Scientific Revolution (1400-1700):
The World’s Most Overly Simplified Timeline Of What, When and Why
Various historical, intellectual and geographical events converge over this period of time (note we're talking about 300-plus years, which is a long time) to create what we now call the "Scientific Revolution".
c. 1000-1100 AD: Birth
of European universities (Bologna 1088, Paris 1150, Oxford 1167)
c. 1100-1400: As
Christian Europeans conquer Moorish Iberia (Spain) Classical Greek and Arabic
proto-scientific philosophical texts gradually re-enter Europe.
1200-1400: Venetian
trade with Arabs also brings Classical and Arab texts into Europe via Italy
(especially Venice), sparking the Italian Renaissance.
c. 1250: Neo-Classical
Scholasticism: 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)
1225-1274: Thomas Aquinas' philosophical scholasticism begins moving scholars away from Platonism and toward 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 (See Summa Theologic 1265-1274).
Aquinas's revolutionary argument
in a nutshell:
a) God created an ordered natural world.
b) God also created man's ability to use reason. 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) Therefore: 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.
Note this is the radical rebuke of Platonic Idealism that paves the way for the scientific revolution.
1450 Printing
press: Johannes Gutenberg. With this invention control of written
word is taken from the Catholic church and church controlled “scribes”;
knowledge now spreads vastly more quickly and with far less control.
1517-1600 Protestant
Reformation: Beginning with Martin
Luther’s famous 95 Theses" to the Castle Church door, in Wittenberg Germany, the
Reformation ironically (it was, in part, inspired by a fear and condemnation of
Classical “Pagan” learning) spurs the learning of science:
a) Protestants believe an ability to
read and understand the Bible is central to salvation: this spurs a massive,
massive change in the number of literate Europeans (note this difference between
traditionally Protestant and Catholic nations/regions persists today).
b) The Reformation effectively ends
Catholic dominance over northern Europe, making it impossible to control the
flow of information as it had done traditionally via the Inquisition.
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…but that’s
another story….