What characterized the Renaissance?

Humanism in the Renaissance undoubtedly had a great impact on the development of natural science at that time. However, previous researchers of the history of science often stayed at the level that humanism inspired people's thinking and liberated their minds. Dobbs, on the other hand, put forward a new insight that the worship of the ancients was a distinctive feature of the Renaissance. In the fifteenth century, there was a passionate search for new classical texts, and every new discovery was hailed as a great achievement. Some of the first giants of the scientific revolution, according to Dobbs, sought to revive the ancient tradition and to work within that tradition. He says, "The work of Copernicus and Vesalius cannot be understood without such intellectual sources and backgrounds as Ptolemy or Galen. Even William Harvey a century later identified himself as an Aristotelian and claimed to have benefited from Galen." Dobbs's point, when read in the context of the history of ideas or cognition, is to say that there is often a relationship of mutual inspiration between old and new ideas, and that for the giants of science, reverence for the ancients did not prevent them from correcting their errors. According to Dobbs, the humanist veneration of the ancients may have been intended to preserve these authorities, yet with additions and corrections to the ancients' material, new ideas arose, and new scientific revolutions may have arisen in this way. Guided by new philosophies and new methods, there are those who bravely come forward who argue that we simply cannot cite the ancients, the Greeks, as an argument. For example, Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, although he had great admiration for Aristotle and Galen, argued that whether anatomy was studied or taught, it should not be based on books, but on actual anatomy; not on philosophers' views, but on natural structures. Scientists had to begin to establish new categories of fact, observation, and experiment. Whereas Bacon's method was essentially experimental, qualitative, and inductive, Descartes' method was essentially inferential, mechanical, and deductive. When Descartes' mechanistic philosophy was applied to man and living things, the previously dominant notions of "vitality" were banished. Descartes' own work was instrumental in the subsequent development of medical and physical science in the late seventeenth century. Thus, the initial rise of the scientific revolution was inseparable from the formation of a new scientific method. It is clear from the experience of cognition that new methods and philosophies must inevitably blaze a new trail through the groping of tradition.

Another contributing factor to the modern scientific revolution was the use of mathematical methods. Its initial rise was also due to the obsession with Platonism and Pythagoreanism. The role of math is most evident in music, where the so-called harmonic is the harmonious relationship of numbers in intervals. This code of harmony can also be seen in architectural design, and it is no wonder that Goethe saw architecture as frozen music. It seems that art rises to a more exalted position as soon as it takes on the character of numbers. Russell, a logician, said: "The understanding of the numerical structure of things thus gives man a new power over his surroundings. In a sense it makes man more like God. The Pythagoreans had seen God as the supreme mathematician. If man could somehow use and improve his mathematical skills, he could come closer to the status of God. This is not to say that humanism was impious or opposed to recognized religion. But it does suggest that the religious practices prevalent at the time had a tendency to be treated as routine matters, whereas it was the doctrines of the pre-Socratic period of antiquity that actually lit the fire of the thinker's imagination. In this way, a neo-Platonist ethos reared its head within the realm of philosophy. The emphasis on human power recalls the optimism of Athens at the height of its power." It could be argued that the application of mathematical methods played a great role in the initial scientific revolution. The mathematical laws governing the orbits of the planets outlined by Kepler or the mathematical expressions for motion proposed by Galileo are milestones in the history of modern science. The application of mathematical methods in the natural sciences was accompanied by new advances in mathematics itself. Leibniz and Newton each invented calculus, and these methods in turn were quickly mastered by the scientists of the day as tools for their scientific research.

Both the natural sciences and the humanities, the edifice of knowledge is gradually built up by countless individuals adding bricks and mortar, except that some people add revolutionary bricks and mortar that go up to the next level, and some people add bricks and mortar that serve as an intermediate link. There is no telling how many mental iterations, comparisons, hesitations, temptations, and guesses humans go through in the process of knowing; even in faulty cognitive models, there may be positive elements. Galen's description of the circulatory system has this special significance. It was through the discovery of errors in his writings that the Renaissance people developed a new conception of blood flow. According to Galen, blood is formed in the liver and flows from there, through the veins and to all parts of the body. The venous blood was rich in natural essence and had the function of nourishing the tissues of the body while carrying away the waste products, and this part of the venous blood that was sent out ended up in the right ventricle. Galen hypothesized that pores existed between the right and left ventricles, and that a very small amount of venous blood flowed through these pores to the left chamber. Here, this blood mixed with air from the lungs to form the essence needed for life. During the Renaissance, with the development of anatomy, Vesalius disproved Galen's misconception that there were pores in the diaphragm of the heart, thus laying the groundwork for Harvey's theory of blood circulation. In a sense, scientists and thinkers stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before them. From Copernicus to Kepler to Galileo to Newton, we can see how the development of modern natural science has advanced step by step. Copernicus contributed the heliocentric theory of revolutionary significance, Kepler contributed the model of planetary orbits on the basis of the Tigu observation, Galileo contributed the law of the motion of the stars through the experiments of the inclined plane and the pendulum, and thought experiments, and by the time of Newton it was raised up and improved into the law of the motion of all objects, forming a rigorous theory of mechanics. In the history of the doctrine of surplus value, which has been previously talked about, we can see a similar situation in the development of economic doctrines.

In short, the rise of the initial scientific revolution was inseparable from the promotion of humanistic ideas in the Renaissance. This promotion is to be understood in two senses: first, it promoted the study of classical culture, and it was this study that led to the interest in natural science and the revision and renewal of traditional natural philosophy; and first, it led to the formation of new methods of scientific research, especially the application of mathematical methods, which was a far-reaching influence. Of course, the fundamental driving force driving the development of science is the development of social productive forces and the development of technology. In those days, the development of technology was crucial. Bacon said in The New Instruments: "Nothing can be more remarkable than those three inventions (namely, printing, gunpowder and the compass) which were unknown to the ancients. These three inventions changed the face and condition of the whole world; the first for literature, the second for war, the third for navigation, and with them innumerable changes. In this sense, no empire, no sect, no star has been more powerful and influential in human activity than these mechanical discoveries."