what is the scientific revolution essay

Scientific Revolution

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The Scientific Revolution (1500-1700), which occurred first in Europe before spreading worldwide, witnessed a new approach to knowledge gathering – the scientific method – which utilised new technologies like the telescope to observe, measure, and test things never seen before. Thanks to the development of dedicated institutions, scientists conducted yet more experiments and shared their knowledge, making it ever more accurate. By the end of this 'revolution', science had replaced philosophy as the dominant method of acquiring new knowledge and improving the human condition.

Defining a 'Revolution'

Dating the beginning and end of the Scientific Revolution is problematic. Historians do not all agree on precise dates as the 'revolution' was not a single dramatic event but, rather, a long and gradual series of discoveries and changes in attitudes to knowledge. The period of the 16th and 17th centuries as a whole generally covers most of the pertinent events and discoveries. There is also the problem of what to call these events. This was not a 'revolution' in the usual sense of the term, that is, a movement involving all classes, in all places, over a short space of time with a defined end goal which was ultimately achieved. Rather, from around 1500 to around 1700, there was a gradual but marked shift in how thinkers approached the acquisition of knowledge of the world around us. Modern historians often shy away from using such a dramatic term as 'revolution' to describe any deep change in human behaviour, since such a blanket term caries with it uncalled-for baggage of meanings and masks a number of anomalies, not least in this case that the 'revolution' was never complete or completed. That something momentous did occur is, however, clear from even the briefest assessment of how knowledge was gathered before and how it has been gathered ever since the Scientific Revolution.

Through the two centuries of the Scientific Revolution, natural philosophers who still adhered to ancient wisdom were slowly replaced in importance by practical scientists who used scientific instruments like the telescope and barometer to test their hypotheses and then share and review their findings. In this way, universal laws could be formed which were then further tested and used to predict outcomes in yet more experiments. Mathematics, in particular, came to dominate thought as more traditional methods of pursuing knowledge like magic, alchemy , and astrology were sidelined in favour of more objective, empirical, and evidence-based experimentation. In addition, the great trio of ancient thinkers who had held sway right through the Middle Ages – Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE), Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 to c. 170 CE), and Galen (129-216 CE) – were swept away as early modern minds finally looked to the future instead of the past.

Instruments like the pendulum clock and thermometer made it possible to accurately measure the world around us while optical instruments revealed things previously unimaginable such as the real nature of the surface of the Moon and the intricate anatomy of tiny insects. In all of these senses, then, there was indeed a 'revolution' that resulted in old theories, many of which had been held since antiquity as true, being cast aside and brand new ones replacing them based on new discoveries, new methodologies, and entirely new fields of study.

The Scientific Method

A distinctive feature of the change in thought during the Scientific Revolution was a reconsideration of how new knowledge should be acquired and tested. Practical experiments had been conducted ever since antiquity, but through the Middle Ages, a certain theoretical approach to knowledge, first pioneered by thinkers like Aristotle, had come to dominate. Verbal arguments had become more important than what could actually be seen in the world. Further, natural philosophers had become preoccupied with why things happen instead of first ascertaining what was actually happening in nature and how it was happening. One of the first to question this approach was the English statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626).

Bacon called for a more systematic and practical approach where empirical (observable) consequences of experiments were collated, assessed using reason, and then openly shared for review by other thinkers. The ultimate objective of this activity should be used to test the validity of existing knowledge and forge a new understanding of the world around us so that the human condition can be practically improved. For these reasons, Bacon is considered one of the founders of modern scientific research and scientific method, even as "the father of modern science". Bacon's approach did become a reality, but with important additions such as the use of a hypothesis as part of the experimental process, the application of mathematics to create universal laws, and the addition of new technology that greatly improved the senses.

The scientific method came to involve the following key components:

• conducting practical experiments
• conducting experiments without prejudice of what they should prove
• using deductive reasoning (creating a generalisation from specific examples) to form a hypothesis (untested theory), which is then tested by an experiment, after which the hypothesis might be accepted, altered, or rejected based on empirical (observable) evidence
• conducting multiple experiments and doing so in different places and by different people to confirm the reliability of the results
• an open and critical review of the results of an experiment by peers
• the formulation of universal laws (inductive reasoning or logic) using, for example, mathematics
• a desire to gain practical benefits from scientific experiments and a belief in the idea of scientific progress

(Note: the above criteria are expressed in modern linguistic terms, not necessarily those terms 17th-century scientists would have used since the revolution in science also caused a revolution in the language to describe it.)

Important Inventions

The Scientific Revolution witnessed a great number of new inventions, that is, technological innovations that allowed the new scientists to not only discover new things about the world but also ways to measure, test, and assess these new phenomena. The most important inventions in the Scientific Revolution include:

• the telescope (c. 1608)
• the microscope (c. 1610)
• the barometer (1643)
• the thermometer (c. 1650)
• the pendulum clock (1657)
• the air pump (1659)
• the balance spring watch (1675)

Important Discoveries

With the above inventions and others, scientists in many different countries made many new discoveries, and whole new specialisations of study became possible, such as meteorology, microscopic anatomy, embryology, and optics.

