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, 31 March, in the History Department Office, 129 Dickinson Hall. NO LAST-MINUTE EXTENSIONS WILL BE GRANTED. Since this is a take-home exercise, it falls under Academic Regulations rather than the Honor Code. Hence, it requires the statement "This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations" with your signature, attesting that you have read and understand the provisions set forth in Academic Integrity at Princeton.
"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 in the
Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance"?
.
"There are three reasons why the sky is round: likeness, convenience, and necessity." (John of Sacrobosco, On the Sphere)Using the texts we read, compare and contrast Sacrobosco's demonstration of the world's roundness with Galileo's demonstration of the motion of falling bodies. What kind of knowledge does each author assume on the part of the reader, and how does the author use that knowledge to make his argument?
"We have decided to consider the phenomena of bodies falling with an acceleration such as actually occurs in nature and to make this definition of accelerated motion exhibit the essential features of observed accelerated motions....In this belief we are confirmed mainly by the consideration that experimental results are seen to agree with and exactly correspond with those properties which have been, one after another, demonstrated by us." (Galileo, Two New Sciences, Third Day)
"It seems to me that the everyday practice of the famous Arsenal of Venice offers to speculative minds a large field for philosophizing, and in particular in that part which is called 'mechanics'; for there all types of instruments and machines are constantly being constructed by many artisans, among whom there must be some who, partly by inherited experience and partly by their own observations, have become highly expert and clever in explanation.” (Galileo, Two New Sciences, opening of First Day)Why did Galileo think philosophers should start paying attention to machines?
"Perhaps there will be babblers who claim to be judges of astronomy although completely ignorant of the subject and, badly distorting some passage of Scripture to their purpose, will dare to find fault with my undertaking and censure it. I disregard them even to the extent of despising their criticism as unfounded." (Copernicus, On the Revolutions, 1543)
"If the matter be truly considered, natural philosophy is, after the word of God, at once the surest medicine against superstition and the most approved nourishment for faith, and therefore she is rightly given to religion as her most faithful handmaiden, since the one displays the will of God, the other his power." (Francis Bacon, The New Organon, 1620)
"[Although we can] argue about the constitution of the universe, we cannot discover the work of [God's] hands. Let us, then, exercise these activities permitted to us and ordained by God, that we may recognize and thereby so much the more admire His greatness, however much less fit we may find ourselves to penetrate the profound depths of His infinite wisdom." (Galileo, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, 1632)