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The Scientific Revolution
The Enlightenment was the product of a vast set of cultural and intellectual changes in Europe during the 1500s and 1600s—changes that in turn produced the social values that permitted the Enlightenment to sweep through Europe in the late 1600s and 1700s. One of the most important of these changes was the Scientific Revolution of the 1500s and 1600s. During the Scientific Revolution, European thinkers tore down the “scientific” beliefs established by the ancients and maintained by the Church. To replace this flawed knowledge, scientists sought to discover and convey the true laws governing the phenomena they observed in nature.
Although it would take centuries to develop, the Scientific Revolution began near the end of the Middle Ages, when farmers began to notice, study, and record the environmental conditions that yielded the best harvests. In time, curiosity about the world spread, which led to further innovation. Even the Church initially encouraged such investigations, out of the belief that studying the world was a form of piety and constituted an admiration of God’s work.
Galileo and Kepler
The Church’s benevolent stance toward science changed abruptly when astronomers such as Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) started questioning the ancient teachings of Aristotle and other accepted “truths.” Galileo’s work in the fields of physics and inertia was groundbreaking, while Kepler’s laws of planetary motion revealed, among other things, that the planets moved in elliptical orbits. Galileo especially encountered significant resistance from the Church for his support of the theories of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), who had stated that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system—not vice versa, as Church teaching had always maintained.
Francis Bacon and René Descartes
Though up against considerable Church opposition, science moved into the spotlight in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Galileo had long said that observation was a necessary element of the scientific method—a point that Francis Bacon (1561–1626) solidified with his inductive method. Sometimes known as the Baconian method, Inductive Science stresses observation and reasoning as the means for coming to general conclusions.
A later contemporary, René Descartes (1596–1650), picked up where Bacon left off. Descartes’s talents ran the gamut from mathematics to philosophy and ultimately the combination of those schools. His work in combining algebra and geometry revolutionized both of those fields, and it was Descartes who came to the philosophical conclusion “I think, therefore I am”—asserting that, if nothing else, he was at least a thinking being. Descartes’s deductive approach to philosophy, using math and logic, stressed a “clear and distinct” foundation for thought that still remains a standard for problem solving.
Isaac Newton
As it turned out, all of these developments of the Scientific Revolution were really just a primer for Englishman Isaac Newton (1642–1727), who swept in, built upon the work of his predecessors, and changed the face of science and mathematics. Newton began his career in mathematics, eventually creating the entire field of calculus. From there, he conducted experiments in physics and math that revealed a number of natural laws that had previously been credited to divine forces. Newton’s seminal work, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), discussed the existence of a uniform force of gravity and established three laws of motion. Later in his career, Newton would release Optics, which detailed his groundbreaking work in that field as well.
The Legacy of the Scientific Revolution
During the Scientific Revolution, physics, philosophy, earth science, astronomy, and mathematics all experienced bold new innovation. Even more significant, the methods of scientific exploration were refined. The thinkers of the Scientific Revolution generated the concepts of inductive and deductive reasoning, as well as the scientific method. Ultimately, these movements yielded the work of Newton, who is considered one of the most influential scientists of all time. His approach to the world encouraged observation and careful consideration of both causes and effects. Just as importantly, Newton showed that scientific thought and methods could be applied to nonscientific topics—a development that paved the way for numerous later thinkers of the Enlightenment.
Events
1605
Kepler discovers first law of planetary motion
1609
Galileo develops his first telescope
1633
Pope prosecutes Galileo for promoting sun-centered theory of the solar system
1687
Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Key People
Galileo Galilei
Italian astronomer who supported the sun-centered Copernican model of the solar system, angering the Catholic Church
Johannes Kepler
German astronomer who discovered laws of planetary motion
Francis Bacon
English scholar who developed Inductive Method of reasoning
René Descartes
French mathematician and philosopher who revolutionized algebra and geometry, developed Deductive Method
Isaac Newton
English mathematician and physicist who formulated fundamental laws of gravity and motion