The Italian Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) built the most powerful of the early telescopes, and with it, he discovered the mountains and valleys of the Moon's surface, previously thought to be made of some unknown substance. Galileo identified four moons of the planet Jupiter and the phases of Venus . He observed sunspots, leading him to suggest the Sun was a turning sphere. The German Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) created a new type of telescope, which used two convex lenses, and he used it to observe the heavenly bodies and confirm the heliocentric view of our galaxy proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 CE). At last, the geocentric model of Ptolemy was shown to be wrong. In addition, Kepler demonstrated that the planets moved in elliptical and not circular orbits.

The Italian astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini (1625-1712) identified the spaces in the rings of Saturn . Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) in Danzig (modern Gdańsk) discovered the first variable star and created a detailed map of the Moon's surface. The English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742) established an observatory on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic in 1677 and created the first chart of the southern stars using a telescope. Halley also discovered the acceleration of the Moon, noted the movement of the stars in relation to each other (proper motion), and identified the comet of 1682 as the same one of 1607 and 1531.

The English scientist Isaac Newton (1642-1727) invented the reflecting telescope in 1668, which used a curved mirror. Newton discovered that white light was made up of a spectrum of coloured light, and he formed his universal theory of gravity, which explained why objects fell on earth and why the heavenly bodies move as they do.

The invention of the microscope, in many ways the natural opposite of the telescope, is usually credited to the spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey (c. 1570 to c. 1619), then living in the Netherlands. The Italian Marcello Malpighi used a microscope to discover capillaries in the blood system in 1661. This was the missing link between arteries and veins, and it confirmed William Harvey's discovery of blood circulation . Galen's views of how the human body worked were now proven to be wholly inadequate or plain wrong.

The English experimentalist Robert Hooke (1635-1703) used his microscope to create sensational drawings of a new miniature world published in his Micrographia in 1665. The Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) pioneered a new type of microscope using a glass bead as a lens, which gave him a much greater magnification than previously possible. Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, protozoa, red blood cells, spermatozoa, and how minute insects and parasites reproduce. Another Dutch microscopist, Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680), discovered that caterpillars contain what become the wings of the butterfly after metamorphosis. Finally, Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) was the founder of plant anatomy based on his in-depth study of the sexual organs of plants.

The barometer was invented in 1643 by the Italian Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647), and it allowed scientists to understand atmospheric pressure. The Frenchman Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) used a barometer to demonstrate that air pressure changes with altitude. The German Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) noted that air pressure varied depending on the weather. The barometer was actually named by the English scientist Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who also worked on air pumps. Boyle and his associate Robert Hooke were able to demonstrate how a vacuum could exist, and they subjected all manner of specimens to changes in air pressure inside their air pump. Boyle was thus able to formulate a universal principle that became known as 'Boyle's Law '. This law states that the pressure exerted by a certain quantity of air varies inversely in proportion to its volume (provided temperatures are constant).

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A related device, the liquid thermometer, was invented in Florence around 1650, and it transformed medicine , allowing doctors to measure a patient's temperature beyond a mere 'hot', 'cold' or 'normal'. The device meant many other experiments could now be made and the results accurately measured and compared.

The first working model of the pendulum clock was invented by the Dutchman Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) in 1657. In a pendulum clock, the regularity of the pendulum's swing precisely controls the falling of a weight. The best pendulum clocks lost a maximum of 15 seconds per day compared to 15 minutes with a mechanical clock. Timekeeping became even more accurate with the invention in 1675 of watches using a balance spring. This great leap forward in accuracy not only helped scientists better monitor their experiments and time their observations of objects in space but it also revolutionised the very idea of time for everyone. This was the first step towards having a universal time, and with it came the concepts of being early, on time, and late in daily life.

Institutionalised Science

Another key development of the Scientific Revolution, besides a new method and new technology, was the foundation of dedicated research bodies. At this time, universities (with the possible exception of departments of medicine) were not concerned with research, but only with teaching. A new type of institution was required where scientists could work together, share their findings, and, most importantly of all, receive funding for their work. These were the new academies and societies that sprang up across Europe. The first such society was the Academia del Cimento in Florence, founded in 1657. Others soon followed, notably the Royal Society in London in 1663 and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1667. Those responsible for the foundation of the Royal Society credited Bacon with the idea, and they were keen to follow his principles of scientific method and his emphasis on sharing and communicating scientific data and results. The Berlin Academy was founded in 1700 and the St. Petersburg Academy in 1724. These academies and societies became the focal points of an international network of scientists who corresponded, read each other's works, and even visited each other's laboratories and observatories as the new scientific method took hold. The public was involved, too, either indirectly through access to published journals and books or directly with the opportunity to attend experiments and demonstrations in the societies' headquarters or out in the field.

That there was an increase in international cooperation in the Scientific Revolution is indicated in the invitation to non-nationals to become fellows of these societies. There were attempts to standardise certain experiments across borders and the instruments different scientists were using. For example, the German Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) devised his Fahrenheit scale for thermometers around 1714. Anders Celsius (1701-1744) from Sweden came up with a rival scale, but having two scales on thermometers was a vast improvement from the early days when scientists in different countries simply used their own scales, a situation that made comparisons of results extremely difficult. There was, too, cooperation between scientists despite them belonging to rival European empires, and it was through these colonial empires, especially the Dutch, French, and British, that the ideas of the Scientific Revolution spread far beyond Europe.

