WEBVTT 1 00:00:18.600 --> 00:00:24.920 Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve Episode two hundred and sixty three Facts and 2 00:00:25.039 --> 00:00:30.239 Experiments. In our last three episodes, we took a look at the beginning 3 00:00:30.399 --> 00:00:36.200 of the scientific revolution by examining first the nature of discovery, then how Europeans 4 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:40.520 changed their views of our planet, and finally how math, for really the 5 00:00:40.560 --> 00:00:46.359 first time in history, started to become an essential and independent branch of science, 6 00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:53.479 from perspective painting to ballistics. No one doubted in sixteen hundred how important 7 00:00:53.840 --> 00:01:00.880 mathematics had become to humans existence. But if the revolution begun by the mathematicians 8 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:07.319 was to be successful, it needed to identify other ways of establishing and communicating 9 00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:22.599 universal truths, and that is what we will be covering today. One day 10 00:01:22.680 --> 00:01:27.239 early in sixteen ten, Johannes Kepler was walking across a bridge in Prague when 11 00:01:27.239 --> 00:01:34.400 a few snowflakes settled upon his coat. Watching them, Kepler evidently grasped two 12 00:01:34.439 --> 00:01:40.799 things more or less simultaneously. Each snowflake was unique, but they were all 13 00:01:40.920 --> 00:01:45.480 like, and that they were all six cornered. This got Kepler thinking about 14 00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:49.519 two dimensional six cornered shapes and how they formed. A latis, the cells 15 00:01:49.560 --> 00:01:55.519 of a honeycomb or seeds of a pomegranate, and about how the only shapes 16 00:01:55.599 --> 00:01:59.200 that one can use to tile a floor if all the tiles are the same 17 00:02:00.120 --> 00:02:05.640 triangles, squares, and hexagons, And about the patterns you can make if 18 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:09.120 you pile cannonballs on top of one another. Kepler thought he could work out 19 00:02:09.479 --> 00:02:15.159 the most space saving way of piling spheres. His claim would later become known 20 00:02:15.199 --> 00:02:21.080 as the Kepler conjecture, and was finally proven true for any regular latise in 21 00:02:21.159 --> 00:02:25.159 eighteen thirty one and for any possible arrangement of spheres in nineteen ninety eight. 22 00:02:27.039 --> 00:02:34.319 For Kepler, this was applied mathematics. Like Galileo, Kepler believed that nature 23 00:02:34.439 --> 00:02:38.680 was based in geometry. If God was a mathematician and phooka to out that, 24 00:02:39.520 --> 00:02:45.080 then one would expect to find math everywhere, from the organization of our 25 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:50.719 solar system to the smallest snowflake. Math. In this case, geometry has 26 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:54.000 to be there. We're going to go more in detail into Galileo a little 27 00:02:54.039 --> 00:02:59.080 bit later on, but to get to the idea of experimentation and fact, 28 00:02:59.599 --> 00:03:06.400 here's a quick overview. The story of Galileo's discoveries is straightforward. In sixteen 29 00:03:06.439 --> 00:03:09.400 o eight, the telescope was invented in the Netherlands as sort of a chance 30 00:03:09.439 --> 00:03:16.560 discovery. Galileo's first telescope had a usable magnification of eight times by the beginning 31 00:03:16.599 --> 00:03:23.080 of six ten, and eventually he managed to produce one that had a magnification 32 00:03:23.120 --> 00:03:28.719 of thirty times, with which he could begin to explore the heavens. There's 33 00:03:28.759 --> 00:03:34.199 a standard phrase used over and over again in literature. Quote Galileo turned his 34 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:39.360 telescope to the heavens end quote, of course he did same thing, or 35 00:03:39.439 --> 00:03:46.479 going on in England, where another astronomer named Harriet did the same thing four 36 00:03:46.520 --> 00:03:51.759 months before Galileo, and his first telescope had a magnification of six times. 