Engineers Can a man can come to the knowledge of the natural effects without ever having read books written in Latin?
Bernard Palissy was an apprentice glazier that by seeking to apply a white glaze pottery became famous. He responded affirmatively to this question with which attacked the professors of the Sorbonne. "The practice can demonstrate that the doctrines of philosophers (including the most famous) can be false."
Robert Norman, English sailor, after 20 years of sailing was devoted to building compasses and trade, is called himself as a "mathematical uninstructed." Has the distinct feeling that there is an opposition between their research background and men's books. Moved by the desire to glorify God and benefit to England, risking his name and challenged the lies of his opponents, making publicly available the results of their work, "luckily in the country many mechanics who know perfectly the use their gear and are able to apply them to their various purposes as effectively as those who would condemn them. "
Juan Vives, philosopher, friend of Erasmus and Thomas More, tutor in English court, a man of great culture, write to the refined audience of humanists. Vives invites European scholars to pay serious attention to problems relating to machines, fabric art, agriculture and navigation, the man of letters must go into the mills and the rural haciendas, ask questions to artisans try to understand the details of their work. The science of nature, written to the causes corruptarum artium (1531), not the monopoly of philosophers or the dialectic. They know better than the mechanics, who have never developed as imaginary entities and ecceidad forms.
These three characters, pose the problem of Theory dominates practice. This position appears in another text of the new science in the De humani corporis fabrica of 1543, where Andrea Vesalius strongly pronounce against the dichotomy established in the medical profession on the one hand, a teacher who stays carefully away the corpse to be dissected and speaking from atop a chair to consult a book, and secondly, a dissector to know the theory and is downgraded to a butcher.
This is concluded with the following: the procedures of artisans, artists and engineers have value in relation to the progress of knowledge. Must be accorded the dignity of cultural events.
workshops these artists are both laboratories are painters, sculptors, engineers, technicians, builders and designers of machinery, in addition to art, are taught the rudiments of anatomy and optics, perspective and geometry. Empirical knowledge of people like Leonardo da Vinci is the result of such an environment.
Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), painter, engineer, machine builder and designer (man without letters), and philosopher, became for modern men at the command man of many skills, the overcoming the old distinction between operations manual and mental.
Leonardo had the need to link theory with practice. Science beginning in the mind are left uncertain, because of purely mental no experience, without which nothing provides certainty in itself. He defended the convergence between practice and theory, but was ambiguous in its ideas, it is also true that the reverse, there is only certainty where you can apply mathematics and those who flock to practice without science are like pilots who enter on the ship without rudder or compass, you never know for sure where they go.
However, the investigations of Leonardo, who were extraordinarily rich brilliant insights and great ideas, it went from being curious experiments without reaching the systematicity which is one of the fundamental characteristics of modern science and technology. Once
advanced artisans in contact with the circle of humanist culture and the classical world, looking at the works of Euclid, Archimedes, Hero, Vitruvius, a response to their questions, this literature is extraordinarily rich in treaties technical nature which sometimes are manual and sometimes contain only single reflections on the work done by artists or mechanical or processes used in the arts.
Done
this process, universities and schools are no longer the only places where there is culture, which developed this knowledge, are the engineers and artists, engineers, who are gaining a prestigious position equal to or higher than the physician, magician, astronomer court or university professor. Leon Battista Alberti
, paint, sculptor, architect, planner and refined humanist believes that mathematics is the common part in the work of artist and scientist, the vision of the painter's own perspective is a science, and is a science painting. Workshops
Most artists come from environments XV century artisans peasants and petit bourgeois "art in the fourteenth century was regarded as a manual activity. In the early fifteenth century, Florence Italy, sculptors and architects were members of the corporation under masons and carpenters, painters belonged to the major corporation of doctors and pharmacists. The architects were not only builders of buildings, also dealt with building machines of war, to prepare stands (machines) and complicated apparatus for processions and parties.
mid sixteenth century was a change in the guild of artists, as commissioned by an artisan and can not be reconciled with the dignity of the artist, ie that due to interest paid them based on their creations, they ceased to be an artisan. -Carlos V is tipped to pick up the brush that has fallen to Titian.
Art and Nature
Francis Bacon, founder of "modern science" three reviews of the mechanical arts.
1 .- They serve to reveal the processes of nature, are a form of knowledge;
2 .- Lar mechanical arts grow into themselves, they are unlike all other forms of traditional knowledge, know-progressive and grow so rapidly that the desires of men cease even before they have reached those perfection:
3 .- In the mechanical arts, unlike other forms of culture, there is collaboration, are a form of collective knowledge: in them merge the talents of many, while in the liberal arts the talents of many were subjected to a single person and the fans, usually so perverted rather than progress.
technicians unaware of the uses that can be done in their experiments, scientists and theorists know that many of the desiderata can be satisfied by the work of mechanics.
Jean d 'Alembert, wrote in the Encyclopedia of William Chambers, "we found out about the liberal arts a word that needed many pages, but for the mechanical arts we found that everything was done.
Denis Diderot, says "We have taken the trouble to go to their workshops, questioning, writing to his dictation, to develop their thoughts, to obtain the specific terms of their profession, to compile lists of defining them. Diderot emphasizes the harmful effects of the traditional distinction between liberal and mechanical arts, this arises from the prejudice that address the sensitive objects and materials, constitutes a waiver of the dignity of spirit.
Daedalus and the Labyrinth myth of Daedalus
(The figure of Daedalus is an extraordinarily clever man, but negligible. His name is celebrated mainly by illegal inventions: the machine that allowed mating with a bull Pasiphae and the Minotaur devouring breed of young, the labyrinth created to hide to protect the Minotaur and evil with evil), draws general conclusions: the mechanical arts tools that help generate life and at the same time, instruments of vice and death. The mechanical arts are actually ambiguous use, and can produce evil, while providing a remedy for evil.
universal theocracy of Tommaso Campanella, Francis Bacon's charity, universal Christianity Leibniz, Comenius universal peace, "representatives of the scientific revolution-not be separated from his interests and enthusiasm for the new science. Nature is at the same time, subject domain and reverence. It has to be "tortured" and bowed to the service of man, but also "the book of God," which should be read in a spirit of humility.
[i]
[i] Information from Paolo Rossi, The Birth of modern science in Europe, chapter three "engineers", pp.40-50.
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