Science and Technology 1450 to 1750 - AP World History: Modern

Contrary to popular belief Opium was brought to China by European and Middle Eastern merchants during the Tang. It did not become popular as a recreational drug until the Ming era. Gunpowder, paper-making, block printing, and the compass were all introduced to European society following interaction with Chinese merchants.

The evolution of firearms depends on many factors, including the quality of powder and different trigger mechanisms, but "pike and shot" was a stalwart concept for military planners throughout the 17th century.

Muskets, and the earlier arquebuses, were not lethal for only one shot to influence many battles; to justify the cost, musketeers had to fire multiple shots.

Because muskets are muzzle loading, they are difficult to reload with blades attached.

Disguising firearms as pikes may have occurred in individual battles, but it was never a major component of warfare.

Some of the earliest firearms used in Europe included anti-cavalry mortars, but this was hundreds of years earlier than the 17th century, and was too unreliable to sufficiently protect musketeers from cavalry.

Heliocentrism-the idea that the Earth and the other planets in the solar system revolve around the Sun-was popularized by the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in 1543. Prior to this the theory of geocentrism-the idea that the Sun and the other planets revolved around the Earth-was popular, but several ancient Greeks and Medieval Arab scholars proposed ideas similar to Copernicus' heliocentism.

The printing press was invented, in Europe, by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. The invention of the printing press allowed for pamphlets and essays to be widely produced for the first time in European history. This facilitated the spread of ideas in Europe and allowed for the rapid spread of the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century.

Native groups domesticated many different animal species, such as llama in the Andean region, centuries before the contact with Columbus and his crew in 1492. Technologies like domesticated horses and steel armor gave Europeans advantage in battle with Native groups, even when the Europeans were outnumbered. It should be noted, however, that historians believe that the most important cause for the massive number of fatalities among Native peoples after contact with Europeans was due to exposure to European diseases like small pox. Native peoples had never been exposed to these diseases and, consequently, had no natural resistance to them.

Galileo was not the first astronomer to argue that the Earth and the other planets revolved around the Sun, but he defended the idea in several of his writings. Galileo's advocacy for heliocentrism put him at odds with Church officials who feared that acceptance of the idea would lead to doubts about the truth of Christianity, since passages in the Bible claimed that the Earth was unmovable. Galileo was forced by the Inquisition to recant his previous advocacy of heliocentrism, and he was sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life.

Gutenberg's printing press made it much easier to create a large number of copies of written works. Use of the printing press allowed the ideas of Martin Luther and his supporters to spread rapidly. The printing press also allowed a much larger number of literate people to own their own copies of the Bible, which they could interpret without intervention from Catholic clergy.

The French philosopher Rene Descartes argued that beliefs should not be based solely on faith, but instead on observations of what is going on in the natural world. These ideas influenced the development of the Scientific Method for experimentation. Scientists base their conclusions on what actually happens in the experiment, and not on what they expected to happen prior to the experiment.

Isaac Newton was one of the most important scientists in human history. Among other discoveries, his formulation of the Theory of Gravity helped to explain why the planets orbit the sun and why objects fall to the Earth. Discoveries in genetics, or how living organisms inherit traits from their parents, would not be mad until a few centuries after Newton's death.

The main reason that Himalayan art uses more embossing than casting is because embossing is cheaper.

Economic considerations, not spiritual ones, were the main reasons why Himalayan art was more often embossed, rather than casted.

Casting technology has existed in the Himalayans for thousands of years, long before the modern era and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Himalayas' altitude does not make metal casting impossible.

The Scientific Revolution was a slow, gradual accumulation of new discoveries, different schools of thought, and changed approaches to the universe. Despite its name, it did not actually take place at a fast rate; instead, it transformed Western Europe slowly but steadily over the course of two centuries, from the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century. The individuals who took part in this Revolution were not actually called scientists; at the time, the word “scientist” hadn’t yet been invented. Instead, they were known as “natural philosophers,” or men who studied and thought about the universe, Nature, and everything in between. Contrary to popular belief, the Scientific Revolution didn’t reject the teachings of antiquity and the Middle Ages at all. In fact, the Revolution’s natural philosophers were inspired by the concepts created by those (such as Aristotle and Ptolemy) who had come before them. These new natural philosophers embraced the work done by their predecessors and worked to update, reform, or fix any errors in these ideas. They married old information with new knowledge and discoveries, combining and investigating them both to expand their understanding of the universe. The many new discoveries and changes made in the field of astronomy generated the most excitement and drama among the Revolution’s contemporary researchers and academics. But many other fields, including medicine, biology, chemistry, and natural history, produced fascinating achievements as well.

In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published his work On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, which today is regarded by most historians as the starting point for the Scientific Revolution. In this piece, Copernicus challenged the ancient scientific worldview of geocentrism, which had been established by Aristotle and Ptolemy centuries earlier. According to geocentrism, the Sun revolved around the Earth, because the Earth, with its superior weight, was the natural center of the universe. Copernicus, however, had discovered that the real truth was just the opposite – in fact, the Earth revolved around the Sun. Copernicus’s model, known as heliocentrism, was hugely important because he provided a perfect beginning for the deep exploration of astronomy and other natural sciences that occurred over the entire course of the Scientific Revolution. Yet Copernicus was not at all a radical scientist; while his heliocentrism did indeed disprove Aristotle and Ptolemy’s geocentrism, Copernicus did not reject any of the ancient thinkers’ other astronomical principles. In his mind, Copernicus was simply correctly a flawed ancient model by proposing an alternate understanding of that same model. It would not be until many years later that Copernicus would begin to be celebrated as a revolutionary, transformative intellectual, a view which modern historians now generally regard as overly generous.

