Write an essay of about 1500 words on ONE of the following questions. Your answer should be based on the readings, lectures, and precept discussions of the course so far, and you should support your argument by specific examples drawn from those sources. No additional research is necessary, but you are welcome to do further reading if you wish. You should, of course, give proper citation for all your sources. Essays are due by 3:00 p.m., Friday, 8 November, in the History Department Office, 129 Dickinson Hall. NO EXTENSIONS WILL BE GRANTED. Since this is a take-home exercise, it falls under Academic Regulations rather than the Honor Code. Hence, it requires only your signature attesting that it represents your own work and that you have read and understand the provisions set forth in Academic Integrity at Princeton.
A noted scholar (Otto Neugebauer) has called Copernicus "the last of the Ptolemaic astronomers", and Curtis Wilson refers to Kepler as "the first modern astronomer". Do you agree with this distinction? If so, in what ways did Copernicus share the theories, goals, and methods of such Ptolemaic writers as Sacrobosco and the author of the Theorica planetarum and in what ways were Copernicus and Kepler so different in their thinking? If not, where do you see the essential similarities? In either case, where does this leave Galileo? Was he engaged in the same enterprise as either of them, or in something significantly different?
Conscious of living in a new era, Renaissance natural philosophers often turned to history for evidence, both positive and negative, to bolster their arguments. Choose THREE of the following figures and compare the uses to which they put the past in advancing their arguments: Copernicus, Vesalius, Galileo, Bacon.
“And so in the course of time the art of treatment has been so miserably distorted that certain doctors assuming the name of physicians have arrogated to themselves the prescription of drugs and diet for obscure diseases, and have relegated the rest of medicine to those whom they call surgeons.” (Vesalius, Preface to De Humani Corporis Fabrica, 318)The above passages illustrate important features of Renaissance science. In your essay, describe what they are and relate them to specific sciences you’ve encountered in the course.
“Well, if we cannot have the presence of your poets ..., we do have at hand archers and catapultists and you may see for yourself whether citing your authorities to them can strengthen their arms to such an extent that the arrows they shoot and the lead balls they hurl will take fire and melt the air.” (Galileo, The Assayer, 270)
“Now we, thanks to the telescope, have brought the heavens thirty or forty times closer to us than they were to Aristotle, so that we can discern many things in them that he could not see…. Therefore we can treat of the heavens and the sun more confidently than Aristotle could.” (Galileo: Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 56)
"Mechanics, since it operates against nature or rather in rivalry with the laws of nature, surely deserves our highest admiration." (Guidobaldo dal Monte, Book of Mechanics, 1577)
"I have seen ... the general run of mechanicians deceived in trying to apply machines to many operations impossible by their nature. ... These deceptions appear to me to have their principal cause in the belief which these craftsmen have, and continue to hold, in being able to raise very great weights with a small force, as if with their machines they could cheat nature, whose instinct --nay, whose most firm constitution-- is that no resistance may be overcome by a force that is not more powerful than it." (Galileo, Mechanics, 1600)
"Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed." (Bacon, New Organon, 1620)
How well do these passages illustrate the transition of technology from magic to science, as discussed by William Eamon in his article, "Technology as magic ..."?