The Scientific Revolution

Question 1

What is meant by the scientific revolution?

Answer 1

a series of discoveries in the 17th century that enhanced the status of science in society.

Question 2

What three critical insights came to the foreground during the scientific revolution?

Answer 2

(1) The realization that the Earth did not form the center of the universe.
(2) The realization that many things on Earth could be understood as (complicated) machines.
(3) The actual demonstration that many movements on Earth and in the universe could be described using a
handful of relatively simple mathematical equations, which became the ‘laws of physics’.

Question 3

What three people are these events usually associated with?

Answer 3

(1) Copernicus and Galilei,
(2) Descartes,
(3) Newton.

Question 4

In the 16th century, whos’s model of the universe was used and what was special about it?

Answer 4

In the 16th century, Aristotle’s model of the universe was used. This model is geocentric. (earth at the centre)

Question 5

Name an observational problem with this model and how was it explained by who

Answer 5

One problem was the retrograde motion of the planets (them going a little back and then forward again), which was explained away by Ptolemy by adding epicycles (small cycles made by the starts in addition to their main orbit around the earth.) It resulted in a complex model.

Question 6

What is meant by a heliocentric model and who proposed it?

Answer 6

model of the universe in which the Sun is at the center. This model was also proposed in ancient cultures but was never taken seriously then. Copernicus became interested in the heliocentric model but did not publish it until right before his death out of fear that it wouldn’t be convincing enough and of upsetting the Catholic Church.

Question 7

What did Galileo make and what three things did he discover with this?

Answer 7

Copernicus’s heliocentric model received strong support when Galilei built his own telescope and discovered multiple things pointing to the impossibility of a geocentric universe:
• Venus has phases therefore it must orbit the sun;
• Jupiter has moons, so the Earth is not ‘special’;
• The moon has mountains, while Aristotle claimed it was just a flat disc.

Question 8

What implications did these discoveries have for aristotle?

Answer 8

This pointed to the fact that the almighty Aristotle also made mistakes and there was still a lot of new things to discover.

Question 9

Describe the relationship between Galileo and the Catholic church

Answer 9

Galilei wrote letters arguing that the heliocentric model was much more likely than the geocentric model, to which he received a warning from the church and a prohibition of his book. However, his evidence was so convincing (and could be confirmed by others that had a telescope) that the heliocentric view rapidly came to dominate astronomy.

Question 10

How did this relationship affect Descartes?

Answer 10

Because of the Church’s treatment of Galilei, Descartes decided to shelve a book of his world view. He started to look at how he could build a new philosophy to reconcile the Church with natural philosophy.

Question 11

Is Descartes a rationalist or an empiricist?

Answer 11

Just like Plato, Descartes is a rationalist.

Question 12

Name and describe Descartes’ world view

Answer 12

Mechanistic world view = world view according to which everything in the material universe can be understood as a complicated machine. This view discards the notion that things have goals and intentions (as in Aristotle’s views)

Question 13

What was the reasoning behind the existence of these machines according to Descartes?

Answer 13

Descartes viewed the universe this way and believed God had created these machines, so he didn’t continuously had to look after His creations.

Question 14

What is meant by dualism?

Answer 14

view of the mind-body relation according to which the mind (soul) is immaterial and completely independent of the body.

Question 15

What was Descartes’ reasoning behind this dualism view?

Answer 15

Descartes identified the soul as being divine and independent of everything else, and therefore separated it from the rest of the universe. Thus, he explained human capacities for consciousness and volition by the presence of a soul.

Question 16

What consequences did the advancements of science have for Descartes’ dualism view?

Answer 16

Very soon questions were asked about how the soul could steer the mechanism of the body if it was separated from it. As a consequence, the ‘soul’ got dragged into the mechanical part of the universe and became subject of natural investigations.

Question 17

How did Newton contribute to the scientific revolution regarding astronomy? (3)

Answer 17

Newton explained why planets orbit the Sun and moons orbit planets. He not only defined the relevant forces but described them in such detail that they could precisely be calculated. He had the insight that objects attract each other, but because of differences in mass, the pulling force varies.

Question 18

What book did Newton publish and what impact did it have?

Answer 18

Principia Mathematica = book in which Newton presented his laws of physics and integrated the insights of Copernicus, Galileo and more into one great theory. This book is considered to be the primary reason for the increased status of science.

