Science and the Enlightenment explorable.com /science-and-enlightenment While the Renaissance, with its roots in Christian art and doctrine, created solid foundations for the flourishing of art, architecture, philosophy, science and mathematics, free thought was still restricted. This period of restriction continued until the Enlightenment, a period where, free of the shackles of religious dogma, free thinkers could expand human knowledge at a rate never before seen. The Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution The Biblical worldview of the Renaissance held sway and any scientific findings deviating from this were regarded as bordering upon blasphemy. Copernicus and Galileo the two foremost casualties of theological interference, with Galileo placed under house arrest by the notorious Inquisition. This period of restriction continued until the Enlightenment. The evidence building up against religious doctrine, irrefutably contradicting the Biblical timeline, burst forth in an unstoppable torrent, aided by the work of scholars and philosophers across Europe. This Scientific Revolution, which began during the 17 th century, became a catalyst for a new philosophy, one that permeated every level of human society and placed the emphasis for change on humanity rather than intangible gods. The Age of Enlightenment, a phrase coined by the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 12 February 1804), represents the change from antiquity to modernity, the period in history where the modern world began and science replaced superstition. When Was the Age of Enlightenment? It is extremely difficult to state exactly where the Age of Enlightenment began, because it blended into the Renaissance and varied from discipline to discipline, but many historians point to the Scientific Revolution of the 17 th Century as the precursor. The later half of this century saw minds such as Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, and Galileo begin to change scientific thought, their views even trickling downwards to the common man. For the intents of this article, we will begin the Enlightenment at the time of Newton s publication of Principia (1687), and end it with the French Revolution of 1789, a time of social change in continental Europe, and a period when the Industrial Revolution of England had gathered momentum. Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 31 March 1727) devised a physical model of the universe that tore apart the intricate models created by the Ancient Greeks, building his system upon gravity and mechanics and fuelling an explosion of humanistic thought. Science, the Enlightenment and Religion Isaac Newton, peinted by Godfrey Kneller (Public Domain) This change in thought coalesced around the philosophy of minds such as Newton and John Locke (1632 1704), and it was based upon transforming society and describing knowledge in terms of human experience rather than Biblical tenets. 1/3
Western Europe, largely due to the wealth flowing in from colonialism, moved away from agrarian economies, and underwent a rapid process of urbanization. Not only did this population migration generate wealth, but urbanization also allowed academics and thinkers to congregate and share ideas, with cities such as London, Paris, and Edinburgh becoming strongholds of Enlightenment thought. Away from Catholicism, England flourished and began to produce some of the greatest philosophers, scientists, engineers, and fomented the Industrial Revolution, as wealth flowed from the New World and Asia. During this Age of Reason, scholars adopted empiricism, proposing the idea that theories should be based upon human observations and experience. The universe operated like a soulless machine, without the hand of God behind every unexplained phenomenon, although many scholars, even John Locke, portrait by Godfrey Kneller (Public Domain) Newton, felt that there was room for a creator, the Uncaused Cause of Aristotle. This new definition of knowledge permeated every aspect of human society, including art and culture, and the rapid accumulation of knowledge, free from religious overtones, saw science start to split into separate disciplines as the age of the great polymaths ended. Scholars and philosophers rebelled against the restrictions of Christianity and used science and metaphysics to question and probe the universe. Reflecting the politics of the time, Europe became much more secular and science, in turn, tore apart the roots of Biblical literalism and absolutism. Philosophers, such as Descartes (31 March 1596 11 February 1650), had already questioned the nature of the soul and envisioned a purely physical and mechanical universe, postulating that animals and the body were automatons, with only the soul elevating humanity. Money began to flow into research, and the easy availability of such inventions as the microscope, telescope, and barometer gave scholars the means to make accurate observations, conducting experiments as they refined the scientific method into its modern form. Books were cheaper than ever before, and the improvement in roads and transportation allowed ideas to flow freely, with men such as Newton and Leibniz (July 1, 1646 November 14, 1716) conducting fierce debates by letter. Scientific societies sprang