Paper for ILS

Prompt is:
How does the concept of a 'Scientific Renaissance' help explain sixteenth-century developments in European medicine and astronomy? Drawing from both the medieval and the post-medieval periods, discuss 3-4 specific examples in making an argument for the udefulness of this label."

Does this essay fit that prompt?


Revival of the Fittest
The Scientific Renaissance, which can be described as the “rebirth” and revival of classical science that took place in the 14th-17th centuries, was an important developmental building block which helped shape not only new ideas of the time but led to discoveries which were critical to our modern time period. Developments in the medieval times- such as Charlemagne’s massive educational reforms and the flurry of translations which accompanied them- served to underscore the importance of the Scientific Renaissance; the latter of which exhibited distinct contributions from Nicolaus Copernicus and Andreas Vesalius.
First we can look at the educational reforms enacted by Charlemagne and how these foreshadowed the future Scientific Renaissance. After the fall of the Roman Empire around the 5th century A.D., Europe experienced a de-urbanization and the rise of monasticism. A decline of classical education ensued, along with a general decline of literacy levels. When Charlemagne came into power in 768, he was extremely interested in the pursuit of education and intellectual endeavors. He conquered the majority of Europe and by doing so, was able to unify a wide variety of beliefs and educational ideas. By gathering together at his palace the most scholarly people in the kingdom (and even some from outside of it) he helped spread knowledge and resurrect it from the secluded and far-flung monasteries where it had been hidden for centuries. With the help of Alcuin, Charlemagne established more monasteries throughout Europe as well as cathedral schools, all of which helped to educate a greater amount of people.
Alcuin was one of Charlemagne’s most widely renowned court scholars. He was mostly responsible for the gathering of books from monasteries and other sources, correcting them, copying them and then dispersing them throughout the kingdom. Alcuin was prominent in the establishment of the huge school at Charlemagne’s court; additionally, he used the seven liberal arts as the basis for the new curriculums in school. The liberal arts originated in ancient times by Varro who first defined nine basic disciplines, which were rhetoric, logic, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, medicine and architecture. The last two were dropped when Martianus Capella arrived on the scene in the 5th century A.D. and introduced new ideas of the trivium and quadrivium. The fact that Alcuin used this as the model for the re-establishment of widespread education throughout Europe is very important in that it brought back old ideas from the ancient times. The new schools which were established by the duo of Charlemagne and Alcuin were still in use for many centuries after their deaths and helped to shape the intellect of future generations, enabling the developments which occurred during the Scientific Renaissance.
Before we discuss the events of the Scientific Renaissance in more detail, it is important to first consider the vast amounts of new translations which began to appear in the middle ages, and the role they also played in the Renaissance to come. The first of several waves of translations which washed over Europe occurred when the Roman Empire dissolved into two distinct halves, and the eastern portion ended up under Byzantine rule. The East stuck closely to Grecian tradition and, intellectually-speaking, declined less rapidly than the western portion of the former Roman Empire. The 7th century A.D. saw the rise of Muhammed and Islam which spread rapidly through territorial conquest. As the need for bureaucratic affairs arose, so, too, did a desire for the translation of Greek texts into Arabic. One of the Arabic men important to the beginning of these translations was Al-Mamun, who founded the House of Wisdom. The division between Latin West and now Greek/Arabic East was deep enough to cause a lack of information flowing between the two areas. This therefore kept sometimes vital and new translations of ancient texts prevalent in the East separated from the up-and-coming monasteries in Western Europe. One of the earliest to break the barrier between east and west was Constantine, a Benedictine monk who, in the 11th century, began to translate medical treatises of Galen (and other ancients) from Arabic to Latin. In the 12th century, Gerard of Cremona set out to find and translate a copy of Ptolemy’s Almagest which he could not find anywhere. He was soon translating huge amounts of ancient texts into Latin, and in the century to come was followed by many others partaking in the same endeavor: to provide the western world with more extensive knowledge useful for building on the liberal arts education provided in the now-widespread monastic schools which had been provided by Charlemagne several centuries earlier.
We can now see that the rise of the Scientific Renaissance was precipitated by earlier efforts to reconstruct ancient texts and ideas; the efforts of which were not fully realized until men such as Nicolaus Copernicus lived and served to revitalize the astronomical field. Copernicus recognized that there was a chance that geocentrism wasn’t necessarily the only option for explaining how the universe works. He revisited ancient texts and found that a number of ancient astronomers had put forth a heliocentric theory in which the earth was not the center of the universe at all. He recognized also a sense of confusion in the Aristotelian texts in regards to particular motions in the sky such as eccentrics, equants, etc. By viewing these ancient works- which were now very readily available thanks not only to the establishment of schools by Charlemagne, but also the translations of scholars like Gerard of Cremona- Copernicus was able to see possible errors in the ancient ideas themselves, as well as to come to new conclusions about what he was seeing in the texts as compared to what he could observe about the world in itself. From this basis, his book De Revolutionibus is not full of new, fresh ideas, but instead is composed of ideas drawn from and shaped by his ancient predecessors: thus enacting in full the idea of a Scientific Renaissance or rebirth. By returning to his predecessors, Copernicus was showing that it was important not to forget about the ancients and the many ideas they had; this was something that was further emphasized by the works a contemporary of his, Andreas Vesalius.
Lastly, another important figure in our discussion of the rebirth of ancient studies is Andreas Vesalius, who reintroduced the importance of detailed, firsthand medical knowledge. Like Copernicus, Vesalius was able to take advantage of the wide variety of newly available ancient texts, see errors in them, and attempt to correct them. He studied, in particular, the works of Galen, and realized with disgust how degraded the job of a physician now was. Ancient physician’s duties had one-by-one been delegated off to other, less educated individuals; for example, barbers were now handed the task of cutting in a procedure, and household servants given the duty of preparing medicines for their master. Vesalius, in looking on Galen’s works, wrote On the Fabric of the Human Body in first a discussion of the poor state of current physician’s jobs, and secondly in an analysis of Galen’s works. Vesalius first emphasized Galen’s hands-on dissection of corpses, but then noticed that he used the corpses of monkeys, which are different than a human’s body. Vesalius was revisiting the ancient texts, and as Copernicus had done, was emphasizing that the classical physicians should be re-born and used again. He was pointing out some flaws which Galen had in his works, but also pointing out the good things- especially the point that physicians should stop delegating the work to others and again partake in hands-on dissection themselves. Vesalius was bringing the Scientific Renaissance to a new level, by reintroducing the public to an important classical figure in the study of medicine, and then building on Galen’s works.
As we can see, the medieval contributions of Charlemagne’s reforms, along with translations helped define the term “Scientific Renaissance,” which was used to explain the developments of 16th-century astronomers and physicians, such as Nicolaus Copernicus and Andreas Vesalius, respectively. The translations that abounded by the time Copernicus and Vesalius lived, and the schools which Charlemagne provided to make them possible, are important in the discussion of what exactly the Scientific Renaissance refers to. Without the springboard provided by Charlemagne and others of his time, it perhaps would not have been possible to 16th-century Europe to jump into the Scientific Revolution which came to be a century later.