Science And Humanism

Renaissance
REVIVAL OF ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE
 Rebirth

Innovation Renaissance Revival

enlighten
ment
 Renaissance is a French word meaning “rebirth.” It refers to a period in European
civilization that was marked by the revival of Classical learning and wisdom after a
long period of cultural decline and stagnation. The intellectual culture of the
Renaissance was sparked by the rediscovery of the ancient philosophies and
ideas which had largely been ignored in Europe throughout the Middle Ages.
 This created an environment of discovery and curiosity in which new ideas were
constantly being introduced and tested.
 Renaissance began in Italy during the 14th century and reached its height in the
15th century. The Renaissance spread to the rest of Europe in the 16th and 17th
centuries.
 The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and
modern-day civilization.
 The Renaissance saw a number of discoveries in many fields—of new scientific
laws, new forms of art and architecture, new religious and political ideas, and
new lands.
 This period also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the
substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline
of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or
application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the
mariner’s compass, and gunpowder.
 It laid the foundation for modern ‘Science and Humanism’.
The School of Athens (1509) by Raphael
1. Telescope by Galileo
2. World map by Martin Waldseemüller
1. Mona Lisa by Vinci
2. The Last Supper by Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519), painter, sculptor, architect and engineer, kept notes and drawings of his studies, ideas and
inventions. Over 7,000 pages have survived, including this notebook known as Codex Arundel after its English collector Thomas
Howard, 14th earl of Arundel.

The structure of the notebook reveals that it was not originally a bound volume. It was put together after Leonardo's death from
loose papers of various types and sizes, some indicating Leonardo's habit of carrying smaller bundles of notes to document
observations outdoors.

Many of the pages were written in 1508; others come from different periods in Leonardo's life, covering practically the whole of his
career. The notebook features many topics, including mechanics, the flow of rivers, astronomy, optics, architecture and the flight of
birds, demonstrating Leonardo's intense curiosity.

The manuscript is written in Italian, in Leonardo's characteristic 'mirror writing', left-handed and moving from right to left.
1.David by Michelangelo
2.Pieta by Michelangelo
St. Peter Basilica in Rome
Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore
 Biggest causes of the Renaissance was the increased interaction between different
cultures and societies in the time before and during the start of the Renaissance.
 vast trade networks across Europe, Asia, Middle east and Africa led to increased
interaction between different societies which caused not only an exchange of goods,
but also an exchange of people, beliefs, ideas and values.
 4000 miles long route of Silk Road played a major role in this process. People of middle
eastern civilization became middlemen between Europe and Asia for the commercial
as well as intellectual developments.
 The period between 1096 and 1291 witnessed 8 major crusades, kind of religious wars
that were also responsible for the cultural interaction and in spreading the ideas and
achievements of various faiths in other parts of the world.
 After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many Greek Scholars of Byzantine
empire fled to other parts of Europe. Many settled in Italy and in particular,
many scholars found refuge in Italy. These refugees included grammarians,
humanists, poets, writers, astronomers, architects scribes, philosophers,
scientists, politicians, and theologians. They brought with them manuscripts
from the destroyed libraries of Constantinople and other Byzantine cities.
 Another cause of the Renaissance was the rediscovery of ancient Greek
and Roman texts by European thinkers. Many of the ancient texts were
preserved by Islamic and Jewish cultures in the Middle East and were not
rediscovered by Europeans until the time of the Renaissance.
 Famous Italian Renaissance scholar and humanist Petrarch is remembered
for rediscovering the earlier work of Roman philosopher Cicero who is
regarded as one of the most masterful writers of his time. Petrarch’s
rediscovery of Cicero’s letters is considered to be the spark of the Italian
Renaissance and inspired other European scholars to do the same and to
look for the ancient texts.
 Renaissance Humanism was the study of ancient Greek and Roman texts
with the goal of promoting new norms and values in society. These norms
and views varied from those at the time because they focused less heavily
on a religious worldview. Instead, Renaissance scholars used ancient texts
to promote a worldview based on logic and reason.
 German blacksmith and printer Johannes Gutenberg developed
the first printing press in the mid-1400s and it quickly had a profound
impact on the events of the Renaissance. The invention and use of
the printing press in Europe was important for the Renaissance
because it allowed new ideas and worldviews to spread across the
continent more easily.
 The Black Death occurred during the 14th century and ravaged human populations
throughout Asia and Europe as it spread along trade routes and through trading ports.
Between 1347 and 1351, Black Death killed more than 20 million people in Europe – almost
one-third of the continent’s population.
 Furthermore, the large death rate of the Black Death caused massive changes in the
population and wealth of Europe. Many people migrated out of certain areas when the
plague spread and as a result, all of Europe was thrown into an upheaval. This ultimately
shifted the balance of power and wealth in European societies and also helped to bring
about the dominance of several city-states in Italy, which is where the Renaissance first
began.
Italy and the City of Florence
 Renaissance began in Italy. One major reason the Renaissance began in Italy is
it’s geography. The city-states of Italy, positioned on the Mediterranean Sea, were
centers for trade and commerce, the first port of call for both goods and new
ideas.
 Secondly, Italy was the core of the former Roman empire, and, at the collapse of
the Byzantine empire in 1453, became the refuge for the intellectuals of
Constantinople who brought with them many of the great lost works of the
ancient Greeks and Romans.
 Independent city states of Italy, such as Florence, Venice, and Rome which grew
wealthy through trade and banking created a class of affluent businessmen.
These men became patrons to individual artists. One big example is Medici family
of Florence. With their massive wealth, the Medici became patrons of
famous Renaissance artists including: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
 Another reason for Italy as the birthplace of the Renaissance was the
concentration of wealth, power, and intellect in the Church. In that time, the
Church controlled so much of the political, economic, and intellectual life of
Europe, that it gathered most of the best minds, wealthiest men, and most
powerful leaders unto itself in Rome at one time or another. All these factor
contributed in the growth of renaissance in Italy.
 While the Renaissance was slow to spread at first, it eventually did spread to the
other regions of Europe. Ideas spread to Europe more quickly once several of the
major conflicts had ended.
 For example, the Hundred Years’ War was a series of conflicts in Northern Europe
between the kingdoms of France and England that occurred from 1337 to 1453.
The war was fought over the control of territory in France and ultimately involved
multiple kingdoms in western and northern Europe. This slowed or prevented the
spread of the Renaissance ideas in the earlier years of the Renaissance. However,
when the Hundred Years’ War ended in the mid-15th century, renaissance ideas
travelled more quickly than before.
 Migration of people during and after the wars, trade and commerce and various
kinds of artistic developments also helped the Renaissance to spread in other parts
of Europe.
Thanks…
 Science and Humanism