Question 19

Historians have tried to find the reasons for the offset of the scientific revolution in 17th-century Europe since the beginning of the term. Why did it happen specifically in that time? (7)

Answer 19

• Demographic changes
• No pressure from religion or authority
• New inventions
• Universities
• Greek and Arab civilizations
• Detachment of natural philosophy
• Factors that helped science grow

Question 20

what Demographic changes helped the scientific revolution in the 17th century? (3)

Answer 20

Europe’s population nearly halved in the 14th century (because of the Great Famine, 100 year war, and black death). At the end of the 15th century a new growth began. Cities grew and installed more democratic regimes. A large group of merchants (traders) emerged and formed a link between hand workers and the intellectual elite.

Question 21

why was there no pressure from religion or authority?

Answer 21

The Catholic Church lost a lot of power from events like the Protestant Reformation. Christian religion left another opening, because it made a strict distinction between the worldly and the heavenly. There was the Church with the pope, but also kings for worldly affairs: no single force took complete control

Question 22

What new inventions helped the scientific revolution?

Answer 22

With the invention of the clock and further establishment of a professional group of clock- and watchmakers, precise equipment could be made for the scientific experiments that were to come. The compass, telescope and microscope were also introduced.

Question 23

How did universities contribute to the scientific revolution?

Answer 23

Universities provided a place for natural philosophers in society and conveyed the message that the pursuit of knowledge about nature was a worthwhile activity. This increased investment by wealthy families or even their involvement in the expansion of science.

Question 24

How did Greek and Arab civilizations contribute to psychology in the 16th century

Answer 24

In the 16th century, many more texts than those of Plato and Aristotle became available. Because of the fall of Constantinople, Greek scholars had fled to Italy. Major breakthroughs happen when 2 main civilizations interact because this creates dynamism in which new ideas can grow.

Question 25

How did Detachment of natural philosophy contribute to psychology in the 16th century

Answer 25

For centuries, knowledge of nature was thought to make sense only in the framework of a comprehensive view of the universe and man’s place in it. Gradually, natural philosophers became detached from this view and felt allowed to study a phenomenon without prior knowledge of the totality of things.

Question 26

Name three factors that helped science grow in the 17th century

Answer 26

(1) Absence of disaster: in the 15th to 19th centuries there were no major disasters.
(2) Benevolent religion: some of the Protestant Churches encouraged followers to study science.
(3) Learned societies: societies that offered a place for natural philosophers to meet and share ideas were
established. They also published proceedings.

Question 27

Why did philosophers clear that scientific knowledge could not be based on observation? what changed this?

Answer 27

because the perceptible world was too unpredictable. This idea changed with the publishing of Bacon’s book Novum Organum.

Question 28

What were Francis Bacon’s comments on empiricism and rationalism in his book?

Answer 28

He claimed that neither perception nor reasoning alone provides progress, the interaction between them is important.

Question 29

What three pieces did the textbook claim he provided?

Answer 29

• Observation and inductive reasoning are much more important than acknowledge by Aristotle.
• Systematic observation is important to have good understanding of phenomena and come to correct axioms.
o It is important to spot evidence against prevailing axioms and convictions.
• Because of the limitations of observations, they must be supplemented by experimental histories to extract the truth from nature.

Question 30

What is meant by experimental history?

Answer 30

a method in which the natural philosopher extracts the truth from nature by active
manipulation and examining the consequences of that intervention (not just passively observing).

Question 31

What is meant by inductive reasoning?

Answer 31

a form of reasoning in which one starts from observations and tries to reach general conclusions on the basis of convergences in the observations. This type of reasoning is needed to turn observed phenomena into laws but doesn’t guarantee true conclusions.

Question 32

What is meant by deductive reasoning?

Answer 32

a form of reasoning in which one starts from a number of indisputable premises, from which new, true conclusions can be drawn if the rules of logic are followed.

Question 33

What is meant by the industrial evolution?

Answer 33

he practical implications of natural philosophy remained limited in the first 200 years after Bacon’s book, but by the 19th century it started to alter everyday life. This became known as the industrial revolution; the socioeconomic and cultural changes in the 19th century caused by the invention of machines. It involved the replacement of labor of peasants and craftsmen by mass production in factories and massive relocation from countryside to towns.

Question 34

What other implication did the industrial revolution have which made society more complex?

