Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance.

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During the Renaissance, the rediscovery of ancient scientific texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention of printing which would democratize learning and allow a faster propagation of new ideas. But, at least in its initial period, the Renaissance is usually seen as one of scientific backwardness. Historians like George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have criticized how the Renaissance affected science, arguing that progress was slowed. Humanists favored human-centered subjects like politics and history over study of natural philosophy or applied mathematics. Others have focused on the positive influence of the Renaissance, pointing to factors like the rediscovery of lost or obscure texts and the increased emphasis on the study of language and the correct reading of texts. Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 441 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2258 × 3070 pixel, file size: 5. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 441 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2258 × 3070 pixel, file size: 5. ... “Da Vinci” redirects here. ... Leonardo da Vincis Vitruvian Man (1492). ... Science is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by a global community of researchers making use of a body of techniques known as scientific methods, emphasizing the observation, experimentation and scientific explanation of real world phenomena. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1020x1508, 359 KB) Book cover Frontispiece of : Tabulae Rudolphinae : quibus astronomicae . ... The sociology and philosophy of science, as well as the entire field of science studies, have in the 20th century been preoccupied with the question of large-scale patterns and trends in the development of science, and asking questions about how science works both in a philosophical and practical sense. ... The historiography of science is the historical study of the history of science (which often overlaps the history of technology, the history of medicine, and the history of mathematics). ... A pseudoscience is any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which fails to comply with the scientific method. ... In prehistoric times, advice and knowledge was passed from generation to generation in an oral tradition. ... The Ptolemaic system of celestial motion, from Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1661. ... Science, and particularly geometry and astronomy, was linked directly to the divine for most medieval scholars. ... This article is about the period or event in history. ... Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature, known in Latin as philosophia naturalis, is a term applied to the objective study of nature and the physical universe before the development of modern science. ... Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, and astrological practices of pre-history: vestiges of these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy, and not completely disentangled from it until a... The history of biology dates as far back as the rise of various civilization as classic philosophers did their own ways of biology as a system of understanding life. ... Portrait of Monsieur Lavoisier and his Wife, by Jacques-Louis David The history of chemistry is long and convoluted. ... ÛEcology is generally spoken of as a new science, having only become prominent in the second half of the 20th Century. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... The history of paleontology has been an ongoing effort to understand the history of life on Earth by understanding the fossil record left behind by living organisms. ... Since antiquity, human beings have sought to understand the workings of nature: why unsupported objects drop to the ground, why different materials have different properties, the character of the universe such as the form of the Earth and the behavior of celestial objects such as the Sun and the Moon... For more, see: Social science#History In ancient philosophy, there was no difference between the liberal arts of mathematics and the study of history, poetry or politics—only with the development of mathematical proof did there gradually arise a perceived difference between scientific disciplines and others, the humanities or liberal... It has been suggested that History of economics be merged into this article or section. ... Efforts to describe and explain the human language faculty have been undertaken throughout recorded history. ... While the study of politics is first found in ancient Greece and ancient India, political science is a late arrival in terms of social sciences. ... The history of psychology as a scholarly study of the mind and behavior dates, in Europe, back to the Late Middle Ages. ... Sociology is a relatively new academic discipline among other social sciences including economics, political science, anthropology, and psychology. ... The wheel was invented circa 4000 BC, and has become one of the worlds most famous, and most useful technologies. ... Agronomy today is very different from what it was before about 1950. ... The history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science that emerged in the twentieth century. ... The History of materials science is rooted in the history of the Earth and the culture of the peoples of the Earth. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... For other uses of Timeline, see Timeline (disambiguation). ... This article is about the European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries. ... Combatants  Byzantine Empire Ottoman Sultanate Commanders Constantine XI †, Loukas Notaras, Giovanni Giustiniani †[1] Mehmed II, ZaÄŸanos Pasha Strength 80,000[2] 80,000[1]-200,000[1][3] Casualties 4,000 dead[4] [5][6] unknown The Fall of Constantinople refers to the capture of the Byzantine Empires... April 2 - Mehmed II begins his siege of Constantinople (Ä°stanbul). ... For other uses, see Print. ... George Alfred Leon Sarton (1884-1956) was a seminal Belgian-American polymath and historian of science. ... Lynn Thorndike (1882–1965) was an American historian, born in Lynn, Massacusetts. ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature, known in Latin as philosophia naturalis, is a term applied to the objective study of nature and the physical universe that was regnant before the development of modern science. ... Applied mathematics is a branch of mathematics that concerns itself with the mathematical techniques typically used in the application of mathematical knowledge to other domains. ...

Marie Boas Hall coined the term Scientific Renaissance to designate the early phase of the Scientific Revolution. More recently, Peter Dear has argued for a two-phase model of early modern science: a Scientific Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, focused on the restoration of the natural knowledge of the ancients; and a Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, when scientists shifted from recovery to innovation. This article is about the period or event in history. ... The early modern period is a term used by historians to refer to the period in Western Europe and its first colonies, between the Middle Ages and modern society. ...