up, offering places to share and refine ideas, as well as give some semblance of peer review and criticism. Science, the Enlightenment and Social Reform The overarching goal of the Enlightenment thinkers was social reform, and they provided the first real challenge to the autocracy and theocracy that had dominated society for so long, with science one of the foremost tools for promoting change. Trade and commerce replaced agriculture, which largely became outsourced to the colonies and the New World. Europe, after the earlier deprivations of plague, famine and war, transformed into rich and abundant societies, with more time devoted to the pleasures of life. As was the case with the Greeks and Islamic scholars, this allowed resources to be channeled into academia and research. The Age of Enlightenment was characterized by optimism, a feeling that humanity could change the world and rectify any mistakes of the past. Rather than Aristotelian metaphysics and abstract musings about the philosophical framework of the universe, philosophers began to look at the nature of knowledge itself, throwing out theology and understanding that humanity could influence nature rather than be subject to the whims of fickle Gods. Knowledge served humanity, not 2/3
religion, and the ideas of original sin and asceticism declined. According to the Rene Descartes (Public Domain) Enlightenment philosophers, man was governed by Natural Law, not archaic commandments written in a pre-historic book, and science expanded, away from the strongholds of physics, astronomy, natural science and alchemy/chemistry into economics, social science and political science. This trend was an offshoot of the belief that anything could be studied and broken down by science, that explanations were available through observation and experimentation rather than philosophy. The Legacy of the Age of Enlightenment This idea of a mechanistic framework for human society and for the universe itself became the bedrock of modern society, with Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Isaac Newton and John Locke becoming the founding fathers of the Enlightenment, possibly the biggest change in human society of all time, the transition from the ancient into the modern world. The science of man became the dominating force. 3/3
Science and the Enlightenment (PART II) explorable.com /science-and-enlightenment-2 By the start of the 18th Century, the hold of the Catholic Church had begun to slip and scholars found that the Protestant Churches, on the whole, were less inclined to impose their views. The Catholics still attempted to ban heliocentrism and were quick to criticize the findings of geologists that conflicted with the Bible, but this politically guided influence was waning. Scientific Advances During the Enlightenment Natural philosophy, as espoused by Newton and Descartes, began to spread, built upon the idea that mathematics was the new universal language. Aristotelian thought became replaced by better and more accurate observations, as scientists tried to explain phenomena rather than devise complex theories and try to fit the findings to those. In medicine, the old idea of humors was gone and physicians began to develop ways of looking at the body and physiology in functional ways rather than try to apply theories, aided by the discovery of the microscope. Alchemy had lost most of its mystical and occult symbolism, and the alchemists became chemists and physicists. The influence of astrology declined, due to the twin attack by Newtonian physics and the invention of the telescope, and it became astronomy, taking on a much more pragmatic role in trying to explain the universe. This new approach to knowledge fueled the Industrial Revolution as geologists and engineers began to find coal and metal ores and provide the machines for mass production. The Renaissance was largely centered on Catholic Southern Europe; by contrast, the Age of Enlightenment was the time of Northern Europe, with France, Britain, Germany, and Holland becoming the real powerhouses, partly aided by wealth from empires dominating foreign lands. The Enlightenment and Geography The Shift of Knowledge During the early Enlightenment, England and Germany were the dominant forces, but France started to play a much larger role, becoming the wealthiest European state during the 18 th Century. Scientific academies and societies sprang up across Paris and French became the preferred language of scientific communication, as the largely secular French government protected scientists from the influence of the Catholic Church, especially after the revolution in 1789. In the middle of the 18 th Century, France and Great Britain became engaged in a scientific and cultural war, the French buoyed by wealth and their excellent academic apparatus, the British by their excellence in manufacturing scientific instruments. Other nations contributed Scotland began to produce renowned scientists and inventors, from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and its excellent universities, and Sweden produced botanists such as Linnaeus. Largely, the Renaissance belonged to Spain and Italy, whereas the Enlightenment saw the shift in power towards Northern Europe and the first glimmerings of the United States as a force in science and Royal Society Edinburgh ( Creative Commons) technology. Bacon, Newton and Locke The Fathers of the Enlightenment Francis Bacon (1561-1626), followed on from Galileo in proclaiming that the universe was a machine, operating 1/3
