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Scientific Revolution
Physics and Math in Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries in Europe
What were the achievements?
• Discovery of heliocentric view of the heavens
• Universal gravitation
• Advances in the understanding of:
– Light
– vacuum
– Gases
– Body
– Microscopic Life
Influences on Revolution
• Effects of Reformation, primarily
doubt in divine inspiration (so many
people disagreed, that not everyone
could be right or divinely inspired)
• Capitalism and emphasis on
materialism, money, and interest
• Improved tools and increased levels of
precision
Influences Continued
• Discovery of the New World
– Geography
– Botany
– Humanity
On the Importance of the New World
“ ‘It is a striking fact,’ wrote the Parisian lawyer
Etienne Pasquier, in the early 1560s, ‘that our
classical authors had no knowledge of all this
America, which we call New Lands.’ ‘This
America’ was not only outside the range of
Europe’s experience but was beyond
expectation. Africa and Asia, though distant
and unfamiliar for most people, had always
been known about” (Watson 442).
Role of Math in Scientific Revolution:
Why Europe?
• Europe jumped ahead of other civilizations in
mathematics
• Arab scholars had no incentive to play with
interpretations of data, because a change in
understanding could be a threat to religion
• Toby Huff argues that Arab astronomers had all the
observations needed, but did not make the connection
to the heliocentric model of universe
Math and Science continued
• Chinese and Arabs never developed the = sign
• Chinese never believed that empirical
investigation (making investigation based on what
senses could perceive) would explain the world
around us
• Scholarship in the Muslim world and China was
tied to a central authority
• Independence of science from the state allowed
Western scientists to be organized in their own
way, and skeptical
Why Astronomy?
• In the sixteenth century, scholars believed that
“The whole fate of life and everything else
was tied up with the movement of the
heavens: the heavens ruled the earth.
Therefore, whoever understood how the
heavens worked, would understand
everything on earth.” (Watson 476)
• In other words, the heavens would reveal the
mind of God.
Copernicus
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Highly educated in many subjects
Intensely curious
Poor at making accurate observations
He was clever and creative at conceiving of ideas, though.
He realized that the complexity of Ptolemy’s explanation of
the universe did not match what else was observed in the
natural world.
Copernicus’s Contribution
• 1. There is no center of all circles for heavenly
bodies
• 2. The earth is not the center of the universe
• 3. The sun is the center of the universe
• 4. By mathematical equations, the distance
from the earth to the sun is much less than
the relative distance of the height of the
firmament, or the distance of more outlying
stars and galaxies
Reaction to Copernicus’s Ideas
• He sent his book to the
Pope in 1530, who
circulated it among his
scholar-friends (Landry
website on Copernicus)
• Pope recommended that it
be printed
• It was not until 1615 that
someone objected that
Copernicus’s ideas created
problems for Christian
theology
Tycho Brahe
• Danish scientist who came from a
wealthy family
• Danish government gave him an
island where he could set up a
laboratory, complete with
observatory
• Brahe’s contribution was
voluminous records of accurate
astronomical observations
• In 1599 Brahe left Denmark to
work as chief mathematician for
the Holy Roman Emperor in
Prague
Brahe’s lab on the island of
Hveen
Johann Kepler
• Kepler had been an assistant to Brahe
• He began with Brahe’s observations, and eventually
abandoned the idea of trying to explain one system for all
the planets
• He focused on Mars, and discovered its elliptical orbit; this
discovery was applied to other planets, and matched with
observations
Implications of Elliptical Theory
• Elliptical orbits led to the study of gravity and
dynamics (physics)
• This theory completed refuted Aristotle’s
theory of the planets based on hollow
concentric crystal balls
Kepler’s Further Discoveries
• Calculated orbits, speeds, and distances of
other planets relative to the sun
• Found that the period of rotation and distance
from the sun was in the ratio of the square to
the cube
• Found a new harmony and pattern in the
universe
Galileo
• Professor of mathematics and military engineering,
which gave him access to a secret weapon captured
from the Dutch—the telescope (used to spy on enemy
armies)
• Galileo pointed it at the sky and discovered many more
stars than the 2,000 visible to the naked eye
• Galileo saw moons around Jupiter, which were so far
away from the Earth that he believed they could work
as a measure of absolute time
• This new measurement would allow navigators a new
way to find longitude at sea
Galileo and Military Inquiry
• Galileo’s study of the trajectory of cannon
balls caused him to study moving objects
• Study of pendulum and swing led to Galileo’s
square root law
Galileo’s Writing
• His dialogue written to explain the Ptolemaic and
Copernican views of the universe were perceived
to mock the Pope—Galileo was jailed by the
Inquisition
• In jail he wrote The Two New Sciences, which
showed that the path of a projectile is a parabola.