Context

Since the Renaissance of the 12th century, Europe was experiencing an intellectual revitalization especially related with the investigation of the natural world. In the 14th century, however, a series of events that would be known as the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was under its way. When the Black Death came, it sealed a sudden end to the previous period of massive scientific change. The plague killed 25–50% of the people in Europe, especially in the crowded conditions of the towns, where the heart of innovations lay. Recurrences of the plague and other disasters caused a continuing decline of population for a century. New technological discoveries allowed the development of the gothic style. ... This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ... Around the start of the 14th century a series of events began that brought centuries of European prosperity and growth to a halt. ... This article concerns the mid fourteenth century pandemic. ...

The Renaissance

The 14th century saw the beginning of the cultural movement of the Renaissance. The rediscovery of ancient texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople, in 1453, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West, particularly Italy. Also, the invention of printing was to have great effect on European society: the facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. This 14th-century statue from south India depicts the gods Shiva (on the left) and Uma (on the right). ... This article is about the European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries. ... Combatants  Byzantine Empire Ottoman Sultanate Commanders Constantine XI †, Loukas Notaras, Giovanni Giustiniani †[1] Mehmed II, ZaÄŸanos Pasha Strength 80,000[2] 80,000[1]-200,000[1][3] Casualties 4,000 dead[4] [5][6] unknown The Fall of Constantinople refers to the capture of the Byzantine Empires... April 2 - Mehmed II begins his siege of Constantinople (Ä°stanbul). ... Byzantine redirects here. ... For other uses, see Print. ...

But this initial period is usually seen as one of scientific backwardness. There were no new developments in physics or astronomy, and the reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion. At the same time, Humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation that was not governed by laws or mathematics. Science would only be revived later, with such figures as Copernicus, Francis Bacon, and Descartes. For other uses, see Aristotle (disambiguation). ... This article is about the geographer, mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy. ... Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... For the specific belief system, see Humanism (life stance). ... Nicolaus Copernicus (in Latin; Polish Mikołaj Kopernik, German Nikolaus Kopernikus - February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543) was a Polish astronomer, mathematician and economist who developed a heliocentric (Sun-centered) theory of the solar system in a form detailed enough to make it scientifically useful. ... For other persons named Francis Bacon, see Francis Bacon (disambiguation). ... René Descartes René Descartes (IPA: , March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Cartesius, worked as a philosopher and mathematician. ...

Important developments

Alchemy

Alchemy is the study of the transmutation of materials through obscure processes. It is sometimes described as an early form of chemistry. One of the main aims of alchemists was to find a method of transmuting lead to gold. A common belief of alchemists was that there is an essential substance from which all other substances formed, and that if you could reduce a substance to this original material, you could then construct it into another substance, like lead to gold. Medieval alchemists worked with two elements, sulphur and mercury. For other uses, see Alchemy (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Chemistry (disambiguation). ...

Paracelsus was an alchemist and physician of the Renaissance. The Paracelsians added a third element, salt, to make a trinity of alchemical elements. Presumed portrait of Paracelsus, attributed to the school of Quentin Matsys. ...

Astronomy

Galileo Galilei. Portrait in crayon by Leoni

The astronomy of the late Middle Ages was based on the geocentric model described by Claudius Ptolemy in Antiquity. Probably very few practicing astronomers or astrologers actually read Ptolemy's Almagest, which had been translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century. Instead they relied on introductions to the Ptolemaic system such as the De sphaera mundi of Johannes de Sacrobosco and the genre of textbooks known as Theorica planetarum. For the task of predicting planetary motions they turned to the Alfonsine Tables, a set of astronomical tables based on the Almagest models but incorporating some later modifications, mainly the trepidation model attributed to Thabit ibn Qurra. Contrary to popular belief, astronomers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance did not resort to "epicycles on epicycles" in order to correct the original Ptolemaic models—until one comes to Copernicus himself. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (450x651, 40 KB) Source: French WP (Utilisateur:Kelson via http://iafosun. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (450x651, 40 KB) Source: French WP (Utilisateur:Kelson via http://iafosun. ... This article is about the historical term. ... This article is about the geographer and astronomer Ptolemy. ... Almagest is the Latin form of the Arabic name (al-kitabu-l-mijisti, i. ... Gerard of Cremona (Italian: Gerardo da Cremona; Latin: Gerardus Cremonensis; c. ... Mediaeval drawing of the Ptolemaic system. ... De sphaera mundi (Latin meaning Of the Spheres of Worlds, sometimes rendered The Sphere of the Cosmos; the Latin title is also given as Tractatus de sphaera, or simply De sphaera) is a medieval astronomy textbook written by Johannes de Sacrobosco c. ... Johannes de Sacrobosco or Sacro Bosco (John of Holywood, c. ... The Alfonsine tables were astronomical tables drawn up at Toledo by order of Alfonso X in 1252 to correct the anomalies in the Ptolemaic tables; they divided the year into 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, 16 seconds. ... Trepidation (from Lat. ... Abul Hasan Thabit ibn Qurra ibn Marwan al-Sabi al-Harrani, (826 – February 18, 901) was an Arab astronomer and mathematician. ...

