The early period of the seventeenth century is known as the “scientific revolution” for the drastic changes evidenced approach to science . The word “revolution” connotes a period of turmoil and social upheaval where ideas about the world change severely and a completely new era of academic thought is ushered in.
This term, therefore, describes quite accurately what took place in the scientific community following the sixteenth century.During the scientific revolution, medieval scientific philosophy was abandoned in favor of the new methods proposed by Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton; the importance of experimentation to the scientific method was reaffirmed; the importance of God to science was for the most part invalidated, and the pursuit of science itself (rather than philosophy) gained validity on its own terms.The change to the medieval idea of science occurred for four reasons (1) Seventeenth century scientists and philosophers were able to collaborate with members of the mathematical and astronomical communities to effect advances in all fields; (2) Scientists realized the inadequacy of medieval experimental methods for their work and so felt the need to devise new methods (some of which we use today); (3)Aacademics had access to a legacy of European, Greek, and Middle Eastern scientific philosophy they could use as a starting point (either by disproving or building on the theorems); (4) Groups like the British Royal Society helped validate science as a field by providing an outlet for the publication of scientists’ work.Assessment of the state of science before the scientific revolution, examination of the differences in the experimental methods utilized by different “scientists” during the seventeenth century, and exploration into how advances made during the scientific revolution affected the scientific method used in science today will provide an idea of how revolutionary the breakthroughs of the seventeenth century really were and what impact they’ve had. The Scientific Revolution was nothing less than a revolution in the way the individual perceives the world. As such, this revolution was primarily an epistemological revolution -- it changed man's thought process.
It was an intellectual revolution -- a revolution in human knowledge. Even more than Renaissance scholars who discovered man and Nature the scientific revolutionaries attempted to understand and explain man and the natural world.Thinkers such as the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and the British mathematician Isaac Newton (1642-1727) overturned the authority of the Middle Ages and the classical world. And by authority I am not referring specifically to that of the Church -- the demise of its authority was already well under way even before the Lutheran Reformation had begun. The authority I am speaking of is intellectual in nature and consisted of the triad of Aristotle(384-322), Ptolemy (c. 90-168) and Galen (c.
130-201). The revolutionaries of the new science had to escape their intellectual heritage. With this in mind, the revolution in science which emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries has appeared as a watershed in world history.The long term effects of both the Scientific Revolution and the modern acceptance and dependence upon science can be felt today in our daily lives. The Revolution in science overturned the authority in not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world -- it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics.
The Scientific Revolution outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements within the system of medieval Christianity. The overarching triumph of the Scientific Revolution was the gradual maturation of the scientific method.This period also witnessed the rise of scientific societies, most notably the Royal Society of London and the Academie des Sciences of Paris. 4 At the core of the Scientific Revolution are four astronomers: Copernicus, then Galileo and Kepler, then Newton.
The birth of the Scientific Revolution is often traced to Copernicus, who finally refuted the Ptolemaic model with the first convincing model ofheliocentrism. 3 This has earned him the title of "father of modern astronomy". In the heliocentric model, the Earth orbits the sun (causing the seasons) and rotates (causing day and night). Yet the model was only gradually accepted, meeting with both scientific and (especially) theological resistance.Theologically, the heliocentric model was considered unacceptable as it diminished Earth's apparent importance in the universe. If Copernicus was right, not only was the Earth not at the centre of everything, it was also a tiny ball of matter in the midst of staggeringly vast space.
If the Earth is in constant motion around the sun, then at night the stars should appear to be constantly moving; the only alternative explanation is that the stars are so incredibly far away that they don't appear to move. 4 Perhaps the chief scientific objection to the heliocentric model was that if the Earth is spinning, everything on the planet's surface should be hurled into space.The answer to this argument is, of course, gravity: the gravitational pull of the Earth far exceeds the outward force exerted by the planet's rotation. But the force of gravity would not be identified until Newton. The first person to study the heavens via telescope was Galileo Galilei.
12 Galileo's observations helped to further discredit the Ptolemaic model by demonstrating that other heavenly bodies are not so unlike the Earth; they have their own geography (e. g. the moon has rugged craters; it is not a smooth sphere of divine substance) and other planets have moons of their own (he discovered the moons of Jupiter). 4 Galileo was also the most important scientist in the field of mechanics prior to Newton.
(Mechanics is the study of moving bodies. Most famously, he demonstrated that weight does not affect how fast an object falls.He also proved that the path of a projectile is a parabola, thus overturning the prevailing belief that a projectile moves in a straight line until it runs out of momentum, then falls straight down. 16 Johannes Kepler advanced the heliocentric model by finally developing an accurate description of planetary orbits, summarized in three laws. 4 One: the path of each planet's orbit around the sun is an ellipse (not a circle). Two: the speed of a planet's orbit increases as it gets closer to the sun.
Kepler's third law is the mathematical relationship between the size and period of a planet's orbit.Yet the very force that causes planets to orbit the sun (gravity) remained a mystery. The most influential theory prior to Newton was that space is filled with some kind of invisible matter (which, borrowing Aristotle's term, was referred to as ether) and that whirlpools in this matter swept the planets along. This explanation was dispelled by Isaac Newton, whose three laws of motion and universal law of gravitation explained not only the motion of the planets, but of all physical objects. 4 They provide a complete description of the mechanics of everyday experience, also known as classical mechanics. They only cease to hold true at very high speeds (when relativity applies) or very small scales (when quantum theory applies).