37 00:03:53.439 --> 00:03:58.479 The puzzle lies in the enormous effort that Galileo put into improving his telescope, 38 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:03.080 grinding on his own equipment two hundred lenses in order to end up with ten 39 00:04:03.199 --> 00:04:11.199 telescopes with a magnification of twenty times or better. For what is strange about 40 00:04:11.199 --> 00:04:15.839 these ten telescopes is that they're too good for their obvious military use. Their 41 00:04:15.920 --> 00:04:21.319 filled of view was tiny. Galileo could only see a small part of the 42 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:27.720 Moon at one time. Held with two hands, they shook and wobbled so 43 00:04:27.800 --> 00:04:30.800 that anything you looked at kept slipping out of the field of view. He 44 00:04:30.959 --> 00:04:38.519 realized some sort of tripod or mount was essential. It is important here for 45 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:43.000 a moment to distinguish between the impact of the telescope and the microscope. The 46 00:04:43.079 --> 00:04:47.000 two are basically the same thing. So as soon as Galileo had a telescope, 47 00:04:47.079 --> 00:04:51.519 he could use it to study flies. For example. He later devised 48 00:04:51.560 --> 00:04:58.040 a better tabletop instrument and studied how flies could climb up glass. But the 49 00:04:58.079 --> 00:05:02.279 first publication to represent who could be seen through a microscope, a single broadsheet 50 00:05:02.279 --> 00:05:09.360 which was entitled the Apareum about Bees in honor of Pope Urban the Eighth didn't 51 00:05:09.399 --> 00:05:16.079 appear until sixteen twenty five, and the first major publication was called Micrographia, 52 00:05:16.120 --> 00:05:24.120 and that wasn't published until sixteen sixty five. It's interesting because the telescope, 53 00:05:24.360 --> 00:05:30.759 on the other hand, transformed astronomy almost overnight, while the microscope was slow 54 00:05:30.839 --> 00:05:34.920 to be adopted and actually, toward the end of the century, quick to 55 00:05:34.920 --> 00:05:41.959 be abandoned. The reason for this, I think is simple. There was 56 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:46.120 an established body of astronomical theory, and what was seen with the telescope was 57 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:53.120 at odds with it. Astronomers could scarcely dispute the relevancy of the telescope to 58 00:05:53.160 --> 00:06:00.199 their studies, but the microscope brought into view a world that was previously unknown. 59 00:06:00.240 --> 00:06:05.480 It was how to establish how the new information it produced related to established 60 00:06:05.519 --> 00:06:14.439 knowledge. The telescope addressed directly issues that were already under discussion. The microscope, 61 00:06:14.839 --> 00:06:19.160 on the other hand, opened up new lines of inquiry whose relevancy to 62 00:06:19.199 --> 00:06:26.560 current concerns wasn't as obvious. A microscope simply isn't as helpful when you're trying 63 00:06:26.600 --> 00:06:33.079 to cite your cannonballs. That the telescope flourished and the microscope languished is one 64 00:06:33.079 --> 00:06:38.879 of the signs that the scientific revolution can be properly understood as a revolution, 65 00:06:39.639 --> 00:06:44.279 a revolt against the previous order. I think that's something that I've come back 66 00:06:44.319 --> 00:06:48.800 to every episode in this whether we're talking about math or the planet Earth. 67 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:56.800 The reality is the scientific revolution is a revolution because it's a rejection of what 68 00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:02.759 we're thousands upon thousands of years of assumed knowledge. Both the telescope and the 69 00:07:02.759 --> 00:07:10.759 microscope produced new knowledge, but in the seventeenth century only the telescope directly endangered 70 00:07:10.920 --> 00:07:16.800 the existing order. When Galileo pointed his improved telescope at the Moon in sixteen 71 00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:21.839 o nine, he spotted something much more striking than he had seen before. 72 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:27.160 Where there should have been light on the surface of the Moon, there was 73 00:07:27.240 --> 00:07:33.480 darkness, and vice versa. What Galileo realized immediately was that the Moon wasn't 74 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:39.720 flat, not flat at all, which had previously been taken for granted. 