{{Short description|Emergence of modern science (1572-1687)}}
{{for|Thomas Kuhn's concept in philosophy of science|paradigm shift}}
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{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Multiple issues|{{lead too short|date=November 2025}}
{{too long|date=November 2025}}}}
{{Infobox historical era|location=[[Early modern Europe]]|start=1543 or 1572|end=1687|before=[[Renaissance]]|after=[[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]]|caption=''[[Portrait of Isaac Newton]]'' by [[Godfrey Kneller]], 1689|image=Portrait_of_Sir_Isaac_Newton,_1689_(head_shot_crop).jpg
| leaders = {{hlist|[[Andreas Vesalius]] (anatomy)
|[[Nicolaus Copernicus]] (astronomy)
|[[Tycho Brahe]] (astronomy)
|[[Galileo Galilei]] (astronomy)
|[[Johannes Kepler]] (astronomy)
|[[Francis Bacon]] (empiricism)
|[[René Descartes]] (empiricism, physics)
|[[Robert Boyle]] (chemistry)
|[[Antonie van Leeuwenhoek]] (microbiology)
|[[Isaac Newton]] (physics)
}}
|key_events=[[SN_1572#Historic_description|1572 supernova]]
[[Galileo_Galilei#Phases_of_Venus|Invention of telescope astronomy]]
[[Kepler's laws of planetary motion|Discovery of Kepler's laws]]
[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Publication of ''Principia Mathematica'']]|name=Scientific Revolution}}
The '''Scientific Revolution''' of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe was an irreversible break with the [[natural philosophy]] that had preceded it, fundamentally changing how the natural world was investigated and understood.[{{Cite journal |last=Küskü |first=Elif Aslan |date=2022 |title=Examination of Scientific Revolution Medicine on the Human Body / Bilimsel Devrim Tıbbını İnsan Bedeni Üzerinden İncelemek |url=https://www.academia.edu/87500649 |journal=The Legends: Journal of European History Studies |access-date=28 September 2022 |archive-date=12 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230112202215/https://www.academia.edu/87500649 |url-status=live }}][{{cite journal |last=Hendrix |first=Scott E. |title=Natural Philosophy or Science in Premodern Epistemic Regimes? The Case of the Astrology of Albert the Great and Galileo Galilei |journal=Teorie Vědy / Theory of Science |year=2011 |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=111–132 |doi=10.46938/tv.2011.72 |s2cid=258069710 |url=http://teorievedy.flu.cas.cz/index.php/tv/issue/view/10 |access-date=20 February 2012 |archive-date=18 November 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121118024030/http://teorievedy.flu.cas.cz/index.php/tv/issue/view/10 |url-status=live |doi-access=free }}][{{cite book | last= Principe | first= Lawrence M. | year = 2011 | chapter = Introduction | title = Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction | pages = 1–3 | location = New York| publisher = Oxford University Press | isbn= 978-0-199-56741-6}}] The New Science that emerged departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions,[{{cite book | last= Lindberg | first= David C. | year = 1990 | chapter = Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution from Baker to Butterfield: A preliminary sketch | title=Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution | editor-first1 = David C. | editor-last1 = Lindberg | editor-first2 = Robert S. | editor-last2 = Westman | pages = 1–26 | edition = First | location = Chicago | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-0-521-34262-9}}]["Europe was in process of dramatic changes in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Perhaps the most striking evidence of this is the widespread use of the word 'new' in titles of books. Two of the best known were Galileo's ''[[Two New Sciences]]'' and Johannes Kepler's ''[[Astronomia nova|New Astronomy]]''. The sense of 'newness' that prevailed in the seventeenth century was undoubtedly a consequence of the belief that much of the knowledge being made public was new, and that it represented significant departures from Aristotelian natural philosophy and the traditional wisdom of the ancients." {{cite book | last= Grant | first = Edward | author-link=Edward Grant | year = 2007 | chapter = Transformation of medieval natural philosophy from the early period modern period to the end of the nineteenth century | title= A History of Natural Philosophy | url= https://archive.org/details/historynaturalph00gran | url-access= limited | pages = 278 | location = New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-052-1-68957-1}}][{{cite book | last= Lindberg | first= David C. | year = 2007 | chapter = The legacy of ancient and medieval science | title= The Beginnings of Western Science| pages= 357–368| edition = 2nd | location = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | isbn= 978-0-226-48205-7}}][{{Cite book|url= https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/natphil-ren/|title= The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|last= Del Soldato|first= Eva|date= 2016|publisher= Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|editor-last= Zalta|editor-first= Edward N.