History 291, Fall 2002

Final Exercise

Complete BOTH parts.  It would help if you submitted them as two separate papers, taking care to place your name and precept on each. The exercise is due on Monday, 20 January, at 3:00 in the History Department Office, 129 Dickinson Hall. Both parts of the exercise are "open book". You may refer to the readings and other course materials, along with your notes from lectures and precept. Remember to cite the sources you do use. The rules governing Academic Integrity at Princeton hold and will be enforced.

Part I (30%)

Following are six passages taken from the sources read this semester. Choose FOUR of them and for each identify the author and work and write a paragraph explaining the significance of the passage for the development of science in the 16th and 17th centuries. (Total length: 800 words)

  1. This will not seem at all strange to those who know how many various automata, or moving machines, the industry of man can make, using but a few pieces of machinery, in comparison to the great multitude of  bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and all the other parts that are in the body of every animal; and who will consider this body as a machine which, having been made by the hands of God, is incomparably better designed, and has in itself more admirable movements, than any of those which can be invented by men.

  2. The next care to be taken, in respect to the Senses, is a supplying of their infirmities with Instruments, and, as it were, the adding of artificial Organs to the natural; this in one of them has been of late years accomplisht with prodigious benefit to all sorts of useful knowledge, by the invention of Optical Glasses. By the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of Microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding.

  3. And thus Nature will be very conformable to her self and very simple, performing all the great Motions of the heavenly Bodies by the Attraction of Gravity which intercedes those Bodies, and almost all the small ones of their Particles by some other attractive and repelling Powers which intercede the Particles.

  4. My purpose is to set forth a very new science dealing with a very ancient subject. There is, in nature, perhaps nothing older than motion, concerning which the books written by philosophers are neither few nor small; nevertheless I have discovered by experiment some propoerties of it which are worth knowing and which have not hitherto been either observed or demonstrated ... for so far as I know, no one has yet pointed out that the distances traversed during equal intervals of time, by a body falling from rest, stand to one another in the same ratio as the odd numbers beginning with unity.

  5. Whether or not the heart, besides propelling the blood, giving it motion locally, and distributing it to the body, adds anything else to it, --heat, spirit, perfection,-- must be inquired into by-and-by, and decided upon other grounds. So much may suffice at this time, when it is shown that by the action of the heart the blood is transfused through the ventricles from the veins to the arteries, and distributed by them to all parts of the body.

  6. Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.


Part II (70%)

Write an essay of about 2000 words on ONE of the following topics. Be sure to support your argument by specific examples taken from the readings and lectures.

  1. "Contrary to a popular notion, the Scientific Revolution did not represent a triumph of common sense over blind dogmatism, achieved by opening one's eyes to the world.  Rather, it involved the construction of a sophisticated theoretical framework for making intelligible a world that lay beyond the reach of the senses and that operated by rules that were often counterintuitive.  Aristotle's world was a world of sensory experience; Newton's was a world of the imagination."

    Do you agree? If so, discuss why and how that framework was constructed. If not, what is wrong with the statement?

  2. One of the commonly identified features of the Scientific Revolution is the rise of experimental practice. According to Steven Shapin, scientists employed three "technologies" to further this approach to understanding nature: the material, the literary, and the social. Explain the meaning and significance of Shapin's argument and apply his analysis to two of the following readings: Descartes's Le Monde, Galileos Discourses and Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences, Query 31 of Newton's Opticks, Harvey's Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, Hooke's Micrographia, the Accademia del Cimento's Essayes of Natural Experiments.

  3. Despite disagreement over its precise terms, the mechanical philosophy became the dominant worldview of the intellectual elite of 17th century Europe. Explain the development of the mechanical philosophy. What were its origins? What were its characteristics? What were the major discrepancies among its believers? Why in the face of this disagreement was it so compelling?

  4. "The Scientific Revolution was driven not by new discoveries and new theories, but by fundamental changes in what European culture expected of science:  what natural philosophy should be about, what kind of knowledge it should be, and how it is related to other forms of knowledge.  It was the answers to these questions that decided what was to count as new discoveries and new theories."

    Discuss critically, basing your analysis and argument on specific examples, illustrations, and analyses taken from both the primary and the secondary materials of the course.