Reaction to the Scientific Method

The reaction to the Scientific Revolution was not all positive. Some intellectuals were sceptical that the new scientific instruments could be trusted. There remained sceptics of experimentation in general, those who stressed that the senses could be misled when the reason of the mind could not be. One such doubter was René Descartes (1596-1650), but if anything, he and other natural philosophers who questioned the value of the work of the practical experimenters were responsible for creating a lasting new division between philosophy and what we would today call science. The term "science" was still not widely used in the 17th century, instead, many experimenters referred to themselves as practitioners of "experimental philosophy". The first use in English of the term "experimental method" was in 1675. The development of these terms illustrates that a break was happening between theoretical and practical thinkers.

Some even questioned whether humanity should be delving into a previously unseen world, which they considered should remain God 's affair. There was a clash between science and religion when it came to the view of how the universe was organised. Church figures preferred to hold on to the idea that the Earth and humanity must be at the centre of the universe, and so thinkers like Galileo, who supported Copernicus ' heliocentric model, were found guilty of heresy. However, most scientists were Christians and had no wish to challenge the teaching of the Bible . Many scientists simply wanted to explain how the world was made as it is. Indeed, some argued that the telescope and microscope demonstrated just how intricate life is, and so one should, they thought, hold even more wonder at God's work.

There was still room for God in this new scientific world, since thinkers like Isaac Newton, for example, could only explain that gravity moved planets, he could not explain where gravity came from or why it existed. There were still many limits to human knowledge. Doctors now knew why certain diseases might come about but still had only limited knowledge of how to cure them. The great longitude problem of how navigators could track their position around the globe remained unsolved. Technology was still frustratingly limited in many areas.

Into the Future

New scientific instruments meant that discoveries came thick and fast, often causing bewilderment at just how complex life could be. Telescopes at one end of the scale and microscopes at the other revealed that a whole new system of measurement was required for the human mind to grasp the scale of the wonders of the visible universe. Previously, the human body had been used as a base of the measurement system, soon nanometers and light years would be required. There were momentous changes in how people of all classes viewed the new worlds opened up by the scientists. This is best seen in the popular fiction of the period, which began to discuss intriguing yet also troubling ideas like the infinity of the universe or that tiny parasites themselves had even smaller parasites, which themselves had yet smaller parasites. Could it be possible to one day travel to the Moon? Since the Earth was no longer the centre of the universe, did this not mean there could be other planets with other life forms?

There was, though, amongst this perplexity, a new confidence and belief, certainly amongst the scientists, that technology and science, given time, could provide all the answers humanity needed to live better, longer, and more happily. New clock mechanisms with their sophisticated gears, the use of pistons in air pumps, and the discovery of the power of air pressure all inspired engineers to invent new machines like the steam engine as another, even greater revolution, appeared on the horizon: the British Industrial Revolution .

The Scientific Revolution had another lasting effect, and that is the establishment of science as the most recognised method of finding truth, a position of dominance it still holds today. When we talk about theories, hypotheses, laws of nature, evidence, facts, and progress we use terms which were coined during the Scientific Revolution; to discuss knowledge today without using these terms is unthinkable, and there, perhaps, lies the true legacy of this revolution in ideas, methods, and technology.

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Bibliography

• Burns, William E. The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Burns, William E. The Scientific Revolution. ABC-CLIO, 2001.
• Bynum, William F. & Browne, Janet & Porter, Roy. Dictionary of the History of Science . Princeton University Press, 1982.
• Fermi, Laura & Bernardini, Gilberto. Galileo and the Scientific Revolution. Dover Publications, 2013.
• Gleick, James. Isaac Newton. Vintage, 2004.
• Henry, John. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science . Red Globe Press, 2008.
• Jardine, Lisa. Ingenious Pursuits. Nan A. Talese, 1999.
• Wootton, David. The Invention of Science. Harper, 2015.

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Ch. 20 The Age of Enlightenment

The scientific revolution, 19.3: the scientific revolution, 19.3.1: roots of the scientific revolution.

The scientific revolution, which emphasized systematic experimentation as the most valid research method, resulted in developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, and chemistry. These developments transformed the views of society about nature.

Learning Objective

Outline the changes that occurred during the Scientific Revolution that resulted in developments towards a new means for experimentation

• The scientific revolution was the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy), and chemistry transformed societal views about nature.
• The change to the medieval idea of science occurred for four reasons: collaboration, the derivation of new experimental methods, the ability to build on the legacy of existing scientific philosophy, and institutions that enabled academic publishing.
• Under the scientific method, which was defined and applied in the 17th century, natural and artificial circumstances were abandoned and a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted throughout the scientific community.
• During the scientific revolution, changing perceptions about the role of the scientist in respect to nature, and the value of experimental or observed evidence, led to a scientific methodology in which empiricism played a large, but not absolute, role.
• As the scientific revolution was not marked by any single change, many new ideas contributed. Some of them were revolutions in their own fields.
• Science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences, and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of the development of free speech and thought.

The scientific revolution was the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy), and chemistry transformed societal views about nature. The scientific revolution began in Europe toward the end of the Renaissance period, and continued through the late 18th century, influencing the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment. While its dates are disputed, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium  ( On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres ) is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution.

