taught his students in Leiden, in the sician and Hermeticist, introduced the concept of Dutch Republic, by taking them on house calls, diagnostic medicine. He argued that particular dis- arguing that nothing in medicine can be known eases can be differentiated and are related to chem- without a careful and rigorous examination of the ical imbalances. His treatments relied on chemicals body. He proclaimed that he was trying to bring and not on bloodletting or the positions of the stars the methods and philosophy of the new science to (although he did not discount such influences), and medicine, and he pioneered hands-on medical he proclaimed an almost ecstatic vision of human techniques. vitality and longevity. In most universities, the fac- Just as Newton applied the theory and method ulties of medicine bitterly opposed his views, but by of science to the heavens, his contemporaries on 1650 in England and later in that century in France, both sides of the English Channel sought to utilize Paracelsian ideas had many advocates. Support science to illuminate every object we experience. for Paracelsian medicine, often combined with al- Protestantism inspired them to be aggressive in chemy, invariably accompanied an attack on the their assault on scholasticism. Indeed, the most traditional medical establishment and its profes- original experimenter of the age, who codified the sional monopoly, and it often signaled an interest experimental method as we know it, was a devout in the new science. The struggle between Galenists English Protestant. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) be- and Paracelsians quickly took on a social dimen- lieved that Aristotle’s physics and the philosophy sion; the innovators saw themselves pitted against that supported it promoted Catholic teachings and a medical elite, which, in their opinion, had lost its thus amounted to little more than magic. At a time commitment to medical research and existed solely when English Protestants feared a revival of Cath- to perpetuate itself. In the eighteenth century, Par- olic and absolutist monarchy, Boyle wanted to acelsian ideas, stripped of their alchemical associ- abolish the invisible forces on which Catholic the- ations, became commonplace. ology rested. He also wished to defeat the magic of The medical reforms of the eighteenth century what he called “the vulgar,” that is, the beliefs of did not rest solely on the Paracelsian approach; the populace, whose disorder and tendencies to re- they also relied heavily on the experimental break- bellion he feared. throughs made in the science of anatomy. A pio- To accomplish these aims, Boyle urged scientists neer in this field was the Belgian surgeon Andreas to adopt the zeal of the magicians, but without Vesalius (1515–1564), who published The Struc- their secretive practices and their conjuring with ture of the Human Body in 1543. Opposing Ga- spirits. As an alternative to spirits, Boyle advocated lenic practice, Vesalius argued for observation and the atomic explanation of matter: that matter con- anatomical dissection as the keys to knowing how sists of small, hard, indestructible particles that the human body works. By the late seventeenth behave with regularity. According to Boyle, the ex- century, doctors had learned a great deal about the istence of these corpuscles explained the changes in human body, its structure, and its chemistry. gases, fluids, and solids. The study of anatomy yielded dramatic results. Boyle pioneered the experimental method with In 1628, William Harvey (1578–1657) announced such exciting and accurate results that by the time that he had discovered the circulation of blood. of his death no serious scientist could attempt Harvey compared the functioning of the heart to chemical experiments without following his guide- that of a mechanical pump, and once again the ten- lines. Thus, the science of chemistry acquired its dency to mechanize nature, so basic to the Scientific characteristic experimentalism; it was also based Revolution in physics, led to a significant discov- on an atomic theory of matter. But only late in the ery. Yet the acceptance of Harvey’s work was very eighteenth century was chemistry applied to med-  Bacon and Descartes: Prophets of the New Science ❖ 411 ical research, particularly in the search for a cure for tuberculosis. BACON AND DESCARTES: PROPHETS OF THE NEW SCIENCE The new science needed prophets and social theo- rists to give it direction and to assess its implica- tions. During the early modern period, two major reformers tried, in disparate ways, to channel sci- ence into the service of specific social programs: Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and René Descartes (1596–1650). Bacon The decidedly practical and empirical Francis Bacon stands as the most important English pro- ponent of the new science, though not its most important practitioner. Bacon was lord chancellor of England under James I, and he wrote about the usefulness of science partly in an effort to convince the crown of its advantages. He wanted science to serve