The Invention of Science: The Scientific Revolution from 1500 to 1750

by David Wootton

the theologians felt entitled to order the philosophers to demonstrate the rationality of belief in an immortal soul (despite the fact that Aristotle had not been of this view: philosophical arguments against the immortality of the soul were condemned by the theologians of Paris in 1270); the philosophers felt entitled to order the mathematicians to prove that all motion in the heavens is circular, because only circular movement can be uniform, permanent and unchanging, and to demonstrate that the earth is the centre of all these heavenly circles.xvi A basic description of the Scientific Revolution is to say that it represented a successful rebellion by the mathematicians against the authority of the philosophers, and of both against the authority of the theologians.18 A late example of this rebellion is apparent in Newton’s title Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy – a title which is a deliberate act of defiance.xvii An early example is provided by Leonardo da Vinci (d.1519), who in his posthumous Treatise on Painting xviii wrote: ‘No human investigation can be termed true science if it is not capable of mathematical demonstration. If you say that the sciences which begin and end in the mind are true, that is not to be conceded, but is denied for many reasons, and chiefly the fact that the test of experiencexix is absent from these exercises of the mind, and without it nothing can be certain.’

"revolt of the mathematicians" is a key concept in the book and I think a good one and one I hadn't seen before.