What follows is meant to orient your reading of Margaret Jacob's book The Scientific Revolution. Start by considering the question that we discussed Friday in class: what makes this series of changes a revolution? Consider especially Jacob's own answers to this question. As we discussed, it's a question about which historians differ, and Jacob is taking a strong position in an ongoing intellectual debate; she believes strongly that this was a genuine revolution—partly because of the time frame, partly because of the range of ideas that were transformed. Get a command of the details of her argument: what time frame is she talking about, and what intellectual changes does she mention? Jacob's introduction also discusses the social spin-offs of changing ideas about science. What were some of these? How direct were linkages among science, technology, and business during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? What hopes for such spin-offs were expressed by seventeenth-century writers? Consider in this regard the selections from Bacon and Descartes.
Then consider relationships between science and religion during this period. As we know from our own society, that relationship can be complex, in some instances conflictual. In what ways did Christian beliefs encourage scientific development in the early modern period? Consider the examples of Copernicus and Bacon in this regard. What were the sore points between Christianity and science? Examine the selection from Christian Huygens with this question in mind. What challenges to Christian belief had emerged by the time Huygens wrote, at the end of the seventeenth century? What steps did Christian churches take toward scientific innovation, and how reasonable were these?
Any dramatic intellectual change like the scientific revolution raises questions of explanation: why did ideas change, and why did the changes occur when and where they did? What answers does Jacob offer in her introduction? Think as well about some of the particular examples included in the documents she presents. What sense do we get about how Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo, and Boyle came to their revolutionary ideas? To what extent were these new ideas the result of new instruments and discoveries? To what extent were they instead the result of new theorizing?
Jacob speaks of "the mechanical philosophy" that came to prominence during the seventeenth century. What does she mean, and what ideas were included in that philosophy? Why was this such an important mode of thought?