the interests of strong monarchy and also to PORTRAIT, FRANCIS BACON. Francis Bacon is seen improve the human condition through better med- as a prophet of the new science. Witness to the icine and application. extraordinary scientific energy visible in Elizabethan No philosopher of modern science has surpassed England, Bacon wrote in order to urge Elizabeth’s Bacon in elevating the study of nature to a human- successor, James I, to embrace science and make it a istic discipline. In the Advancement of Learning state priority. Bacon also turned science into an (1605), Bacon argued that science must be open activity of the pious; doing God’s work with nature and that all ideas must be allowed a hearing. Sci- became as important as knowing God’s biblical ence must have human goals: the improvement of word. (© Historial Picture Archive/Corbis.) humanity’s material condition and the advance- ment of trade and industry, but not the making of war or the taking of lives. Bacon also saw the need for science to possess an inductive methodology security of the state inspired much scientific activity grounded in experience; the scientist should first in the seventeenth century, particularly in England. of all be a collector of facts. Bacon also benefited from the vibrancy of Lon- Although Bacon was rather vague about how don’s scientific community, one of the largest in the scientist actually works, he knew that precon- Europe. ceived ideas imposed on nature seldom yield posi- tive results. An opponent of Aristotle, Bacon argued that university education should move away from Descartes the ancient texts and toward the new learning. A powerful civil servant, he was not afraid to attack René Descartes, a French philosopher, went to the the guardians of tradition. The Baconian vision of best French schools and was trained by the Jesuits progress in science leading to better lives and the in mathematics and scholastic philosophy. Yet in college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e 412 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism FONTENELLE, PORTRAIT BY BERNARD PICART. Fontenelle understood the new science, but most im- portant, he could make it understandable to those less learned than himself. He gave a eulogy on the death PORTRAIT DESCARTES. If the Scientific Revolution of Newton that was read throughout the century, and had a revolutionary, it was Descartes. Trained by the he also worked tirelessly for the French Academy of Jesuits and a devout Christian, Descartes nevertheless Sciences. (© Corbis.) turned his back on scholasticism and based learning on the power of the individual mind. “Cogito ergo sum”—I think therefore I am—rallied generations of clear and distinct ideas, to think for itself and not inquirers as did Descartes’s mechanical understand- slavishly follow tradition or doctrine. ing of matter in motion. (© Chris Hellier/Corbis.) God exists because Descartes had in his mind an idea of a supreme, perfect being, and, Des- cartes reasoned, this idea could have been put his early twenties, he experienced a crisis of confi- there only by such a being, not by any ordinary dence and came to the conclusion that everything mortal. Therefore, God’s existence means that the he had been taught was irrelevant and meaningless. physical world must be real, for no Creator would Descartes began to search within himself for invent a vast hoax. what he could be sure was clear and distinct knowl- For Descartes, the new science meant confi- edge. All he could know with certainty was the dence: in his own mind, in the knowability of the fact of his existence, and even that he knew only physical world, and in mathematics and reason. because he experienced not his body but his mind: Scientific thought meant an alternative to every- “I think, therefore I am.” From this point of cer- thing he associated with the medieval: confusion, titude, Descartes deduced the existence of God disorder, conflict between church and state, fear and of nature. He argued that science should be of the unknown, and magic. Turning his back on grounded on the human mind’s ability to arrive at the centuries immediately preceding his own, Des-  Bacon and Descartes: Prophets of the New Science ❖ 413 LA VÉRITÉ, BY BERNARD PICART. In the early eighteenth century, French critics of the existing order in church and state used Descartes as a symbol. Here he is pointing to the slaying of error and ignorance by truth. The engraver who created this picture was eventually forced to flee France and settle in the Dutch Republic. (Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands.) cartes, possibly as a result of knowing Bacon’s ideas classical languages and Hebrew thought. His gen- for practical science, proclaimed that “it is possible ius drew him to the new science, and he became to attain knowledge which is very useful in life, an early explicator of Descartes’s philosophy, in and that, instead of that speculative philosophy which he spied a central weakness: its inability to which is taught in the schools [that is, scholasti- explain the linkage