|edition= Fall 2016|access-date= 1 June 2018|archive-date= 11 December 2019|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20191211205744/https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/natphil-ren/|url-status= live}}] was more mechanistic in its worldview and more integrated with mathematics,[{{cite book|author1-link=Ofer Gal | last= Gal | first = Ofer | year = 2021 | chapter = The New Science | title = The Origins of Modern Science | pages = 308–349 | location = New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-1316649701}}][{{cite book | last1 = Bowler | first1 = Peter J. | last2 = Morus | first2 = Iwan Rhys | year = 2020 | chapter = The scientific revolution | title = Making Modern Science | pages = 25–57 | edition = 2nd | location = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | isbn= 978-0226365763}}] and was focused on the acquisition and interpretation of new evidence.[{{cite book | last= Grant | first = Edward | author-link=Edward Grant | year = 2007 | chapter = Transformation of medieval natural philosophy from the early period modern period to the end of the nineteenth century |quote="...seventeenth century natural philosophers...continued the strong medieval tradition of reasoned argument but came to emphasize what had been largely ignored in the Middle Ages: regular observation of nature's activities by the naked eye and by instruments, and the use of experiments to coax nature to yield her secret operations by artificial means."| title= A History of Natural Philosophy | url= https://archive.org/details/historynaturalph00gran | url-access= limited | pages = 283 | location = New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-052-1-68957-1}}][ Wootton, David. ''The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution'' (Penguin, 2015). p. 136. {{ISBN|0-06-175952-X}}.]
The Scientific Revolution is a convenient boundary between ancient thought and modern science. While the [[Periodization|period]] is frequently said to have begun in 1543 with the printings of ''[[De humani corporis fabrica]]'' (''On the Workings of the Human Body'') by [[Andreas Vesalius]] and ''[[De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium|De Revolutionibus]]'' (''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'') by [[Nicolaus Copernicus]], the [[SN 1572]] supernova has also been suggested as its beginning. The period culminated with the publication of the ''[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica]]'' in 1687 by [[Isaac Newton]].
==Terminology and periodisation==
The word "revolution" has been used to describe scientific upheaval since at least the 18th century. In 1747, the French mathematician [[Alexis Clairaut]] applied it to [[Isaac Newton]].[(in French) Alexis Clairaut, "Du systeme du monde, dans les principes de la gravitation universelle", in "Histoires (& Memoires) de l'Academie Royale des Sciences" for 1745 (published 1749).] In the 19th century [[William Whewell]] chose it to label "the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation of change and improvement."["Among the most conspicuous of the revolutions which opinions on this subject have undergone, is the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation of change and improvement." {{cite book|title=Philosophy of the Inductive sciences|year=1840|first=William |last=Whewell|volume=2|page=318|url=https://archive.org/stream/philosophyinduc04whewgoog#page/n328/mode/2up}}] In the 20th century, [[Alexandre Koyré]] used the term "scientific revolution" to describe a "mutation" in human intellect. The term was popularized by the historian and philosopher of history [[Herbert Butterfield]] in his ''Origins of Modern Science'' who provocatively asserted that "it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity" in European history.["Since that revolution turned the authority in English not only of the Middle Ages but of the ancient world—since it started not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics—it 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 Christendom.... [It] looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance." Herbert Butterfield, ''[https://archive.org/details/originsofmoderns007291mbp The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800]'', (New York: Macmillan Co., 1959) p. viii.] The Scientific Revolution is widely understood by scholars as synonymous with the emergence of "modern" science.