During Europe’s so-called ‘Dark Ages’, the learning of the ancient Greeks was mostly forgotten, or condemned as pagan. Much of their science survived only through Arab scholars, who also made significant contributions to subjects such as mathematics and chemistry (the words algebra and alcohol derive from Arabic).
On the other side of the world, China was a hotbed of technological innovation, whose range of inventions included the magnetic compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing. Eventually these ‘Four Great Inventions’ reached the West.
Even when ancient Greek learning was rediscovered in Europe, it didn’t immediately inspire new thinking. Scholars regarded the ancient Greeks as the ultimate authority, especially once theologians had written their version of Greek thought into Roman Catholic doctrine. To question this authority was heresy.
A central tenet of Church teaching was that the Earth, on which God had created man, lay at the centre of the universe. This echoed the cosmology of the Greek geographer Ptolemy (1st century CE ), although an earlier scientist, Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century BCE ), had proposed that the Earth orbits the Sun. This heliocentric theory was revived in the 16th century by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Although both mathematics and observations confirmed it, he did not dare publish his findings till 1543, the year of his death. When the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei produced evidence that backed Copernicus, the Roman Catholic Church put him on trial, and in 1633, under threat of being burned as a heretic, he withdrew his support. Nevertheless, Galileo’s contributions to modern science were enormous, particularly his use of mathematics in physics.
‘I am much occupied with the investigation of physical causes. My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is not similar to a divine animated being, but similar to a clock.’
Johannes Kepler, letter to his patron (1605). Kepler built on the findings of Copernicus, and found the laws of planetary motion
Combining observation and experiment with mathematical analysis became the hallmarks of the new scientific method. General theories were to be derived from particular observations of the real world – a method triumphantly vindicated when in 1687 Isaac Newton published his law of gravity and three laws of motion, which described the interactions between forces and objects. The stress on a mechanized cosmos identified regular and predictable processes that could be mathematically defined. The prestige of Newtonian ideas helped ensure that the concepts, methods, language and metaphors used to explain them were applied in various branches of knowledge.
Breakthroughs took place in other fields of science. In the year when Copernicus published his heliocentric theory, the Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius published On the Workings of the Human Body , based on dissections he had himself performed rather than on the teaching of the ancient Greek physician Galen – till now the ultimate authority in such matters. Galen’s medical theories were also challenged by the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus, who began the move from medieval alchemy towards modern chemistry, and insisted that specific diseases require specific remedies.
Galen had followed the principle of Aristotle that the world is made up of a balance of four elements (earth, water, air and fire). Newton’s contemporary, Robert Boyle, promoted the altogether different concept of chemical elements. Both Boyle and Newton belonged to the Royal Society of London, founded in 1600. It was just one of many academies of science that were established around Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Not so many years before science had flown in the face of authority. Now it became a respectable activity for a gentleman.