between matter and spirit or cism], we may find a practical philosophy by means to connect God to nature in any meaningful way. of which... we can... render ourselves the mas- Spinoza’s solution was radical, logical, and thor- ters and possessors of nature.”4 Descartes was the oughly heretical to Christian thinkers: he argued first person to dream about the capacity of science that God is Nature, that matter and spirit in effect to control and dominate nature, though he never are one. could have imagined its potential to destroy nature. To this day, philosophers dispute Spinoza’s pur- (See document on page 417.) pose. Was he an atheist who wanted to do away In order to affirm the existence of anything other with the Judeo-Christian conception of God, or than the abstractions of mathematics, Descartes was he a mystic who wished to infuse God into had to proclaim the existence of God and the phys- Nature? His contemporaries of every religious per- ical world, largely because both were ideas in his suasion (he was expelled from his Amsterdam syn- mind. He radically separated matter from spirit and agogue) deemed him an atheist and thought that mind from nature, and in the process he widened a he had become one by reading too much science. gap in Western thought that would haunt philos- Their condemnation made “spinozism” a byword ophers for centuries. What if a thinker who under- for atheism and freethinking. In the Enlightenment, stood the implications of Descartes’s separation of freethinkers and materialists would claim to have matter from spirit was to argue that only matter been inspired by Spinoza. existed? The thinker who did so was Benedict de The thoughts and visions of Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza (1632–1677). Born in Amsterdam of re- and Spinoza revealed the power and importance cently immigrated Jewish parents, he was trained in of scientific knowledge. Science could promote college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e 414 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism and self-confidence unimagined even by Renais- sance proponents of individualism or by the theo- rists of absolute state power. THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION Perhaps the critical factor making for the success of the Scientific Revolution lay in the acceptance and use of the new science by educated elites. With- out such acceptance, the science of Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Boyle, and Newton would have re- mained the specialized knowledge of the few—or, worse still, a suspect, even heretical, approach to nature. Galileo could not have succeeded as much as he did in disseminating his theories (despite the hostility of the church) without his large Euro- pean following and his many aristocratic patrons, particularly in Florence. Access to the printing press in Europe was also critical to the acceptance of the new mechanical un- derstanding of nature. Descartes understood that fact when he left France, after the condemnation BENEDICT SPINOZA. Spinoza lived most of his life in of Galileo, and published and lived in the Nether- Amsterdam, cut off from his synagogue by an expul- lands. Persecution and censorship meant that the sion. We do not know why he was expelled but it may new science made far less of an impact in Catholic very well have had something to do with his radical than in Protestant Europe. It is not accidental that understanding of nature as the only substance in the most of the leaders within the scientific movement world. His closest friends were a Dutch sect of devout wrote and published in their native languages, not Protestants who deeply believed in the freedom to in Latin. think for one’s self. (Archive Photos/Getty Images.) Equally important, the new science offered the dream of power to both governments and early promoters of industry. In the seventeenth century, this dream enticed monarchs and statesmen to give human well-being, as Bacon insisted; it could their patronage to scientific academies and projects. make human beings and nature the foundation of The achievements of the new science were quickly all meaningful knowledge, as Descartes assumed; institutionalized in academies dominated either by science could express pantheism or justify a belief the state, as in France, or by the landed and com- in Nature as God, as Spinoza suggested. Which- mercial elite, as in England. Founded in the 1660s, ever position educated westerners embraced by scientific academies such as the Royal Society in the late 1600s, science would be used to challenge England became centers for the dissemination of the traditional authority of the clergy, whether science at a time when many universities, still con- Catholic or Protestant. Why believe in dogmas trolled by the clergy, were hostile to its attack on and texts when nature offered another kind of scholasticism. truth—universal and, just as important, applica- The new mechanical learning—not widely com- ble to human problems? For good or ill, the Scien- municated by Newton’s Principia, which was far