INTRODUCTION
In this unit, we wish to introduce you to what particularly differentiates the humanists from scientists of the period and their contributions, but marked out Roger Bacon, Isaac Newton, and Copernicus for more specific and comprehensive discussion. We have also added a discussion of the geographical discoveries of Christopher Columbus. You may find yourself someday being asked to discuss or make a scholarly contribution to issues revolving around the scientific revolution in Renaissance Europe. In this unit, we have prepared you adequately for such tasks, should they arise.
3.1 MAJOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMANISTS AND SCIENTISTS
Humanists rely on reason, leading to the belief that there are no supernatural beings such as gods, angels, and God that determine and administer people‟s will. Though humanists are not scientists, some of them, the secular humanists, lean on some aspects of science and/or scientific method to explain or answer questions about the evolution of human beings and the entire universe.
Humanists are intellectual and social philosophers in the application of the individual and societal pleasure for the expression of personal and individual propositions. They may not be agnostics, nor unchristian but their form of Christianity maybe secularised.
Scientists do not believe in human self subjectivity to a god who inhabits a supposed space, reducing the individual to an atom or speck that could be driven at will under the hands of uncontrollable forces.
In contemporary human history, scientists thrive under the investigative and explorative philosophies of Physics, which at first was viewed suspiciously dogma, but with time regarded with ever increasing conviction from the time of Galileo. Scientists believe in the absolute uniformity of nature; and seeing the world as a system, a mechanism of every part, every movement and of a whole, as related to other parts for complete and definite functionality.
Scientists believe in the experimental studying of the existence of the connections between every phenomenon with the aim to unravel the connection between it and other phenomena, such is the attitude and spirit of the working hypothesis of modern scientists
Again, scientists adopt the practical method alien to the subjective philosophy of humanists. Humanists are preoccupied with viewing everything from the angle or axis of human interest, as it predominates their thinking. This is at variance with scientific investigative rationality. Humanists are fundamentally aesthetical in movement. Their ideal life is about human experience, aristocratic in perspective, alluring beauty; they work with humanist apparatus such as love, laws, ambition and reform.
Scientists have revolutionized the world; examples of great discoveries abound with men who had caught the scientific spirit of Galileo, notably among whom are Sir Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin. Their mind probing inventions have accelerated the development of the world.
We may conclude that while humanists rely on the exercise of the humanities and literary culture, scientists exercise the same faculties but in a much more delicate manner. Scientists expose every law to scientific verification intentionally and not by accident.
3.2 SOME SCIENTISTS OF THE PERIOD AND THEIR WORKS
A number of scientists existed in Medieval Europe; some of them and their works are:
Paul of Aegina (ca. 625 - ca. 690) was the greatest Byzantine Surgeon. He developed many novel surgical techniques in the Islamic world and authored the timeless medical encyclopedia, Medical Compendium in Seven Books.
The Venerable Bede (ca. 672 - 735) was a monk who made discoveries in medicine and computer. He authored many books including The Reckoning of Time, a book which discusses Mathematics, the nature of things and the astronomical subject of the cosmos.
Robert Grossteste (1168 - 1253). He was the Bishop of Lincoln who wrote texts on the science of optics, astronomy and geometry. He was the leading figure of the 13th century English intellectual movement. His work on optics and astronomy influenced many scientists of his time including Roger Bacon.
Roger Bacon (1214 - 1284) was a member of the Franciscan order. His works were on mechanics, astronomy and geography, including optics. His research in optics established optics as a discipline in Medieval universities.
Nicole Oresme (1323 - 1382) was a 14th century philosopher, a theologian and bishop of Lisieux who wrote influential treatises in Latin and French on Mathematics, Physics, Economics and astronomy.
Rabanus Maurus (780 - 856), a teacher, monk and archbishop of Mainz, he wrote works on computers and the encyclopedia De Universo. His teaching earned him the accolade of Praeceptor Germamae orthe German teacher.
Anthemius of Tralles (474 - 534) was a Professor of geometry and architecture, who wrote extensively on Mathematics. He was one of the architects of the famous Hagia Sophia, the largest medieval building in Istanbul, Turkey. His works were intellectual sources throughout Western Europe and the Arab World.
Jordanus de Nemore (late 12th, early 13th century),a respected Mathematician of the Middle Ages,was well known for his treatise on mechanics (the science of weights), algebra, geometry, stereographic projection and arithmetic.
