The Scientific Revolution: the old and the new

1. The Scientific Revolution: the old and the new

2. On Thursday • Last class: we will have a review for the final, please come and if you have any questions I will try to answer them!

3. Today • The new science in early modern Europe: a complex issue • Galileo Galilei, Copernicanism and the Catholic Church • Old science and new science: what was at stake?

4. Old cosmology: a mix of Bible and Aristotle • Geocentrism • The earth does not move • The ‘heavens’ above the earth are incorruptible • What is behind this formulation? Nature and theology in the later Middle Ages: Scholasticism (Thomas Aquinas)

5. 1492: the earth is not that small World map, Brescia, 1483 ca. World map, Amsterdam 1570

6. 1517: earth (and heaven) turned upside-down Text of the Bull ‘Exurge Domine’, with which Luther was excommunicated by the Pope, 1520, Vatican Library

7. Nicholaus Copernicus: the earth is not the center Nicholaus Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus, I ed. 1543

8. The problems with Copernicus’s theory: • ‘Wrong’ theology • ‘Wrong’ timing • ‘Wrong’ calculations

9. Wrong theology: ‘the world also is established, that it cannot be moved’ (Psalms, 93:1)

10. Wrong timing: the Protestant Reformation spreading fast.. Religious map of Europe, ca. 1560s

11. Wrong timing: the Reformation and the Council of Trent (1545-1563)

12. Wrong calculations: the orbits

13. Wrong calculations: the size

14. In this context…Galileo’s trials (1615-6, 1632-3)

15. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621)

16. The debate between Galileo and Bellarmine (i.e. your readings) • 1) The ‘truth’ of Copernicanism: is it a mathematical model or is the earth REALLY at the center? • 2) The interpretation of the Bible: who is in charge of doing this? • This is NOT a question of science vs. religion, but it is a complex debate in which science and religion are deeply linked!

17. Bellarmine and science ‘…whenever a true demonstration would be produced that the sun stands in the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven … then at that time it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in interpreting the Scriptures which seem to be contrary... But I do not believe that there is such a demonstration, for it has not been shown to me’ (Bellarmino to Foscarini, 12 April 1615)

18. Galileo and religion: how to interpret the BIble ‘it seems to me that it was extremely prudently ..established by Your Paternity that the Sacred Scripture can never lie or err, but its tenets are absolutely and inviolably true. Only I would add that, even if the Scripture cannot err, nevertheless its interpreters and expositors can err in several ways, among which a very serious and frequent case is when they would want to limit their interpretation only to the mere literal significance of the words’ (Galileo to Castelli 21 December 1613, my italics)

19. Galileo spoke a lot about religion, and the Church spoke a lot about science, but what are the ‘new’ acquisitions of the scientific revolution?

20. Galileo and the experimental method

21. Galileo and motion

22. Galileo and horoscopes

23. Newton and the theory of mechanics

24. Newton and alchemy

25. So? • The early modernity was a time of changes, some of them quite traumatic, such as the discovery of America and post-Reformation Politics. The development of the ‘new’ experimental science was another fundamental change, but.. • There was not a clear-cut passage from a religious to a scientific worldview! • Galileo discussed Bible like a theologian, and Newton wrote more on alchemy than on physics! • The scientific ‘revolution’ as a complex mix of past, present and future • DO NOT FORGET TO COME NEXT TIME FOR OUR FINAL REVIEW!