75 00:07:40.759 --> 00:07:46.480 There were mountains and craters. The Moon, in other words, was much 76 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:50.399 more like our planet Earth than we had previously thought. And it just so 77 00:07:50.480 --> 00:07:57.439 happened that in England the astronomer Harriot had seen exactly what Galileo had seen. 78 00:07:58.360 --> 00:08:01.519 We have a sketch that he drew on the twenty sixth of July sixteen o 79 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:07.879 nine. Looking at it, it's perfectly clear that the terminator, that is, 80 00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:11.519 the part where you can see light, is not regular. It's irregular. 81 00:08:13.519 --> 00:08:16.360 This is confirmed in another sketch by the same man, dated the seventeenth 82 00:08:16.360 --> 00:08:22.680 of July sixteen ten. The difference is by the time of the second sketch, 83 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:28.959 Harriet had read Galileo's Starry Messenger, which had been published in the spring. 84 00:08:30.279 --> 00:08:35.600 Now, looking at it from Galileo's perspective, he saw exactly what Galileo 85 00:08:35.720 --> 00:08:43.080 had seen. It seems clear that what he was doing was comparing Galileo's illustration 86 00:08:43.639 --> 00:08:48.600 with what he could see through his telescope, for both Galileo's illustration and Harriet's 87 00:08:48.639 --> 00:08:56.279 illustration feature a large circular shape. In fact, there's no such prominent object 88 00:08:56.279 --> 00:09:01.360 on the Moon, and scholars have suggested that Galileo did lively enlarged a crater 89 00:09:01.840 --> 00:09:07.159 to enable the viewer to, as it were, zoom in. Harriet, 90 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:11.919 looking at the Moon, saw the same the highlights and shadows, the mountain 91 00:09:11.039 --> 00:09:18.720 ranges, the valleys that Galileo described, and he also convinced himself that he 92 00:09:18.840 --> 00:09:26.399 had seen Galileo's imaginary crater. Once Galileo had described what he had seen, 93 00:09:28.519 --> 00:09:33.879 once he had trained viewers on how to look, it was almost impossible to 94 00:09:33.879 --> 00:09:43.279 dispute that the Moon had mountains and valleys, even one that didn't really exist. 95 00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:50.759 Of course, all this paled in comparison to the revelations that lie ahead. 96 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:56.360 In October sixteen eleven, Galileo came to the conclusion that one could predict 97 00:09:56.679 --> 00:10:01.159 the location and movement of the heavens, and one could do it with much 98 00:10:01.200 --> 00:10:09.120 greater accuracy than had been hitherto thought. By this point, Galileo realized Venus 99 00:10:09.240 --> 00:10:16.519 had phases, and that these phases were totally incompatible with ptolemaic astronomy, which 100 00:10:16.559 --> 00:10:22.759 assumed Venus had to orbit around the Earth. Looking at these phases, Galileo 101 00:10:22.840 --> 00:10:30.240 realized Venus absolutely had to orbit around the Sun. Early the following year, 102 00:10:30.360 --> 00:10:35.159 when Galileo told a prominent group of Jesuit astronomers about this discovery and they confirmed 103 00:10:35.159 --> 00:10:41.759 it, they threw him a party. Not everyone, as we will see, 104 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:48.279 even within the Church was hostile to new ideas about the universe. Just 105 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:54.279 some people, But make no mistake, after sixteen eleven sixteen twelve, the 106 00:10:54.360 --> 00:11:03.919 ptolemaic conception of the universe had been fatally wounded. Interestingly enough, Galileo's discovery 107 00:11:03.440 --> 00:11:09.080 also marked the first time in the history of the world. In sixteen twenty 108 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:16.519 eight, Francis Goodwin published the first ever work of science fiction, titled The 109 00:11:16.519 --> 00:11:22.600 Man in the Moon. Later on, these mathematical innovations would lead to the 110 00:11:22.600 --> 00:11:28.679 creation of the metric system in the early eighteenth century, so that scientists could 111 00:11:28.679 --> 00:11:35.200 consistently measure and explain their new discoveries. Previously, historians thought that Copernicus was 112 00:11:35.240 --> 00:11:41.200 responsible for the destruction of the correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm. This 113 00:11:41.279 --> 00:11:46.960 is a mistake. There was only one small major shift in copernicus universe. 