The Scientific Revolution, 1540-1740

This course examines the developments in mathematics, natural philosophy, and the life and earth sciences from the Italian Renaissance to the Enlightenment. What were the most salient changes in the way humans understood the natural world during this period?  Was it a gradual change from the older way of understanding the natural world, or a dramatic revolution?  While giving proper dues to the achievements of Chinese and Islamic scholars in the five hundred years before the European Renaissance, what was new about achievements in ‘The West’ in the period under review?

The course will outline the basic features of the Aristotelian worldview and will then assess how and why new approaches to studying nature supplanted the older paradigm.  It will examine the key scientific discoveries that led to the erosion of confidence in the robustness and completeness of that system, which culminated in a rough agreement about what scientific knowledge was, and how research should be conducted.

Students will study the significance of personal contact, correspondence, and the development of various international standards for pursuing natural philosophy; the 'reconstitution of the philosophical self' as a precondition for performing scientific enquiry; the significance of disciplines and of disciplinary changes (particularly regarding the borders and relations between philosophy and theology); proto-science fiction; the importance of, and justifications for experimental research against various critiques; the changing relations between philosophy and metaphysics during the period; the relevance of alchemical and magical traditions; the evolving relations between artisans and philosophers during the period; the invention of the totemic hero or scientific 'genius' as part of a new genealogy of scientific authorship; and the 'popularization' of natural philosophy towards the end of the period.