The scientific revolution was built upon the foundation of ancient Greek learning and science in the Middle Ages, as it had been elaborated and further developed by Roman/Byzantine science and medieval Islamic science. The Aristotelian tradition was still an important intellectual framework in the 17th century, although by that time natural philosophers had moved away from much of it. Key scientific ideas dating back to classical antiquity had changed drastically over the years, and in many cases been discredited. The ideas that remained (for example, Aristotle’s cosmology, which placed the Earth at the center of a spherical hierarchic cosmos, or the Ptolemaic model of planetary motion) were transformed fundamentally during the scientific revolution.

The change to the medieval idea of science occurred for four reasons:

• Seventeenth century scientists and philosophers were able to collaborate with members of the mathematical and astronomical communities to effect advances in all fields.
• 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).
• Academics had access to a legacy of European, Greek, and Middle Eastern scientific philosophy that they could use as a starting point (either by disproving or building on the theorems).
• Institutions (for example, the British Royal Society) helped validate science as a field by providing an outlet for the publication of scientists’ work.

New Methods

Under the scientific method that was defined and applied in the 17th century, natural and artificial circumstances were abandoned, and a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted throughout the scientific community. The philosophy of using an inductive approach to nature (to abandon assumption and to attempt to simply observe with an open mind) was in strict contrast with the earlier, Aristotelian approach of deduction, by which analysis of known facts produced further understanding. In practice, many scientists and philosophers believed that a healthy mix of both was needed—the willingness to both question assumptions, and to interpret observations assumed to have some degree of validity.

During the scientific revolution, changing perceptions about the role of the scientist in respect to nature, the value of evidence, experimental or observed, led towards a scientific methodology in which empiricism played a large, but not absolute, role. The term British empiricism came into use to describe philosophical differences perceived between two of its founders—Francis Bacon, described as empiricist, and René Descartes, who was described as a rationalist. Bacon’s works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or sometimes simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. Correspondingly, Descartes distinguished between the knowledge that could be attained by reason alone (rationalist approach), as, for example, in mathematics, and the knowledge that required experience of the world, as in physics.

Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley, and David Hume were the primary exponents of empiricism, and developed a sophisticated empirical tradition as the basis of human knowledge. The recognized founder of the approach was John Locke, who proposed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) that the only true knowledge that could be accessible to the human mind was that which was based on experience.

Many new ideas contributed to what is called the scientific revolution. Some of them were revolutions in their own fields. These include:

• The heliocentric model that involved the radical displacement of the earth to an orbit around the sun (as opposed to being seen as the center of the universe). Copernicus’ 1543 work on the heliocentric model of the solar system tried to demonstrate that the sun was the center of the universe. The discoveries of Johannes Kepler and Galileo gave the theory credibility and the work culminated in Isaac Newton’s Principia, which formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that dominated scientists’ view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.
• Studying human anatomy based upon the dissection of human corpses, rather than the animal dissections, as practiced for centuries.
• Discovering and studying magnetism and electricity, and thus, electric properties of various materials.
• Modernization of disciplines (making them more as what they are today), including dentistry, physiology, chemistry, or optics.
• Invention of tools that deepened the understating of sciences, including mechanical calculator, steam digester (the forerunner of the steam engine), refracting and reflecting telescopes, vacuum pump, or mercury barometer.

The Shannon Portrait of the Hon. Robert Boyle F. R. S. (1627-1691) Robert Boyle (1627-1691), an Irish-born English scientist, was an early supporter of the scientific method and founder of modern chemistry. Boyle is known for his pioneering experiments on the physical properties of gases, his authorship of the Sceptical Chymist, his role in creating the Royal Society of London, and his philanthropy in the American colonies.

The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

The scientific revolution laid the foundations for the Age of Enlightenment, which centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and emphasized the importance of the scientific method. By the 18th century, when the Enlightenment flourished, scientific authority began to displace religious authority, and disciplines until then seen as legitimately scientific (e.g.,  alchemy and astrology) lost scientific credibility.

Science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences, and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of the development of free speech and thought. Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought, and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress. At the time, science was dominated by scientific societies and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centers of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were also the backbone of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population. The century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine, mathematics, and physics; the development of biological taxonomy; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline, which established the foundations of modern chemistry.

Isaac Newton’s Principia, developed the first set of unified scientific laws

Newton’s Principia  formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, which dominated scientists’ view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. By deriving Kepler’s laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, and then using the same principles to account for the trajectories of comets, the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other phenomena, Newton removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos. This work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles. His laws of motion were to be the solid foundation of mechanics.

Attributions

• “Age of Enlightenment.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “René Descartes.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Scientific method.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Baconian method.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Royal Society.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Galileo Galilei.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Science in the Age of Enlightenment.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Age_of_Enlightenment . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Scientific revolution.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Jo Kent, The Impact of the Scientific Revolution: A Brief History of the Experimental Method in the 17th Century. June 12, 2014.” http://cnx.org/content/m13245/1.1/ . OpenStax CNX CC BY 2.0 .
• “NewtonsPrincipia.jpg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution#/media/File:NewtonsPrincipia.jpg . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 2.0 .
• “The Shannon Portrait of the Hon Robert Boyle.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Shannon_Portrait_of_the_Hon_Robert_Boyle.jpg . Wikipedia Public domain .
• Boundless World History. Authored by : Boundless. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

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What is the Scientific Revolution?