tific Revolution gave its followers a sense of power too technical for most people, but rather passed  The Meaning of the Scientific Revolution ❖ 415 on as mechanical information in handbooks and lectures—began to be applied in Britain and Scot- land during the second half of the eighteenth cen- tury. The applied mechanics that improved the steam engine and utilized it in coal mining and water engineering stemmed from Newtonian lec- tures and books, which proliferated in Britain during the 1700s. The road from the Scientific Revolution leads more directly to the Industrial Revolution than is often realized. James Watt, who perfected the steam engine, had been tutored in Newtonian mechanics. His engine revolutionized the manufacturing of cotton and the draining of coal mines. In the same period, the scientific gentle- man and woman became fashionable icons. Elite and mildly prosperous families brought micro- scopes and globes into their homes. Owning these objects caused the family’s status to rise, even if no one in the family became an engineer or doctor. Science had captured the Western imagination. THE MEANING OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION JAMES WATT (1736–1819). This engraved portrait The Scientific Revolution was decisive in shaping of James Watt was rendered in his successful years. the modern mentality; it shattered the medieval His somewhat grim affect is consonant with the de- view of the universe and replaced it with a wholly pression he often described in his letters. (The Granger different worldview. Gone was the belief that a mo- Collection, New York.) tionless earth lay at the center of a universe that was finite and enclosed by a ring of stars. Gone, too, was the belief that the universe was divided be systematic, verifiable, progressive, and useful. into higher and lower worlds and that the laws of This new approach to learning used the scientists motion operating in the heavens were different of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as proof from those working on earth. Nature could be mas- that no institution or dogma had a monopoly on tered conceptually and mathematically. truth; the scientific approach would yield knowl- The experimental methodology of the new sci- edge that might, if properly applied for the good ence played a crucial historical role in reorienting of all people, produce a new and better age. Such Western thought from medieval theology and an outlook gave thinkers new confidence in the metaphysics to the study of physical and human power of the human mind to master nature and problems. In the Late Middle Ages, most men of led them to examine European institutions and learning were Aristotelians and theologians. By the traditions with an inquiring, critical, and skepti- mid-eighteenth century, knowledge of Newtonian cal spirit. Scientific societies and academies sprang science and the dissemination of useful learning up all over Europe. In the Dutch Republic in 1785, had become the goal of the educated classes. All a society was also founded by women interested knowledge, it was believed, could emulate scientific in receiving a scientific education. Most scientific knowledge: it could be based on observation, ex- academies, however, excluded women into the perimentation, or rational deduction; and it could twentieth century. college.hmco.com/pic/perrywc9e Profile Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) Today we know so much more about Sir Isaac Newton, about his beliefs and life, than did his contemporaries. Newton was very private, even secretive. He wanted to appear to the world solely as a natural philosopher interested in local mo- tion and the motions of the heavenly bodies. He said sternly, “I do not frame hypotheses,” when asked to explain what universal gravitation ac- tually is. In his heart, he believed it to be the will of God operating in the universe. This deeply religious man devoted as many hours of his work- week to theology and biblical prophecy as he did to experiments. Perhaps most surprising of all his labors are his alchemical pursuits. Like the magicians of old, he wanted to understand the secret workings of chemical action, and he be- lieved that someday the truly pious natural phi- losopher would be able to transform ordinary metals into gold. Evidence of the private Newton sits amid his vast manuscript collections, which are now dispersed all over the world. At Imperial College, London, the Newton project has suc- ceeded in putting many of these manuscripts (Image Select/Art Resource, N.Y.) online so that everyone can read them. Go to http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk. The Scientific Revolution ultimately weakened among the European masses, were regarded with traditional Christianity. God’s role in a mechanical disdain by elite culture. Large numbers of people universe was not clear. Newton had argued that remained devoted to some form of traditional God not only set the universe in motion but still Christianity, and the uncertainty of a universe gov- intervened in its operations, thus