[{{cite book | editor1-last = Olby | editor1-first = R.C. | editor2-last = Cantor | editor2-first = G.N. | editor3-last = Christie | editor3-first = J.R.R. | editor4-last = Hodge | editor4-first = M.J.S. | title = Companion to the History of Modern Science | publisher = Routledge | date = October 7, 2020 | orig-year = 1990 | isbn = 978-1-000-10754-8 | page = xiii | language = en | quote=Modern science is here defined as science - excluding medicine and technology - from the sixteenth century to the present.}}][{{Cite book|last=Cohen|first=H. Floris|chapter=Solving the Problem of the Scientific Revolution|date=2010|chapter-url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt45kddd.4?seq=14|title=How Modern Science Came into the World: Four Civilizations, One 17th-Century Breakthrough|pages=xxviii|publisher=Amsterdam University Press|isbn=978-90-8964-239-4}}]
While the Scientific Revolution is frequently said to have begun in 1543 with the printings of ''[[De humani corporis fabrica]]'' (''On the Workings of the Human Body'') by [[Andreas Vesalius]] and ''[[De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium|De Revolutionibus]]'' (''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'') by [[Nicolaus Copernicus]][ Cohen, I. Bernard. ''The Birth of a New Physics (Revised and Updated)'' (W.W. Norton & Company, 1985). p.24. {{ISBN|0-393-01994-2}}] and to be complete in the "[[Unification_of_theories_in_physics#Unification_of_gravity_on_Earth_with_astronomical_behaviors|grand synthesis]]" of Isaac Newton's 1687 ''[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Principia]]'', other historians have proposed 1572, when [[Tycho Brahe]] observed the [[SN_1572#Historic_description|1572 supernova]], as an alternative starting date.[{{cite book |last=Hall |first=A. Rupert |author-link=A. Rupert Hall |title=The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude |edition=2nd |publisher=Beacon Press |location=Boston |year=1970 |orig-year=1954 |isbn=0-8070-5093-8 | pages=52 |quote=Tycho Brahe...was the Vesalius of astronomy.}}][ "Modern science was invented between 1572, when Tycho Brahe saw a nova, or new star, and 1704, when Newton published his Optics..." Wootton, David. ''The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution'' (Penguin, 2015). p. 1. {{ISBN|0-06-175952-X}}.]
== Significance ==
The period saw a fundamental transformation in scientific ideas across mathematics, physics, astronomy, and biology in institutions supporting scientific investigation and in the more widely held picture of the universe.[{{Cite book | last = Hunt | first = Shelby D. | title = Controversy in marketing theory: for reason, realism, truth, and objectivity | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=07lchJbdWGgC | publisher = M.E. Sharpe | year = 2003 | page = 18 | isbn = 978-0-7656-0932-8}}]}}
[[File:Galileo Galilei by Ottavio Leoni Marucelliana (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Portrait of [[Galileo Galilei]] by [[Ottavio Leoni]]]]
Much of the change of attitude came from [[Galileo Galilei]] whose telescopic observations provided persuasive evidence for [[heliocentrism]] and who developed the science of motion[{{cite book |author-last=Schuster |author-first=John A. |year=1996 |orig-year=1990 |editor1-last=Cantor |editor1-first=Geoffrey |editor2-last=Olby |editor2-first=Robert |editor3-last=Christie |editor3-first=John |editor4-last=Hodge |editor4-first=Jonathon |title=Companion to the History of Modern Science |chapter=Scientific Revolution |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6GIPEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA217 |location=[[Abingdon, Oxfordshire]] |publisher=[[Routledge]] |pages=217–242 |isbn=9780415145787}}] and [[Francis Bacon]],[{{cite web |url=http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm |title=Empiricism: The influence of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and David Hume |publisher=Sweet Briar College|access-date=21 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130708012140/http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm|archive-date=8 July 2013}}] whose "confident and emphatic announcement" in the modern progress of science inspired the creation of scientific societies such as the [[Royal Society]].[Syfret (1948) p. 75]
Many contemporary writers and modern historians claim that there was a revolutionary change in world view. In 1611 English poet [[John Donne]] wrote:
