Q)Compare the state of science and technology during renaissance with that of post renaissance period in Europe.
Ans)DURING RENAISSANCE
The phase of renaissance was one of description and criticism. First came the exploration of ancient knowledge, mainly the Greeks. The scholars encountered the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle in the original, as well as those of Democritus and Archimedes. Then came the challenge to old authority.At the same time the arts and techniques flourished and provided the material means for the growth of science.
Art
The visual arts, such as painting and sculpture, came to occupy and important place in the society. These had a profound influence on the development of science.The professions of artists, architects and engineers were not separated in the Renaissance. Artists were also the civil and military engineers.They could cast a statue, build a cathedral drain a swamp or even besiege a town.
Medicine and Technology
The faculties of medicine, especially in Italy, were the first ones to break out of the general obscurantism. The doctors mingled freely with artists, mathematicians, astronomers and engineers. The new anatomy, physiology and pathology were sounded on direct observation and experiment. Thus the hold of humors and elements, began to be broken..
In technology the greatest advances of Renaissance were in the fields of mining, metallurgy and chemistry.
The smelting of metals like iron, copper, bismuth, cobalt etc, their handling and separation led to a general theory of chemistry involving oxidation and reduction, distillation and amalgamation. Metallic compounds were introduced into medicine. Other chemical substances such as alum and clay were studied to improve cloth and leather industries to make fine poetry.
Navigation and Astronomy
By the end of the middle ages, trade on land and over the seas was being taken up on a big scale. Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese sailor reached India 1497 via the Cape of Good hope in Africa. Columbus took a great and a adventurous journey westward on the Atlantic ocean in the hope of reaching India. He reached the continent, later named as America, in 1492 thinking that he ahd reached India.
POST-RENAISSANCE
In science, this period from from the mid-sixteenth century to mid-eighteenth century includes the first great triumphs if the new observational and experimental approach. This new approach, together with the development eith the development in science and technology during renaissance, amounted to a Scientific Revolution. European science grew to maturity. The first institute of teaching science, the Gresham college, was opened in 1579. The revolutionary Copernican model of the solar system helped in improving astronomical tables. What the theory lacked was an accurate description of the orbits of the planets.This was done by two remarkable men. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and Johannes Kepler(1571-1630). Brahe collected a series of exact observations on the positions of stars and planets with specially made apparatus.Kepler's laws of planetary motion struck a mortal blow to the Greek thought of perfect circular motion.
The telescope invented around this time, proved to be the greatest scientific instrument of this period. In the hands of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), a professor of physics and military engineering at Padua, it became a means of revolution in science.
Galileo's more detailed work, entitled Dialogue concerning the two Chief Systems of the World, the Ptolemaic and the Copernican was published in 1632 and was indeed dedicated to the pope. In this he criticized and ridiculed the ancient Ptolemaic cosmology. The challenge put down by pope could not be ignored. It immediately led to conflict with the church which led to Galileo's trail. He was condemned and forced to go back on his words.
The year Galileo died Newton was born. New ton continued Galileo's scientific tradition.He provided a complete scientific theory of motion of all objects, whether planes in the heavens or bodies in the earth.It was not easy for any more for church to suppress the scientific tradition. Earlier, Giordano Bruno (1548--1600) was burnt to death and Campanella (1568-1639) was imprisoned for years for opposing the Aristotelian world view and supporting the Copernican theory.
Ans)DURING RENAISSANCE
The phase of renaissance was one of description and criticism. First came the exploration of ancient knowledge, mainly the Greeks. The scholars encountered the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle in the original, as well as those of Democritus and Archimedes. Then came the challenge to old authority.At the same time the arts and techniques flourished and provided the material means for the growth of science.
Art
The visual arts, such as painting and sculpture, came to occupy and important place in the society. These had a profound influence on the development of science.The professions of artists, architects and engineers were not separated in the Renaissance. Artists were also the civil and military engineers.They could cast a statue, build a cathedral drain a swamp or even besiege a town.
Medicine and Technology
The faculties of medicine, especially in Italy, were the first ones to break out of the general obscurantism. The doctors mingled freely with artists, mathematicians, astronomers and engineers. The new anatomy, physiology and pathology were sounded on direct observation and experiment. Thus the hold of humors and elements, began to be broken..
In technology the greatest advances of Renaissance were in the fields of mining, metallurgy and chemistry.
The smelting of metals like iron, copper, bismuth, cobalt etc, their handling and separation led to a general theory of chemistry involving oxidation and reduction, distillation and amalgamation. Metallic compounds were introduced into medicine. Other chemical substances such as alum and clay were studied to improve cloth and leather industries to make fine poetry.
