Research Topics
The Origins of the New Science
In what ways was the Scientific Revolution both evolutionary and revolutionary? What did Newton mean when he admitted that "If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants"?
Between 1543 and 1687 a series of mathematical and scientific treatises were published across Europe. What these texts unleashed was nothing short of a Scientific Revolution, a revolution whose effects would shape the 18th century Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. A new world view of man, society and the universe was the result.
- Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)
Burned at the stake as a heretic, Bruno argued that the universe was homogenous and that it was made up of four elements - earth, air, fire and water.
- Nicolas Copernicus, Dedication of The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies to Pope Paul III (1543)
Copernicus postulates an explicitly heliocentric model of the solar system.
- Galileo, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (1615)
Galileo relates his position regarding faith and the new science and that the sun is at the center of the solar system and that the earth moves.
- Francis Bacon, "Salomon's House," from The New Atlantis, 1627
Bacon presents a model society based on a scientifically inductive study of nature and man.
- Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy (1637)
Descartes doubts the existence of everything except the fact that he is doubtful, thereby creating deductive scientific method.
- Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)
Newton relates his rules of reasoning and new methodological guide to the study of all reality.