{{blockquote|[The] new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.[Donne, John ''An Anatomy of the World'', quoted in Kuhn, Thomas S. (1957) ''The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought''. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr. p. 194.]}}
[[David Wootton (historian)|David Wootton]] calls the Scientific Revolution "the most important transformation in human history" since the [[Neolithic Revolution]].[{{Cite news |last=Daston |first=Lorraine |date=2015-11-28 |title=The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution by David Wootton review – a big bang moment |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/28/invention-of-science-scientific-revolution-david-wootton-review |access-date=2024-11-14 |work=[[The Guardian]]}}]
==Ancient, medieval and Renaissance background==
===Medieval Translations===
{{main|Latin translations of the 12th century}}
[[File:Laurentius de Voltolina Vorlesung vor Studenten - Min 1233 - Kupferstichkabinett Berlin.jpg|thumb|A [[medieval university]] class, 1350s]]
According to historians [[Thomas Kuhn]] and [[Edward Grant]], the Scientific Revolution - carried out by scholars who used Latin as a common language - was built upon the foundation of translations, from Greek and Arabic to Latin starting in the 10th century and accelerating during the 12th and 13th centuries, of [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] learning, [[Byzantine science|Roman/Byzantine science]] and [[Science in the medieval Islamic world|medieval Islamic science]] combined with the emergence of the [[medieval university]].[{{cite book |last=Kuhn |first=Thomas S. |author-link=Thomas Kuhn|date=1992 |title=The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought |title-link=The Copernican Revolution (book) |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-17103-9 |quote=Christendom recovered ancient learning first from the Arabs and usually in Arabic translation. The title ''Almagest'' by which we know Ptolemy's major work is not its Greek name at all, but a contraction of the Arabic title which it received from a 9th century Moslem translation...The first Latin translations from the Arabic were made in the 10th century...The first astronomical tables to be widely exploited by Europeans were imported from Toledo in the 11th century. Ptolemy's ''Almagest'' and most of Aristotle's astronomical and physical writings were latinized during the 12th, and in the following century they were steadily, though selectively, integrated into the curriculum of the [[medieval university]].}}][{{cite book |last=Grant |first=Edward |title=The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts |date=1996 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0-521-56762-6 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/foundationsofmod0000gran |quote="...the emergence of universities was intimately associated with the new learning that had been translated into Latin during the course of the twelfth century. Indeed, the university was the institutional means by which Western Europe organized, absorbed, and expanded the great volume of new knowledge, the instrument through which it molded and disseminated a common intellectual heritage for generations to come."}}]["The key event that made the new intellectual life of Western Europe different than anything that had gone before is the emergence of the university as a unique and vital institution. Not only was it unique in the history of Western Europe, but it also was unique in the history of the world." {{cite book | last= Grant| first= Edward | year = 2007 | chapter = Natural Philosophy after the Translations | title= A History of Natural Philosophy | pages = 144 | location = New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-052-1-68957-1}}] Grant calls this "probably the greatest intellectual expropriation of knowledge" in human history.["The translations from Arabic and Greek to Latin occurred during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The lengthy process represents what is probably the greatest intellectual expropriation of knowledge by one culture and civilization from other cultures and civilizations."{{cite book | last= Grant| first= Edward | year = 2007 | chapter = Translations in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries | title= A History of Natural Philosophy | pages = 130 | location = New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-052-1-68957-1}}]
[[File:PeuerbachSuperioribus2.png|thumb|200px|left|[[Ptolemaic system|Ptolemaic model]] of the spheres for [[Venus]], [[Mars]], [[Jupiter]], and [[Saturn]]. [[Georg von Peuerbach]], ''Theoricae novae planetarum'', 1474.]]