leaving room for erned by devils, witches, or the stars continued to miracles. Others retained a place for God as Cre- make sense to peasants and laborers. ator but regarded miracles as limitations on nature’s In Catholic countries, where the Scientific Rev- mechanical perfection. Applied to religious doc- olution began, hostility toward scientific ideas gath- trines, Descartes’s reliance on methodical doubt ered strength in the early 1600s. The mentality of and clarity of thought and Bacon’s insistence on the Counter Reformation enabled lesser minds to careful observation led thinkers to question the va- exercise their fears against any idea they regarded lidity of Christian teachings. Theology became a as suspicious. Galileo was caught in this hostile en- separate, and for some an irrelevant, area of intel- vironment, and the Copernican system was con- lectual inquiry, not fit for the interests of practical, demned by the church in 1616. In Spain and well-informed people. Not only Christian doc- Poland, it was not officially taught until the 1770s. trines but also various popular beliefs grew suspect. Gradually, the science of Newton became the Magic, witchcraft, and astrology, still widespread science of western Europe: nature mechanized, ana- 416  Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 1. Peter Paul Rubens. The Betrothal of Saint Cath- erine, sketch for a large altar painting, c. 1628. (Staatliche Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany / The Bridgeman Art Library.) T he influence of political, economic, and social change permeates the visual arts of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies. Perhaps most significant to the artists ereign states and by a change in the nature of artistic patronage. Although a number of terms are used to de- scribe the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who made their living by providing paintings the one most commonly applied by art histori- with religious themes for churches, as well as ans is baroque. The word literally means irreg- for private patrons, were the religious conflicts ularly shaped, whimsical, grotesque, or odd. Its that split apart European society. Catholics and origin is French, but it is generally agreed that Protestants quarreled and openly fought over the baroque style of art originated in Rome. doctrine and dogma; as a result of the strug- Baroque art is hard to explain within the gles, artists had to decide how best to please context of the social and political changes that patrons whose religious sympathies may have were sweeping over Europe. Some historians changed or developed in new directions. Politi- see it as illustrative of the Counter Reforma- cally, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tion; others point out that the style was equally are also marked by the emergence of new sov- appealing to Catholics and Protestants. Nor 2. Giovanne Benedetto Castiglione. Melancholia, mid-seventeenth century. (Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Muriel and Philip Berman Gift, acquired from the Matthew Carey Lea Bequest of 1898 to The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.) was baroque favored only by the absolute rul- artists. But we also notice that Rubens’s palette ers of France or other monarchs; it was also a is much lighter than theirs, and consequently, style of the bourgeois. the figures of Saint Catherine and the saints One of the most famous baroque painters who surround her seem to move lightly as well. was Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) of Flan- Noteworthy, too, in this canvas is the depic- ders, which, prospering from its commercial tion of the figures, whose hairstyles and mode connections, was home to many successful of dress is contemporary rather than suggestive artists and patrons in this period. To study of biblical times. This juxtaposition of scenes painting, Rubens traveled to Rome in 1600 from the Bible with the flavor of everyday life and spent many years visiting other artistic in the seventeenth century reveals much about centers in Italy. There he learned to paint on the connection between the artist and his own large-scale canvases and play with the size and surroundings. weight of his subjects. Despite the influence of The baroque style of highly finished, realis- his southern contemporaries, however, his style tic works is very familiar to us. But we must remained essentially Flemish. also recall that baroque artists were skilled In his painting The Betrothal of Saint Cathe- draftsmen. As an example, there is Giovanne rine (Figure 1), we immediately sense the energy Benedetto Castiglione’s Melancholia (mid- and fullness of the figures typical among Italian seventeenth century) (Figure 2), a brush draw- ing in oil with added red chalk. Works on paper do not always survive as well as those on board or canvas. The drawings we do have at- test to the artistic skill of seventeenth-century artists, who used line and shadow as well as did their Renaissance predecessors. Melancholia is an allegory about the human dilemma of