﻿If we, if we just take a quick look at what I described, during the Greek period,
in the early Greek period it was materialistic thinking, but subjective, but materialistic.
At some point of time there was onset of idealism — idealism of the form that
idea is prior, matter is secondary. And whatever you can think of that
is the truth for you, the subjective mode of thinking and a lot of belief systems sprouted.
But in the middle age, one kind of belief system became the mainstream, but a belief system.
So, the middle age can be said to be the golden age of idealism.
And you would notice that, in that golden age
of idealism spanning over a thousand years, there was practically no science.
Science died down; because it was ‘belief and no question’.
In the, in the 15th, 16th century, the things started
changing. Because
even though trade and commerce was low, but there were some trade and commerce—in the main for the
sake of the aristocrats, for the sake of the land owners, because they needed aristocratic goods.
So, there were some exchanges, some trade, and the traders over the centuries were
slowly becoming financially more powerful. And around 14th, 15th century they saw that...
So far they were simply buying from one place and selling it in another.
They were buying from say India spices and selling it inin Europe; they were buying
wherever cloth is produced and selling it to another another place; they were buying
some exotic food stuff from one place and selling it in another; glassware, ironware
and all these were subjects of trade. In the 14th-15th century, they started
to manufacture these things. So, they started sort of these
are called ‘manufactories’, where the normal people; the people who would otherwise engaged
in tilling the land, when they are free they would come and make something for the trader:
something like something made of iron, something made of glass, something made of cloth.
And the these manufactories increased the volume of production and slowly these people,
the traders become financially powerful. And that brought in a
disbalance in the kind of society that existed. Earlier the aristocrats and the land owners were
calling the shots; but now the moneyed people, the people, the the the traders in the main,
they became relatively more powerful. And in that stage, we see in the cultural sphere,
birth of a new kind of movement, called renaissance.
Renaissance actually questioned everything.
Renaissance questioned everything. So far whatever were believed,
people were questioning that. Earlier God was at the center of everything.
All paintings were centered around God and humans were sort of appendages in the paintings.
But now humans became the center of all paintings.
Look at the Sistine Chapel painting by Michelangelo;
even Jesus is painted as a powerful man, that otherworldly features are gone, a powerful man.
So, and people started depicting man as a center of everything.
This, the center of attention came to humans. In that stage,
in science, a lot of developments happened. Copernicus took a look at the models of the
solar system that were in existence. I said that one model of a of solar
system was where the planets move as they were they are embedded on crystal spheres.
Another picture was the Ptolemaic picture, where the planets moved in epicycles.
As people took more and more closer look at the planets’ motion, they found that these are
not being explained by the epicycle picture. And so, so far the idea was that there was a,
the orbit of a a planet and there would be another.
So, it would be circle over circle
and naturally the orbit of the planet would be something like this as visible from the earth.
But people were observing the actual motion of the planets and they could not
explain it with this picture. And then there they thought that
there may be epicycles over epicycles, over epicycles, over epicycles
so on and so forth. And it become it became
very complicated; the picture of the solar system became very complicated.
And in this status, Copernicus pointed out, Copernicus saw that there can be an alternative
model of the solar system not with the Earth at the center, but with the sun at the center.
And sun at the center and the planets going around it, Earth is also seen as a planet
and the moon is going around the earth; so that was the picture painted by Copernicus.
He knew that his views were heretic, will be considered heretic and so, he allowed
publication of his book only when he was, he saw it, only when he was in the death bed.
But his book, after it was published, was banned from most of Europe.
But still banning was not very effective in those days, because
copies remain here and there in different people’s possession and in libraries.
This man Giordano Bruno, who was training to become a monk,
saw such a copy in one church library, read it, and was convinced.
And he took it upon himself to propagate that idea among others.
So, Giordano Bruno. Earlier I had said Copernicus.
The polish monk, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno
accepted what Copernicus had to say. He was convinced that it was true.
And he took it upon himself to propagate that view.
He understood that he cannot do that being in Italy; because it was
in the grip of the the church rule. So, he fled Italy, went to other
countries in Europe; went to Paris, went to Germany, went to England.