AGE OF DISCOVERY
INTRODUCTION:
• The era known as the Age of Exploration, sometimes called the Age of Discovery, officially
began in the early 15th century and lasted through the 17th century.
• The period is characterized as a time when Europeans began exploring the world by sea in
search of new trading routes, wealth, and knowledge.
• They were in search of trading goods such as gold, ivory and spices. In the process, Europeans
met people and mapped lands previously unknown to them.
• It was new routes rather than new lands that filled the minds of kings and commoners,
scholars and seamen.
• Knowledge that generated from renaissance and scientific revolution was helping European
nations in exploring new opportunities in the hitherto unexplored world.
• Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Bartholomeu Dias and Ferdinand Magellan were some
famous scholars of this period who transformed the Global Geography, politics, economy and
much more.
CAUSES:
• European countries had traditionally traded with eastern countries mainly through land. Silk road was a
famous route of the medieval period. But it was mostly over land and took merchants a great deal of
time to ship goods. European countries were interested in speeding up trade by finding a quicker sea
route.
• When the Ottoman Empire took control of Constantinople in 1453, it blocked European access to the
area, severely limiting trade. In addition, it also blocked access to North Africa and the Red Sea, two
very important trade routes to the Far East.
• A big reason for the beginning of the Age of Exploration was the rise of absolute monarchies in
Europe. The powerful monarchs of Europe had centralized the authority and wealth of each country
and used their vast wealth to fund the expeditions of many explorers. For example, Christopher
Columbus was funded by King-queen of Spain.
• Europeans had made some dramatic improvements in their navigational skill and technology that
allowed early explorers to travel further and more accurately at sea. For example, ship building and
navigation had drastically improved in the years immediately before the Age of Exploration began.
• Europeans of the time were interested in foreign cultures and goods. In general, the Renaissance in
Europe caused an expansion of new ideas and new understandings of the world. Europeans were
interested in learning about these new ideas and expanding on their worldviews.
 Travel route of Marco Polo.

