Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

CHAPTER 3
Science and mathematics from the Renaissance
to Descartes
George Molland
Early in the nineteenth century John Playfair wrote for the Encyclopaedia
Britannica a long article entitled ‘Dissertation; exhibiting a General View of the
Progress of Mathematics and Physical Science, since the Revival of Letters in
Europe’. 1 Ever since the Renaissance’s invention of its own self, there has been a
persistent belief that, during a general rebirth of learning, the natural and
mathematical sciences made advances that effectively eclipsed what William
Whewell later called the ‘Stationary Period of Science’. 2 No wonder that this
myth triggered a ‘revolt of the medievalists’, 3 who in this century have done
much to redress the balance in favour of their own period. But like all myths this
one contains truth as well as falsehood, and this chapter will dwell more on the
former than the latter, and so concentrate on areas of innovation. But the revolt
still reminds us that innovation was not the norm: for most people (both educated
and uneducated) the traditional wisdom, together with its non-trivial
modifications, was a more important former of consciousness than any radical
new developments, and Aristotelian natural philosophy remained firmly
ensconced in the universities until well into the second half of the seventeenth
century, retaining in many cases a strong vitality of its own.
Besides its bias in favour of innovation, this chapter will exhibit other, perhaps
more insidious, forms of selectivity. It will neglect almost completely many
important areas, especially in the life sciences, in order to give prominence both
in coverage and mode of treatment to those areas that may be ‘philosophically’
more illuminating. (The inverted commas are intended to emphasize that, for this
period, to distinguish rigidly between philosophy and science would be grossly
anachronistic, and add even more to the historiographical distortion introduced
by the policy of selectivity.) The chapter will comprise just three sections,
dealing respectively with general ideas of advancement; a new picture of the
heavens; a new mechanics embedded in a new view of nature.
TECHNOLOGY/PROGRESS/METHOD
It will be useful in the manner of Alexandre Koyré to distinguish technics from
technology 4 and so allow ourselves to retain an older meaning of the English