Who were the giants?

WHO WERE THE GIANTS?

Isaac Newton, the father of Newtonian physics, inventor of calculus, and discoverer of gravity once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

As central as gravity is, it wasn’t theorized until recently. In fact, gravity is 80 years younger than colonial America. In this light, science may look like an undeveloped field—and in many ways, it still is. There were giants, to be sure. But who were they?

Much of the physical science we know now was born in the Renaissance. As Europe shed the plague-pocked skin of the Middle Ages, they began to look forward by, ironically enough, looking backwards. They adopted en masse an ad fontes philosophy, that brought them back to the times of the Greeks and Romans. As philologists dove into “rescued” ancient texts (and knowledge brought back by trade and crusade), they rediscovered some of the progress their predecessors made. From these texts, made available by the brand-new, movable-type printing press, a group of scientists emerged from the woodwork. In the same way that trees are planted in, but grow away from the ground, most scientists planted their ideas in, then grew away from the Greek and Roman ideas of the time. Here are a couple of the shoulders upon which the modern scientist stands.

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) — this architect, artist, inventor, polymath, and “universal genius” was the picture of the Renaissance man, and one of the most talented men to ever live. He designed flying machines, scuba gear, automobiles, tanks, catapults, music machines, and at one point, a utopian village. Unfortunately, Da Vinci was born too early, and many of his inventions could not be realized in his lifetime.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) — Copernicus was the proposer of the heliocentric theory—i.e., that our earth turns on an axis and revolves around the sun. Before (and even after) Copernicus, people believed that the earth was the center of the solar system, and many medicines were based on the alignment of the planets and sun. He was also a major contributor to economic theories that we use today.

Paracelsus (1493-1541) — Overturned much of old medicine’s—specifically Galen’s—theories. Was known (to his disgust) as the Martin Luther of medicine.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) — Proved Copernicus’s heliocentric theory and argued Aristotle’s axioms of physical science. Arguably the greatest astronomer in history.