choosing among the worlds of art, religion, science, and learning. Symbols from each of these worlds—scientific tools, musical instruments, a globe, and the like—surround the figure of Genius, who sits in a contempla- tive pose. Although by and large the artists of the ba- roque period were not well-rounded humanists like those of the Renaissance, some of them could work in two- and three-dimensional art forms. For example, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) distinguished himself as a sculp- tor as well as an architect. Bernini was responsible for the sculptural program of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. He also completed sculptures in other Roman churches, including the Cornaro Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. His The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1644–1647) (Figure 3) is a remarkable work that tells a dramatic 3. Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The Ecstasy of Saint story. The heart of Saint Teresa of Avila was Teresa, 1644–1647. (Scala/Art Resource, N.Y.) said to have been pierced by an angel’s golden arrow; the pain was exquisite, for not only was it the pain of death but also the pleasure of everlasting life in the arms of God. Bernini national reputation. Nicolas Poussin (1593/4– skillfully portrays the exact moment of Saint Teresa’s ecstasy, in a theatrical setting using not 1665) relied strongly on the art of the classical only sculpture but also the architectural ele- and especially the Hellenistic periods for his in- ments of the chapel. spiration. His The Rape of the Sabine Women The saint and the angel are carved of white (c. 1636–37) (Figure 4), a lavish and richly marble and seem to be floating on a cloud. painted canvas, captures action like a carefully The sculpted golden rays, which descend from posed photograph. Indeed, if Bernini was theat- a point above the figures, are bathed in light rical in his portrayal of Saint Teresa, one could by a window hidden behind the frame that sur- say that Poussin is cinematographic. rounds the two figures. Bernini decorated the The story depicted in The Rape of the Sa- entire chapel to follow the theme of Saint Te- bine Women is derived from classical myth- resa; ceiling frescoes show clouds of angels cel- ology; the poses of the figures hark back to the ebrating the event. Hellenistic period. Compare the positioning While Bernini was gaining fame in Italy, of the arms of the women on the left of the a French painter—one who spent almost his canvas with the tortured stance of Laocoön, entire career in Rome—was winning an inter- in the sculpture shown in Figure 4 of the first 4. Nicolas Poussin. The Rape of the Sabine Women, c. 1636–1637. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Har- ris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1946 [46.160]. Photograph © 1992 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.) art essay. Other groups in the Poussin canvas his meticulous, almost photo-realistic style. In are also reminiscent of that sculpture. As an- particular, it focuses on the way in which glass other bow to the ancient past, Poussin paints reflects light and on the juxtaposition of dif- in the background buildings that are faithful to ferent textures. Although modern art histori- Roman prototypes. Such reliance on archaeol- ans view some still lifes as merely ornamental ogy and mythology are typical of his work. displays of technical skill, there was a reason While paintings depicting mythological, for them. The popularity of still lifes, and of historical, or religious themes dominated the landscapes, probably has to do with the human major art markets during the baroque era, pa- desire for reassurance that “things are as they trons in Holland sought paintings that related should be,” that the status quo is being main- more to their own experience. For that reason, tained, regardless of the religious or political the genre of the still life—paintings of flowers, turmoil affecting other aspects of life. No mat- fruit, dishes, food, and other familiar objects— ter what was going on politically, no matter reached its zenith in that country. what religious dispute was being negotiated, Willem Kalf (1622–1693), among the most people could find a degree of comfort in being skilled of Dutch still-life masters, was able to surrounded by familiar objects or scenes. take a collection of objects and turn it into an While Kalf distinguished himself as a still- object of art. His Still Life (Figure 5) showcases life painter, another Dutch master, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) gained fame for his his- torical and religious canvases. Rembrandt was influenced in his early years by Italian painters, especially by their use of light. But that was not his only strength. His reputation as a portrait painter brought him renown and fortune in Amsterdam. Even more impressive were his self-portraits, which he painted not for the commissions of patrons but entirely for himself in the pursuit of truth. For an artist to paint as many self- portaits as