History of Science Online - Course Info - Time tips - Semester Schedule - Weekly Assignments - Timeline - Projects - Week 14: 17th Century Science

This week's assignments

Our focus is on the century often referred to as "The Scientific Revolution," the 17th century or 1600's, the century of Galileo (last week) and Newton (next week). This week we'll explore the rise of mechanical philosophy, which was the idea that scientific explanations should refer only to matter and motion (because nature is like a machine or clockwork). Mechanical philosophy has many ancient and medieval roots (ranging from the impetus theory of Jean Buridan to the construction of large medieval town clocks), yet its successes in the 17th century came at the expense of traditional competing perspectives that saw nature as alive, and perhaps intelligent, on the model of an organism. These diverse organicist philosophies include the chemical philosophy, Renaissance naturalism, Renaissance natural magic, hermeticism, vitalism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism and animism, among others. This week, focus on the interplay between mechanical and organicist philosophies of nature, and the figures who advocated one of these over another or combined them in various interesting ways.

	HSCI 3013. History of Science to 17th century Kerry Magruder, 2004-08 Report typos or broken links Many thanks to Mythology and Folklore and other online courses developed by Laura Gibbs.	Search course websites:
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