And from everywhere the more he preached his ideas, he was thrown out, he was driven out.
Not only he did he believe in the Copernican picture of the solar system, he believed
that the stars that we see these are also like suns,
and like the sun they also have planetary systems around them and they might also harbor life.
So, earth is not the only abode of life and that these were all heretic views
in the in the view of the church at that time. Finally, the church caught him and after years of
torture, trying to get him to accept the the church view, to recant his own views, he refused.
And finally, in the year 1600, he was burned at stake, in Rome.
At the time Galileo Galilei was teaching in the University of Pisa when Bruno was burned.
He was having to teach what was the established belief at that time.
Especially in mechanics the belief was, according to Aristotle, force produces motion.
According to Aristotle, a heavier body will fall faster than a lighter body.
And while teaching these, the only difference was that, Galileo said ‘let us go and test it’.
So, as per legend, he took his students and went up the leaning tower of Pisa and dropped
one heavy mass of iron and one small mass of iron and they came down together with the same sound.
And that sort of demonstrated that earlier belief was wrong.
But most importantly it demonstrated a very important philosophical current.
It brought in a very important philosophical current: objective thinking, which said
that what I am thinking, what I am believing, what I am having to teach may be wrong.
And therefore, it is my task to test it against physical reality.
So, he also tested these things by rolling balls on inclined planes and he did experiments on
pendula and through that he established that actually force does not produce motion; force
produces change in motion, which was later adopted by Newton to produce his first law of motion.
Galileo also built a telescope and looked at the sky for the first time.
And when he saw the sky, he saw spots on the sun, he saw mountains on moon, he saw
phases of Venus, he saw satellites of Jupiter and so on and so forth.
Now, two important observations out of these. One, phase of Venus: phase means, the way
moon goes through phases—new moon, full moon, half-moon—that
way Venus also goes through phases. And Galileo realize that, that can happen only if
Copernicus’ idea is true, Copernican model is true, and only if Venus is an interior planet,
then only it is possible to have phases of a planet.
And he also saw the satellites of Jupiter and he realized that,
then if some satellite is moving around that planet, there cannot be a crystal sphere there.
So, the crystal sphere idea was immediately proved wrong.
He invited his colleagues of the university to look through his telescope as
at what he was saying. They refused.
They said that this is the problem. The telescope is the problem.
Whatever has has been believed is to be believed and the telescope is a problem.
So, he went into trouble with the church, I am not going into the details.
Finally, he was called to the church, he was called to to the to a ‘inquisition’, as
it was called.Those who did something that is heretic, they would be called by
the inquisition, there would be a trial and finally, there will be punishment.
And he was, he was, the old man was punished for the rest of his life in home imprisonment.
So, but through that, during that period he wrote up his own ideas in form of books
and somehow managed to get this out and his disciples took it to Holland,
which was at that time protestant and not all that much in charge’s control.
The books were published from there and people came to know about his ideas.
Through that more or less the the horizon opened. At the time something else was happening.
Tycho Brahe was looking at the motion of the planets very accurately; he made
an observatory in a place, in an island off the Holland coast, called Uraniborg
and he was making very accurate observations. But at some point of time he fell out with a king,
he was driven out from there, he again got shelter with another king in Austria,
he built another observatory. And at that time,
a young man Johannes Kepler, became his assistant and within a year Tycho Brahe died.
When Tycho Brahe died, all his gathered mass of data regarding the motion of the
planets came to the possession of Kepler. He sat down with it and tried to work out
the motion of the planets for a long time and then he came up with the Kepler’s laws;
that the planets move in ellipses and what you know as Kepler’s laws:
that they they subtend equal areas in equal time and so on and so forth.
So, with that, I would say the renaissance was in full swing.
And in the next stage, we will see a great development.
The moment the mental roadblock was moved, ‘believe do not question’,
people started questioning and not believing. And then they started looking at the whole world
anew and that is when the science proper started. That is why the science, the onset of scientific
era is said to be from the time of Galileo. Why?
Because Galileo introduced the objective method of thinking.