Scientific Revolution: We explain what the Scientific Revolution was, when it happened, what its main contributions were and the scientists involved.
What was the Scientific Revolution?
The Scientific Revolution is known as the drastic change in the model of thought that took place between the 16th and 17th centuries in the West, during the Modern Age.
The Scientific Revolution forever transformed the ways of understanding nature and life: the medieval conception of the world was abandoned to adopt the scientific method. Thus, it laid the foundations for the emergence of science as we understand it today. You must read about Scientific Thinking once.
These new ideas were born in Europe at the end of the Renaissance, the result of discoveries and observations in areas such as physics, astronomy, biology and chemistry. In addition, the Scientific Revolution was closely related to the change in philosophical paradigm introduced by the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment.
The exact dates of the start of the Scientific Revolution are a matter of debate, but the year 1543 is generally taken as its inaugural moment, when Nicolaus Copernicus’s masterpiece On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) was published.
Similarly, its end is usually placed in 1632, when Galileo Galilei published his Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo Tolemaico, e Copernicano), or in 1687, with the publication of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica). Maybe you should definitely read about Grammar once.
KEY POINTS
- The Scientific Revolution was a period of drastic change in thought that took place in the West in the 16th and 17th centuries.
- It promoted observation and experimentation as a scientific method of accessing knowledge, against the authority of tradition and religion.
- It began with the formulation of Copernicus’ heliocentric model, which eventually allowed the geocentric view of the universe to be abandoned. He introduced advances in astronomy, physics, chemistry, among other areas, which allowed us to understand the laws of nature and develop new knowledge and technologies.
Background of the Scientific Revolution
For the Scientific Revolution to occur, it was necessary to overcome the dogmatic control of knowledge typical of the Middle Ages, a period during which faith and religion governed thought through the surveillance of the Church. The first step was when the classical legacy of Antiquity was recovered, especially from Greco-Latin culture, something that increased in the Renaissance. To this was added the contribution of medieval Islamic science.
The appearance of the printing press in the 15th century was also necessary, which allowed the dissemination of knowledge and facilitated the exchange of ideas. In addition, the emergence of the bourgeoisie as a social class had begun to transform the world. This class of merchants and businessmen, of plebeian origin but with increasing material wealth, called into question the feudal order and the traditional values of the nobility and the clergy.
Despite the relaxation of some social norms due to the impetus of the Renaissance and the rise of the bourgeoisie, many of the thinkers of the Scientific Revolution suffered persecution by the Inquisition (the court of the Catholic Church), as was the case of Galileo Galilei, who had to retract his heliocentric ideas.
Another factor that contributed to the Scientific Revolution was the voyages of exploration, as they increased interest in cartography, astronomy and animal and plant species, while at the same time demanding better instruments and methods for navigation.
The thought of the Greek philosopher Aristotle had gained acceptance at the end of the Middle Ages and was in force when the Scientific Revolution began. The Aristotelian influence was one of the most difficult to break, especially his conception of the cosmos as a space in which the Earth occupied the central place (geocentrism), something that was also defended by the followers of another classical author: Claudius Ptolemy.
At the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, a new vision of the cosmos was born in the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, who recovered some aspects and methods of Ptolemy’s work but questioned his geocentrism, which gave rise to the heliocentric model that placed the Sun as the center of the system and inaugurated a new era of thought in the West. You must read about Gastronomy once.
Protagonists of the Scientific Revolution
The main protagonists of the Scientific Revolution were:
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543):
Polish mathematician, physicist and Catholic cleric, he dedicated much of his life to astronomy and formulated the heliocentric theory of the solar system, which stated that the planets orbited around the Sun (an idea that had been proposed without many adherents by Aristarchus of Samos in Antiquity). With the publication of his work on the movement of the stars, he began the Scientific Revolution, by questioning the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic geocentric model that had been defended for several centuries.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642):
An Italian astronomer, physicist, mathematician and engineer, he was the great example of the Renaissance man, equally dedicated to the arts and sciences. He was an important observer of the stars and introduced improvements to the telescopes of his time. He became famous for his support of the Copernican formulation of the solar system. He is considered one of the fathers of modern physics.
Isaac Newton (1643-1727):
English physicist, theologian, philosopher, alchemist, inventor and mathematician, author of the first great treatise on modern physics, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a work that revolutionized the physical understanding of the world and laid the foundations for the emergence of this science. His laws of motion, his law of universal gravitation and his formulations regarding optics and infinitesimal calculus are still in practice.
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601).