Sometime around 1450, mathematician Georg Purbach (1423–1461) began a series of lectures on astronomy at the University of Vienna. Regiomontanus (1436–1476), who was then one of his students, collected his notes on the lecture and later published them as Theoricae novae planetarum in the 1470s. This "New Theorica" replaced the older theorica as the textbook of advanced astronomy. Peurbach also began to prepare a summary and commentary on the Almagest. He died after completing only six books, however, and Regiomontanus continued the task, consulting a Greek manuscript brought from Constantinople by Cardinal Bessarion. When it was published in 1496, the Epitome of the Almagest made the highest levels of Ptolemaic astronomy widely accessible to many European astronomers for the first time. Georg Purbach (also Georg von Peuerbach, Peurbach, Purbach, Purbachius, his real surname is unknown) (born May 30, 1423 in Purbach near Linz– April 8, 1461 in Vienna) was an Austrian astronomer/astrologer and mathematician. ... The University of Vienna (German: ) is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. ... Johannes Müller von Königsberg (June 6, 1436 – July 6, 1476), known by his Latin pseudonym Regiomontanus, was an important German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. ... Johannes Bessarion, or Basilius (c. ...

The last major event in Renaissance astronomy is the work of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). He was among the first generation of astronomers to be trained with the Theoricae novae and the Epitome. Shortly before 1514 he began to explore a shocking new idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He spent the rest of his life attempting a mathematical proof of heliocentrism. When De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was finally published in 1543, Copernicus was on his deathbed. A comparison of his work with the Almagest shows that Copernicus was in many ways a Renaissance scientist rather than a revolutionary, because he followed Ptolemy's methods and even his order of presentation. In astronomy, the Renaissance of science can be said to have ended with the truly novel works of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). Copernicus redirects here. ... Heliocentric Solar System Heliocentrism (lower panel) in comparison to the geocentric model (upper panel) In astronomy, heliocentrism is the theory that the sun is at the center of the Universe and/or the Solar System. ... Nicolai Copernici Torinensis De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, Libri VI - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, by Nicolaus Copernicus of Torin, Six Books (title page of 2nd edition, ex officina Henricpetrina Basel, 1566) Heliocentric model of the solar system De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (English: ), first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg... Kepler redirects here. ... Galileo redirects here. ...

Geography and the New World

Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait. No contemporary depiction of Pliny has survived.

In the history of geography, the key classical text was the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century). It was translated into Latin in the 15th century by Jacopo d'Angelo. It was widely read in manuscript and went through many print editions after it was first printed in 1475. Regiomontanus worked on preparing an edition for print prior to his death; his manuscripts were consulted by later mathematicians in Nuremberg. Pliny the Elder from [1] File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... This article explores the history of geography. ... The Geographia is Ptolemys main work besides the Almagest. ... This article is about the geographer, mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy. ... Nürnberg redirects here. ...

The information provided by Ptolemy, as well as Pliny the Elder and other classical sources, was soon seen to be in contradiction to the lands explored in the Age of Discovery. The new discoveries revealed shortcomings in classical knowledge; they also opened European imagination to new possibilities. Thomas More's Utopia was inspired partly by the discovery of the New World. Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait. ... See also: Age of Sail and Afro-Asiatic age of discovery For the computer wargame, Age of Discovery, see Global Diplomacy. ... For the Elizabethan play, see Sir Thomas More (play). ... De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia (translated On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia) or more simply Utopia is a 1516 book by Sir (Saint) Thomas More. ... Frontispiece of Peter Martyr dAnghieras De orbe novo (On the New World). Carte dAmérique, Guillaume Delisle, 1722. ...

See also

• Renaissance magic
• Continuity thesis
• Scientific revolution

Magic and occultism in the Late Medieval and Renaissance period (15th and 16th century). ... In the history of ideas, the continuity thesis is the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual development of the high Middle Ages, and the developments in the Renaissance and early modern period. ... This article is about the period or event in history. ...

References

• Dear, Peter. Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500–1700. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Debus, Allen G. Man and Nature in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
• Grafton, Anthony, et al. New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.
• Hall, Marie Boas. The Scientific Renaissance, 1450–1630. New York: Dover Publications, 1962, 1994.

External links

• Britannica.com—Renaissance science and technology