Scientific Revolution

Abstract

To summarize the scientific revolution in one phrase: it was the time when a new way of studying the natural, physical world became widely accepted by a small “community of scholars,” although not necessarily by nonscientists. But the specific status of that “new way” is hotly disputed and the precise historical steps involved in that development are extremely complex. Standard histories are those by Dampier (1966) and Cohen (2001). Cohen stresses the stages involved from initial creative insight to dissemination (orally or in letters, later on in print) and then widespread acceptance. For example, Descartes’ theory of inertia of 1633 was held back when the Inquisition condemned Galileo's theological interpretations and Descartes decided it was not a good time to publish. In the seventeenth century there was a significant qualitative transformation in the approach to the study of natural philosophy and that major change is now often called the “scientific revolution,” but it is clear that small‐scale “revolutions” took place before and have happened since. It was at that time that the transition from undifferentiated “astronomy/astrology” and “alchemy/chemistry” first really got under way. Moreover, great advances were made in mathematics. The story of the rise of modern science begins even earlier, however, with the Arab contacts with Greek science, and modern science eventually led to Enlightenment philosophy (Hellemans & Bunch 1988: 58–188). Different natural philosophies changed at different rates and in different ways. For example, empirical and theoretical progress in astronomy and physics was different from progress in other physical sciences like chemistry (Goodman & Russell 1991: 387–414). However, it was between circa 1500 and1800 that the distinction between true science and proto‐science or pseudo‐science (Shermer 2001: 22–65) became somewhat clearer. Many thinkers have seen the essence of the intellectual revolution as a leap beyond the tradition inherited from Aristotelianism and rationalism. But the notion that simple inductive empiricism, often identified with Francis Bacon's New “Organon” ( Novum organum ) of 1620, is the basis of the scientific method has been rejected. It should be remembered that the introduction of Aristotle's Organon concerning “categories” and “interpretation,” and his physics, astronomy, and biology transferred into Roman Catholic theology by Thomas Aquinas, was considered a radical step and indeed did open a window to the study of the actual order of nature and the universe (Funkenstein 1986). The idea of the importance of nuances of general theoretical assumptions concerning ontology and epistemology has been widely shared ever since the early 1960s, when Kuhn's (1970) history of paradigmatic changes in physical science became widely accepted. Indeed, the social sciences now also regularly use Kuhn's general theory of an oscillation between “normal science” and “paradigmatic revolutions.” The link between Kuhn's theories and earlier views concerning a dialectic of reason – views primarily associated with Hegel's critique of Cartesian dualism (Russon 1991) – should be noted. However, the seventeenth‐century paradigmatic revolution associated with Descartes, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, von Helmont, and many others was extremely important, since it laid the foundation for what was considered to be true science for the next four centuries. Newton's laws of gravitational attraction, motion, and force (i.e., inverse square law) in the Principia Mathematica (1687 manuscript) led to British Newtonianism, which was widely exported throughout Europe (e.g., the Low Countries), but Cartesianism in France was a rival for many years (Russell 1991). In the eighteenth century botany and zoology became more systematic with the use of binomial nomenclature, although Linnaeus's theories of nature and of society were deeply flawed (Koerner 1999). It was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that a series of new ideas constituting a general change in worldviews made a radical shift in scientific thinking possible. Einstein's theory of relativity did not reject Newtonian mechanics, but did make it clear that Newton's assumptions about space and time were too limited and that a true explanation of gravity required postulating “space‐time.” Similarly, discoveries in mathematics and statistics, particularly the invention of non‐Euclidean geometry, revolutionized science in the twentieth century in somewhat the same way they had in earlier times (Newman 1956). The same can be said for Boolean and Fregean mathematical and symbolic logic (Bartley in Dodgson 1986: 3–42). Comte (1957) wrote that scientific thinking moves only gradually, but inevitably, from the study of distant objects, such as stars, to that which is closest to human life – society itself. His positivism had a profound impact on logical positivism and the quest for “consilience,” a unified general science of all of the natural world (Wilson 1998). In English the distinction between science and social science is more rigid than in many other languages. In German the term Wissenschaft encompasses not only physical and natural sciences, but also social sciences and other disciplines such as history and jurisprudence.