• This journey of Marco polo was taken long before age of discovery (from 1271
to 1295). his travel accounts inspired many Europeans to travel around the
world and generated curiosity about the rich wealth and culture of the East.
 PROGRESS OF EXPLORATION:
• The Age of Exploration is considered to have occurred mostly with four European nations, which
included: Portugal, Spain, France and England.
• They were all countries that bordered on the Atlantic Ocean and had easy access to the sea with many
sea ports and experienced sailors. This allowed these four nations to have the ability to begin exploring
while other European nations did not.
• Portugal is considered to have started the Age of Exploration ahead of the other three nations with the
expeditions that were carried out under Prince Henry ‘the Navigator. Although he never directly carried
out any trips of his own, Henry was vital in Portugal’s earliest trips and for revolutionizing the way that
these trips were recorded.
• He set up a School of navigation in 1419 and under his direction sailors perfected sailing techniques,
navigational tools, designs for sails and different mapping techniques. For example, he is credited with
being the first to require captains of ships to keep a record or log of their journeys. This was important
because it allowed different explorers to combine their findings to build up a common knowledge base
of discoveries.
• Early Portuguese explorers travelled south along the western coast of Africa in search of a new route to
India and China in the early 1400s. They gradually pushed farther south along the African coast reaching
the Cape of Good Hope by 1490. Less than a decade later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama would follow this
route all the way to India.
• Portugal’s neighbor, Spain, was jealous of Portugal’s expeditions and the resulting wealth and wanted to
begin its own explorations. Instead of heading south, like Portuguese sailors, Spanish explorers headed
west across the Atlantic Ocean. These early explorers were seeking a quicker trade route to the Far East,
including China and India.
• The most famous example of early Spanish explorers is Christopher Columbus. Columbus, while being
of Italian nationality, sailed for Spain after being funded by the king and queen of Spain. He is credited
with being the first European to explore the New World in 1492, which later named America. Instead of
reaching India, Columbus found the island of San Salvador in what is known today as the Bahamas, part
of Caribbean islands.
• The Portuguese also reached the New World when explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral explored Brazil,
setting off a conflict between Spain and Portugal over the newly claimed lands. As a result, the Treaty of
Tordesillas officially divided the New World in half in 1494.
• Seeing the increased wealth of Portugal and Spain, Britain and France also started taking interest in
exploring new lands in late 1500s. This was the beginning of contention among the European nations for
the control of rich resources of Newly explored lands of America, Asia and Africa.
• The most important thing to keep in mind while reading all these geographical
explorations is that had there been no Renaissance and Scientific Revolution,
geographical exploration wouldn’t be possible.
• Renaissance generated the curiosity for the knowledge, for learning, for
understanding the human behavior, the respect for human mind and his rational
ability.
• Scientific Revolution gave new insight to human mind, ability to challenge myths
and superstitions, promoted knowledge beyond few and paved the way for so
many new innovations which helped people while exploring new lands, ex.
Compass.
• New theories and inventions helped immensely in calculating distances and
directions, finding out alternative and short routes and weather conditions.
• This map of world by Henricus Martellus was made in 1491 with the help of many small maps and
voyage accounts by seamen. This was very important because the existence of Africa in map, although
distorted and inaccurate, was made possible because of various travel accounts and charts. The
delineation of the west coast of southern Africa from the Guinea Gulf to the Cape suggests a
knowledge of the charts of the expedition of Bartolomeu Dias. Now, the interesting point is that
Christopher Columbus, while planning for his first voyage In 1492 took help of this map. We clearly
see no mention of America here. Planning of Columbus was to sail westward, so that he could get a
short route for Asia, especially India. But as we know, he entered into a “new world”.
• This map is made by Waldseemüller in 1507.
• Now , Africa is more accurate and we have a new continent, America.
• By looking into two previous slide, we need to understand few important things.
• First, explorers helping cartographers and cartographers helping explorers. While numerous
travel accounts were helping cartographers in making more accurate maps. These maps were
being used by new explorers for finding new lands and they were adding additional
information for future cartography.
• Maps were becoming major source for safe and accurate journey, and now seamen could
calculate a rough outline regarding distance and time of their journey. This promoted
Shipbuilding to massive extent because for long journey, one needed large amount of
livestock and food, capability of ship to resist sea storm and high winds.
• So, in time period between these two maps, Christopher Columbus took four voyages (1492,
1493, 1498, 1502) where he described the concerned area as outskirt of Asia. But a man
named Amerigo Vespucci, who took the voyages Between 1497 and 1504 to this continent,
said that It was not the outskirt of Asia but a new world, later known as America.
• First (left) is the route map of Columbus. Second is the route map of Amerigo Vespucci.
• Observe the routes. Henry the navigator of Portugal promoted the voyages around western coast of
Africa (purple). Bartolomeu Dias went far ahead and reached till southern coast of Africa (orange). This
proved that there was a way to Asia beyond African southern coast and a sailor named Vasco da Gama
took advantage of the previous findings. And then, India was discovered by the west (green).
NAVIGATION TOOLS:
Please go through the following links to know about the navigation tools used during
this period.

• https://ageofexploration-renaissance-inquiry.weebly.com/what-
navigational-tools-made-exploration-possible.html
• https://exploration.marinersmuseum.org/object/compass/

1. https://youtu.be/uExoQJmAa_w
2. https://youtu.be/41QcsGuK9o0
3. https://youtu.be/C4hBN6uElyU
4. https://youtu.be/-gK87XVCaN8
SHIPBUILDING:

• https://www-
labs.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/History/Shi
ps_Discovery/

• https://www.mpofcinci.com/blog/navigatio
n-during-the-age-of-discovery//
Pic 01 (L) : Columbus lands in ’New World’ (1492)
Pic 02 (R) : Vasco da Gama in the court of Zamorin of Calicut (1498)
IMPACTS:
• Impact of these geographical discoveries were manifold and multidirectional.
• On the one side, age of exploration opened new ways of opportunity, trade and commerce. On another, it
was the beginning of the ’era of colonialism’.
• Things which started with sea voyages now came to the point where European Nations started competing
for the rich wealth and natural resources of new lands.
• Humanism was taking new definitions. Those, who earlier were supporting the view that human mind and
rational ability must be respected, were now exploiting the people of new lands in the name of
development and civilization.
• Scientific achievement during this age promoted a new era of Industrial revolution in Europe in 18th century
which made things easy for the Europe but difficult for its colonies. Disintegration of local small industries in
colonies with focus on extracting raw material from these new lands to European factories completely
ruined the economy and people of New lands.
• And much more…
Thanks…
 Science And
Humanism

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

THEORIES, FEATURES AND TECHNOLOGIES
 INTRODUCTION :
• The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early
modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy)
and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature.
• The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe towards the end of the Renaissance period and continued through
the late 18th century, influencing the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment.

