Scientific Revolutions: Historical Perspective

1. Scientific Revolutions: Historical Perspective  After the Scientific Revolution: The Enlightenment

2. What is The Enlightenment?

3. What is The Enlightenment? Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minority is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapereaude! [dare to be wise] Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.

4. What is The Enlightenment? Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority.… Sapereaude! [dare to be wise] Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment. Immanuel Kant - 1798

5. Critique of Pure Reason Critique of Practical Reason Critique of Judgment Religion Within the Bounds of Pure Reason • What can I know? • What ought we done? • What may I hope? Immanuel Kant(1724-1804)

6. Letters concerning the English nation(1733) Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (1738) Dictionnairephilosophique (1764) François-Marie ArouetVoltaire(1689-1755)

7. Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle – transl. and commentary Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749)

8. On The Spirit of the Laws, 1748 Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et deMontesquieu(1689-1755)

9. Emile, or On Education, 1762 The Social Contract, 1762 Jean Jacques Rousseau(1712-1778)

10. Encyclopédie Denis Diderot(1713-1784)

11. Encyclopédie Jean le Rond d'Alembert(1717-1783)

12. Benjamin Franklin(1706-1790) Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826)

13. Frederick II(1712-1786) Joseph II(1741-1790) Catherine II(1729-1796)

14. Philosophy of the Enlightenment (1932) Ernst Cassirer(1874-1945)

15. Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as Realist (1959) • The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Science of Freedom (1969) • The Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment (1964) • The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism (1966) • The Bridge of Criticism: Dialogues on the Enlightenment (1970) Peter Gay(1923 - )

16. (1991)

17. (2001)

18. (2005)

19. (1947)

20. (1962)

22. (1979)

24. d'Alembert(1717-1783) DiscoursPréliminaire des Éditeurs

26. d'Alembert(1717-1783) DiscoursPréliminaire des Éditeurs Scholasticism … was prejudicial to the progress of true philosophy … Since time immemorial men had been persuaded that they possessed the doctrine of Aristotle in all its purity, commented on by the Arabs and corrupted by thousands of absurd or childish additions. So great was their respect for the ancients that they did not even think of ascertaining whether that barbarous philosophy was really the philosophy of this great man.

27. d'Alembert(1717-1783) DiscoursPréliminaire des Éditeurs Born in the depths of the most profound night, Bacon was aware that philosophy did not yet exist, although many men doubtless flattered themselves that they excelled in it … Therefore, he began by considering generally the various objects of all the natural sciences. He divided these sciences into different branches, of which he made the most exact enumeration that was possible for him. He examined what was already known concerning each of these objects and made the immense catalogue of what remained to be discovered. … and made known the necessity of experimental physics, of which no one was yet aware. … He asserted that the scholastics had enervated science by their petty questions, … Hostile to systems, he conceives of philosophy as being only that part of our knowledge which should contribute to making us better or happier, thus apparently confining it within the limits of the science of useful things, and everywhere he recommends the study of Nature.

28. d'Alembert (1717-1783) One can view Descartes as a geometer or as a philosopher. Mathematics, which he seems to have considered lightly, nevertheless today constitutes the most solid and the least contested part of his glory. Algebra, which had been virtually created by the Italians and prodigiously augmented by our illustrious Viète, received new acquisitions in the hands of Descartes. … But above all what immortalized the name of this great man is the application he was able to make of algebra to geometry, one of the grandest and most fortunate ideas that the human mind has ever had. It will always be the key to the most profound investigations, not only in sublime geometry, but also in all the physico-mathematical sciences.

29. d'Alembert (1717-1783) As a philosopher he was perhaps equally great, but he was not so fortunate. … If Descartes, who opened the way for us, did not progress as far along it as his sectaries believe, nevertheless the sciences are far more indebted to him than his adversaries will allow; … We see his inventive genius shining forth everywhere, even in those works which are least read now. If one judges impartially those vortices which today seem almost ridiculous, it will be agreed, I daresay, that at that time nothing better could be imagined.  The astronomical observations which served to destroy them were still imperfect or hardly established.

30. d'Alembert (1717-1783) Let us recognize, therefore, that Descartes, who was forced to create a completely new physics, could not have created it better; that it was necessary, so to speak, to pass by way of the vortices in order to arrive at the true system of the world; and that if he was mistaken concerning the laws of movement, he was the first, at least, to see that they must exist.

31. d'Alembert (1717-1783) Newton appeared at last, and gave philosophy a form which apparently it is to keep. That great genius saw that it was time to banish conjectures and vague hypotheses from physics, or at least to present them only for what they were worth, and that this science was uniquely susceptible to the experiments of geometry. 

32. d'Alembert (1717-1783) He had the singular advantage of seeing his philosophy generally accepted in England during his life and of having all his compatriots for partisans and admirers. However, at that time it would have taken a good deal to make Europe likewise accept his works. Not only were they unknown in France, but scholastic philosophy was still dominant there when Newton had already overthrown Cartesian physics; the vortices were destroyed even before we considered adopting them. It took us as long to get over defending them as it did for us to accept them in the first place. It is necessary only to open our books in order to see with surprise that twenty years have not yet passed since we began to renounce Cartesianism in France.

33. d'Alembert (1717-1783) "נכון הוא שניוטון זכה לכבוד מיוחד, לראות איך הפילוסופיה שלו התקבלה על ידי כל בני ארצו עוד בימי חייו, ולזכות באהדתם ובהערצתם. ... בעת ההיא עוד נראה כקשה מאוד להשיג אהדה דומה באירופה. בצרפת, לא רק שלא הכירו את עבודתו, אלא שהסכולסטיקה עוד שלטה כאן בזמן שהפיזיקה הניוטונית גברה על המדע הקרטזי באנגליה."

35. 1704 The first technical dictionary • Avoided theological and biographical entries; • concentrated on “arts”, science and technology (including:  humanities and fine arts, notably on law, commerce, music, and heraldry)

37. 1728

40. Chamber’s Cyclopaedia Cyclopaedia, or, A universal dictionary of arts and sciences: containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify'd thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine: the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial; the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial: with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c; among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c: The whole intended as a course of ancient and modern learning.

45. Chamber’s Cyclopaedia

46. Chamber’s Cyclopaedia • Five columns of text were dedicated to wine, • A few lines to geometry and logic 

49. Discourse Preliminaire–Prospectus–“Philosophy” (Diderot) דיון מפורט בדימוי ידע: שפה, תמונה, ארגון,שיתוף פעולה, מומחיות האידאלים של הנאורות!

50. As an Encyclopédie, its goal is to set forth as well as possible the order and connection of the parts of human knowledge. As a Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, it is to contain the general principles that form the basis of each science and each art, liberal or mechanical, and the most essential facts that make up the body and substance of each.