114 00:11:48.559 --> 00:11:52.000 The stars were required to be at a vast distance from the Solar System, 115 00:11:52.080 --> 00:11:56.000 given that there was no measurable change in their relationship to each other in the 116 00:11:56.039 --> 00:12:00.759 sky, while the Earth orbited the Sun in the course of a year, 117 00:12:01.559 --> 00:12:07.200 and consequently they must be very big if they're not invisible. But the Sun 118 00:12:07.240 --> 00:12:13.240 and the planets remained the same size, and Copernicus still continued. It seems 119 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:20.679 to believe that the universe consisted of nested spheres, which was ptolemaic. Kapernicus 120 00:12:20.919 --> 00:12:24.759 universe was no longer Earth centered, but it was Earth friendly, and there 121 00:12:24.799 --> 00:12:28.960 was no reason to think that it was not the product of benevolent design. 122 00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:33.879 There was nothing in his argument that might imply that Earth was just another planet, 123 00:12:33.519 --> 00:12:37.799 or that the universe had not been created for the benefit of human beings. 124 00:12:37.759 --> 00:12:41.720 The universe had a center, and the Sun and the Earth were still 125 00:12:41.879 --> 00:12:46.840 unique objects. The key change occurred in sixteen o eight with the invention of 126 00:12:46.879 --> 00:12:52.120 the telescope and the microscope. Before sixteen o eight, the standard scientific instruments 127 00:12:52.360 --> 00:12:56.679 crossed apps, Astra labs and so forth were all designed to make naked eye 128 00:12:56.679 --> 00:13:03.519 measurements of degrees of the circle. Even the vast sextants and quadrants built by 129 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:09.919 Tico Brahe were simply in large sighting devices. These instruments were really no different 130 00:13:09.919 --> 00:13:16.039 in principle than those used by Ptolemy, and although by making parallax investigations of 131 00:13:16.039 --> 00:13:22.039 the comet and stars they could be used to undermine traditional belief in translucent spheres 132 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:26.279 that supported all the planets, as was still accepted by Copernicus, they reinforced 133 00:13:26.279 --> 00:13:31.399 the assumption that human beings were the perfect observers of the cosmos, and the 134 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:37.000 cosmos itself was designed to support human life. But after sixteen o eight, 135 00:13:37.559 --> 00:13:45.759 a new range of instruments made the invisible visible. The thermometer sixteen eleven and 136 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:50.679 barometer sixteen forty three made it possible to see temperature and air pressure for the 137 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:58.039 first time. All of these intellectual changes have consequences. The discovery of America 138 00:13:58.279 --> 00:14:03.759 killed off the two sphere theory of the Earth. Copernicanism led to the belief 139 00:14:05.159 --> 00:14:09.000 that the planet shined by reflecting light, which was confirmed by the discovery of 140 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:15.519 the phases of Venus, and this would kill off the Ptolemaic system. But 141 00:14:15.639 --> 00:14:20.440 the phases of Venus, which is what really kills off the Ptolemaic system, 142 00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:26.720 was only made possible because of the telescope. Innovation and invention changed the conception 143 00:14:26.879 --> 00:14:35.039 of the universe. The reality is Totolemaic astronomy was unaffected by Copernicus. Certainly, 144 00:14:35.039 --> 00:14:39.200 it went into crisis when the star was discovered in fifteen seventy two, 145 00:14:39.759 --> 00:14:46.200 but by the end of the sixteenth century it had fully recovered. The telescope, 146 00:14:46.480 --> 00:14:52.080 on the other hand, brought about its immediate and irreversible collapse. And 147 00:14:52.159 --> 00:14:58.879 this is another fascinating point about the scientific revolution. Once mankind figured out that 148 00:14:58.919 --> 00:15:03.080 it could look to the hea, what it decided to do was find new, 149 00:15:03.559 --> 00:15:07.720 innovative and better ways of doing so, and that brings about a further 150 00:15:07.799 --> 00:15:15.240 shift in consciousness, which brings about more investigation. In other words, for 151 00:15:15.279 --> 00:15:20.240 the first time, as we're going to see, humankind is starting to experiment 152 00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:28.559 with science, and that experimentation is going to blow the lid off everything medieval 153 00:15:28.600 --> 00:15:33.879 Europe believed. We take facts for granted. Nowadays, there have been few 154 00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:39.080 attempts to rate the history of facts, and all of them are frankly terrible. 