ABSTRACT
The Renaissance is one of the most brilliant periods of artistic and scientific genius in history. The achievements of classical culture were rediscovered, architecture flourished and artists applied the laws of perspective to give a three-dimensional effect to their paintings. In the same period modern science, born in the Middle Ages through the fundamental work of Grosseteste, Buridan and Oresme, came to maturity with the work of Copernicus and Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Leonardo da Vinci was notable among those who gathered together the ideas of his medieval predecessors, often without acknowledgement, and embodied them in his writings. Until then, the concepts describing motion, though generally sound, were
largely qualitative. It was the great achievement of the Renaissance natural philosophers to make them more precise, to express them numerically, and ultimately to describe their temporal variation by means of differential equations. This was done through studies of the motions of the heavens, particularly of the moon and the planets. The first step was made by Copernicus (1473-1543), who boldly put the sun in the centre of the solar system, thus making possible a theory of planetary motion, and eventually stirring up a theological hornet’s nest. It is essential for the establishment of a scientific theory that its consequences
agree with experimental measurements, and it was Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) who made the very careful measurements of the motions of the planets that enabled Kepler (1571-1630) to establish the planetary orbits and the laws of planetary motion. Meanwhile Galileo (1564-1642) was working on the fundamental dynamical
concepts of mass, velocity, acceleration and momentum, expressing them in precise mathematical form and seeing how they related to falling bodies and projectiles. Against his wishes, he also became involved in the debate on the relation of the new scientific ideas to the teaching of the Bible. Finally Newton (1642-1727) put in place the cornerstone by postulating his
laws of motion and developing the differential calculus. This, together with his theory of universal gravitation, enabled him to derive Kepler’s laws and to calculate precisely the motions of the moon and of the planets. This achievement established modern science and gave it lasting prestige to the extent that it became the paradigm of intellectual accomplishment. It also led to the idea of the world as a vast mechanism that only needed to be set in motion by God and henceforth would go on for ever without any further action by Him.