• It replaced the Greek view of nature that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years. The Scientific Revolution
was characterized by an emphasis on abstract reasoning, quantitative thought, an understanding of how nature
works, the view of nature as a machine, and the development of an experimental scientific method.
• Early phase of Scientific revolution, from 1450 to 1632( the year when Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the
Two Chief World System) known as Scientific Renaissance. This period focused on the restoration and recovery of
the natural knowledge of the ancients. Later, the process shifted to Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, when
scientists shifted from recovery to innovation.
• The Scientific Revolution is traditionally assumed to start with the Copernican Revolution (initiated in 1543) and to
be complete in the "grand synthesis" of Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia.
 EMPIRICISM AND SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTATION:
• By the start of the Scientific Revolution, empiricism had already become an important component of
science and natural philosophy.
• Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments.
It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested
against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition,
or revelation.
• Francis bacon is called the father of empiricism. His works established and
popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry. His demand for a planned procedure of
investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for
science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
• His work Novum Organum was published in 1620. He argued that man is "the minister and interpreter
of nature“, and that "effects are produced by the means of instruments and helps", and later that
"nature can only be commanded by obeying her“.
• William Gilbert was an early advocate of scientific experimentation. He passionately rejected the
prevailing Aristotelian philosophy. His book De Magnete was written in 1600, and he is regarded by
some as the father of electricity and magnetism. In this work, he describes many of his experiments
with his model Earth called the terrella. From these experiments, he concluded that the Earth was
itself magnetic and that was the reason that compasses points to north.
SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES :
• The growing flood of information that resulted from the Scientific Revolution put heavy
strains upon old institutions and practices.
• Natural philosophers had to be sure of their data, and to that end they required
independent and critical confirmation of their discoveries. New means were created to
accomplish these ends.
• Scientific societies sprang up, beginning in Italy in the early years of the 17th century and
culminating in the two great national scientific societies that mark the zenith of the
Scientific Revolution: the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge,
created by royal charter in 1660, and the Académie des Sciences of Paris, formed in 1666.
• In these societies and others like them all over the world, natural philosophers could
gather to examine, discuss, and criticize new discoveries and old theories.
• To provide a firm basis for these discussions, societies began to publish scientific papers.
New canons of reporting were devised so that experiments and discoveries could be
reproduced by others. Precision in language and willingness to share experimental
methods were given priority in this task.
 ASTRONOMY:
• The Scientific Revolution began in astronomy.
• The astronomy of the late Middle Ages was based on the geocentric model described by Ptolemy in antiquity.
• Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus was the first to propound a comprehensive heliocentric theory (1543).
• The discoveries of Johannes Kepler and Galileo gave the theory credibility.
• Kepler was an astronomer who, using the accurate observations of Tycho Brahe, proposed that the planets
move around the sun not in circular orbits, but in elliptical ones. Together with his other laws of planetary
motion, this allowed him to create a model of the solar system that was an improvement over Copernicus'
original system.
• Galileo's main contributions to the acceptance of the heliocentric system were his mechanics, the
observations he made with his telescope as well as his detailed presentation of the case.
• Using an early theory of inertia, Galileo could explain why rocks dropped from a tower fall straight down even
if the earth rotates. His observations of the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the spots on the sun, and
mountains on the moon all helped to discredit the Aristotelian philosophy and the Ptolemaic theory of the
solar system.
• at the end of the 17th century, heliocentric theory was generally accepted by astronomers.
In a book called On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies (that was published as
Copernicus lay on his deathbed), Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was
the centre of the Solar System. Such a model is called a heliocentric system.
Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion
 ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727)
• Isaac Newton is best know for his theory about the law of gravity.
• Newton’s published his major work “Principia” in 1687, a landmark work that established the universal
laws of motion and gravity. Newton’s second major book, “Opticks,” detailed his experiments to
determine the properties of light.
• By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, and then
using the same principles to account for the trajectories of comets, the tides, the precession of the
equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the
heliocentric model of the cosmos. This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and
of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles.
• His laws of motion were to be the solid foundation of mechanics; his law of universal
gravitation combined terrestrial and celestial mechanics into one great system that seemed to be able
to describe the whole world in mathematical formulae.
• By means of the concept of force, Newton was able to synthesize two important components of the
Scientific Revolution, the mechanical philosophy and the mathematization of nature.
Isaac Newton's prism experiment, 1666.
 MECHANICS:
• The battle for Copernicanism was fought in the realm of mechanics as well. Galileo’s contributions to
the science of mechanics were related directly to his defense of Copernicanism.
• He developed the foundations for a new physics that was both highly mathematizable and directly related to
the problems facing the new cosmology.
• Interested in finding the natural acceleration of falling bodies, he was able to derive the law of free fall (the
distance, s, varies as the square of the time, t2).
• Combining this result with his rudimentary form of the principle of inertia enabled him to meet the
traditional physical objections to Earth’s motion: since a body in motion tends to remain in motion,
projectiles and other objects on the terrestrial surface will tend to share the motions of Earth, which will
thus be imperceptible to someone standing on Earth.
• French philosopher René Descartes was principally concerned with the conceptions of matter and motion as
part of his general program for science—namely, to explain all the phenomena of nature in terms of matter
and motion. This program, known as the mechanical philosophy, came to be the dominant theme of 17th-
century science.
• According to Descartes, all natural phenomena depend on the collisions of small particles, and so it is of
great importance to discover the quantitative laws of impact. This was done by Descartes’s disciple
physicist Christiaan Huygens, who formulated the laws of conservation of momentum and of kinetic energy.
OPTICS:
• Johannes Kepler published Astronomiae Pars Optica (The Optical Part of Astronomy) in 1604.
• Kepler, taking his lead from the writings of the 13th-century opticians like Roger Bacon, Robert
Grosseteste, and John Pecham, set the tone for the science in the 17th century.
• Kepler introduced the point by point analysis of optical problems, tracing rays from each point on the
object to a point on the image. Just as the mechanical philosophy was breaking the world into atomic
parts, so Kepler approached optics by breaking organic reality into what he considered to be ultimately
real units.
• He developed a geometric theory of lenses, providing the first mathematical account
of Galileo’s telescope.
• Using mechanical analogies, Descartes was able to derive mathematically many of the known
properties of light, including the law of reflection and the newly discovered law of refraction.
• Newton proposed new theory of colours. Traditional theory considered colours to be the result of the
modification of white light. Newton upset the traditional theory of colours by demonstrating in an
impressive set of experiments that white light is a mixture out of which separate beams of coloured
light can be separated. He associated different degrees of refrangibility with rays of different colours,
and in this manner he was able to explain the way prisms produce spectra of colours from white light.
Descartes sought to incorporate the
phenomena of light into mechanical
philosophy by demonstrating that
they can be explained entirely in
terms of matter and motion. Using
mechanical analogies, he was able to
derive mathematically many of the
known properties of light, including
the law of reflection and the newly
discovered law of refraction.
CHEMISTRY:
• Chemistry, and its antecedent alchemy, became an increasingly important aspect of scientific thought
in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries.
• Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their extraction to smelt metals were an
important source of information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them Georg
Agricola (1494–1555), who published his great work De re metallica in 1556. His work describes the
highly developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the
time. His approach removed the mysticism associated with the subject, creating the practical base
upon which others could build.
• English chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) is considered to have refined the modern scientific method
for alchemy and to have separated chemistry further from alchemy. Boyle is largely regarded today as
the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry.
• He is best known for Boyle's law, which he presented in 1662: the law describes the inversely
proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is
kept constant within a closed system.
• He believed all theories must be tested experimentally before being regarded as true. The work
contains some of the earliest modern ideas of atoms, molecules, and chemical reaction, and marks the
beginning of the history of modern chemistry.
Although Robert Boyle ’s chief
scientific interest was chemistry, his
first published scientific work, New
Experiments Physico-Mechanicall,
Touching the Spring of the Air, and
Its Effects (1660), concerned the
physical nature of air, as displayed in
a brilliant series of experiments in
which he used an air pump to create
a vacuum. The second edition of this
work, published in 1662, delineated
the quantitative relationship that
Boyle derived from experimental
values, later known as Boyle’s law:
that the volume of a gas varies
inversely with pressure.
One of the most important
mathematical advance of the early
period of the Scientific Revolution
was the invention of logarithms in
1594 by John Napier of Scotland.
Napier spent the next 20 years of his
life developing his theory and
computing an extensive table of
logarithms to aid in calculation. In
1614, he published Description of
the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms,
which contained the fruits of these
labors.
The common symbol for
infinity, ∞, was invented by
the English mathematician
John Wallis in 1655.
(Left) Standing figure–
muscle plate from De
humani corporis fabrica,
libri septum, Basile: 1543
by Andreas Vesalius
(1514-1564)
(Right) The bones,
muscles and tendons of
the hand, c.1510-11–pen
and ink with wash, over
black chalk, 28.8 x 20.2cm,
from Anatomical
Manuscript A by Leonardo
da Vinci (1452-1519)
In 1628, the English physician William Harvey
announced a revolutionary theory stating that
blood circulates repeatedly throughout the
body. He relied on experimentation,
comparative anatomy and calculation to arrive
at his conclusions.
Thanks…
The Contemporary Conjuncture

