The Origins of the Scientific Revolution
The slow incubation of ideas during the Renaissance and Middle Ages had brought to Europe a new outlook; no longer were the people held captive by bounded theology, but were free to explore the limits of the universe. This gradual change from the dogmatic and rigid structural atmosphere of the old Europe, known as the Scientific Revolution, had not been brought about by a few people, but by the machinations of the whole continent, combining the genius of the intellectuals in the universities with the economic power of the expanding European states. The exposure of the people to other lands had increased the importance of trade and travel, and in the face of such large discoveries, technological developments had to be made to take advantage of and hold the power over these new advancements. With the curiosity that came with the prospect of these unknowns came the realization of the relative captivity of man within the current social environment. The boom in technology enabled different worlds to be seen by man, ones in which the worldliness of clergy and the cruelty of autocratic regimes did not exist, and in which was purity: the sky, the sea, the minutiae, and the mind of man itself. People were willing to overlook the inward-looking systems of the Church and royalty and see the broadening horizons of Man.
The travels of Marco Polo, Columbus, and Henry the Navigator had opened up the world to the eyes of European society. Because of the prospect of wealth and progress offered by these new places, Europeans and Muslims alike scrambled to put their foot into the door as regards to territorial expansion and trade. When the first treasure ships and scout ships arrived back in Europe from trips to far-off lands, the enormous riches and wealth garnered from the sale of luxury items led to the financial backing of more voyages by royalty: the Muscovy Company, opening up trade with the Russians at Archangel, the annual fleets of Spanish and Portuguese sailing to the ports of Persia, and the huge Venetian corsairs fighting with Turkish caramusalis for Egyptian trading rights. As well, the towns along the coasts of the Mediterranean and the two oceans had developed specialized goods of their own to ship back, such as salt from Ibiza, vino greco from Naples, and oil from Djerba; thus, trade was initiated. However, it was not that simple. Some of the towns made similar products, or had a very profitable venture of which other towns and countries were jealous of, and so warfare was initiated. Because of the need for increasingly better protection and firepower, and higher quality goods, the sciences blossomed as courts paid for these developments.
The developments of universities throughout all of Europe during these times were harbingers of times to come. These were places in which students chose to study, and teachers chose to teach. In only such a place could the spread of knowledge expand rapidly. From the Middle Ages, these institutions had developed out of raw primitiveness and began anew in every respect. The adoption of ancient culture and languages were a major step in the gradual progress toward being a major center of learning. With the increase of wealth during the fourteenth century and onwards, a more systematic care for education was possible. Professorships were soon set up in different fields, including civil law, canonical law, medicine, rhetoric, philosophy, astronomy, astrology, and botany. There existed fierce competition between universities to entice distinguished professors to their universities and so huge sums were devoted to paying these academic superstars. It is said that in Bologna, sometimes half of its public income (20,000 ducats) was spent in these endeavors. Even so, it took outside help for universities to flower. Pope Leo X, in 1513, organized a Church sponsored college which had eighty-eight lecturers, among whom there were the most able men of Italy, to read and interpret the classics. The Medici family had deep roots in the Platonic philosophy and gathered many famous scholars about them to teach and encourage each other to higher levels of philosophical understanding. Within these universities, the total education of the person was emphasized, teaching the how and the why together. Many famous figures of the Scientific Revolution were born from the walls of these institutions which emphasized a wholly professional attitude, and encouraged the gathering of information and the careful study of it by scholars.
The general religious bog of Europe had garnered few praises; in fact, the clergy were hated and their worldly attitudes were seen as a slap in the face of true Christian teaching. As well, the religious wars in France, Germany, Italy and even Spain, had embittered the whole continent to the "truth" of the Church. Instead, it fostered a sense of religious skepticism. Human observation and reason seemed much simpler and more straightforward, as well as a more useful approach to gaining truth. So, the European became more receptive to a world view proceeding not from tradition, scripture, or divine revelation, but through observed fact, or science, something that was definite and unchanging, like the face of the clergy. The appeal of finding evidence of God's will in creation through the natural world, instead of through corrupt methods, was seen as a virtuous enterprise, one that offered testimony to the higher ways of God and were almost worship in itself. Because so many questions of life arose from nature, there was a tendency to look there for answers.
As well as being openly repugnant, the clergy attracted losses in other ways; with the Gutenberg press they had lost control over reading and writing, as well as control over higher education, which belonged to the universities. With this, they became lazy, ignorant, and intolerant as well. Their very word was law, and was a large part of the sense of feudal domination. However, as the clergy lost control, so did the kings and emperors. Their control was based on the Church and feudalism, and with both of these powerhouses dying away, the very power structure of Europe was at stake (Engels). The people looked more and more toward developments which would help rebuild the continent, and a market for philosophers was born. The fatigue from religious troubles developed a more cynical and Machiavellian mindset in the philosophers of the Scientific Revolution. Hobbes, in his writings, called for a powerful sovereign who served the larger political community with his authority to curb human wantonness. Hugo Grotius appealed to the conscience of the European individual to seek an open, tolerant, or broadminded spirit toward Truth, and to that end, compiled together laws that might help toward a new cooperative international order and became the "father" of international law. Locke, contemporary of Newton, saw the mind as a machine that received bits of energy that came to it through the senses and that was processed by the machine-like mind into thoughts and ideas. Because of the stifling religious atmosphere, these philosophers were encouraged in thinking outside the narrow outlook provided.
New sources of scientific development awed the people of Europe. Among learned individuals, Dante, even as a master poet, sought a scientific understanding of nature through hints and clues in the Divine Comedy. As a popular man, his word had considerable influence, and so his excitement about gaining a popular knowledge of the heavens, combined with the "invention" of a telescope by Galileo and the efforts of Copernicus and Brahe, brought about considerable interest in the public about the sky. As well, the development of the microscope by Leeuwenhoek aroused interest in the molecular world. The travels of the explorers had brought home people of other races, along with exotic plants and animals (Naples received a giraffe and zebra from Baghdad, Leo X received an elephant and rhino from Portugal, and Cardinal Medici kept many barbarians at court, including North African Moors, Tartar bowmen, Negro wrestlers, Indian divers, and Turks) and induced observers to study further these other vibrant areas of nature (Burckhardt). The physical beauty of these specimens also encouraged collections and so preserved for generations to come the sight of these objects of foreign descent. The old hobbies of falconry, hunting, and racing also contributed to the growth of zoology and botany during the Scientific Revolution; through science, the breeding of more perfect specimens could be created. In military matters, the development of better cannon on ships also contributed to the improvement of land warfare. The same things that worked at sea were useful on land and thus sparked another race for mastery.
The combination of all these factors affecting the lifeblood of the nation created an atmosphere of competition and curiosity in which an inevitable result was a revolution in thought of some kind. The university, sponsoring learning throughout the continent, inevitably met up with royal demands for research into arms development and luxury endeavors. The growing trade between the countries of Europe and the rest of the discovered world also stimulated the start of the Scientific Revolution. The breakdown of the feudal structure also left a void which was filled by the philosophy of the new intellectuals and started a new outlook into humanity and knowledge. The Scientific Revolution then started, gaining momentum through the work of the scientists that have contributed to our knowledge in all the areas of science and thought. In the end, as it merged into the period of the Enlightenment, it had achieved its main aim: to expose the limits of the universe and of man and understand the world that all of us, as humans, lived in.