Course: The Scientific Revolution: Understanding the Roots of Modern Science

The following text is taken from the sixth part of René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method (published in 1637). The Discourse is the introduction to a set of three essays …

The following text is taken from Thomas Hobbes’ Preface to his treatise On the Citizen (published in 1642). The work is mainly political in nature and addresses issues such as …

Welcome to the third week of the course The Scientific Revolution! You made great progress so far and we hope you enjoyed what we discussed during the previous two weeks. …

Read the following text in which Isaac Newton exposes his conception about the uses of hypotheses in experimental philosophy. Your comprehension will be tested in the following step. I have …

Read the following text in which Robert Boyle exposes his conception about when a hypothesis should be accepted in natural philosophy. Your comprehension will be tested in the following step. …

In this video Doina-Cristina Rusu discusses the relationship between hypotheses and experimentation. How do metaphysical or theological assumptions influence experimental philosophy, both in designing experiments and in explaining the produced …

You have seen in the previous steps that the theological and metaphysical convictions can interfere with the scientific practice in various ways: in how the experiments are designed, which questions …

In the previous steps you learned about the functions and uses of instruments in the scientific method. Let’s see again which are functions that instruments can have. In order to …

Robert Hooke’s scientific project has as one of its main aims to construct those instruments which can help senses to better perceive the natural world. The microscope and the telescope …

In this video Doina-Cristina Rusu exposes a classification of scientific instruments from the early modern period. Instruments are mathematical and scientific. The former are used especially for drawing and calculations, …

Let’s see what we have discussed so far. In Week 1 you learned about the new corpuscularian matter theory, which replaced the Aristotelian distinction between matter and form. As you …

In this video Doina-Cristina Rusu analyses the features of an experiment suggested by Francis Bacon. The three characteristics to be found in the text are the following: the criticism of …

But let’s see now what exactly it meant to design an experiment at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The following text is from Bacon’s collection of experiments Sylva sylvarum …

Among the most common terms that come to mind when we think of the scientific practice, we tend to find ‘knowledge’, ‘method’ and ‘experiment’. See the result of your word …