upon entirely predictable laws. He criticized the approach of previous scholars, pointing out that observation and experience was far more important than reading books, a subtle and correct swipe considering that Aristotle and Galen had been given prominence even where their ideas were patently wrong and did not match reality. Bacon advocated throwing out classical dogma and looking for new knowledge based upon reality rather than churning out the same, tired theories. However, he did believe that Aristotle s inductive method, of observing phenomena and attempting to propose general principles to explain them was a sound basis for gathering knowledge. He proposed that this was much more appropriate than the deductive approach of Plato, where general principles are proposed and these theories are applied to phenomena for, as Ptolemy s epicycles showed, this led to the futile pursuit of inherently flawed models. This laid down the foundations for the Scientific Revolution. Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 31 March 1727), a philosopher as well as an astronomer, was another member of the triumvirate of thinkers that defined the Scientific Revolution and created a framework for the Enlightenment. In his text, the Principia Mathematica (1687), he laid down some fundamental arguments stating his belief that mathematics could describe the innermost workings of the universe. 1. Mathematics and mathematical models are sufficient to describe the universe. Portrait of Francis Bacon (Public Domain) 2. The mechanical universe is predictable, given enough data, following the mathematics used to describe it 3. Theology, religion, and Gods make no difference to the smooth operation of the machine that is the universe 4. Gravity is one of the mathematical laws that defines how the planets move, and explains the orderly motion of heavenly bodies. Although better known for his work concerning political systems, John Locke (29 August 1632 28 October 1704) was instrumental in directing the course of the Enlightenment, his philosophy shaping science, defining the nature of knowledge, and forming the basis of modern psychology. His most famous work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, was published in 1689, cementing his place as the first important philosopher of the Enlightenment. He built upon the work of the scientists, such as Newton and Galileo, arguing that they were true philosophers, building knowledge from experience and analysis rather than pure reason alone. In the second book of the essay, he discussed the difference between ideas and physical objects, arguing that perception via the senses lay at the root of knowledge, producing the ideas that represent the ideas in the mind. This line of thought became critical in the development of empirical psychology. The Enlightenment, Society and Ethics Newton used his principles to describe the universe in Treatises of Government, by John Locke (Public Domain) 2/3
terms of astronomy and physics, but Enlightenment thinkers began to apply these laws to fields as diverse as economics and politics. Importantly, the removal of religion from the equation needed a redefinition of ethics, and scholars such as David Hume (7 May 1711 25 August 1776) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) increasingly looked to quantify ethics rather than seeing them as a phenomenon derived from holy scripture. This is a sub discipline that pervades culture and, especially for social scientists, medicine and psychologists, is one of the most important facets of the Enlightenment, dictating how they can and cannot behave. The Enlightenment The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution and Modern Society These great thinkers defined the Enlightenment and created the mechanistic principles that would lead through the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, forming the basis of modern, largely secular society. It also gave scholars the means to gather information and try to fit it into a coherent body of knowledge, rather than adopt the piecemeal approach of the Renaissance and before. Knowledge became systematized and, while increased specialization carried some risks, namely that scientists ran the risk of immersing their studies so far into one field that they did not realize discoveries in other areas, the establishing of scientific societies and journals helped to bridge these divides, part of the fluid, urban, university culture that sprang up across Europe. During this period, Europe was undergoing a period of political, social, and philosophical changes, moving away from absolutist monarchs and ushering the modern age, based around innovation and capitalism. The Enlightenment scholars drew inspiration from Republican Rome rather than Classical Greece, looking towards secularism and moving society away from religious doctrine and control. In terms of science, the 18th century can be seen as an extension of the Scientific Revolution of Newton and Descartes, as a continuation of their work. Portrait of David Hume (Public Domain) 3/3