Thomas Aquinas (1227 - 1274) was an Italian theologian, a friar in the Dominican Order, a Catholic Saint and Doctor Angelius who wrote beautiful treatises for which he was more famous, and incorporated Aristotelian views into the scholastic tradition.
Jean Burdan (1300 - 1358) was a French philosopher and Priest of the Middle Age. He developed the theory of impetus that explained the movements of projectiles and objects of free-fall, a theory that gave way to the dynamics of Galileo and of Isaac Newton.
3.3 Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (1214 – 1284) was the Doctor Mirabilis, which means a wonderful teacher. He was a respectable English philosopher who achieved a great feat in the study of nature. He was a respected 19th century advocate of modern scientific method, apparently inspired by Aristotle, Arabic teachers and scholars including Alhazen. A graduate of Oxford at the age of thirteen, his family had their properties seized and were exiled in the reign of Henry III of England. He was a friar in the Franciscan order.
He wrote on philosophy and advised on how to incorporate the philosophy of Aristotle and science into theology. His theories on alchemy and astrology are documented in his books, Opus Majus, De Multiplications Specierum, amongst others.
He suffered arrest and imprisonment from the medieval church due to his interest in certain astrological doctrines, and sympathies for radical Franciscans on prophecies of his time. Bacon was an advocate of modern experimental science, in an age that was hostile to modern scientific ideas.
A respected multilinguist of his time, he advocated a theological reform premised around a return to the study of the language in which the Bible was composed to avoid a corruption of works of Greek philosophers by misinterpretations and mistranslations. He advised theologians to study science instead of blindly following prior authorities. In the Opus Majus, he criticised Alexander of Italy and Albertus Magnus, his contemporaries, whom he said had not studied Aristotle, and had not acquired enough learning.
3.4 Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. He was a natural philosopher, scientist, and theorist, who invented a new theory of light and colour, transformed the structure of physical science with his three laws of motion and of universal gravitation, combining the contributions of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and others into a powerful whole. He revolutionised the 17th century with his power of observations and theories.
Newton was born prematurely in an era when England had not emerged from a bitter civil war. His father had died three months before he was born, and his mother had left him in the care of his grandmother to remarry. At age eighteen he was admitted into Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was exposed to Aristotle‟s teachings and other classical philosophies. At Cambridge, he was not particularly brilliant, but studied privately and mastered the works of Rene Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes and other scientific figures of the age. In 1665, Newton got his bachelor‟s degree at Cambridge, and returned to Woolsthorpe after the school closed for two years because of the outbreak of the plague.
Newton developed unusual interest in mathematics and philosophy, conceived his method of infinitesimal calculus, began research into his theory of light and colour and gained insight into the problem of planetary motion, and this led to the publication of his Principia in 1687. After his Masters degree in Arts at Cambridge, in 1669, he was appointed a Senior Fellow and succeeded Isaac Barrow as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
He was admitted into the Royal Society, and he began his controversial study of the nature of colour, a development which degenerated into conflicts involving him and the society‟s respected curator of experiments, Robert Hooke, which continued till 1678. He suffered depression in 1678 when his mother died. After he got over it, he researched into alchemical and the hidden forces of nature. His alchemical studies opened theoretical avenues not found in mechanical philosophy. In 1666, he observed the fall of an apple in his garden at Woolsthorpe; this provoked his concept of universal gravitational pull, though the idea was said to have been birthed 20 years earlier, when the issue of planetary motion was discussed with Newton by Robert Hooke, Edmund Halley and Christopher Wren in 1684. Isaac Newton was acquainted with John Locke, a philosopher, and Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, a brilliant mathematician. He was elected President of the Royal Society of London. In 1704, his major work, Opticks was published.
3.5 Nicolaus Copernicus
Nocolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) was an accompanied administrator, politician, and statesman. A Polish, he was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a heliocentric model of the universe which placed the sun, rather than the Earth, at the centre. One of his most popular scientific publications is On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. A respected physician, translator, doctor of Canon Law, classic scholar, economist, diplomat and governor,his theory of money remained a principal concept in Economics up to today. He was responsible for translating from Greek to Latin, some of the works of the 7th century Byzantine historian, Theophylact Simocatta.
He collaborated with some astronomers of his time to observe the eclipses of the sun between 1515 to 1530. He conducted over 60 astronomical observations in from 1513 to1516 from his external curia using primitive instrument. He also observed planetary bodies like the Mars, Saturn and the sun in 1515. His observations of the sun made him discover the movement of the solar system in connection with the fixed stars. His theory of money in 1517 helped Prussia and Poland to stablise their currency. He was also a physician who in his early days treated his brothers, uncle and other family members.
