Pre-Galilean Science

Abstract

Three great figures dominated scientific thinking in the century between 1500 and 1600: Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. We might well have devoted this chapter entirely to them, but that would have left the reader wondering why a gap of about 15 centuries separates Greek astronomy from the beginning of modern astronomy. For that reason, we first give a brief discussion of science during the Middle Ages to show the vast difference between the dogmatic scholasticism (non-science) of that period and the remarkable discoveries of Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler. The medieval scholastics such as Hugo of Saint Victor and Thomas Aquinas sought to understand the world by uniting faith and reason into a single intellectual framework, while the early Renaissance scientists, particularly Kepler, tried to make sense of the universe by searching for mathematical patterns (that could be quantified) amid their astronomical observations. Although the scholastics developed impressive proofs for the existence of God, among other things, they could offer no external evidence to support their conclusions. By contrast, Kepler, after 30 years of labor, derived three simple mathematical relationships that could describe the motions of the planets in the sky. His repeated testing of theory against observation provided an early model for what we now call modern science and offered an empirical approach toward the world that continues to be relevant to this day.

The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

—Cyril Connolly