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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Bearing in mind that science is a product of its environment and at the same time an important modifier of that environment, I shall try to draw an over-all picture of science in the Renaissance. This summary barely scratches the surface of the wealth of material for this exuberant era. The mathematical and physical sciences are emphasized and a number of really important men are consciously omitted.
It would be foolish to plunge into our topic without defining, at least in broad outline, what is meant here by the term Renaissance. Certainly, there is a difference between ancient and modern science.
1 For example, Leonardo da Vinci, possibly the greatest scientist and inventor of the period, who had very little influence on the course of events in the history of science and in his own time was best known as an artist; Nicholas of Cusa, by some called a precursor of Copernicus; and Giordano Bruno, whose tragic death in 1600 has been taken as a symbol of the close of a period in intellectual history.
2 Lynn, Thorndike, ‘Renaissance or Prenaissance?’, Journal of the History of Ideas, IV, No. 1 (January, 1943), 65 Google Scholar.
3 A. C., Crombie, Augustine to Galileo (London: Falcon, 1952), p. 273 Google Scholar.
4 George, Sarton, ‘Science in the Renaissance’, The Civilization of the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929), p. 75 Google Scholar.
5 For example, he cited the thirteenth-century work of Peregrinus and the sixteenthcentury work of Fracastoro.
6 Gilbert's De Magnete stimulated Kepler to explain the deviation in the radius vector of the planets by imagining the planet bodies as consisting of parallel magnetic filaments, one end being attracted, the other repelled by the sun.
7 Dissection was officially recognized at the University of Bologna in 1405 and at Padua in 1429.