Answer 34

Scientific advances led to differentiation of occupations people could have. Because the jobs involved specialized knowledge and skills people also had to train for them. This made society more complex.

Question 35

What is meant by the age of enlightenment?

Answer 35

the Western philosophy and cultural life of the 18th century, in which autonomous thinking and observation became the primary sources of knowledge, rather than reliance on authority. Intellectuals were attracted to the natural sciences because of the belief that knowledge provided by these disciplines was objective.

Question 36

What is meant by positivism?

Answer 36

View that true knowledge can only be obtained by means of the scientific method. This movement saw religion and philosophy as inferior forms of explanation.

Question 37

What three new claims about scientific knowledge did positivism make?

Answer 37

• Because science is based on observation and experimentation it is always right.
• Scientific theories are summaries of observations and are thus, always correct.
• Because scientific knowledge is always true, it should be the motor of all progress.

Question 38

Name four forces against the rise of positivism

Answer 38

• Catholic Church: science is second-rank to the Church and is potentially dangerous if not guided by
religious morals.
• Protestant Church: many saw no inherent contradiction between religion and science, but it still had to be
guided by religion.
• Humanities: it is an illusion to think that human social life could be built on reason alone because the
traditional world order and education had proven their use.
• Romanticism: the mechanistic world view relied on by scientists is wrong because the universe is a living,
changing organism.

Question 39

The scientific advances escaped the attention of nearly all historians up to the first half of the 20th century. In hindsight, 3 factors that hindered historians’ awareness of the impact of science on society can be discerned, what were these three factors?

Answer 39

(1) Historians were part of the humanist culture and didn’t feel much affinity with science.
(2) The accumulation of scientific knowledge seemed like a slow, steady process, without interesting twists and turns.
(3) Many questioned whether there was even such a thing as scientific progress.

Question 40

What did Augustine contribute to the psychology? (3)

Answer 40

He is the first to give a learning theory and to discover the ‘unconscious’. He also identifies the problem of other minds: how do we know if other people also have consciousness? He gives a solution to this problem in the form of an argument from analogy: because we see that other people behave the same as we do, we can deduce that they also have consciousness.

Question 41

What advancements took place in the middle east?

Answer 41

While Europe is not moving forward, in the Middle East science flourishes. Scholars do important work in mathematics and physics. While Aristotle was not really part of philosophy in Europe yet, in the Middle East Christianity began to study him.

Question 42

What four objections are given to coepernicus’ model?

Answer 42

• It doesn’t describe the data very well and is as complex as the Ptolemaic, so what do we gain?
• Why aren’t we thrown into space if the earth is indeed orbiting the sun?
• If the earth rotates, why does a stone you throw from a tower fall right down?
• Why are we the only one with a moon and why isn’t the moon also orbiting the sun?

Question 43

In what form does Galilea support corpy’s model?

Answer 43

Galileo Galilei takes Copernicus’ work seriously and writes a book in which he defends it. In this book he is not really tactical. There is a foolish figure in the book (Simplicio) that represents the view of the Church, thus, they clash.

Question 44

Who was the first to articulate the scientific method?

Answer 44

Bacon was the first to articulate the Scientific Method. He recognizes human psychology as interfering with finding the truth.

Question 45

According to him all humans commit certain fallacies (= idols).
Name four of these types fallacies

Answer 45

Idols of the Tribe
= fallacies that all humans commit and that are inherent to human nature. Visual illusions.
Idols of the Cave
= fallacies we commit because we belong to a certain culture, have certain interests and/or habits. These are not the same for all people. These are things you don’t believe because of evidence for it, but rather because many people around you believe it. Having prejudices about a certain group.
Idols of the Marketplace
= fallacies we commit because we can talk about things. Words like ‘intelligence’ don’t really refer to any existing things, but we tend to assume they do. Thus, we assign all kinds of properties to them. For example: if it exists it has to be somewhere, so it is in the head.
Idols of the theatre
= fallacies we commit because we believe what authorities say. Bacon gave examples of old philosophical schools like Aristotle and Plato. He criticized Greek antiquity without holding back.

Question 46

How are Bacon’s views still relevant?

Answer 46

Bacon’s ideas remain highly relevant because people still give in to the idols. Science relies on admitting the human deficit, not denying it. Science has basically institutionalized Bacon’s distrust: we use experiments, statistical tests, peer review and replication studies to prove ourselves.