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13 Cards in this Set

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  • Back
TYCHO BRAHE
He was a Danish nobleman (1546-1601) who was granted possession of an island near Copenhagen by King Fredrick II. On this island, he built the elaborate Uraniborg castle, which he outfitted with a library, observatories, and instruments he had designed for more precise astronomical observations. He was unable to accept the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system, but at the same time was unable to accept Copernicus’ suggestion that the earth actually moved.
JOHANNES KEPLER
(1571-1630) His work illustrates well the narrow line that often separated magic and science in the early Scientific Revolution. In a book written in 1596, he elaborated on his theory that the universe was constructed on the basis of geometric figures, such as the pyramid and the cube.
GALILEO
(1564-1642) Galileo Galilei taught mathematics, fist at Pisa and later at Padua. He was the first European to make systematic observations of the heavens by means of a telescope. Instead of peering at terrestrial objects, he turned his telescope to the skies and made a remarkable series of discoveries: mountains and craters on the moon, four moons revolving around Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and sunspots. He published his revelations in The Starry Messenger in 1610, stunning his contemporaries and probably did more to make Europeans aware of the new picture of the universe than the mathematical theories of Copernicus and Kepler did.
NEWTON
Born in England in 1642 and was an unremarkable young man until he attended Cambridge University. His first great burst of creative energy came in 1666, when the fear of the plague closed Cambridge and forced him to return to Woolsthrope for 18 months. During this time, he invented calculus.
PARACELCUS
(1493-1541) He rejected the work of both Aristotle and Galen and attacked the universities as center of the moribund philosophy. He and his followers hoped to replace the traditional system with a new chemical philosophy that was based on a new understanding of nature derived from fresh observation and experiment.
VESALIUS
(1514-1564) His study of medicine at Paris involved him in the works of Galen and his latest text, On Anatomical Procedures, led Vesalius to emphasize practical research as the principal avenue for understanding human anatomy. After receiving a doctorate in medicine at the University of Padua in 1536, he accepted a position there as professor of surgery. In 1543, he published his masterpiece, On the Fabric of the Human Body.
WILLIAM HARVEY
(1578-1657) He attended Cambridge University and later Padua, where he received a doctorate of medicine in 1602. His reputation rests on his book On the Motion of the Heart and Blood, published in 1628. His work, which was based on meticulous observations and experiments, led him to demolish the ancient Greek’s erroneous contentions. He demonstrated that he heart and not the liver was the beginning point of the circulation of blood in the body, the same blood flows in both veins and arteries, and most important, that the blood makes a complete circuit as it passes through the body.
ROBERT BOYLE
(1627-1691) He was one of the first scientists to conduct controlled experiments. His pioneering work on the properties of gases led to Boyle’s Law, which stats that the volume of a gas varies with the pressure exerted on it. He also rejected the medieval belief that all matter consisted of the same components in favor of the view that matter is composted of atoms, which he called “little particles of all shapes and sizes” and which would later be known as the chemical elements.
MARGARET CAVENDISH
(1623-1673) She was a participant in the crucial scientific debates at this time, though rejected from membership in the Royal Society. She wrote a number of works on scientific matters, including Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Grounds of Natural Philosophy. In these works, she did not hesitate to attack what she considered the defects of the rationalist and empiricist approaches to scientific knowledge and was especially critical of the growing belief that through science humans would be masters of nature.
MARIA MERIAN
(1647-1717) She established a reputation as an important entomologist by the beginning of the 18th century. Her training came from working in her father’s workshop, where she learned the art of illustration, a training of great importance since her exact observation of insects and plants was demonstrated through the superb illustrations she made.
MARIA WINKELMAN
(1670-1720) She was the most famous of the female astronomers, was educated by her father and uncle and received advanced training in astronomy from a nearby self-taught astronomer. She corresponded with the famous scientist Gottfried Leibniz (who invented the calculus independently of Newton).
RENE DESCARTES
(1596-1650) With emphasis on the mind, he asserted that he would accept only those things that his reason said were true. From his first postulate, Descartes deduced an additional principle, the separation of mind and matter. He argued that since “the mind cannot be doubted, but the body and material world can, the two must be radically different.”
FRANCIS BACON
(1561-1626) He was a lawyer and lord chancellor who rejected Copernicus and Kepler and misunderstood Galileo. His new foundation—a correct scientific method—was to be built on inductive principles. Rather than beginning with assumed first principles from which logical conclusions could be deduced, he urged scientists to proceed from the particular to the general.