Rembrandt did in the seventeenth century was very unusual. Self-portraits are analogous to autobiographies: in both, the art- ist examines himself because he believes his own self is worthy of self-examination. Rembrandt’s quest for the meaning of the inner life is compatible with the growing intro- spectiveness of the seventeenth century, an age that also produced Descartes’s dictum that to think is to be, the soliloquies of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the hallucinations of Cervantes’ 5. Willem Kalf. Still Life, c. 1660. (Scala/Art Re- Don Quixote. source, N.Y.) Rembrandt produced a series of sixty-two self-portraits during the course of his lifetime, an exhaustive autobiography in pictures in which he seemed to engage in a dialogue with decoration of his palace at Versailles with works himself in a variety of atttitudes and poses: that were lighthearted and youthful instead of vigorous, youthful, heroic, flamboyant, melo- stodgy and serious. His dabbling with artistic dramatic, enigmatic, aging, distraught, strug- matters led to quarrels and esthetic disagree- gling with despair, grimly resolved, disdainful, ments in the artistic community. strong, weak. Rembrandt completed Self-Por- An example of the rococo is François Bouch- trait at Old Age, 1669 (Figure 6), the fifty-fifth er’s (1703–1770) The Toilet of Venus (1751) in a corpus of sixty-two self-portraits, in the (Figure 7). Although some art historians de- last year of his life. It is among a cluster of self- scribe his work as slick and artificial, Boucher portraits in which he appears to have “pulled became the darling of the French court. In his himself together” and defined his identity. In it, The Toilet of Venus, the goddess is full figured we find Rembrandt staring back at us with the and lush, surrounded by all the sensual accou- calm assurance of a man who has mastered his terments that the goddess of love and erotic art and life, and surpassed his time and place. pleasure should have. Given her appearance The later part of the eighteenth century marks and her surroundings, Boucher’s Venus looks the beginning of the rococo and neoclassical pe- as though she would have been comfortable in riods in art history. Especially popular in France, period dress, supervising the decor of her bou- the rococo and neoclassical movements owed doir at the palace at Versailles. Clearly, Boucher much to political and social forces. The term ro- understood his audience well. coco describes a style that is frothy and frivolous While Boucher exemplified the light and and compatible with the peripheral concerns of airy sentiment of the rococo, Jacques Louis royalty. In 1698, King Louis XIV ordered the re- David (1748–1825) typified the neoclassical.  6. Rembrandt van Rijn. Self Portrait at Old Age, 1669. (Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, N.Y.) The neoclassical style represents a return to the The subject matter is important because it il- rationality and harmony of the classical past; luminates the neoclassical concept of virtue, many of the works from this period also reflect represented by the martyrdom of Marat, a rev- contemporary political events. olutionary. The style borrows from Poussin’s Justice, honor for one’s country, and the ability to capture a scene with photographic need to portray inspirational themes were the stillness, rendering the figures in an almost guideposts of the neoclassical artists. Their sculptural way. But David has also appro- training ground was Italy, primarily because it priated Rembrandt’s technique of skillfully was the source of the classical prototypes from juxtaposing light and shadow. While the neo- which they could learn. Jacques Louis David’s classicists sometimes paid homage to their dis- The Death of Marat (1793) (Figure 8) captures tant past in subject matter, they also showed the essence of that event in a manner that com- their reverence for the revolutionary ideals of bines the best of Poussin and Rubens. their own time. 7. François Boucher. The Toilet of Venus, 1751. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of William K. Vanderbilt, 1920 [20.155.9]. Photograph © 1993 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.) 8. Jacques Louis David. The Death of Marat, 1793. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, N.Y.)  