Scientific Revolution is the name given to a period of drastic change in scientific thought that took place during the 16th and 17th centuries. It replaced the Greek view of nature that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years. The Scientific Revolution was characterized by an emphasis on abstract reasoning, quantitative thought, an understanding of how nature works, the view of nature as a machine , and the development of an experimental scientific method .

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• Published: 11 April 2012

In retrospect: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• David Kaiser 1  

Nature volume  484 ,  pages 164–165 ( 2012 ) Cite this article

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David Kaiser marks the 50th anniversary of an exemplary account of the cycles of scientific progress.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition

• Thomas S. Kuhn

Fifty years ago, a short book appeared under the intriguing title The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Its author, Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996), had begun his academic life as a physicist but had migrated to the history and philosophy of science. His main argument in the book — his second work, following a study of the Copernican revolution in astronomy — was that scientific activity unfolds according to a repeating pattern, which we can discern by studying its history.

Kuhn was not at all confident about how Structure would be received. He had been denied tenure at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few years before, and he wrote to several correspondents after the book was published that he felt he had stuck his neck “very far out”. Within months, however, some people were proclaiming a new era in the understanding of science. One biologist joked that all commentary could now be dated with precision: his own efforts had appeared “in the year 2 B.K.”, before Kuhn. A decade later, Kuhn was so inundated with correspondence about the book that he despaired of ever again getting any work done.

By the mid-1980s, Structure had achieved blockbuster status. Nearly a million copies had been sold and more than a dozen foreign-language editions published. The book became the most-cited academic work in all of the humanities and social sciences between 1976 and 83 — cited more often than classic works by Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida. The book was required reading for undergraduates in classes across the curriculum, from history and philosophy to sociology, economics, political science and the natural sciences. Before long, Kuhn's phrase “paradigm shift” was showing up everywhere from business manuals to cartoons in The New Yorker .

Kuhn began thinking about his project 15 years before it was published, while he was working on his doctorate in theoretical physics at Harvard. He became interested in developmental psychology, avidly reading works by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget about the stages of cognitive development in children.

Kuhn saw similar developmental stages in entire sciences. First, he said, a field of study matures by forming a paradigm — a set of guiding concepts, theories and methods on which most members of the relevant community agree. There follows a period of “normal science”, during which researchers further articulate what the paradigm might imply for specific situations.

In the course of that work, anomalies necessarily arise — findings that differ from expectations. Kuhn had in mind episodes such as the accidental discoveries of X-rays in the late nineteenth century and nuclear fission in the early twentieth. Often, Kuhn argued, the anomalies are brushed aside or left as problems for future research. But once enough anomalies have accumulated, and all efforts to assimilate them to the paradigm have met with frustration, the field enters a state of crisis. Resolution comes only with a revolution, and the inauguration of a new paradigm that can address the anomalies. Then the whole process repeats with a new phase of normal science. Kuhn was especially struck by the cyclic nature of the process, which ran counter to then-conventional ideas about scientific progress.

At the heart of Kuhn's account stood the tricky notion of the paradigm. British philosopher Margaret Masterman famously isolated 21 distinct ways in which Kuhn used the slippery term throughout his slim volume. Even Kuhn himself came to realize that he had saddled the word with too much baggage: in later essays, he separated his intended meanings into two clusters. One sense referred to a scientific community's reigning theories and methods. The second meaning, which Kuhn argued was both more original and more important, referred to exemplars or model problems, the worked examples on which students and young scientists cut their teeth. As Kuhn appreciated from his own physics training, scientists learned by immersive apprenticeship; they had to hone what Hungarian chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi had called “tacit knowledge” by working through large collections of exemplars rather than by memorizing explicit rules or theorems. More than most scholars of his era, Kuhn taught historians and philosophers to view science as practice rather than syllogism.

Most controversial was Kuhn's claim that scientists have no way to compare concepts on either side of a scientific revolution. For example, the idea of 'mass' in the Newtonian paradigm is not the same as in the Einsteinian one, Kuhn argued; each concept draws meaning from separate webs of ideas, practices and results. If scientific concepts are bound up in specific ways of viewing the world, like a person who sees only one aspect of a Gestalt psychologist's duck–rabbit figure, then how is it possible to compare one concept to another? To Kuhn, the concepts were incommensurable: no common measure could be found with which to relate them, because scientists, he argued, always interrogate nature through a given paradigm.

Perhaps the most radical thrust of Kuhn's analysis, then, was that science might not be progressing toward a truer representation of the world, but might simply be moving away from previous representations. Knowledge need not be cumulative: when paradigms change, whole sets of questions and answers get dropped as irrelevant, rather than incorporated into the new era of normal science. In the closing pages of his original edition, Kuhn adopted the metaphor of Darwinian natural selection: scientific knowledge surely changes over time, but does not necessarily march towards an ultimate goal.

Scientists have no way to compare concepts on either side of a scientific revolution.

