How cosplaying Ancient Rome led to the scientific revolution – Ada Palmer

Quick Overview

The scientific revolution emerged from the Renaissance project of reviving classical Roman virtues, which initially focused on reforming political leadership by recreating the educational environment of ancient figures like Brutus and Cicero, leading to the collection of classical texts, a shift in educational philosophy from mere absorption to Machiavellian political science, and ultimately, the increased accessibility of those texts via the printing press allowed diverse readers to test hypotheses derived from materialism in Lucretius, culminating in scientific discoveries like the heart being a pump.

Key Points: The initial Renaissance goal, driven by figures like Petrarch reacting to civil war and banditry, was to imitate ancient Roman virtues to create better leaders, leading to the massive effort to find and assemble libraries of classical manuscripts. Petrarch's successors, like Marsilio Ficino, raised young elites by surrounding them with classical education based on the assumption that exposure leads to imitation (osmosis), hoping for philosopher princes like Brutus instead of selfish rulers like those in Romeo and Juliet. Upstart rulers adopted classical trappings for propaganda, making themselves seem legitimate, while the Medici used Latin, Greek, and ancient aesthetics to gain respect despite being perceived as 'merchant scum' lacking nobility. Machiavelli, observing the failure of the 'philosopher prince' ideal (citing Cesare Borgia's success despite vice), shifted the classical project from imitating virtuous men to using history as a casebook for political science, imitating successful choices rather than virtues. The proliferation of books due to the printing press, coupled with micro-technologies like footnotes, transformed literacy from merely reading letters to 'book-literacy,' allowing non-expert students to access texts like Lucretius, leading to new questions and scientific testing (e.g., the heart as a pump). The Florentine Republic, unique among Italian republics for abolishing its nobility and running on sortition (lottery of nine commoner guild heads needing consensus), retained more rights and limited even subsequent Medici dukes because of the strength of these ingrained republican traditions, illustrating that even failed resistance yields partial victory. Petrarch intended to create a world upholding his Christian values, but instead, his project indirectly enabled the scientific method which led to modern hygiene and the treatment of the Black Death, a positive outcome that would have horrified him due to its departure from his intended values.