By the 16th century, the [[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian framework]] dominated Europe's intellectual landscape, though historians like [[James Hannam]] argue it was already fading and partly discredited.[[[#Hannam|Hannam]], p. 342] [[Aristotle]]'s universe was both [[geocentrism|geocentric]] and hierarchical: an [[Sublunary_sphere|imperfect terrestrial region]] of four [[classical element]]s - [[Earth (classical element)|earth]], [[water (classical element)|water]], [[air (classical element)|air]], and [[fire (classical element)|fire]] - seeking their 'natural places' was surrounded by an unchanging [[Celestial spheres|celestial realm]].[ {{cite book |last=Kuhn |first=Thomas S. |author-link=Thomas Kuhn|date=1992 |title=The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought |title-link=The Copernican Revolution (book) |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-17103-9 |pages=27-28 |quote="...the 'two-sphere universe' consist[s] of an interior sphere for man and an exterior sphere for the stars...There were many two-sphere universes. But, after its first establishment, the two-sphere framework itself was almost never questioned. For very nearly two millennia it guided the imagination of all astronomers and most philosophers."}}] This celestial region consisted of nested spherical shells composed of a fifth element, [[Aether (classical element)|aether]], which moved only with either perfect, circular motion or combinations of such perfect circular motions.[[[#Grant|Grant]], pp. 55–68, 87–116][[[#Pedersen|Pedersen]], pp. 25, 106–10.] Ptolemy’s [[Almagest]] provided the [[Geocentrism#Ptolemaic_model|mathematically rigorous framework for calculating planetary positions]].[ {{cite book |last=Kuhn |first=Thomas S. |author-link=Thomas Kuhn|date=1992 |title=The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought |title-link=The Copernican Revolution (book) |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-17103-9 |pages=72-73 |quote="...[[Ptolemy]]'s contribution is the outstanding one...His ''Almagest'', the book that epitomizes the greatest achievements of ancient astronomy, was the first systematic mathematical treatise to give a ''complete'', ''detailed'', and ''quantitative'' account of all the celestial motions."}}]
While the breakthroughs that created modern astronomy and modern physics during the 16th and 17th centuries marked a decisive rupture with Renaissance Aristotelianism, this was still a break with an existing tradition, not a creation from nothing. In that sense, the [[Scholasticism|scholastics]] who recovered, assimilated and argued about ancient learning were a prerequisite for the Revolution.[{{cite book |last=Kuhn |first=Thomas S. |author-link=Thomas Kuhn|date=1992 |title=The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought |title-link=The Copernican Revolution (book) |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-17103-9 |quote=The centuries of [[scholasticism]] are the centuries in which the tradition of ancient science and philosophy was simultaneously reconstituted, assimilated and tested for adequacy...The great new scientific theories of the 16th and 17th centuries all originate from rents torn by scholastic criticism in the fabric of Aristotelian thought...}}] [[Nicolaus Copernicus]],[Kuhn, Thomas (1957) ''The Copernican Revolution''. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr. p. 142.] Galileo,[Galilei, Galileo (1974) ''Two New Sciences'', trans. [[Stillman Drake]], (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 217, 225, 296–67.][{{cite journal|author=Moody, Ernest A.|year=1951|title=Galileo and Avempace: The Dynamics of the Leaning Tower Experiment (I)|journal=Journal of the History of Ideas|volume=12|issue=2|pages=163–93|doi=10.2307/2707514|jstor=2707514}}][Clagett, Marshall (1961) ''The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages''. Madison, Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 218–19, 252–55, 346, 409–16, 547, 576–78, 673–82][{{cite journal|author=Espinoza, Fernando|year=2005|title=An analysis of the historical development of ideas about motion and its implications for teaching|journal=Physics Education|volume=40|issue=2|page=141|bibcode=2005PhyEd..40..139E|doi=10.1088/0031-9120/40/2/002|s2cid=250809354 }}] [[Johannes Kepler]][