Parabola is related to cone and ellipse, which tied
together mathematical explanation of
observations of ballistics and astronomy.
Isaac Newton
• Spent much time alone as a child in the countryside
• Forced to return from Cambridge to his home in
Lincolnshire because of the plague of 1665
• In solitude at his country home he made many of his
foundational discoveries
Newton’s Contemporaries: A Brain
Trust
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He was familiar with the work of Galileo
Other scholars of his time include:
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)
Nicholas Mercator (1620-1687)
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665)
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
In this time span, the following advances were made in
Math: symbolic expression, the use of letters,
mathematical series, new ideas in geometry,
logarithms, and calculus
Newton and Calculus
• “The calculus is essentially an algebraic method for
understanding (i.e., calculating and measuring) the
variation in properties (such as velocities) which may be
altered in infinitesimal differences, that is, in properties
that are continuous. In our study at home we may have
200 books or 2,000, or 2,001, but we don’t have 200 ¾
books, or 2001 ½. However, when traveling on a train its
speed can vary continuously, infinitesimally, from 10 to 186
mph. The calculus concerns infinitesimal differences and is
important because it helps explain the way so much of our
universe varies” (Watson 481).
• For a time, Newton’s ideas were so advanced that he was
the only person who could “differentiate” or calculate the
area under a curve.
Gravitation
• Newton’s study of
Galileo’s work on
pendulums led him to
the idea of centrifugal
force.
• Centrifugal force led
to the idea of the idea
that gravity holds the
planets in place.
Newton on Optics
• Newton believed his more important work related to the study of light
• He studied light by examining what happened to it as it passed through
prisms, manipulating it further with mirrors and lenses
• Prior to Newton, people believed that light came from human eye to the
object observed
• Newton realized that light was more like a projectile, bounced off of the
viewed object
Meet Someone New. . .
• 1671 French astronomer Jean Picard (no
relation to Star Trek!) went to the Danish
island of Hveen where Tycho Brahe had his
laboratory. The lab was in ruins, but he met a
young man there who was self-taught about
astronomy, Olaus Römer.
• Picard took Römer back to France with him,
where Picard taught him more formal
processes for studying astronomy.
Römer continued
• Römer began examining the observations of
Galileo about Jupiter’s moons, and he discovered
that their speed was not constant, as Galileo had
recorded. The speed of the moons was relative
to Jupiter’s distance from Earth.
• Römer concluded that light has a speed, which
idea was accepted by people who had had
experience with the speed of sound on
battlefields, where they could see a cannonball
before they could hear the report from the
cannon.
A Genius Generation
• Isaac Newton said, in comparing himself to
Descartes,
• “If I have seen farther than Descartes, it is
because I have stood on the shoulders of
giants.” (Watson 484)
Newton
Descartes
Bibliography
• Landry, Peter. “Nicolas Copernicus.” Blupete:
Biographies, The Scientists. Feb. 2004. 27
Nov. 2007.
<http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biograp
hies/Science/Copernicus.htm>
• Watson, Peter. “Ideas: A History of Thought
and Invention, From Fire to Freud.” New York:
Harper Perennial, 2005.