3.5 Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506), an Italian, was a skillful adventurer who had interest in discovering the unknown. His early experience of sea travels along the Mediterranean, northern Europe, including Spain and Portugal, and his love for map making and studying the voyages of men like Marco Polo preoccupied him with the thought of traveling to unknown places including Asia, which had only one route from Europe (eastward across the Mediterranean sea, through deserts, mountains and ancient routes). Even Europeans too wanted a better and alternative route for their trading activities but were afraid to risk travel into the unknown parts of the Atlantic. But Columbus ‟ experience as one who studied maps, and the wisdom gained from experiences of previous sailors provided a novel insight that made him to conclude that India and Eastern were the ideal route to Asia, a route that was far better than going round Africa.
Determined still, he tried unsuccessfully for about ten years to make his travel plans acceptable to the European rulers of his time. There was a great reluctance to sponsor his proposed expedition because of the raging disagreement about the actual location of Asia and the distance. Some had said that Asia was towards the West, no one was sure, but Columbus put his estimated distance at about 2,500 miles (4000 kilometres west of the Canary Islands). It was much later that the world knew that his assumption was wrong, because his calculation reduced the earth.
In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon agreed to put three ships together for Christopher Columbus for a voyage. They also promised to make him the Viceroy (governor) of any new land he acquired, and 10 percent from any wealth he brings into Spain. With ninety male crew members, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria sailed westward on August 3, 1492. Columbus documented his voyage in a diary. His three ships were manned by crew members who were mostly Spanish, except himself and a few others aboard. Columbus and his crew members sailed into the Atlantic until the morning of October 12, 1492, when they arrived at an Island of the Bahamas, which he named Sansalvador, but thinking he had reached the East Indies, he named the people that lived there Indians. For the next ten weeks he explored the Island of the Caribbean, and arrived at the thickly populated Island of the Hispaniola shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. He also discovered Cuba which he thought of as the Asian mainland.
It was at the Hispaniola that one of the ships of Columbus, the flagship‟s Santa Maria got broken to pieces. He left many of his crews behind to establish a fort and continued a return journey to Spain in the Nina. In his diary, he wrote about the very hospitable people he had met in a fertile land thinking he had reached Asia. Although, he had accumulated a fair quantity of riches, mines, gold and metals, it was not in the great quantity he anticipated. He promised to give Ferdinand and Isabella slaves and as much gold they want if they would agree to finance another voyage; though he offered them some Indianshe had enslaved.
Christopher Columbus made three more trips to the Americas between 1493 and 1504, still in search of the Asia already described by Marco Polo. Unfortunately, all the men he left behind had been killed by the Indians who took advantage of the conflicts and disunity among the Spanish. The latter had plundered the natives of their wealth and took advantage of women and stole goods.
At last, Christopher Columbus failed in his mission to Christianise the natives, and accumulate wealth for Spain. Isabella and Ferdinand were displeased by the chaotic reports from their colonies, thus in 1500, Columbus was recalled and removed as the governor of the Indies. Apparently distressed and disillusioned, he died in Spain in 1506.
4.0 CONCLUSION
In this unit, we have discussed the difference between humanists and scientists, mentioned some of the scientists of the period and their works. We have also explained the life, challenges and theories propounded by Roger Bacon, Isaac Newton, Nicolaus Copernicus, as well as some geographical discoveries of Christopher Columbus.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, you have learnt:
. There are some major differences between humanists and scientists;
. About the work-filled life and challenges of Roger Bacon;
. The scientific experiences of Isaac Newton;
. About Nicolaus Corpernicus‟ contribution to Science;
. The spirit of adventure in the life of the popular voyager, Christopher Columbus.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1) List and explain two differences between humanists and scientists.
2) Identify at least five scientists of the Renaissance and their works.
3) Explain what you consider most interesting in the life of Roger Bacon.
4) Discuss the success of Isaac Newton as a 17th century scientist.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Baktan, Coy (1980). History and Geographical Discoveries. London: Pen Books.
Ben, Lewis (1969). Medieval Scientists. England: Penguin Books.
Berke, Hen (2006). Humanists and Scientists. London: Heinemann.
Calthen, Lens (2004).Renaissance Inventors. London: Heinemann.
David, Creign (2000). Science and Controversies - The Medieval and Renaissance. Sidney: Teleline.
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