S1310 Science and Society in the Early Modern World

This course will explore the origins of the modern scientific enterprise in Western Europe from antiquity through the first part of the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. We shall commence with an overview of the important and influential antecedent achievements of classical Greece  and of medieval Islam. We shall then examine their transmission to the Latin West and incorporation into the medieval university. A general question to explore here is why this scientific tradition became a robust and permanent fixture of the Latin Christian academic establishment. Another theme that we shall consider is the extra-scientific attitude and response towards the natural world, through the literary construction of “arcadia” by the Latin poet, Vergil, the architecture of the “villa” by the Latin writer, Vitruvius, and the extraordinary Christian response to the natural world of St. Francis of Assisi.               We shall then turn to social and cultural developments in Italy during the 15th to the early 17th century that fostered the transformation of science during the Scientific Revolution. These include the rise of Renaissance Humanism, High Renaissance art, the emergence of a magical/technological orientation, the effect of the illustrated print culture which appeared in the late 15th century. A principal focus for this exploration of 16th – century culture will be the University of Padua and Venice and the consideration of the rise of anatomy at Padua and the early career of Galileo Galilei.