Navigation and Astronomy
By the end of the middle ages, trade on land and over the seas was being taken up on a big scale. Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese sailor reached India 1497 via the Cape of Good hope in Africa. Columbus took a great and a adventurous journey westward on the Atlantic ocean in the hope of reaching India. He reached the continent, later named as America, in 1492 thinking that he ahd reached India.
POST-RENAISSANCE
In science, this period from from the mid-sixteenth century to mid-eighteenth century includes the first great triumphs if the new observational and experimental approach. This new approach, together with the development eith the development in science and technology during renaissance, amounted to a Scientific Revolution. European science grew to maturity. The first institute of teaching science, the Gresham college, was opened in 1579. The revolutionary Copernican model of the solar system helped in improving astronomical tables. What the theory lacked was an accurate description of the orbits of the planets.This was done by two remarkable men. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and Johannes Kepler(1571-1630). Brahe collected a series of exact observations on the positions of stars and planets with specially made apparatus.Kepler's laws of planetary motion struck a mortal blow to the Greek thought of perfect circular motion.
The telescope invented around this time, proved to be the greatest scientific instrument of this period. In the hands of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), a professor of physics and military engineering at Padua, it became a means of revolution in science.
Galileo's more detailed work, entitled Dialogue concerning the two Chief Systems of the World, the Ptolemaic and the Copernican was published in 1632 and was indeed dedicated to the pope. In this he criticized and ridiculed the ancient Ptolemaic cosmology. The challenge put down by pope could not be ignored. It immediately led to conflict with the church which led to Galileo's trail. He was condemned and forced to go back on his words.
The year Galileo died Newton was born. New ton continued Galileo's scientific tradition.He provided a complete scientific theory of motion of all objects, whether planes in the heavens or bodies in the earth.It was not easy for any more for church to suppress the scientific tradition. Earlier, Giordano Bruno (1548--1600) was burnt to death and Campanella (1568-1639) was imprisoned for years for opposing the Aristotelian world view and supporting the Copernican theory.
Galileo and Kepler could formulate mathematical descriptions of the bodies because they were masters of the new mathematics that had grown during renaissance. Algebra, geometry and the decimal system, taken from the ancients and the Arabs as well as the introduction of logarithm by Napier (1550-1617), greatly simplified astronomical calculatons. Forty years later, the observational laws of Kepler were combined with the explanations of Galileo in Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
Magnetism was experimentally studied for the first time. William Harvey's (1578-1657) discovery of blood in the human body.It led to a complete break from Galen's ideas. A totally new approach was formulated and the human body was analysed on the principle of pumps and valves like the ones seen in machinery. As a result, a new kind of experimental anatomy and physiology emerged.The first well-established scientific societies, the Royal Society of London(1662) and the French Royal Academy (1666) were formed. These societies set themselves the task of concentrating on the pressing technical problem of those times, those of pumping and hydraulics, of gunnery and navigation. Astronomy was an essential need of ocean navigation. The developments in astronomy led to the new mathematical explanation of the universe, finally arrived at by Newton. This was a major triumph of science.
The greatest triumph of the seventeenth century was a general system of mechanics. This system could explain the motion of heavenly bodies as well as the motion of matter on earth in terms of universal laws and theories.
There were other developments too. such as in optics and the theory of light, closely linked to astronomy by the telescope and to biology by the microscope. Seventeenth century grew from attempts to understand refraction. Theories about nature of light were also given.Another development was pneumatic, the science of mechanical properties of gasses. The question of vacuum was also important.The actual production of vacuum and the use of air pump for this led Robert boyle to study the behavior of air. The world of biology also saw great developments with the coming of the microscope.
Magnetism was experimentally studied for the first time. William Harvey's (1578-1657) discovery of blood in the human body.It led to a complete break from Galen's ideas. A totally new approach was formulated and the human body was analysed on the principle of pumps and valves like the ones seen in machinery. As a result, a new kind of experimental anatomy and physiology emerged.The first well-established scientific societies, the Royal Society of London(1662) and the French Royal Academy (1666) were formed. These societies set themselves the task of concentrating on the pressing technical problem of those times, those of pumping and hydraulics, of gunnery and navigation. Astronomy was an essential need of ocean navigation. The developments in astronomy led to the new mathematical explanation of the universe, finally arrived at by Newton. This was a major triumph of science.
The greatest triumph of the seventeenth century was a general system of mechanics. This system could explain the motion of heavenly bodies as well as the motion of matter on earth in terms of universal laws and theories.
There were other developments too. such as in optics and the theory of light, closely linked to astronomy by the telescope and to biology by the microscope. Seventeenth century grew from attempts to understand refraction. Theories about nature of light were also given.Another development was pneumatic, the science of mechanical properties of gasses. The question of vacuum was also important.The actual production of vacuum and the use of air pump for this led Robert boyle to study the behavior of air. The world of biology also saw great developments with the coming of the microscope.
