Scientists That We Owe A Debt To - Sir Isaac Newton

Seems our debt is great when it comes to certain individuals in history, this is also true of the many scientists from long ago. As part of this series on science during and after the Renaissance, it should be noted that we cannot give an exact date for the beginning of the Renaissance, so therefore we cannot point to a particular year and say "Then the Renaissance ended."

The period declined slowly, first in Italy, then to the west. By 1700 the civilized world had lost much of that special urge to create beauty and to pursue learning for its own sake.

The world was growing up. Modern times were on the way, a period of learning was to lose much of its dreamy quality, and take on a more practical aspect in the eyes of some.

Science may have sprang forward in modern times, but some of us (myself included) wonder what price we paid when the urge to create beauty and pursue learning for its own sake? What did we really give up when that natural curiosity side of science was brushed aside to make way for a different kind of approach to science?

A Kinder And Gentler Kind Of Science and Scientist

Modern science owes much to Sir Isaac Newton. Newton may be called the English man of the Renaissance, the many-sided genius, who may be compared to the Italian Leonardo.

He was the first to show conclusively that white light can be split up into the colors of the spectrum by passing it through a prism -- and that the colors of the spectrum can be combined again into white light, by passing the spectrum through a prism.

He also formed a theory of light. He thought it consisted of streams of little particles which he called corpuscles.

Newton's three laws of motion have served for over three hundred years, as the basis of the study of how things move.

His discovery of the law of gravitation was possibly the most important single contribution to knowledge ever made by one man.

However, Albert Einstein and other modern scientists have pointed out certain things we must consider in relation to gravitation, which Newton did not guess.

Never-the-less, Newton's basic discovery helped generations of scientists to learn more and more about our world.

Some of Newton's greatest discoveries were in mathematics. For example, he developed the advanced branch of mathematics called calculus.

Unfortunately, he did not publish this at the time, and in 1684 the German scientist, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, whose admirers called him the Aristotle of the seventeenth century, worked out and published the very same thing, independently of Newton.

The result was that there was a tremendous row between friends of the two scientists. Some of Newton's followers accused Leibnitz of copying Newton's ideas (although these had not been published).

Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, born in 1632 in Delft, Holland, made innumerable discoveries by examining all sorts of things under simple microscopes.

He was a brilliant observer, and he constructed with his own hands every microscope, including the lenses, which he used.

His microscopes were eagerly sought after, but through he occasionally gave one as a gift, he refused to sell them. He was no more interested in worldly advancement than he was in money.

The only language he knew was Dutch, but he reported his discoveries to the Royal Society in England, which published them in English or Latin.

Leeuwenhoek was the first to see and describe bacteria, protozoa and yeast cells. He described many forms of tiny plant and animal life.

He died in 1723, having spent his whole life in the town of his birth. He was not the inventor of the microscope, as is sometimes mistakenly said -- but he did much to perfect the instrument.

John Ray was an Englishman, one of the first men to make a natural classification of plants and animals.

Like other scientists of his time, John Ray was an ordained lecturer. Since he was given to writing profound theological works, illustrating the power and love of God by evidence and observations from the created natural world -- he would later be persecuted for his beliefs.

None-the-less he became one of the founding scientists of British botany and zoology, despite his humble beginnings as the son of a blacksmith.

Francesco Redi, an Italian, showed that maggots were the offspring of flies.

Previously, people had thought they "arose by spontaneous generation," that is, without parents.

Like other scientists, science wasn't his only passion. Even after his death, his poetic work, "Bacco in Toscana," was published and so wildly popular that it is considered one of the best literary works of the 17th century.

The Italian Marcello Malpighi was another brilliant observer.

His discoveries under microscopic lenses, included the capillary vessels which connect arteries and veins, and the tracheae and breathing holes of insects.

Nehemiah Grew, a pious Englishman, believed plants and animals were both part of God's design, hence would show some similarity in structure.

He made endless microscopic studies of both, and published a valuable work, The Anatomy of Plants.

The noted naturalist Jan Swammerdam was a fellow-countryman of Leeuwenhoek.

His skill as a dissector was unsurpassed, and with the aid of his microscope he gave detailed descriptions of the anatomy of bees, gnats, and dragon-flies.

His manuscripts and drawings on the metamorphosis of insects, published after his death as the Bible of Nature, are still consulted today.