Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Galileo and the Mechanical Tradition
The great technological innovations of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries grew out of this medieval mechanical tradition. Leonardo da
Vinci and Johannes Gutenberg were its most prominent heirs, standing
on the shoulders of inventors and engineers whose names are lost to
history, but whose contributions to Western scientific, technological, and
economic progress are now finally being recognized.
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And it was out of
these unique circumstances that modern science emerged as well. Signif-
icantly, medieval science played no role in the creation of the new tech-
nical order, and small wonder, since as purely speculative it meticulously
avoided contact with the mechanical arts. Its spirit and problems
were inherited mainly from the Greeks. Galileo, the archetype of the
new scientist, would change all that by joining science and the new
technology in a way that would transform the West.
Both the separation of natural science from theology after Saint
Thomas Aquinas and the basic principles of mechanics developed in the
fifteenth century by direct and conscious analogy with machines came to
fruition in the work of Galileo. In addition to producing the kind of
lasting material prosperity and hence leisure we know to be a precondi-
tion for scientific research, the impact of technology on modern science
was from the start multifaceted. To begin with, the new mechanical arts
provided specific problems for scientists to ponder—for example, in the
case of the mariner's compass and William Gilbert's theory of magnet-
ism. The fateful connection for Galileo in this respect was between bal-
listics and a new understanding of motion.
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More obviously, modern
science from its inception was heavily dependent on sophisticated instru-
ments for more precise observations and experimentation. The use of
such aids as the telescope and microscope, a new hydrostatic balance,
and the thermoscope and geometric compass helped establish this trend.
Finally, the new technology in concert with Christian theology laid the
foundation for a more aggressive attitude toward nature that looked for
the first time in human history to a
systematic
exploitation of nature's
powers through mechanical means. Without this fundamental shift in
posture, it is difficult to imagine Galileo's positing of phenomena not
found in experienced nature but rather isolated in controlled, techno-
logically manipulated situations.
