History 291, Spring 2004

Final Exercise

Part I (30%)

1. Because there is no void at all in the new world, it was impossible for all the parts of matter to move in a straight line.  Rather, all of them being just about equal and as easily divertible, they all had to unite in some circular motions.  And yet, because we suppose that God first moved them diversely, we should not imagine that they all came together to turn about a single center, but about many different ones, which we may imagine to be diversely situated.
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. As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in Experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general.
4. Regarding Ideas, whether Plato erred or not, it is certain that the artisan must have an idea in order to carry out his work; otherwise he would never reach an end.  But to say that in order to know something, for example what paper is, one must know everything you have brought up: that is what I deny, even though it would be necessary in order to know it as God knows it.  It is, then, enough to have knowledge of something, to know its effects, its operations, and its uses, by means of which we distinguish it from every other individual or from among the other species.  We do not wish to attribute to ourselves any greater or any more particular knowledge than that.
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.
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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. “The demand for truth above all was an appeal to fact – fact that was in principle public, verifiable, morally neutral, invariant with the social circumstances of the observer, immune from interference by magician or god.  But the new science did more than appeal to facts.  It created facts of that kind for the first time.” (Nathan Sivin, “Why the Scientific Revolution did not take place in China – or didn’t it?”, p. 544)

   Identify and analyze some of the techniques that were used to establish the facts that Sivin describes and assess their role in the development of the new science of the seventeenth century.
2. Robert Hooke wrote in his Micrographia that "The next care to be taken in respect of the senses is a supplying of their infirmities with Instruments, and, as it were, the adding of artificial Organs to the natural."  How did  instruments become so important to the development of science in the seventeenth century?  In answering this question you should consider at least three new instruments and the role they played in shaping the ideas and observations of the natural philosophers who used them.
   

3. “…there is the assumption that, since modern science has so quickly and thoroughly become international, it transcends European historical and philosophic biases, and is as universal, objective, and value-free as the Nature that it seeks to understand and manipulate. … I am arguing that the notion of a universal and value-free modern science, which has somehow become independent of its social and historical origins, is wishful thinking. ( Nathan Sivin, “Why the Scientific Revolution did not take place in China—or didn’t it?’ pp. 537-8)

   To what extent can one argue that the very notion that knowledge of Nature is (or should be) "universal, objective, and value-free" reflects the particular historical and philosophical circumstances of what we call the "Scientific Revolution"? 
   
4. In expounding corpuscularism, Robert Boyle often spoke of "mechanical philosophy" and "experimental philosophy" as if they were the same thing.  Newton occasionally talked the same way. What did corpuscles have to do either with mechanics or with experiment in the 17th century?