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Authors: Niall Ferguson
Tags: General History
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elements and chemical analysis
1662
Boyle states Boyle’s Law that the volume occupied by a fixed mass of gas in a container is inversely proportional to the pressure it exerts
1669
Isaac Newton’s
De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas
presents the first systematic account of the calculus, independently developed by Gottfried Leibniz
1676
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovers micro-organisms
1687
Newton’s
Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica
states the law of universal gravitation and the laws of motion
1735
Carolus Linnaeus’
Systema naturae
introduces systematic classification of genera and species of organisms
1738
Daniel Bernoulli’s
Hydrodynamica
states Bernoulli’s Principle and founds the mathematical study of fluid flow and the kinetic theory of gases
1746
Jean-Etienne Guettard prepares the first true geological maps
1755
Joseph Black identifies carbon dioxide
1775
Antoine Lavoisier accurately describes combustion
1785
James Hutton’s ‘Concerning the System of the Earth’ states the uniformitarian view of the earth’s development
1789
Lavoisier’s
Traité élémentaire de chimie
states the law of conservation of matter
By the mid-1600s this kind of scientific knowledge was spreading as rapidly as had the doctrine of the Protestant Reformers a century before. The printing press and increasingly reliable postal services combined to create an extraordinary network, small by modern standards, but more powerful than anything previously achieved by a community of scholars. There was of course a great deal of intellectual resistance, as is always the case when the paradigm – the conceptual framework itself – shifts. 28 Indeed, some of this resistance came from within. Newton himself dabbled in alchemy. Hooke all but killed himself with quack remedies for indigestion. It was by no means easy for such men to reconcile the new science with Christian doctrine, which few were ready to renounce. 29 But it remains undeniable that this was an intellectual revolution even more transformative than the religious revolution that preceded and unintentionally begat it. The ground rules of scientific research – including the dissemination of findings and the assigning of credit to the first into print – were laid. ‘Your first letter [paper] baptised me in the Newtonian religion,’ wrote the young French philosopher and wit François-Marie Arouet (better known by his pen-name Voltaire) to Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis following the publication of the latter’s
Discourse on the Different Figures of the Planets
in 1732, ‘and your second gave me confirmation. I thank you for your sacraments.’ 30 This was irony; yet it also acknowledged the revelatory nature of the new science.
Those who decry ‘Eurocentrism’ as if it were some distasteful prejudice have a problem: the Scientific Revolution was, by any scientific measure, wholly Eurocentric. An astonishingly high proportion of the key figures – around 80 per cent – originated in a hexagon bounded by Glasgow, Copenhagen, Kraków, Naples, Marseille and Plymouth, and nearly all the rest were born within a hundred miles of that area. 31 In marked contrast, Ottoman scientific progress was non-existent in this same period. The best explanation for this divergence was the unlimited sovereignty of religion in the Muslim world. Towards the end of the eleventh century, influential Islamic clerics began to argue that the study of Greek philosophy was incompatible with the teachings of the Koran. 32 Indeed, it was blasphemous to suggest that man might be able to discern the divine mode of operation, which Godmight in any case vary at will. In the words of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, author of
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
, ‘It is rare that someone becomes absorbed in this [foreign] science without renouncing religion and letting go the reins of piety within him.’ 33 Under clerical influence, the study of ancient philosophy was curtailed,
1662
Boyle states Boyle’s Law that the volume occupied by a fixed mass of gas in a container is inversely proportional to the pressure it exerts
1669
Isaac Newton’s
De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas
presents the first systematic account of the calculus, independently developed by Gottfried Leibniz
1676
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovers micro-organisms
1687
Newton’s
Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica
states the law of universal gravitation and the laws of motion
1735
Carolus Linnaeus’
Systema naturae
introduces systematic classification of genera and species of organisms
1738
Daniel Bernoulli’s
Hydrodynamica
states Bernoulli’s Principle and founds the mathematical study of fluid flow and the kinetic theory of gases
1746
Jean-Etienne Guettard prepares the first true geological maps
1755
Joseph Black identifies carbon dioxide
1775
Antoine Lavoisier accurately describes combustion
1785
James Hutton’s ‘Concerning the System of the Earth’ states the uniformitarian view of the earth’s development
1789
Lavoisier’s
Traité élémentaire de chimie
states the law of conservation of matter
By the mid-1600s this kind of scientific knowledge was spreading as rapidly as had the doctrine of the Protestant Reformers a century before. The printing press and increasingly reliable postal services combined to create an extraordinary network, small by modern standards, but more powerful than anything previously achieved by a community of scholars. There was of course a great deal of intellectual resistance, as is always the case when the paradigm – the conceptual framework itself – shifts. 28 Indeed, some of this resistance came from within. Newton himself dabbled in alchemy. Hooke all but killed himself with quack remedies for indigestion. It was by no means easy for such men to reconcile the new science with Christian doctrine, which few were ready to renounce. 29 But it remains undeniable that this was an intellectual revolution even more transformative than the religious revolution that preceded and unintentionally begat it. The ground rules of scientific research – including the dissemination of findings and the assigning of credit to the first into print – were laid. ‘Your first letter [paper] baptised me in the Newtonian religion,’ wrote the young French philosopher and wit François-Marie Arouet (better known by his pen-name Voltaire) to Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis following the publication of the latter’s
Discourse on the Different Figures of the Planets
in 1732, ‘and your second gave me confirmation. I thank you for your sacraments.’ 30 This was irony; yet it also acknowledged the revelatory nature of the new science.
Those who decry ‘Eurocentrism’ as if it were some distasteful prejudice have a problem: the Scientific Revolution was, by any scientific measure, wholly Eurocentric. An astonishingly high proportion of the key figures – around 80 per cent – originated in a hexagon bounded by Glasgow, Copenhagen, Kraków, Naples, Marseille and Plymouth, and nearly all the rest were born within a hundred miles of that area. 31 In marked contrast, Ottoman scientific progress was non-existent in this same period. The best explanation for this divergence was the unlimited sovereignty of religion in the Muslim world. Towards the end of the eleventh century, influential Islamic clerics began to argue that the study of Greek philosophy was incompatible with the teachings of the Koran. 32 Indeed, it was blasphemous to suggest that man might be able to discern the divine mode of operation, which Godmight in any case vary at will. In the words of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, author of
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
, ‘It is rare that someone becomes absorbed in this [foreign] science without renouncing religion and letting go the reins of piety within him.’ 33 Under clerical influence, the study of ancient philosophy was curtailed,
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