➢ climate catastrophe: climatology

➢ the 6th mass extinction: biology
➢ the “Anthropocene”: geology
From Holocene to Anthropocene
 “Age of Humans”
➢ Crutzen and Stoermer (2000), The “Anthropocene”
➢ anthropozoic era – Stoppani (1873); anthropogenic
age – Pavlov (1913); ‘noösphere’ – Teilhard de
Chardin and Le Roy (1924)
➢ expansion of mankind in the past three centuries in
numbers (a ten-fold increase!)
➢ per capita exploitation of earth’s resources
➢ urbanization has increased tenfold in the past
century
➢ emission of CO2, SO2, NO, CO
➢ The “Anthropocene” – central role of humans
 The dating debate

➢ Crutzen and Stoermer – industrialization

➢ CO2 concentration in atmosphere from 270–275 parts per
million (ppm) to 310 ppm in the mid-twentieth century
➢ From linear to exponential growth – the “Great
Acceleration” (Steffen 2005; Steffen et al. 2015); the
“1950s syndrome” (Pfister 1995)
 Stratigraphic Signatures

➢ The Anthropocene Working Group

➢ Report to be submitted to the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy
➢ International Commission on Stratigraphy > International Union of
Geological Sciences

To what extent are human actions recorded as measurable signals in

geological strata?

Is the Anthropocene world markedly different from the stable Holocene

Epoch?
 Evidences
➢ new materials, such as elemental aluminum, concrete, plastic, and carbon particles
➢ alterations in the processes of sediment creation
➢ altered geochemical signals in sediments and ice sheets
➢ increases in nitrogen and phosphorus
➢ presence in sediments and ice of radionuclides released by nuclear bomb testing
➢ changes in the carbon cycle based on data from ice core samples
➢ increase in global temperature and rising sea levels
➢ alterations in biodiversity
 From strata to multi-layered arguments…
➢ New stratigraphic signatures!

‘‘The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from

the Holocene’’ (Waters et al. 2016).