And so, 50 years later, we are left with our own anomaly. How did an academic book on the history and philosophy of science become a cultural icon? Structure was composed as an extended essay rather than a formal monograph: it was written as an entry on the history of science for the soon-to-be-defunct International Encyclopedia of Unified Science . Kuhn never intended it to be definitive. He often described the book (even in its original preface) as a first pass at material that he intended to address in more detail later.

To me, the book has the feel of a physicist's toy model: an intentionally stripped-down and simplified schematic — an exemplar — intended to capture important phenomena. The thought-provoking thesis is argued with earnestness and clarity, not weighed down with jargon or lumbering footnotes. The more controversial claims are often advanced in a suggestive rather than declarative mode. Perhaps most important, the book is short: it can be read comfortably in a single sitting.

For the 50th-anniversary edition, the University of Chicago Press has included an introductory essay by renowned Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking. Like Kuhn, Hacking has a gift for clear exposition. His introduction provides a helpful guide to some of the thornier philosophical issues, and gives hints as to how historians and philosophers of science have parted with Kuhn.

The field of science studies has changed markedly since 1962. Few philosophers still subscribe to radical incommensurability; many historians focus on sociological or cultural features that received no play in Kuhn's work; and topics in the life sciences now dominate, whereas Kuhn focused closely on physics. Nevertheless, we may still admire Kuhn's dexterity in broaching challenging ideas with a fascinating mix of examples from psychology, history, philosophy and beyond. We need hardly agree with each of Kuhn's propositions to enjoy — and benefit from — this classic book.

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Kaiser, D. In retrospect: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Nature 484 , 164–165 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/484164a

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Scientific Revolution by Sheila J. Rabin LAST REVIEWED: 11 January 2017 LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0006

The developments in science during the 16th and 17th centuries have traditionally been called the “Scientific Revolution.” The era that began with Nicolaus Copernicus (b. 1473–d. 1543) and ended with Isaac Newton (b. 1642–d. 1727) saw not only a change from an earth-centered to a sun-centered cosmos and a resultant mechanical universe but also advances in experimental method and changes in the life sciences. The traditional formulation saw all this as the beginnings of modern science. Yet not all was new. As scholars looked more deeply, many found that the science of the previous period looked more sophisticated, and that of the later period seemed less modern than had been acknowledged. The line of demarcation between “medieval” and “modern” science blurred. The study of nature, even among the most famous thinkers of the era, such as Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, included subjects that today would be considered unscientific: astrology, alchemy, and magic. Though experiments were carried out, there was no professional class of scientists; most practitioners were dilettantes. Many historians are now reluctant to use the phrase “scientific revolution” when referring to this period in science. Nonetheless, important changes did occur in the physical and life sciences even if no total rupture occurred between the older and newer approaches. This entry lists works by subject and does not include monographs on specific individuals or their works, which will appear in separate entries.

The works of Burtt 2003 and Butterfield 1997 were instrumental in establishing the idea of the scientific revolution as a major break from the past. Duhem 1985 shows the creativity and influence of medieval thinkers and practitioners. Westfall 1971 is a traditional overview emphasizing mechanization and mathematics. Recent scholars tend to either reject the idea of an early modern revolution in science or modify it, in works such as Dear 2009 and Shapin 1996 , or emphasize the developments as nonlinear and complex, such as Gal and Chen-Morris 2013 .

Burtt, Edwin Arthur. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science . 2d rev. ed. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003.

Sees scientific revolution as a major philosophical shift in Western intellectual tradition from medieval to modern caused by appeal to mathematical elegance of Neoplatonic ideals. Originally published in 1932.

Butterfield, Herbert. The Origins of Modern Science . Rev. ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

From Butterfield’s Cambridge lectures in 1948. Popularized the view of the scientific revolution as the beginning of modernity brought about by specific forward-looking individuals. Originally published in 1957.

Dear, Peter. Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500–1700 . 2d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-08958-8

For general audiences. Covers material chronologically from 1500 to 1800. Greater emphasis on mathematics and physical sciences over life sciences and medicine. Good for classroom use. Originally published in 2001.

Debus, Allen G. Man and Nature in the Renaissance . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Part of Cambridge History of Science series for general audiences; intellectual history. Combines the idea of the progress of the exact sciences with the occult disciplines of the period.

Duhem, Pierre. Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds . Edited and translated by Roger Ariew. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Abridgement of author’s Le système du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic , 10 vols. (Paris: A. Hermann, 1913–1959). Looks at medieval thinkers and shows that their cosmological thinking was often more sophisticated than given credit for. Suggests that the scientific revolution was not so revolutionary.

Gal, Ofer, and Raz Chen-Morris. Baroque Science . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Shows developments by major players in optics and optical instruments and the mathematization of the physical sciences in the 17th century as paradoxes and results of leaps of the imagination.

Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226750224.001.0001

For general audiences. Shapin declares, “There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.” Focuses mostly on England and social history; useful bibliographical essay.

Westfall, Richard S. The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics . New York: Wiley, 1971.

Cambridge History of Science Series for general audiences. Sees 17th century science as a resolution of the conflict between mathematical principles of order and mechanical philosophy. Includes development of chemistry and life sciences as well as physics and astronomy. Reprinted 1977.