155 00:15:39.080 --> 00:15:45.360 Yet our culture is as dependent on facts as it is on crude oil. 156 00:15:46.399 --> 00:15:52.039 It's almost impossible to imagine doing without facts. And yet there was a 157 00:15:52.039 --> 00:15:58.759 time when facts didn't exist. What did the map of knowledge look like before 158 00:15:58.759 --> 00:16:03.559 the invention of the fact. On the one hand, there was truth on 159 00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:07.360 the other, opinion on the other hand, There was knowledge. On the 160 00:16:07.360 --> 00:16:11.720 other there was experience. On the one hand, there was proof. On 161 00:16:11.759 --> 00:16:18.519 the other there was persuasion. Opinion, experience, persuasion. All of these 162 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:27.000 were necessarily unreliable and unsatisfactory. Knowledge had to be built on firmer foundations. 163 00:16:29.039 --> 00:16:34.720 The story of the fact is a story in which the lowest and most unreliable 164 00:16:34.799 --> 00:16:44.360 form of knowledge was magically transformed into the highest and most reliable. What we're 165 00:16:44.399 --> 00:16:52.919 concerned with here is what the Oxford English Dictionary lists as fact quote A thing 166 00:16:52.120 --> 00:17:00.279 that has really occurred or is actually the case end quote. Although dictionaries don't 167 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:06.960 distinguish clearly enough between an agency of a fact something that has occurred because someone 168 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:11.680 has done it, and an impersonal idea of fact something that has occurred in 169 00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:17.839 the course of nature. How did you refer to this something? Before facts 170 00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:23.160 were invented? In Greek there was the phenomenon, But phenomenon were malleable. 171 00:17:25.039 --> 00:17:30.359 They could be saved or solved, while facts are stubborn. In Latin, 172 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:36.920 there is the thing rests. The Romans said race ipsilocuter, which means the 173 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:41.920 facts speak for themselves. Of course, when they wrote this, there was 174 00:17:41.119 --> 00:17:48.640 no such word as fact in English. Before the fact there were particulars. 175 00:17:49.680 --> 00:17:56.960 Phenomenon are too subjective, They are appearances, not realities. Things in particulars 176 00:17:57.319 --> 00:18:03.200 are too much in the real world. None of them corresponds to that peculiar 177 00:18:03.240 --> 00:18:10.799 blend of reality and thought, which is the fact. This peculiar blend is 178 00:18:10.839 --> 00:18:17.920 what some have referred to when describing facts as linguistic but claiming to be copies 179 00:18:18.079 --> 00:18:22.839 of the real. In a society becoming increasingly interested in experience, it should 180 00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:27.599 come as no surprise that the term fact was taking on a new significance. 181 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:37.039 Facts identify a type of knowledge which is grounded in experience. Whereas before Europeans 182 00:18:37.119 --> 00:18:44.880 might have obsessed about relations of ideas, now they wanted matters of fact. 183 00:18:45.240 --> 00:18:53.640 In fact pun intended, Hume indicated the distinction between relationships and ideas and matters 184 00:18:53.680 --> 00:19:02.400 of fact was fundamentally the intellectual conflict that gives rise to the Scientific Revolution. 185 00:19:03.240 --> 00:19:10.839 Amazingly to us today, before the Scientific Revolution, facts were few and far 186 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:17.680 between. They had to be handmade for example, they were hard to distribute, 187 00:19:18.279 --> 00:19:22.519 and they were unreliable. A good instance of this is just simply the 188 00:19:22.559 --> 00:19:29.880 fact that prior to eighteen o one, it's impossible for us to say from 189 00:19:29.920 --> 00:19:37.920 a historical perspective. Even though we have a lot of facts about the industrialized 190 00:19:37.960 --> 00:19:45.240 West before eighteen o one, we cannot definitively say what the population of Great 191 00:19:45.319 --> 00:19:55.119 Britain was. Crucially, facts are not only established, they can be disestablished. 