Movements Leading to the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment
(1400-1600)
A number of various historical, intellectual and geographical events converge
over this period of time (note we're talking about 300 or more years, which is a
long time) to create what we now call the "Scientific Revolution". Here
is a brief, partial outline:
1100-1400: As
Christian Europeans conquer Moorish Iberia (Spain) Classical and Arabic
proto-scientific philosophical texts re-enter Europe.
c. 1100 AD: Birth
of European universities
1200-1400: Venetian
trade with Arabs bring Classical and Arab texts into Europe via Italy
(especially Venice), sparking the Italian Renaissance.
c. 1250: Neo-Classical Scholasticism:
1225-1274: Thomas Aquinas' Philosophical Scholasticism begins moving scholars away from Platonism and toward a return to Aristotelian metaphysics (see here also) as the pre-eminent means of understanding the natural world and how we make sense of it. Aquinas prefigures the Renaissance in his influential approach to reconciling Aristotelian Classical and Christian theology.
Aristotle's writings are
rediscovered in Europe (preserved by Arab and Byzantine scholars -- in other
words, Arabs and Jews living in N. Africa and the Middle East) and thus
Aristotle's philosophy; translation of Aristotle into Latin.
Aristotle had set out the basic
principles of Scientific Reasoning:
a) Attention to careful analysis: separating wholes into
parts
b) Categorization of information
c) Understanding workings of natural world thru reason and
examination.
(Note how this contrasts with Platonic
Idealism and St.
Augustine's Neo-Platonism)
Aquinas's argument:
a) God created an ordered natural world. God also created
man's ability to use reason. Therefore:
b) Rational philosophy (Aristotelian analytical method) is a
valid compliment to theology; God created man's intellect and will, thus,
celebrating and developing human freedom, intellect and will would promote God's
will.
c) If God created an ordered, natural world, man could and
should apply reason to understand the natural world, thereby better
understanding and celebrating the will of God as manifest in his creation.
We cannot overstate the effects Aquinas's argument will
have on Western Civilization; without
him, we would probably still live in a world without science. Of
course he himself had no concept of where his argument would take civilization.
1450 Printing
press: Johannes
Gutenberg. With this invention control of
written word is taken from Catholic church and church controlled “scribes”;
knowledge now spreads vastly more quickly.
1492: Discovery
of the New World. If
you want to understand the impact of this discovery on European consciousness,
imagine what it would be like to discover life on another planet.
Economically and politically, this discovery ends
the economic dominance of Mediterranean Italy (Catholic) and the Middle East
(Muslim) as all the new wealth and trade is to the West, via the Atlantic. Further,
this new wealth is massive and, perhaps, unprecedented, and, with the defeat of
the Spanish Armada (1588), it will establish Protestant, literate England as the major
world power.
When we combine the effects of the Reformation with those of the New World's
discovery, it’s no coincidence that the Scientific Revolution reaches its full
fruition in England, with Newton’s Principia
Mathematica"Mathematical Principles Of Natural Philosophy") (1687) (not to
mention the British Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859). Of
course Newton (and French Liebniz) also develop calculus at this time, which
leads the scientific revolution to be harnessed as the Industrial Revolution