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The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction

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Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction explores the exciting developments in the sciences during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This time witnessed such fervent investigations of the natural world that the period has been called the ‘Scientific Revolution.’ New ideas and discoveries not only redefined what human beings believed, knew, and could do, but also forced them to redefine themselves with respect to the strange new worlds revealed by the technology of the day. The story is told from the perspective of the historical characters themselves, emphasizing their background, context, reasoning, and motivations, and dispelling well-worn myths about the history of science.

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• DOI: 10.2307/3107174
• Corpus ID: 146569262

The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry

• Pamela O. Long , H. Floris Cohen
• Published 3 October 1994
• History, Philosophy

153 Citations

Ideologies of the scientific revolution: the rise and fall of a historiographical concept, two new conceptions of the scientific revolution compared, the origins of modern science, making the history of early modern science: reflections on a discipline in the age of globalization *, concepts of the 'scientific revolution': an analysis of the historiographical appraisal of the traditional claims of the science, archimedean science and the scientific revolution, introduction: darwin in the larger intellectual context, scientific revolution, history and sociology of, the intellectual roots of engineering science, early modern jesuit science. a historiographical essay, related papers.

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Scientific revolution essay

Of all the innovations that Europe experienced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the most influential was intellectual transformation that we refer to as the “scientific revolution”. It must be noticed that precisely because there was a revolution, a lot of intellectuals still ignored or opposed the change going on around them. The key point of what happened in the seventeenth century was new discovery, scientists were able to break away from the classical tradition and make their own findings.

In Italy, Galileo Galilei first applied the telescope and microscope to scientific work and experimented with them. He showed that the improvement of investigatory instruments made the technical advance possible. On the basis of his own observations, he accepted the conclusion of Copernicus that the earth moved around the sun and not vice versa. He proved experimentally that Aristotle had committed an error in saying that heavy bodies would fall in a vacuum more rapidly than light bodies. In other words, he moved toward a proper understanding of gravity.

For Galileo made it impossible to believe in the old theory about earth as center of universe he was brought before the Italian inquisition as a potential heretic. Yet his achievements were vital to further astronomical knowledge. Galileo’s empirical work only confirmed that there were new ways of getting at truth, and this was really the foundation of the scientific revolution. A slightly different approach was taken by Rene Descartes, also in the early seventeenth century. He made major strides in developing mathematics.

Ultimately, the mathematical approach, combined with greater empiricism, such as Galileo’s, produced the modern scientific method, deduction. The third figure is Francis Bacon, who, like Descartes, made few actual scientific discoveries. He for the first time set forth a philosophy of empiricism. The way to knowledge was not through abstract reasoning, but through repeated experiments which, when they produced a predictable result, represented new truth. The interest in science boomed from the mid-seventeenth century onward.

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The scientific revolution made a considerable break with the medieval-Renaissance approach to knowledge. Galileo, Bacon, and Descartes displayed a mutual scorn for received knowledge. What had previously been said about the physical universe, needed to be re-reasoned, according to Descartes, or exposed to direct experimentation, according to Galileo and Bacon. The later seventeenth century saw steady advance in scientific knowledge. The gains in biology were great. Microscopes allowed new knowledge of invisible, unicellular organisms.

The knowledge in medicine was actively accumulated through medical practice: microscopic anatomy, the circulation of blood, inoculation and vaccination, and so on. The powerful breakthrough in chemistry also occurred in the seventeenth century. The discovery of oxygen, causative relation between oxygen and burning, water formula, and many other discoveries led to the important conclusion that the world consisted of “mixtures” of basic elements. The great developments in astronomy and physics became the basis for calling what happened an intellectual revolution.

Advances from Copernicus and Galileo accrued steadily, as observation showed elliptical instead of circular orbits of planets about the sun. In such work telescopic observation was combined with mathematical calculation. The culmination of physics development came with Isaac Newton and his explanation of universe completely through the use of mathematics with the help of which he could show that the universe operated in a completely rational way. Through his study and telescopic observations of the behavior of planetary bodies, Newton discovered a phenomenon of physical attraction between them, which is called gravity.

Speaking about scientific revolution in terms of intellectual development we must mention another prominent figure, John Locke. He was an important political philosopher, hostile to absolute rule and a defender of toleration and individual rights. He believed that government owed duties to its citizens and even assumed the right of revolution when these duties were not fulfilled. Locke rejected the medieval approach which posited knowledge by faith, which might then be followed by reason. He also rejected Descartes’ idea of innate knowledge.

Hence, he supported the idea of the newborn human mind as a blank sheet of paper, to be filled in by rational experience. The scientific revolution then, consisted of: immense new discoveries in physics and biology; of a related belief that nature was orderly and that human reason could progressively grasp more and more of how it works; of a denial of the necessity of faith. God might still be around, but he was just part of the rational order, who put the works together and then let them run.

91 Scientific Revolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best scientific revolution topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 good essay topics on scientific revolution, 🔎 simple & easy scientific revolution essay titles, ❓ questions about the scientific revolution.

