Essay on Why Were There Changing Attitudes to the Natural World in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Introduction

In this essay I will analyse why there were changing attitudes to the natural world in the 16th and 17th centuries. This essay will be divided into two sections, which are based upon the acknowledged two main areas of change and discovery during the 16th and 17th centuries. The first section is concerned with the exploration of the intellectual world, the second section will focus on the physical discoveries.[1] Firstly it is important to identify an appropriate definition of ‘the natural world’. The area of understanding that is now the province of science was then the province of natural philosophy.[2] Natural philosophy in its entirety, (as described by Newton), includes all that is concerned with science to astronomy [although in the 16th century it also was concerned with astrology].[3] The study of living things was a subset of this discipline and known as natural history which became very popular in this period.[4] The study of living things and the enquiry into nature in the Aristotelian sense was not just biology, but there was less differentiation between living things and the natural world that we now make.[5] I will be using the definition proposed by Thomas that the natural world includes “animals, birds, vegetation and physical landscapes”,[6] because I believe that during this period there were significant changes in attitude to these areas.[7] This concept of ‘attitude’ requires definition and I will be utilizing the Princeton definition, which states an attitude is “[a] complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways”.[8]

There is much historiography concerning the causes underlying changing attitudes to the natural world. The debate is largely between the twin poles of externalism and internalism.[9] Externalism is the view that the changes in attitude to the natural world occurred in response to the social context of the time, rather than being related exclusively to an increased knowledge of science. This view is supported by Pumfrey, who believes that changes in attitude were closely related to the new Renaissance culture.[10] Pumfrey emphasises that the analysis of ancient texts was responsible for the change in attitude,[11] a view supported by Burke.[12] Conversely, internalists tend to focus more on the significance of individual innovators in the changing attitudes. Internalists argue that humanist study had little relevance and it was the new methods of mathematics and new technologies,  Order A Similar Paper