The Scientific Revolution

Lesson 1: Sources of the Scientific Revolution

Practical Science

Early modern science was not solely shaped by its intellectual inheritance, but also by the range of practical problems and processes with which early modern Europeans were confronted. For example, much of the development of early modern astronomy was driven by problems of navigation.

In order for a ship on the high seas to make it to its destination, it was necessary to know its position on the globe (nobody thought the earth was flat). This problem was not completely solved until the eighteenth century. Progress depended on using the stars and planets as markers, which made it necessary to know their exact positions.

The dramatic expansion of European contacts with the outside world following the voyages of Columbus and the Portugese explorer Vasco da Gama made navigational problems a pressing matter to European governments. They offered lavish rewards for successful navigational methods, and navigational problems engaged the attention of many of Europe’s leading scientists, including Galileo, Christiaan Huygens, Robert Hooke, John Flamsteed and Isaac Newton.

The marine compass, coming into wide use, also offered scientific challenges. The first important book on magnetism, the English physician William Gilbert’s On the Magnet, originated in the practical use of the compass by navigators. Another fertile source of practical problems and solutions was mining. The sixteenth century was a golden age of mining literature, most of it emanating from Germany, where mining boomed from 1460 to 1530. The expanding economy’s demand for metalled to an increase in technically complex and capital-intensive deep mining.

A voluminous literature explained mining processes and asserted mining’s dignity. This mining literature differed from the alchemical literature in that mining writers emphasized how their knowledge should be widely distributed rather than restricted to a circle of adepts. This idea of openness was characteristic of much of the technological literature generally.

Challenging practical and technological problems associated with mining influenced the development of science and engineering. One of the most pressing issue was the improvement of pumping technology to clear water from mines. Sixteenth-century mining engineers, practical men with little formal training in science, noticed while working on drainage problems that a column of water could not be raised much higher than thirty feet.

This observation eventually inspired a research program culminating in the development of the barometer. Oster’s documents 6.1, 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5 are examples of scientific literature associated with mining. War was also a fertile source of scientific problems. European states fought many bloody conflicts during the Renaissance, and the different states eagerly sought technological advantages. The direct application of scientific knowledge for the creation of more lethal and effective weapons was still in the future, but the use of currently existing technology involved science.

The rise of cannons and artillery brought up the question of how to hit the target, which often revolved around the mathematical description of the curve traced by the missle after it was fired. Fortification, a boom industry in Renaissance Europe, also required complex mathematics.

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