Page 9 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK
P. 9
Illustration of
male musculature
from Vesalius’s
De Humani
Corporis Fabrica
19th-century painting of Galileo
explaining his new astronomical
theories at Padua University
1633
1543 Galileo is sentenced to
In Padua Andreas house arrest after his
Vesalius overturns 1619 sensational book, Dialogue
centuries of medical By 1619, the German astrono- Concerning the Two Chief
beliefs with his revolution- mer Johannes Kepler has World Systems (1632)
ary book, On the Fabric formulated all three of his challenges Christianity by
of the Human Body. Its famous laws. Employed in supporting a heliocentric
stunning illustrations reveal the imperial court at Prague, system. His telescope has
details of human anatomy Kepler describes mathemati- enabled him to collect
that for the first time have cally how the planets rotate incontrovertible evidence –
been drawn directly from in elliptical orbits. He also such as the movement of
dissections of corpses. believes that the universe is Jupiter’s moons, and that the
bound together magnetically. Earth moves around the Sun.
1600
1543 1572 1628
In his Latin On the Revolutions of After a bright star suddenly For centuries, doctors
the Heavenly Spheres, the Polish appears in 1572, the Danish believed that the liver
priest Nicolaus Copernicus astronomer Tycho Brahe constantly generates
(pictured below) suggests that carefully measures its blood. Through
the planets rotate in circles location. By proving that it carrying out quantita-
around a central Sun. This idea is lies beyond the Moon’s orbit, tive experiments, the
he challenges the Aristotelian
not immediately accepted: many
GETTY/BRIDGEMAN mathematicians regard it as a belief that the heavens are William Harvey 1644
royal physician
unchanging. The observa-
geometric model rather than
shows that the heart
tions from his Uraniborg
physical reality, and it cannot be
In his Latin Principles
repeatedly pumps a
observatory would go on to
proved experimentally.
prove crucial for establish- fixed amount of of Philosophy, the
French philosopher
blood around the
ing Copernicanism. body. He also studies René Descartes
reproduction, arguing (pictured above)
against the possibility eliminates mysterious
of spontaneous powers from the
generation. universe by describing
a mechanical
universe packed with
tiny moving particles
that repeatedly collide
with each other. He
formulates Newton’s
first law of motion:
Illustration (1660–
61) by Cellarius of without intervention,
Tycho Brahe’s plan of objects move uniformly
the planets’ orbits in straight lines.
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