Primary Source René Descartes, to get my hands on... ones... most curious and most rare.... Discourse on Method (1637) I was especially pleased with mathematics, on account of the certitude and evidence of its reasoning; but I did not as yet notice its true use, René Descartes gave a meaning to the new science and thinking that it only served the mechanical that validated human courage to think for oneself. arts, I was astonished thereby that its founda- He grounded everything that could be learned tions being so firm and so solid, that no one had about nature on the individual’s capacity to reason built anything lofty upon them. On the other and to discover truth. hand, I compared the writings of the ancient pagans that deal with morals and found them to be towering and magnificent palaces with no bet- Part One ter foundation than sand and mud. They extol Good sense is, of all things among men, the the virtues so highly, and make them appear most equally distributed; for everyone believes more valuable than anything in the world.... himself so well provided with it that even those I revered our theology, and aspired, as much who are the most difficult to please in everything as anyone else, to reach heaven; but I came to else, do not usually desire a larger measure of understand that the way is not less open to the this quality than they already have. It is not most ignorant than to the most learned, and that likely that they are deceived in this. It indicates the revealed truths that guide us there are be- rather that the power of judging well, and of dis- yond our comprehension. I would not have dared tinguishing the true from the false, what is prop- to submit them to my feeble reasoning, and I erly called good sense or reason, is by nature thought that in order to undertake to examine equal in all men.... For it is not enough to have them and to succeed in it, one would need to a vigorous mind; but the main thing is to apply have some extraordinary help from heaven and it well.... need to be more than a mere man.... And fi- I have been brought up on books from my nally, considering that all the same thought that childhood, and as I was persuaded that by their we have when we are awake can also come to us help a clear and certain knowledge of all that is when we are asleep, without there being any of useful in life might be acquired, I had an ex- them at that time that be true, I resolved to feign treme desire to learn them. But as soon as I had that all the things that had ever entered my mind finished the entire course of study, at the close were no more true than the illusions of my of which one is normally admitted into the dreams. But, immediately afterward, I took note ranks of the learned, I completely changed my that, while I wanted thus to think that everything opinion. For I found myself so encumbered by was false, it necessarily had to be that I, who was doubts and errors that it seemed to me I had ad- thinking this, were something. And, noticing vanced no further in all my attempts at learn- that this truth—I think, therefore I am—was so firm ing, than the discovery at every turn of my own and so assured that all the most extravagant ignorance. And yet I was studying at one of the suppositions of the skeptics were not capable of most famous schools in Europe, where I thought shaking it, I judged that I could accept it, with- that there must be learned men if there were out scruple, as the first principle of the philoso- any of them anywhere on earth. I had been phy that I was seeking. taught all that others learned there; and not contented with the sciences actually taught us, Margaret C. Jacob, The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with in addition I read all the books I had been able Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, forthcoming). 417 418 ❖ 17 The Scientific Revolution: The Universe Seen as a Mechanism lyzed, regulated, and mathematized. As a result of ence of industry. Thus, the Scientific Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, learned westerners came operating on both intellectual and commercial lev- to believe more strongly than ever that nature could els, laid the groundwork for two major develop- be mastered. Mechanical science—applied to ca- ments of the modern West: the Age of Enlightenment nals, engines, pumps, and levers—became the sci- and the Industrial Revolution. ❖ ❖ ❖ NOTES SUGGESTED READING 1. Quoted in Jean D. Moss, Novelties in the Burns, Williams E., Science in the Enlightenment: Heavens (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, An Encyclopedia (2003). An excellent source of 1993), 33. information. Gleick, James, Isaac Newton (2004). A great read. 2. Excerpted in Discoveries and Opinions of Harkness, Deborah, The Jewel House: Elizabethan Galileo, ed. Stillman Drake (Garden City, N.Y.: London and the Scientific Revolution (2007). Doubleday, 1957), 28. This is a remarkable account of the depth of scien- 3. Excerpted in Newton’s Philosophy of Nature, tific practice in one of the largest cities in Europe ed. H. S. Thayer (New York: Hafner, 1953), and gives a wholly new understanding of the ori- 177. gins of the Scientific Revolution. 4. Excerpted in Descartes’ Philosophical Writ- Jacob, Margaret C., and Larry Stewart, Practical ings, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Matter: Newton’s Science in the Service of Indus- Modern Library, 1958), 130–131. try and Empire (2004). A survey of the way New- ton’s science spread, first in Britain but then onto the Continent. The fruits of this new scientific cul- ture were put on display at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Newman, William R., Atoms and Alchemy: Chymis- try and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution (2006). Argues for the central role of alchemy in the new atomistic science.