➢ From geology to climate science

➢ Transformations in earth systems
➢ “planetary boundaries” and the search for “safe operating space for
humanity” (Rockstrom et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015)
 Global Sustainability Challenges
➢ Economic growth 1/ecological sustainability
➢ Human-induced environmental disasters at continental
to planetary scales (Stern 2007)
➢ Estimation of SOS for humanity – imperative
➢ “planetary boundaries” (Rockstrom et al., 2009) –
crucial intervention
 Earth System Processes
➢ Identification of key Earth System processes
➢ Quantification of the boundary level for each of these processes
➢ Transgression of boundaries – global environmental change

“What are the non-negotiable planetary preconditions that humanity needs

to respect in order to avoid the risk of deleterious or even catastrophic
environmental change at continental to global scales?”
(Rockstrom et al., 2009)
 Thresholds and Boundaries
➢ Thresholds – non-linear transitions in the functioning of
coupled human-environmental systems (Schellnhuber
2002, Lenton et al. 2008)
➢ abrupt retreat of Arctic sea ice caused by
anthropogenic global warming
➢ Boundaries – human determined values of the control
variable set at a “safe” distance from a dangerous level
➢ Uncertainty in the quantification process
 Scientific Inquiries
1. the scale of human action in relation to the capacity of the Earth to sustain it (Costanza
1991)
2. understanding essential Earth System processes (Steffen et al. 2004)
3. the framework of resilience (Holling 1973, Gunderson and Holling 2002, Walker et al.
2004, Folke 2006) and its links to complex dynamics (Kaufmann 1993, Holland 1996) and
self-regulation of living systems (Lovelock 1979, Levin 1999)

“…the first step by identifying biophysical boundaries at the planetary scale within
which humanity has the flexibility to choose a myriad of pathways for human well-
being and development” (Rocktrom et al. 2009)
The Nine Planetary Boundaries
Interactions, cross-scale complexities
Transgression of Boundaries
 Is the Anthropocene neutral?

“Capitalocene is a kind of critical provocation to this sensibility of the

Anthropocene, which is: We have met the enemy and he is us” (Moore 2017).
 The ‘Capitalocene’: Taking capitalism seriously…
➢ Extermination of everything from megafauna
to microbiota
➢ …understanding it not just as an economic
system but as a way of organizing the
relations between humans and the rest of
nature Planet Power
➢ altered relationship with other planetary
beings People Profit
Is COVID 19 a ‘Capitalocene’ challenge?
➢Van Dooren (2020): “the real source of the crisis is human,
not animal”

➢the ‘dysfunctional relationship’ (Dooren, 2020) or ‘metabolic

rift’ (Foster, 1999) between humans and animals (and also
avian species)

➢ our complex entanglement to our environment (Peterson,

2020); “interspecies intersectionality”
Wildlife trafficking
 “Urbanocene” or the Urban Anthropocene?

➢ Myint (2018): a transformation from the Anthropocene

to the Urbanocene
➢ Lussault (2020): Anthropocene as the Urbanocene; a
spectacular evolution of the earth system, with
urbanization as a primary driver
➢ “Part of story of the anthropogenesis of humans is the
story of the species’ urbanization: anthropogenesis is
urbanogenesis” (Mendieta, 2019: 93).
 The ‘new’ urban / The urban moment
➢ 2007 – the urban population of the world surpassed the rural population
(World Urbanization Prospects, 2008)
➢ 1950 – 30%; 2018 – 55%; BY 2050 – 68% (World Urbanization Prospects,
2018).
➢ Evident in the:
▪ Rate
▪ Scale
▪ Shifting geographies of urbanization
Rate

"clock speed" of cities

(Myint, 2018)
➢ 1959 – one billion
➢ 1985 – two billion
➢ 2002 – three billion
➢ 2015 – four billion
➢ 2028 – five billion
➢ 2041 – six billion
 Scale
➢ size (and also numbers) really matters…
➢ cities are bigger than at any other time in terms of their physical
extents, population sizes, economic importance, and
environmental impacts (Seto et al., 2010)

Number of cities with one million (or >)

population
Year Number of cities
1800s Beijing
1900s 16
2000s 378 (India – 40; China – > 100
2025 600
 Shifting geographies
➢ The world’s largest internal migration of rural people
to urban areas has been happening on a remarkable
scale in Asian countries since 1990s.
➢ Between 1990 and 2017 China was the leading rural
out-migrating society in the world (falling from 73.56
to 42.04 per cent of the total population), followed
by SE Asia
➢ Sharp decline in Thailand’s rural population, from
80% in 1960 to 48.46% cent in 2016
➢ 1900 – 2017: Indonesia (from 69.42 to 45.34 per
cent) and Malaysia (halving from 50.21 to 24.55 per
cent)
By 2030

➢ the urban population in China is expected to exceed one billion, an increase of 400 million, and
result in the creation of at least 30 cities of one million

➢ India is projected to surpass that of China, with its urban population nearly doubling from today’s
350 million to 611 million and with an addition of 26 cities of one million
 Implications – metabolism to ‘metabolic rift’
➢ consumption and consumerist cities
The developing world has already
➢ a largescale, dispersed, fragmented, and entered into the high-growth, rapid
transition phase of the urbanization
(non-)networked landscape – planetary process, marked by numerous
problems and challenges including
urbanization
the swelling of slums and squatter
➢ …metabolisms, economics and politics are settlements; lack of citywide
infrastructures for services such as
increasingly out of sync with nature and with housing, health and sanitation;
privatization and commercialization
less-urbanized regions (Myint 2018) of infrastructures; city development
➢ from centric formations to the new plans based on the logic of foreign
capital; the widening gap between
polymorphic urban tissue deeply extended in the rich and the poor; and the
changing nature of the rural–urban
the once rural and natural environment divide (Mukherjee, 2015: 33).
(Novaković & Milaković 2018)
Cities, consumption, cultural transformations
➢ dramatic rise in meat
consumption; from eudemonic
to hedonic notion of wellbeing

➢ cultural (and hence dietary)

transformation

➢ 8–10 % annual growth (1990-

2010) in the Indian poultry
sector with an annual turnover
of US$7,500 million
 Mapping a contagion!
“What were once local spillovers are now epidemics
trawling their way through global webs of travel and
trade” (Wallace, et al. 2020)

