HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS IN EARLY MODERN

Alexandre Koyré´s Études Galiléennes (Galileo Studies) projected a coherent Platonist-idealist view into the account of the early modern science which eventually became the pioneer historical overview of scientific ideas in the course of the 17^th Revolution in Science. Koyré is recognised to have been the first to coin the term ´Scientific Revolution in its current meaning. The Galileo Studies⁶⁶, a 1978 translation from Koyré

´s original 1939 French version, discusses the development of Galileo´s theories of motion and their impact on the scientific world. He lists its intellectual achievements as the geometrization of space and the subsequent dissolution of the cosmos which allowed the universe to be broken into its constitute parts and the substitution of the concrete space of the pre-Galilean physics with the absolute space of the Euclidian geometric system. The historicity of Koyré account lies in the fact that he tied his notion of the revolution in the science of the 17^th century with the work of Galileo, one its major propounders.

Central to Koyré account of Galileo achievement was his introduction of mathematics to physics which lead to genuine geometrization of space and the overthrow of the impetus theory. Galileo was heavily influenced by the thought of Plato which made him to side with ´Platonian ´mathematicism´ against Aristotelian empiricism with its claim that real physical bodies have no geometrical forms´.⁶⁷ Koyré notes that the classical concept of motion developed by Descartes, Galileo and Newton shows motion as a state in time, and also, that bodies have a set inertia. These fundamental achievements refuted three essential facts central to the Aristotelian physics. The first is that natural motion did not exist. Second, motion is not the consequence of the nature of the body. Third, none of such nature could bring it to rest.However, the way Koyré greatly emphasized the importance of mathematics in the Galilean achievement shows his understanding of physics as truly the incarnation of mathematics—indicating why the language of mathematics really expresses the essence of reality.

66 See Alexandre Koyré, Galileo Studies, trans. John Mepham (Hassocks: The Harvest Press, 1978) 67H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, p.78

Another mathematician by training, Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis reiterated the view of the mathematization of nature as the defining feature of early modern science. His The Mechanisation of the World Picture (1950) was written with the intent of surveying the way in which the mechanistic conception of the world came into being. It began by first describing the impact of the mechanistic conception in the time of Newton. He writes,

It was this conception that first led to the methods of research and treatment that have caused the great flourishing of physical science...of which we are reaping the fruit in our own day:

experiment as the source of knowledge, mathematical formulation as the descriptive medium, mathematical deduction as the guiding principle in the search for new phenomenon to be verified by experimentation.⁶⁸

Dijksterhuis attempts to record the development over time of those particular ideas in the history of mechanics that ultimately were incorporated into Newtonian mechanics.

Hence, he made a delineation of the obstacles that obstructed advances in science during each period of scientific development, including, in particular, those obstacles leading to the adoption of the mechanistic conception in the time of Newton. In order to articulate the incremental development of the history of physical science during antiquity he describes six major factors, and explains why each of them fell short of the requirements needed to promote classical science. Such factors include: ancient mathematics, corpuscular theories, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Neo-Platonism.

This study will not pretend to analyse all these factors one after another. The important fact that could be extracted from the above analysis is that Dijksterhuis´s emphasis on the common hindrance which affected the success of each historical period depicts his believe in continuity in science. Invariably, the hindrance created the need for a mechanistic conception to advance the study of science and nature which could not

68 Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture (London: Oxford University Press, 1961) p. 3. The original Dutch edition was De mechanisering van het wereldbeeld (Amsterdam:

Meulenhoff, 1950).

materialise until the time of Newton. However, Dijksterhuis concept of continuity has not been acceptable by some scholars.

For instance, H. Floris Cohen (1994) tried to demonstrate that Dijksterhuis was not quite the advocate of ´continuity´ he appeared to be. He argued that Dijksterhuis abandoned continuity when he came to Copernicus´s De Revolutionibus. Thus,

...despite the [Dijksterhuis´s] protestations of continuity and despite organizing his book so that the period of early modern science is made to begin with Copernicus, the attentive reader leaves the book with the impression that in the past of science we find one unique break, which was occasioned in the main by the Archimedean Galileo and by Kepler, the Platonist and Pythagorean—the first two scientists truly to mathematized nature.⁶⁹

What Cohen failed to say here is that Dijksterhuis´s survey of the history of science found fault with the science of both Galileo and Kepler. While discussing Galileo, Dijksterhuis wrote that, ¨...in Galileo´s work, verification by experiment sometimes appears to be of secondary importance because it may be regarded as somewhat superfluous if the preceding reasoning seemed convincing; thus only purely mental experiments remain or the experiments are only described without being performed.¨⁷⁰ In discussing the new elements of Kepler´s work a similar fault is found. Dijksterhuis explained that Kepler´s new method does not deviate greatly from the old system, it is only different.⁷¹ Hence, he actually maintained his continuity thesis because at the time of the scientific activities of these scientists human thinking had not reached independence with a completely functional mechanistic conception.

Even while Dijksterhuis discusses Newton´s scientific achievements, he does not say that a complete and useable mechanistic conception of the world was achieved. He sees this state of scientific investigation having to wait for those that followed Newton.

69H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, p. 69 70E. J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture, p. 345

71Ibid., p. 322

Dijksterhuis treatment of the historic ideas of the early modern science on their particular propounders during the period mirrors the changing scientific mentalities put forth by Herbert Butterfield in The Origin of Modern Science (1949).

Butterfield had published his work a year before the publication of Dijksterhuis´s in which, as a ´general historian´ than a ´historian of science´, demonstrated the importance of understanding the achievements of the early modern science only in the historical context of the era. His historical survey of the emergence of the scientific ideas in the early modern science lends huge sense of historical importance to the concept of Scientific Revolution. He portends that the novelty and magnanimity of the achievements of such figures like Galileo, Bacon, Copernicus, Newton, Harvey and Boyle could only be appreciated by defining them within the context these scientists lived and worked. The transformations they achieved were ones that required a different kind of thinking-cap, a transposition in the mind of the scientist himself.⁷²

A. Rupert Hall is also one of such early historians to establish a historical overview of the account of the science of the early modern period. Unlike Butterfield, he is a full-blown historian of science. However, he recognises Butterfield, Alexandre Koyré, Joseph Needham and Charles Singer as his mentors. His principal objective was to illustrate that ´there was no unique reason for the development of science in early modern Europe, since one is free to argue that every feature of the European civilisation was a contributing factor´.⁷³ What made the science that developed in Western Europe between 1500 and 1800 so unique was the overall rational character which marks it throughout. His objective was more to discuss the rational nature of the Scientific Revolution as opposed to the various brands of mysticism, magic, superstition, and the like, which early modern science conquered and gradually out-grew. The importance of Hall´s work is that it has served to showcase the predominate tendency among historian in trying to identify one factor or another as the cause of the scientific revolution. The two predominant structures of account of the causes of the scientific revolution include the positivist and historicist models.

72Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800, p.17

73 A. Rupert Hall, The Revolution in Science 1500-1750 (London: Longman, 1983[1954]) p. 36