192 00:19:56.279 --> 00:20:00.960 A fact can be confirmed by experience, and that it can be refuted 193 00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:07.279 by experience. When and where was the language of the fact invented? Only 194 00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:12.599 quite recently historians thought there was a straightforward answer to this question. Francis Bacon 195 00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:18.680 invented the fact. From Bacon, the fact entered the English language and was 196 00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:25.480 adopted by the Royal Society. So historians started to write about seriously quote Baconian 197 00:20:25.559 --> 00:20:33.160 facts end quote. English philosophy has always been thought to be almost peculiarly empiricist, 198 00:20:33.599 --> 00:20:37.680 and therefore it made sense that on this count England would have created and 199 00:20:37.759 --> 00:20:45.519 invented the culture of the fact. Unfortunately, this story, as with most 200 00:20:45.759 --> 00:20:51.759 straightforward answers, is just way too simplistic to be accurate. The fact doesn't 201 00:20:51.799 --> 00:20:57.599 belong to the English language. Galileo and his correspondence happily discussed facts, but 202 00:20:57.680 --> 00:21:03.960 there are Italian usages from much earlier, from the fifteen seventies. According to 203 00:21:03.039 --> 00:21:08.200 established scholarship, the French discovered the New World only in the sixteen sixties, 204 00:21:08.680 --> 00:21:18.000 but Montague used the word fact fact to mean fact no less than five times, 205 00:21:18.200 --> 00:21:21.839 one of which actually dates from as early as fifteen eighty, well before 206 00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:25.960 the sixteen sixties. When it comes to linguistics, you really have to get 207 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:29.920 the initial usage, which it turns out is a lot earlier than what we 208 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:36.160 thought. In fact, the word fact itself doesn't come from Bacon. He 209 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:41.920 never uses the word in its modern meaning in English. He uses factum three 210 00:21:41.039 --> 00:21:45.200 or four times in print. The man with the stronger claim to the word 211 00:21:45.400 --> 00:21:52.119 fact is Thomas Hobbs. He uses the word in Elements of Law, Natural 212 00:21:52.200 --> 00:21:57.920 and Politic, written in sixteen forty but not published until sixteen fifty. Of 213 00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:02.519 course, there were facts, as I mentioned, in Italian, French, 214 00:22:02.680 --> 00:22:07.839 and Latin, long before there were facts in English. The word fact only 215 00:22:07.880 --> 00:22:14.440 becomes more respectable in English after sixteen sixty one. And again here the printing 216 00:22:14.480 --> 00:22:19.200 press is extremely important. The printing press made facts. According to one historian, 217 00:22:19.519 --> 00:22:26.039 Harder before printing facts were too soft, they were too malleable. What 218 00:22:26.279 --> 00:22:33.759 made the scientific revolution, this historian argues, is not the experimental method or 219 00:22:33.799 --> 00:22:38.039 commercial society, both of those have been around for centuries, but again the 220 00:22:38.079 --> 00:22:45.319 printing press, which turned private information into public knowledge, private experience into communal 221 00:22:45.359 --> 00:22:49.720 experience. For my case, I don't think that this takes the argument far 222 00:22:49.839 --> 00:22:56.559 enough. The printing press didn't necessarily make facts stronger. It made them outside 223 00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:03.480 a very few specialized fields possible. Without the printing press, I'm not sure 224 00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:10.160 the modern conception of fact ever comes into being, because you just can't disseminate 225 00:23:10.640 --> 00:23:15.680 enough knowledge along enough of the population. Just isn't going to work, not 226 00:23:15.799 --> 00:23:22.119 without the way to mass