• The Scientific Revolution: From Astronomy to Physics The Scientific Revolution, which occurred roughly between the 15th and 16th centuries, refers to a period of innovations in science and technology, the entirety of which had originated from the notion that the Earth is […]
• Thomas Kuhn’s Scientific Revolution The implicit assumptions of a paradigm act as criterion that is used in study or to validate study. A paradigm shift is a radical change in the way science as a study and criterion for […]
• Excerpt from the Structure of Scientific Revolutions In the case of psychology, the discipline has yet to settle on a single dominant paradigm, leading to a continued evolution of the field and a lack of a shared understanding of its basic foundations.
• Scientific Revolution and Its Consequences Engaging humans in scientific processes and achievements can help decrease the firmness of their beliefs and give them a chance to technological progress.
• The Scientific Revolution as the Greatest Achievements by the Humanity The Scientific Revolution can be explained as a historic phenomenon which occurred between The Enlightenment and the beginning of industrialization in the end of the eighteenth century.
• The Role of Galileo in Scientific Revolution In an article by Little Edmund on Galileo, science, and the church, the writer clearly shows us that the church was hostile towards science and scientific facts.
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Understanding scientific objectivity is vital to considering the validity of gained evidence and the possible influences that may sway the conclusions of the study.
• “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Kuhn A scientific paradigm may be defined as a set of discoveries and achievements recognized and accepted by the scientific community at a given moment in time.
• Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment The emergence of shared spaces open to scientific debate contributed to the propagation of the inquiring spirit of the era, which helped to shape the cultures of many European states.
• “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn Thus, it can be argued that the process of dislodging a scientific paradigm by a new one is congruous with a nonrelativistic approach.
• Scientific Revolution’ Study for 7th Grade Students At the age of 12-14, children are learning to analyze and evaluate their knowledge, which is why the overarching goal of a middle-school world history course is to teach children to think like historians. The […]
• Galileo Galilei and His Role in the Scientific Revolution Galileo’s later discoveries of the Venus gave more proof to the Copernicus theory that it is the Sun at the centre of the universe and not the Earth.
• Scientific Revolution History: Attitude of Mechanization The above statement refers to the modernization as enshrined in the need for empirical inference as an exponential factor of knowledge creation and dispersion.
• History: Evolution of the Scientific Revolution The onset of the scientific revolution is associated with Copernican technical inventions of 1543 and the discovery of motion science by Galileo.
• The Significance of Scientific Revolution in Our History People used religion to explain the happenings of and within the universe by viewing the universe as godly beginning with nothing to do with scientific development.
• Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” He adds on to say that Kuhn’s analysis of the scientific revolution does not provide a reality of understanding the world in the context of science.
• Historiography of Science and the Scientific Revolution His contribution to the field of philosophy of science resulted in a paradigm shift on various aspects of positivists’ doctrine and insights into the history of science1.
• Overview of the Scientific Revolution Periods The supporters of humanistic theory agree with the ideas of great influence of people on the development of science. The emergence of the Western culture has given rise to the development of new directions of […]
• Why the Scientific Revolution did not Take Place in China–Or Did It? The history of science and technology in China contributed much to the advancement of the global knowledge in science and technology.
• Thomas Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions However, Kuhn notes that, this process of reconstructing and reconsidering assumptions and facts is tedious and time consuming; therefore, he offers a way of creating paradigms in the process of scientific revolution.
• The History of Humanities Scientific Revolution Therefore, the need to strengthen natural science as an independent discipline led to the establishment of scientific societies such as the Accademia del Cimento, the Academie des Sciences, and the Royal Society of London, which […]
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• What Were the Causes and Effects of the Scientific Revolution and How Did It Change the World in the Years 1500–1800?
• How Did the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution Lead to a More Secular and Democratic Society?
• What Was the Contribution of Francis Bacon to the Scientific Revolution?
• How Did Isaac Newton Start the Scientific Revolution?
• Was There Any Connection Between Religion and Science in the Scientific Revolution?
• What Is the Relationship Between the Development of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution?
• How Did Scientists and Philosophers Change Medieval Ideas About Science and Natural Law During the Scientific Revolution?
• What Personalities Contributed to the Changes During the Scientific Revolution?
• Did the Scientific Revolution Affect Religion?
• Who Were the Supporters and Opponents of the Scientific Revolution?
• What Was the Role of Women During the Scientific Revolution?
• How Did the Scientific Revolution Create the Environment for the Enlightenment?
• What Was the Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Western Perspectives?
• How Did the Scientific Revolution Affect People’s Beliefs?
• What Were the Intellectual, Social, and Religious Consequences of the Scientific Revolution for the West?
• Are There Connections Between the Scientific Revolution and the French Revolution?
• Was the Scientific Revolution Mainly the Result of Technological Advances from the Renaissance?
• What Did the Scientific Revolution Bring to the European World?
• How Did the Scientific Revolution Change Productivity in Western Industry?
• What Was the Social Paradigm of Change Represented by the Scientific Revolution?
• How Did the Scientific Revolution Affect People’s View of the Catholic Church?
• Why Was the Scientific Revolution in Europe and Not in China?
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IvyPanda. (2024, February 29). 91 Scientific Revolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/scientific-revolution-essay-topics/

"91 Scientific Revolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 29 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/scientific-revolution-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '91 Scientific Revolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 29 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "91 Scientific Revolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/scientific-revolution-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "91 Scientific Revolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/scientific-revolution-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "91 Scientific Revolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/scientific-revolution-essay-topics/.