division in the Church with his protests of dictatorial be- 

 havior of the Pope; the great artist Michelangelo; and the 

 scientist-artist, Leonardo da Vinci. The latter two men lived 

 in the wealthy trading Italian city states, where beginning in 

 the seventeenth century men tried to solve some of the an- 

 cient problems of knowledge along the lines suggested by 

 Bacon. The first great experimental scientist was Galileo 

 c. 1640) who founded the science of physics, and obtain- 

 ed conclusive proof with his telescope of the correctness of 

 the heliocentric theory of the planetary system advanced in 

 the previous century by Copernicus — ^so displacing the 

 Earth from its previously believed position as the centre of 

 the Universe. In medicine the important discovery of the 

 circulation of the blood in animals was made by Harvey (c. 

 1630), and in philosophy and mathematics Descartes (c. 

 1660) advanced an essentially scientific view and invented 

 analytical geometry respectively. But the greatest achieve- 

 ment of science was produced by Newton in his researches 

 in theoretical and experimental physics, resulting in the 

 statement of the fundamental laws of motion, the discovery 

 of gravity, and the first understanding of the nature of light. 

 In the next century came the first great application of 

 scientific reasoning to improve Man's condition on the 

 Earth — the construction of the steam engine by Watt (c. 

 1780). The great philosopher Kant (c. 1770) attempted 

 a survey of knowledge, and first suggested that the Milky 

 Way with the Sun and its planets might be but one star 

 system among many in the Universe — a hypothesis validated 

 in our own century. Chemistry was put on a sound footing 

 by Lavoisier (c. 1780) who demonstrated the actual events 

 happening during burning, even showing that respiration 

 was of the same nature — an important step towards a 

 physico-chemical theory of living matter. The generation 



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