Source: https://fortune.com/longform/how-coronavirus-spread-map/
 Cities, ‘circuits of capital’, “neo-liberal disease”

➢ Global ‘circuits of capital’; permits and payments

➢ Worldwide wild food industry
➢ Urban-peri-urban interconnections; the immediate “spill over effects”
➢ from “borderlines” to “borderlands” (Hinchliffe et al., 2012)

“…the expanding periurban commodity circuits shipping these newly spilled-

over pathogens in livestock and labor from the deepest hinterland to regional
cities” (Wallace, Chaves and Wallace 2020)
 From virus to integral ecology
➢ The war is not between viruses
and the vaccines.
➢ Blurring and breaking boundaries
– interconnectedness
[naturesociety; urbanrural;
citynature, etc.]
➢ Multi-spatial interconnections;
multispecies entanglements
➢ Integral ecology and wellbeing
REFERENCES

• Bonneuil, Christophe and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (2016). The Shock of the

Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. London: Verso.
• Crutzen, Paul J. and Eugene F. Stoermer (2000). The ‘‘Anthropocene.’’ Global
Change Newsletter (41): 17–18
• Petit, Jean-Robert, J. Jouzel, D. Raynaud, N. I. Barkov, J.-M. Barnola, I. Basile, M.
Bender, J. Chappellaz, M. Davis, G. Delaygue, M. Delmotte, V. M. Kotlyakov, M.
Legrand, V. Y. Lipenkov, C. Lorius, L. Pe´pin, C. Ritz, E. Saltzman and M. Stievenard
(1999). Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the
Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica. Nature (399): 429–436.
• Pfister, Christian (1995). Das 1950er Syndrom: Der Weg in die Konsumgesellschaft. Bern: Paul
Haupt.
• Rockstro¨m, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Asa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin,
Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Bjo¨rn Nykvist,
Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker So¨rlin, Peter K.
Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell,
Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul
Crutzen and Jonathan A. Foley (2009). A Safe Operating Space for Humanity. Nature (461): 472–
475.
• Steffen, Will (2005). Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet under Pressure. Stuttgart:
Birkha¨user.
• Steffen, Will, Katherine Richardson, Johan Rockstro¨m, Sarah E. Cornell, Ingo Fetzer, Elena M.
Bennett, Reinette Biggs, Stephen R. Carpenter, Wim de Vries, Cynthia A. de Wit, Carl Folke,
Dieter Gerten, Jens Heinke, Georgina M. Mace, Linn M. Persson, Veerabhadran Ramanathan,
Belinda Reyers and Sverker So¨rlin (2015). Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development
on a Changing Planet. Science (349): 1286–1287.
• Stoppani, Antonio (1873). Corso di Geologia: Geologia Endografica, Vol 3, G. Bernardoni E. G.
Brigola: Milano.

• Trischler, Helmuth. (2016). The Anthropocene: A Challenge for the History of Science,
Technology, and the Environment. NTM. 24 (3).309-335.

• Waters, Colin N., Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Cle´ment Poirier,
Agnieszka Gałuszka, Alejandro Cearreta, Matt Edgeworth, Erle C. Ellis, Michael Ellis, Catherine
Jeandel, Reinhold Leinfelder, J. R. McNeill, Daniel deB. Richter, Will Steffen, James Syvitski,
Davor Vidas, Michael Wagreich, Mark Williams, An Zhisheng, Jacques Grinevald, Eric Odada,
Naomi Oreskes and Alexander P. Wolfe (2016). The Anthropocene Is Functionally and
Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene. Science. 351 (6269).
REFERENCES