produce facts. And the printing press allowed for the 227 00:23:22.279 --> 00:23:26.680 mass production of facts in the way that the factory system is going to allow 228 00:23:26.759 --> 00:23:33.480 for the mass production of Model T cars. Later on, Guttenberg's Bible was 229 00:23:33.559 --> 00:23:38.599 completed in fourteen fifty four or fourteen fifty five. That was, of course 230 00:23:38.640 --> 00:23:45.559 a watershed moment. But consider this when a major comment passed by Earth in 231 00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:49.759 fifteen seventy seven, thanks to the printing press, which had now been operation 232 00:23:51.079 --> 00:23:57.240 for at least twenty two years, more than one hundred and eighty publications debated 233 00:23:57.279 --> 00:24:06.440 the meaning of its existence. Thus, the printing press took astronomers and astrologers 234 00:24:06.440 --> 00:24:12.599 scientists from two different fields, and put them together to exchange ideas. Thus 235 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:18.759 was the power of printing. Book Fairs then accelerated the growth in the international 236 00:24:18.799 --> 00:24:26.680 trade of books. Books strengthened innovation, making it possible for innovators to work 237 00:24:26.720 --> 00:24:33.480 together and pool ideas. It made it possible to attack the monopoly of information 238 00:24:33.039 --> 00:24:37.240 previously held only by the universities. And of course, what I mean by 239 00:24:37.279 --> 00:24:42.640 that is that prior to the printing press, very few people had access to 240 00:24:42.839 --> 00:24:51.000 ideas and to education. Those with previous access had a vested interest in protecting 241 00:24:51.039 --> 00:25:00.839 that access. The printing press democratized this information and eliminated this monopoly. The 242 00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:07.000 printing press also created a sort of intellectual arms race, kings and queens needed 243 00:25:07.279 --> 00:25:12.799 these new weapons. They needed to be the first to discover a new land 244 00:25:14.119 --> 00:25:19.640 and use a new navigational system. This competition would go a long way to 245 00:25:19.720 --> 00:25:26.559 fuel the incessant wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but would also transform 246 00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:34.880 Europe into the world's dominant continent for centuries. But if there are now facts, 247 00:25:34.920 --> 00:25:40.759 then Europeans needed a way to test those facts. We call that process 248 00:25:40.799 --> 00:25:47.720 today experimentation. The first proper experiment in European history that we know of, 249 00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:55.000 took place on September nineteenth, sixteen forty eight, and was performed by Florin 250 00:25:55.200 --> 00:26:00.319 Perrier, a French scientist and actually brother in law to Blaze Pascal. He 251 00:26:00.440 --> 00:26:07.000 used a sealed tube and mercury to study changes in air pressure and density based 252 00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:12.279 on height. To be a proper experiment, you need one a carefully designed 253 00:26:12.279 --> 00:26:22.400 procedure, two verification i e. Onlookers, three repetition, four independent replication, 254 00:26:22.279 --> 00:26:30.359 and five result dissemination. Harrier was the first to combine all these facts 255 00:26:30.440 --> 00:26:38.599 ors in his altitude experiment. Now, certainly philosophers had tested theories before. 256 00:26:40.519 --> 00:26:47.240 Ptolemy and Galen did so centuries earlier, and the Great Arab scientist Ibn al 257 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:55.119 Hayafen had done some rudimentary experiments in the eleventh century. The puzzle was not 258 00:26:55.720 --> 00:27:00.359 whether there was any experimentation prior to the scientific Revolution, but why there was 259 00:27:00.440 --> 00:27:08.279 so little. One reason is that experimentation required manual labor, and the reality 260 00:27:08.519 --> 00:27:15.359 was Medieval and Renaissance culture was resistant to physical work. This only starts to 261 00:27:15.480 --> 00:27:22.559 change in the mid to late fifteenth century. Second, again, the emphasis 262 00:27:22.559 --> 00:27:30.880 in medieval Europe was on Aristotelian logic and using logic to prove points. Before 263 00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:37.599 the fifteenth century, it was assumed there was no need to physically test something. 