Danish astronomer, considered the most accurate observer of the firmament before the invention of the telescope and founder of the first center for astronomical studies: Uraniborg. His work allowed the consolidation of astronomical study in a systematic way, and not through occasional observations.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630):
German astronomer and mathematician, famous for his laws on the movement of celestial bodies in their orbit around the Sun, which influenced the work of Isaac Newton. He was a close collaborator of Tycho Brahe and one of the fundamental names of modern astronomy.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626):
English philosopher, statesman, lawyer and writer, considered the father of philosophical and scientific empiricism, since in his works Novum organum [New Instruments] and On the Dignity and Progress of the Sciences (De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum) he described and laid the foundations for the construction of the experimental scientific method. He was one of the great pioneers of modern thought.
René Descartes (1596-1650):
French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, father of modern philosophy and analytical geometry. His famous principle “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito ergo sum), which was essential in the emergence of rationalism and is based on the idea that knowledge is achieved through reason, is well-known. His most famous work is the Discourse on Method, where he broke with the traditional scholasticism of the Middle Ages.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691):
Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, Christian theologian, chemist, physicist and inventor, famous for his formulation of Boyle’s law, one of the principles that govern the behavior of gases. He is considered the first modern chemist in history, and his work The Sceptical Chymist is fundamental in the history of this discipline.
William Gilbert (1544-1603):
English natural philosopher and physician, pioneer in the study of magnetism, as evidenced by his work De magnete, one of the first physics books in England. He was also one of the pioneers in the study of electricity from electrostatics and a fervent opponent of the scholastic method and Aristotelian theories taught in universities.
Consequences of the Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution meant a major break with the medieval tradition, which focused on religious dogma, the idea of God and revealed truth to understand the world and reality. In contrast to this, it demonstrated the human capacity to apply the intellect to understand the world.
Thus, it allowed the birth of rationalism (doctrine that maintains that knowledge is acquired through reason) and empiricism (doctrine that states that knowledge is acquired through experience). This gave rise to modern thought, which displaced medieval faith as the governing principle of life and knowledge.
In addition to this, perhaps the most transcendent consequence of the Scientific Revolution was the formal birth of the sciences, framed in the scientific method and rationalist empiricism. This implied a radical transformation of the world of ideas, which influenced material life through the development of technological innovations and the reappearance of knowledge that until recently had been part of Islamic alchemy or of knowledge considered heretical by the Church.
Contributions of the Scientific Revolution
The contemporary world would not have been the same without the Scientific Revolution. Among its main contributions to the understanding we have today of the universe, we can mention:
- The heliocentric model of the solar system: Through calculation and observation of the firmament with increasingly refined telescopes, the astronomers of the Scientific Revolution demonstrated that the Earth was not the center of the universe around which the Sun and the other stars revolved, but that the Sun is the center of the solar system and that the planets, including the Earth, revolve around it. This knowledge broke with the religious cosmological order that prevailed during the Middle Ages and that came from the theories of Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemy.
- Support for atomism against Aristotelian theories on matter: In ancient times, Aristotle thought that matter was a continuous form made up of four elements in different proportions: air, fire, water and earth. This idea prevailed during the Middle Ages, even though Democritus and Leucippus, other ancient philosophers, had already formulated the atomic theory. The latter stated that matter was made up of indivisible particles called atoms, and was rescued and improved during the Scientific Revolution and influenced contemporary atomic theory.
- Advances in the understanding of human anatomy and the discarding of Galen’s theories: For more than a thousand years, the studies of the Roman physician Galen governed medical knowledge in the West, until the Scientific Revolution arrived. New experiments, dissections and studies carried out through the application of the scientific method and with new measuring instruments allowed a better understanding of the human body and laid the foundations for modern medicine.
- The separation of chemistry from alchemy: Chemistry was formally born during the period of the Scientific Revolution, thanks to the studies of figures such as Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier. At first, it was influenced by alchemy, but the consolidation of the scientific method soon discredited it and consolidated the role of chemistry as a science.
- The development of optics: Optics was a huge advance of the Scientific Revolution, which resulted not only in greater knowledge about the behavior of light, but also in better inputs for scientific research, such as telescopes and microscopes, which allowed the observation of distant stars and microscopic particles.
- The first experiments with electricity: William Gilbert was one of the first researchers to devote himself to experimentation and the recording of electrical principles. He allowed the discovery of the electrical properties of many different materials, such as amber, sulfur or glass, and made enormous advances in electricity and magnetism, which founded entire fields of study within physics.