➢ Andreae, M. O., D. Rosenfeld, P. Artaxo, A. A. Costa, G. P. Frank, K. M. Longo, and M. A. F. Silva Dias.
(2004). Smoking rain clouds over the Amazon. Science 303:1337–1342.
➢ Costanza, R., editor. (1991). Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability.
Columbia University Press, New York, New York, USA.
➢ Folke, C. (2006). Resilience, the emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses.
Global Environmental Change 16:253–267
➢ Gunderson, L. H., and C. S. Holling, editors. (2002). Panarchy: understanding transformations in
human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, D.C., USA.
➢ Holland, J. (1996). Hidden order: how adaptation builds complexity. Basic Books, Jackson, Tennessee,
USA.
➢ Hollins, C.S, (1973). Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics.4:1-23
➢ Kaufmann, S. A. (1993). Origins of order. Oxford University Press, New York, New
York, USA
➢ Kesselmeier, J., U. Kuhn, A. Wolf, M. O. Andreae, P. Ciccioli, E. Brancaleoni, M.
Frattoni, A. Guenther, J. Greenberg, P. D. Vasconcellos, T. de Oliva, T. Tavares, and P.
Artaxo. (2000). Atmospheric volatile organic compounds (VOC) at a remote tropical
forest site in central Amazonia. Atmospheric Environment 34:4063–4072
➢ Lenton, T. M., H. Held, E. Kriegler, J. W. Hall, W. Lucht, S. Rahmstorf, and H. J.
Schellnhuber. (2008). Tipping elements in Earth’s climate system. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. 105:1786–1793
➢ Levin, S. A. (1999). Fragile dominion: complexity and the commons. Perseus Books, Reading,
Massachusetts, USA
➢ Lovelock, J. (1979). Gaia: a new look at life on Earth. Oxford University Press, New York, New York, USA
➢ Nepstad, D. C., C. M. Stickler, B. Soares-Filho, and F. Merry. (2008). Interactions among Amazon land use,
forests, and climate: prospects for a near-term forest tipping point. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society B 363:1737–1746.
➢ Rockstro¨m, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Asa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M.
Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Bjo¨rn Nykvist, Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry
Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker So¨rlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno
Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian
Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen and Jonathan A. Foley (2009). A Safe
Operating Space for Humanity. Nature (461): 472–475.
➢ Schellnhuber, H. J. (2002). Coping with Earth system complexity and irregularity. Pages 151–
159 in W. Steffen, J. Jaeger, D. J. Carson, and C. Bradshaw, editors. Challenges of a changing
Earth. Springer Verlag, Berlin, Germany.
➢ Steffen, W., A. Sanderson, J. Jäger, P. D. Tyson, B. Moore, III, P. A. Matson, K. Richardson, F.
Oldfield, H.-J. Schellnhuber, B. L. Turner, II, and R. J. Wassn. (2004). Global change and the
Earth system: a planet under pressure. Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany
➢ Steffen, Will, Katherine Richardson, Johan Rockstro¨m, Sarah E. Cornell, Ingo Fetzer, Elena M.
Bennett, Reinette Biggs, Stephen R. Carpenter, Wim de Vries, Cynthia A. de Wit, Carl Folke,
Dieter Gerten, Jens Heinke, Georgina M. Mace, Linn M. Persson, Veerabhadran Ramanathan,
Belinda Reyers and Sverker So¨rlin (2015). Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human
Development on a Changing Planet. Science (349): 1286–1287.
➢ Stern, N. (2007). The economics of climate change – the Stern review. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK
➢ Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig. (2004). Resilience, adaptability and
transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. [online] URL:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5
➢ Zalasiewicz, Jan, Colin N. Waters, Mark Williams, Anthony D. Barnosky, Alejandro Cearreta,
Paul Crutzen, Erle Ellis, Michael A. Ellis, Ian J. Fairchild, Jacques Grinevald, Peter K. Haff, Irka
Hajdas, Reinhold Leinfelder, John McNeill, Eric O. Odada, Cle´ment Poirier, Daniel Richter, Will
Steffen, Colin Summerhayes, James P.M. Syvitski, Davor Vidas, Michael Wagreich, Scott L.
Wing, Alexander P. Wolfe, Zhisheng An and Naomi Oreskes (2015). When Did the
Anthropocene Begin? A Mid-twentieth Century Boundary Level is Stratigraphically Optimal.
Quaternary International (383): 196–203.
REFERENCES

➢ Moore, J. and Patel, R. 2018. Unearthing the Capitalocene: Towards a Reparations Ecology.
Available at: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-01-04/unearthing-the-capitalocene-
towards-a-reparations-ecology/
➢ Mukherjee, J. and Sen, A. 2020. Is Covid 19 a ‘Capitalocene’ Challenge? Available at:
https://seeingthewoods.org/2020/05/11/is-covid-19-a-capitalocene-challenge/
➢ https://www.wired.com/story/capitalocene/
➢ Wallace, R., Liebman, A., Chaves, L.F. and Wallace, R. COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital.
Available at: https://monthlyreview.org/2020/05/01/covid-19-and-circuits-of-capital/
➢ Hinchliffe, S., Allen, J., Lavau, S., Bingham, N., Carter, S. 2012. ‘Biosecurity and the
Topologies of Infected Life: From Borderlines to Borderlands’. Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers.
➢ Peterson, J. 2020. Corona environments and some reflections on the entanglements of the
coronavirus pandemic. Avialable at: https://www.kth.se/blogs/hist/2020/04/corona-
environments-and-some-reflections-on-the-entanglements-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
➢ Van Dooren, T. 2020. Pangolins and Panemics. The Real Source of the Crisis is Human not
Animal. Available at: https://newmatilda.com/2020/03/22/pangolins-and-pandemics-the-
real-source-of-this-crisis-is-human-not-animal/
REFERENCES

➢ Lussault, M. 2020. Could the Anthropocene be an “Urbanocene?” Available at:

https://riverlab.berkeley.edu/index.php/2019/03/could-the-anthropocene-be-an-
urbanocene/
➢ Mendieta, E. 2019. Edge City: Reflections on the Urbanocene and the Plantatiocene.
Critical Philosophy of Race, 7(1): 81-106.
➢ Mukherjee, J. 2015. Sustainable Flows between Kolkata and its Peri-urban Interface:
Challenges and Opportunities. In A. Allen, M. Swilling and A. Lampis (eds.) Untamed
Urbanisms. UK: Routledge.
REFERENCES
➢ Myint, T. 2018. The Long Read: From the Anthropocene to the Urbanocene: Understanding
Asia’s Rural out-migration and Global Climate Change. Available at:
https://theasiadialogue.com/2018/12/14/from-the-anthropocene-to-the-urbanocene-
understanding-asias-rural-out-migration-and-global-climate-change/
➢ Novaković, N. and Milaković, A. 2018. The Scale of the Urban: World Urbanisation and
Architectural Reactions. In N. Novaković, J.P. Grom and A. Fikfak (eds.), Realms of Urban
Design: Mapping Sustainability. Netherlands: TU Delft.
➢ Seto, K., Sanchez-Rodrıguez, R. and Fragkias, M. 2010. The New Geography of
Contemporary Urbanization and the Environment. The Annual Review of Environment and
Resources, 35: 167-94.
REFERENCES
➢ West, G. 2017. Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and
Companies. UK: Hachette.
➢ United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019).
World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision (ST/ESA/SER.A/420). New York: United
Nations.