Precursorism, called in its more extreme forms precursoritis or precursitis, is a characteristic of that kind of historical writing in which the author seeks antecedents of present-day institutions or ideas in earlier historical periods. This kind of anachronism is considered to be a form of Whig history and is a special problem among historians of science.[1] The French historian of medieval science, Pierre Duhem, exemplifies several of the characteristics of the quest for precursors of modern scientific ideas. Duhem was trained as a physicist, rather than as a historian; he was French and many of the precursors he identified were French or studied at the University of Paris; he was a devout Catholic and many of the precursors of the theologically troubling Italian, Galileo, were members of religious orders. Most striking among them was the French bishop and scholastic philosopher, Nicole Oresme.[2]
The concept has been applied to those who would find precursors of Darwin in the early nineteenth century,[3] and to those who would find anticipations of modern science in ancient cultures from the Near East to Mesoamerica.[4] Precursorism has recently been identified as a significant factor in some studies of the work of Islamic scientists.[5]
It is now commonly assumed that historians of science should study past scientific "ideas in their own right, avoiding anachronism and precursoritis."[6]
Notes
↑ "No field of historical study seems so to dispose its adherents to find anachronistic forerunners and adumbrations as does the history of science." Marshall Clagett, Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions, (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1968), p. 3
↑ Dana B. Durand, "Nicole Oresme and the Mediaeval Origins of Modern Science", Speculum, 16 (1941): 167-185.
↑ "I do not wish to make overly much of this point, as "precursoritis" is the bane of historiography." Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr., 2002), p. 138.
↑ "[T]he author's Whiggism leads him to see non-Western cultures, not in their own terms, but as "mirroring," "presaging," "hinting at," "bearing out," "paving the way for," "evidencing nascent understandings of," and "being the forerunner of" today's science. This malady is sometimes diagnosed as "precursoritis," and every graduate student knows that identifying who got what right or wrong by our lights is not the way–certainly not the best way–to tell the story of what people have thought about nature in other historical contexts or of how we came to know what we now know." James E. McClellan III, "Ancient Roots Forced into Modern Pots," Review of Dick Teresi, Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science: From the Babylonians to the Maya, Science, 298, (2002): 1895-1896.
↑ "Precursorism (which has a notorious tendency to degenerate into a disease known as 'precursitis') is equally familiar; it reads the future into the past, with a sense of elation." A. I. Sabra, "The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement," History of Science, 25(1987): 223-243.
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, that of WWII, the British Empire, early Islam, and China—and different approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the development of academic history, there developed a body of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups and loyalties—such as to their nation state—remains a debated question.
The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompass all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal.
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 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. While its dates are debated, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is often cited as marking the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".
An anachronism is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of persons, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type of anachronism is an object misplaced in time, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a plant or animal, a custom, or anything else associated with a particular period that is placed outside its proper temporal domain.
Jean Buridan was an influential 14th century French philosopher.
Whig history, often appearing as whig history, is an approach to historiography that presents history as a journey from a dark and terrible past to a "glorious present". The present described is generally one with modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy: the term was coined to criticise grand narratives praising Britain's adoption of constitutional monarchy and the historical development of the Westminster system. The term has also been applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history to describe "any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the historical process". When the term is used in contexts other than British history, "whig history" (lowercase) is preferred.
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature was the philosophical study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural science.
The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, and others. In these celestial models, the apparent motions of the fixed stars and planets are accounted for by treating them as embedded in rotating spheres made of an aetherial, transparent fifth element (quintessence), like jewels set in orbs. Since it was believed that the fixed stars did not change their positions relative to one another, it was argued that they must be on the surface of a single starry sphere.
Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem was a French theoretical physicist who worked on thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, and the theory of elasticity. Duhem was also a historian of science, noted for his work on the European Middle Ages, which is regarded as having created the field of the history of medieval science. As a philosopher of science, he is remembered principally for his views on the indeterminacy of experimental criteria.
Nicole Oresme, also known as Nicolas Oresme, Nicholas Oresme, or Nicolas d'Oresme, was a French philosopher of the later Middle Ages. He wrote influential works on economics, mathematics, physics, astrology and astronomy, philosophy, and theology; was Bishop of Lisieux, a translator, a counselor of King Charles V of France, and one of the most original thinkers of 14th-century Europe.
The Condemnations at the medieval University of Paris were enacted to restrict certain teachings as being heretical. These included a number of medieval theological teachings, but most importantly the physical treatises of Aristotle. The investigations of these teachings were conducted by the Bishops of Paris. The Condemnations of 1277 are traditionally linked to an investigation requested by Pope John XXI, although whether he actually supported drawing up a list of condemnations is unclear.
Scientific formalism is a family of approaches to the presentation of science. It is viewed as an important part of the scientific method, especially in the physical sciences.
The Oxford Calculators were a group of 14th-century thinkers, almost all associated with Merton College, Oxford; for this reason they were dubbed "The Merton School". These men took a strikingly logical and mathematical approach to philosophical problems. The key "calculators", writing in the second quarter of the 14th century, were Thomas Bradwardine, William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead and John Dumbleton. Using the slightly earlier works of Walter Burley, Gerard of Brussels, and Nicole Oresme, these individuals expanded upon the concepts of 'latitudes' and what real world applications they could apply them to.
The Tusi couple is a mathematical device in which a small circle rotates inside a larger circle twice the diameter of the smaller circle. Rotations of the circles cause a point on the circumference of the smaller circle to oscillate back and forth in linear motion along a diameter of the larger circle. The Tusi couple is a 2-cusped hypocycloid.
In the history of ideas, the continuity thesis is the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual development of the Middle Ages and the developments in the Renaissance and early modern period. Thus the idea of an intellectual or scientific revolution following the Renaissance is, according to the continuity thesis, a myth. Some continuity theorists point to earlier intellectual revolutions occurring in the Middle Ages, usually referring to the European Renaissance of the 12th century as a sign of continuity. Despite the many points that have been brought up by proponents of the continuity thesis, a majority of scholars still support the traditional view of the Scientific Revolution occurring in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The mean speed theorem, also known as the Merton rule of uniform acceleration, was discovered in the 14th century by the Oxford Calculators of Merton College, and was proved by Nicole Oresme. It states that a uniformly accelerated body travels the same distance as a body with uniform speed whose speed is half the final velocity of the accelerated body.
European science in the Middle Ages comprised the study of nature, mathematics and natural philosophy in medieval Europe. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of ancient learning. Although a range of Christian clerics and scholars from Isidore and Bede to Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry, Western Europe would see a period of scientific decline during the Early Middle Ages. However, by the time of the High Middle Ages, the region had rallied and was on its way to once more taking the lead in scientific discovery. Scholarship and scientific discoveries of the Late Middle Ages laid the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution of the Early Modern Period.
Most sources of knowledge available to early Christians were connected to pagan world-views. There were various opinions on how Christianity should regard pagan learning, which included its ideas about nature. For instance, among early Christian teachers, Tertullian held a generally negative opinion of Greek philosophy, while Origen regarded it much more favorably and required his students to read nearly every work available to them.
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