Changing Nature of Science Over the Centuries
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In the year 1600, what we now call the scientific revolution was in some respects already well underway. Over a century had passed since Columbus' voyages had demonstrated that entire continents existed of which the ancients knew nothing. More than half a century had passed since the publication of Copernicus' great work, De Revolutionibus, in 1543, challenged the traditional view that the Earth was in the center of the Universe. An equal time had passed since Veselius combined dissection of human cadavers with Renaissance draftsmanship to revolutionize the study of anatomy, and demonstrate that much of the received wisdom of the ancients on the subject was in error. The year 1600 itself saw the publication of William Gilbert's De Magnete, which began the scientific analysis of magnetic and electrical phenomena (and which thus, ultimately, began to pave the way toward yet another scientific revolution, that of the late nineteenth century, which culminated in relativity and quantum theory). If science by 1600 had begun to move far from its ancient and medieval roots, it was, however, also still very far from what we today would regard as science--especially with respect to its attitudes and values. Most works on scientific subjects were still primarily compendia of citations from ancient authors. The leading astronomer of Europe was Tycho Brahe, who brought unprecedented precision to the measurement of the heavens, but did so in the service of defending his own varia
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nterpretation of texts. This enterprise fully deserves the name of scholarship, but it scarcely qualifies, by our standards, as science.
In looking toward the past, however, the scholars of the Renaissance did not look exclusively at the canon of ancient thought with which we are familiar. They also turned their attention toward a body of knowledge, the Hermetic tradition, which is little-remembered today because it has come to be regarded as almost entirely spurious. The word hermetic survives today only in the sense of hermetically-sealed, a usage which only indirectly reflects the original connotation of a body of secret (therefore "sealed") knowledge.
This word derives ultimately from the Greek sun god Hermes, but was applied specifically to Hermes Trismagestus, "thrice-great" Hermes, an Egyptian who was believed to have lived at roughly the time of Moses (Shumaker 201ff). The ancient Greeks had been well aware that much of their learning came from the more ancient civilization of Egypt. Plato in particular was aware of this, and introduced an Egyptian connection into some of his works, notably the Critias and Timeaus. Later Alexandrian Greeks expanded upon this, and being evidently unwilling to translate heiroglyphi
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2597
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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