THE 17th CENTURY: TIME OF REAPING, TIME OF SOWING

The 16th century produced the first – so far isolated – representatives of the “natural-scientific Renaissance”. The first half of the 17th century brought many more, together with the first formulations of a new philosophy. One variant of this philosophy was spoken of as “experimental philosophy”. Earlier periods had made no distinction between “experience” and “experiment” – what we call “experiment” they would mostly see as forced or tortured nature, which could tell nothing about nature in itself. Experimental philosophy began preparing special settings in which nature would speak more clearly. Another aspect of the new philosophy was spoken of as “mechanical”. At first, the meaning of this was close to “experimental” – in the Aristotelian view, forced nature was indeed mechanics, no longer nature; gradually, the term came to refer to an explanation of nature as composed of mechanical devices, and often linked to atomism, which was widely adopted in natural philosophy but also (metaphorically) as descriptions of human life. One effect of this changing attitude was that the development of new scientific instruments, at first seen as isolated events (the telescope, the microscope, the barometer) became a systematic endeavour, allowing many new discoveries. Another effect was that occult thinking was gradually losing ground, the “occult” being present only in the “occult qualities” of chemistry, which one might then try to explain. A third effect touched at the role of mathematics: with the creation of new mathematical tools (a new kind of algebra, and soon infinitesimal calculus), mathematics was now seen as providing explanations. Not directly connected to this, certain writers on philosophy emulated the axiomatic structure of Euclid' Elements. In the late 16th century, a few circles of scholars and amateurs had been interested in the “secrets of nature”. In the 17th century, the first “scientific academies” grew out of this (and of the establishment of letter circles serving scientific communication). They started as private undertakings. The English Royal Society stayed private, while the French Académie des Sciences became part of the absolute state system. In spite of this difference, both published proceedings – the first “scientific journals”. The 17th century was also the culmination of the Baroque. With its emphasis on the impressive, grandiose and symbolic, it was at odds with the new sciences; none the less, some thinkers placed themselves at the crossroad between the two currents, producing impressive works with little future. A first group of texts illustrates the new natural philosophy of the early century – Bacon, Gilbert, Descartes, Ghetaldus and Galilei; the second that of the mid-century – its tools, and writings by Hooke and Boyle. A third group illustrates thinking in other domains – epistemology (Pascal and Locke), politics (Hobbes), economics (Colbert), language (Arnauld and Lancelot), in part influenced by atomism and/or geometric method. Two texts exemplify “Baroque science”, and a final group the culmination of 17th-century natural science: Steno on neurology and geology, Huygens on light, Newton on the world system.