264 00:27:37.559 --> 00:27:45.400 You could prove it true or false based on argument and reason. Third, 265 00:27:45.160 --> 00:27:51.000 experimentation requires one to move back and forth between concrete facts on the one 266 00:27:51.039 --> 00:27:57.960 hand, and abstract theory and hypothesis on the other. Experimentation requires a balancing 267 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:04.440 act between platonic idealism and crude empiricism. You need to be able to make 268 00:28:04.480 --> 00:28:12.680 the claim that general conclusions can be drawn from specific examples. Europeans simply weren't 269 00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:21.119 accustomed to doing this before the fifteenth century. Finally, as we have already 270 00:28:21.119 --> 00:28:26.079 covered, there was no culture of discovery in the Middle Ages, so what 271 00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:33.599 would be the point in experimentation. Society was entirely backward looking. And I 272 00:28:33.720 --> 00:28:37.039 cannot stress this enough. I know that it's I keep repeating it over and 273 00:28:37.039 --> 00:28:41.559 over again, but it's so important that prior to let's say, the late 274 00:28:41.640 --> 00:28:48.799 fifteenth century, European society had its head turned backwards. They were always looking 275 00:28:48.839 --> 00:28:52.880 to the glories of the past. After the end of the fifteenth century, 276 00:28:53.480 --> 00:29:00.319 that's when the idea of progress and looking forward becomes the new year European mindset. 277 00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:07.559 And that, my friends, is an amazing and important shift. Even 278 00:29:07.599 --> 00:29:14.240 Arab scientists, certainly the most advanced in the High Middle Ages, struggled to 279 00:29:14.279 --> 00:29:22.200 make discoveries somehow fit into their past based cultures. The first major field for 280 00:29:22.279 --> 00:29:27.839 experimental inquiry in the early modern period was with the magnet and navigation. This 281 00:29:27.920 --> 00:29:32.880 was an easy starting point for Europeans because there was no such thing as the 282 00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:37.640 compass in the ancient world, so clearly one couldn't look to Ptolemay for help. 283 00:29:37.799 --> 00:29:42.920 Plus, the compass and the magnet were essential in navigation, which suddenly 284 00:29:44.119 --> 00:29:48.839 everyone cared a lot about, giving the economics. By fifteen twenty two, 285 00:29:49.240 --> 00:29:55.759 Sebastian Cabot, who sailed from England to Nova Scotia realized that magnets do not 286 00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:00.559 point true north, but rather east or west of true north, depending on 287 00:30:00.640 --> 00:30:06.039 where you were in the globe. This was a crucial discovery because now, 288 00:30:06.559 --> 00:30:10.559 depending on the level of variation in your compass, you could use it to 289 00:30:10.640 --> 00:30:17.599 determine longitude. Hence, experimentation in that case led to a novel discovery. 290 00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:23.680 All right, now that we've covered some of the basics of the early scientific 291 00:30:23.759 --> 00:30:27.880 Revolution, I want to take a look at two key figures from that period, 292 00:30:29.359 --> 00:30:34.400 Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus because he's arguably the father of modern astronomy, 293 00:30:34.920 --> 00:30:41.559 though that award might fairly go to Tico Brahe. Galileo because he gets us 294 00:30:41.599 --> 00:30:45.160 into the history of the reaction to the scientific Revolution, which of course there 295 00:30:45.319 --> 00:30:48.680 was that brings the church an inquisition onto the board end. You know, 296 00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:53.680 I can't wait to talk about that knee interim. If you'd like some more 297 00:30:53.799 --> 00:30:57.319 content, check out the links in the show notes. Got two down there 298 00:30:57.359 --> 00:31:00.640 for two seven day free trials. The Westerns of two point zero and the 299 00:31:00.680 --> 00:31:06.279 Patreon account both offer that option. Now, if you're looking for additional ways 300 00:31:06.319 --> 00:31:08.880 to support the program. The other thing that's there is the link to the 301 00:31:10.039 --> 00:31:15.440 website. If you would just like some additional stuff, go ahead and check 302 00:31:15.480 --> 00:31:15.759 it out.