Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The study of nature changed radically during the sixteenth century. Natural philosophy, dedicated to an epistemological and ontological understanding of nature and its underlying concepts, developed new conceptual and theoretical models, especially in astronomy and the physical sciences. The mathematical arts, often seen by contemporaries as a separate branch of philosophy and nature study, began to interact with natural philosophy, as philosophers increasingly saw mathematics as the language of nature. Historians have therefore sometimes characterized this period as the beginning of the mathematization of nature. Methods of investigation also changed during the early modern period as experimentation began to emerge as a legitimate and important method of inquiry and fact determination. Equally, the place of study and the importance of this study to the secular world also changed, from the universities and scholasticism to the courts and more pragmatic princely interests. This was the beginning of what would come to be called the scientific revolution, although this revolution would not be complete until the end of the seventeenth century.Through most of the sixteenth century English natural philosophers were not major players in this intellectual transformation, and this is even more true of Scottish and Irish scholars, who did not take a lead in natural philosophical pursuits ... log in or subscribe to read full text