Crucial to the later success of the famed scientist Sir Isaac Newton was the work done years earlier by Johannes Kepler. A German astronomer, Kepler lived and worked during the Scientific Revolution’s beginning. At first, he was simply a research assistant to the more famed astronomer Tycho Brahe, who was an ardent proponent of geocentrism and conducted vast numbers of observations of the planets, all without any equipment. All the data Brahe gathered over the course of his hundreds of observations would later become an invaluable database used by nearly every astronomer who followed after him. But Brahe completely rejected Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the universe. However, Kepler believed that Copernicus was right, and after Brahe died in 1601, Kepler took over his boss’s work. He immediately set out to investigate heliocentrism more deeply, hoping to prove Copernicus right and his old mentor wrong. In the process, Kepler discovered a crucial, and previously missing, piece of information about the universe: he found that the planets moved in elliptical orbits, not the circular ones that Copernicus and Brahe had both claimed. Kepler’s discovery of accurate planetary motion laid the groundwork for the later studies done by Isaac Newton, who directly relied upon Kepler’s findings to inspire and inform his own research.

Among his many other claims to fame, the Italian mathematician, inventor, and astronomer Galileo Galilei was the very first person to examine the skies, planets, and stars up close and personal by using a telescope. The telescope was a brand new invention, one created by Dutch eye-doctor and inventor Hans Lippershey in 1603. With his telescope, Galileo made numerous discoveries – new stars, moons, and never-before-seen features such as mountains on planets all were revealed before Galileo’s tireless eyes.

Galileo Galilei, in addition to being a truly innovative mathematician and scientist, was also just as outspoken and ambitious as he was brilliant. He wanted to share his new discoveries and theories with as many people as possible, especially the political and social elites of his day. His many writings, including his Starry Messenger and Letter on Sunspots, were written in such a way that his ideas, while obviously complex, were nonetheless more accessible and available to the average person than were the works written by nearly all of his other fellow scientists. His prose brought him to the attention of the infamous Medici family, who agreed to become his patrons and employed him as an astronomer, mathematician, and natural philosopher for many years. Over the course of his time with the Medicis, Galileo gained significant political skills and connections, with he used to further popularize his ideas. Galileo was an especially fervent proponent of the deceased astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and his heliocentric model. Eventually, it was this eye-catching combination of high level political associations, dramatic new theories, and unashamed bluntness that drew Galileo into conflict with the Catholic Church. He was not, however, an atheist, merely a Christian whose views were not directly in line with those of the church.

The feudal system, in both Europe and Japan, was built on the premise that certain individuals are more skilled and have better training in weapons than others. Archery and swordsmanship were both difficult skills, which had to be mastered over a period of years. Those skilled individuals were able to gain power for themselves by agreeing to fight on behalf of landowners and in defense of serfs living on the land. However, the introduction of firearms changed this arrangement. Suddenly anyone with access to a gun could shoot and kill with very little training. This contributed to the decline of the feudal system in Europe, and, when guns were introduced to Japanese society, threatened to disrupt the feudal system in Japan.

When most people think about the Scientific Revolution, Isaac Newton and his famed affinity for apples springs immediately to mind. This is definitely warranted – Newton was one of the most prolific and successful scientists of his day. Newton lived towards the end of the Scientific Revolution; so naturally, he was very much immersed in the past findings of the many scientists who had lived and worked before him. In particular, he was inspired by the work of Johannes Kepler and his theory of elliptical planetary motion. Over the course of his career, Newton made numerous new discoveries in the field of astronomy while also pioneering the beginnings of physics. He is best known for his discovery of gravity, which he uncovered during his investigation into Kepler’s past planetary research. As Newton realized, every single object in the entire universe, including the planets, were all affected by gravity, a powerful force which pulled and pushed things together in mathematically perfect order.

Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, author, and lawyer, was a key part of the Scientific Revolution. Bacon was nearly frenetic in his interests; he was involved in almost every possible field, from politics to literature to scientific investigation. Today, he is best known because of his status as the so-called “father of empiricism.” Empiricism is the belief that observation and experimentation are crucial to human understanding; without personal observation, Bacon argued, any explanations or theories were fatally flawed and unacceptable. According to this theory, any scientist who wished to investigate the natural world should first spend a very long time observing the topic of his research, using the powers of his own five senses. Only through detailed personal study, Bacon believed, could any sort of scientific truth be discovered. (For this reason, he was a vigorous champion of Isaac Newton.) In keeping with this attitude, he ridiculed any scientist who hadn’t personally observed or studied natural phenomena.

The scientific principle of deduction was devised by Rene Descartes, one of the Scientific Revolution’s most lauded men. Although he is today most famous for his invention of analytic geometry, in his own time Descartes was best known for his principle of deduction. Deduction is the belief that all intellectual reasoning (whether scientific or humanistic in nature) must first begin with a basic, central idea, which would then guide the thinker, in logical succession, to ever more specific and certain facts. Along with the theory of deduction, Descartes developed the scientific method (a methodology for conducting scientific research) whose emphasis on the importance of a hypothesis perfectly supports deductive reasoning. He was especially in favor of quiet, introspective examination, which he believed would reveal answers about the universe to the sufficiently deductive and internalized mind. While quite popular at the time, Descartes’s deductive reasoning gradually fell out of favor and was eclipsed by Francis Bacon’s principle of empiricism.