{{cite journal|author=Eastwood, Bruce S. |title=Kepler as Historian of Science: Precursors of Copernican Heliocentrism according to ''De revolutionibus'', I, 10|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume= 126|year=1982|pages= 367–94}} reprinted in Eastwood, B.S. (1989) ''Astronomy and Optics from Pliny to Descartes,'' London: Variorum Reprints.] and Newton[{{Cite journal|last1=McGuire|first1=J. E.|last2=Rattansi|first2=P.M.|year=1966|title=Newton and the 'Pipes of Pan'|url=http://ls.poly.edu/~jbain/mms/texts/66McGuire%28Pipes%29.pdf|journal=Notes and Records of the Royal Society |volume=21|issue=2|pages=108|doi=10.1098/rsnr.1966.0014|s2cid=143495080|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304064640/http://ls.poly.edu/~jbain/mms/texts/66McGuire(Pipes).pdf|archive-date=4 March 2016}}][{{cite book | last=Newton | first=Isaac | title=Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton|editor1-last=Hall|editor1-first=A.R.|editor2-last=Hall|editor2-first=M.B. | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1962 | pages=310–11 | quote = All those ancients knew the first law [of motion] who attributed to atoms in an infinite vacuum a motion which was rectilinear, extremely swift and perpetual because of the lack of resistance... Aristotle was of the same mind, since he expresses his opinion thus...[in ''Physics'' 4.8.215a19-22], speaking of motion in the void [in which bodies have no gravity and] where there is no impediment he writes: 'Why a body once moved should come to rest anywhere no one can say. For why should it rest here rather than there ? Hence either it will not be moved, or it must be moved indefinitely, unless something stronger impedes it.'}}] all studied at universities founded during the [[High Middle Ages]] and all acknowledged their debts to earlier scholars.
===Christianity===
{{Further|Relationship between science and religion#Influence of a biblical worldview on early modern science}}
{{Quote box|width=25%|quote="When natural philosophers referred to ''laws'' of nature, they were not glibly choosing that metaphor. Laws were the result of legislation by an intelligent deity."[{{cite book |last=Brooke |first=John Hedley |title=Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives |page=26 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |series=Canto Classics |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-107-66446-3}}]|source=[[John Hedley Brooke]], ''[[Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives]]'' (1991)}}
In ''Science and the Modern World'', [[Alfred North Whitehead]] argued that modern science inherited a "faith" in the power of human reason from medieval [[Scholasticism|scholastics]].[{{cite book |last=Whitehead |first=Alfred North |author-link=Alfred North Whitehead|date=1925 |title=Science and the Modern World |location=New York |publisher=Macmillan | quote=Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology. |page=19}}] Other scholars have noted a direct tie between "particular aspects of traditional Christianity" and the rise of science.[{{citation | last = Noll | first = Mark | author-link = Mark Noll | title = Science, Religion, and A.D. White: Seeking Peace in the "Warfare Between Science and Theology" | publisher = The Biologos Foundation | page = 4 | url = http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/noll_scholarly_essay2.pdf | access-date = 14 January 2015 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150322013257/http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/noll_scholarly_essay2.pdf | archive-date = 22 March 2015 | url-status=dead }}.][{{Citation | last1 = Lindberg | first1 = David C. | author-link = David C. Lindberg | last2 = Numbers | first2 = Ronald L. | author2-link = Ronald L. Numbers | title = God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science | place = Berkeley and Los Angeles | publisher = University of California Press | year = 1986 | chapter = Introduction | pages = 5, 12 | isbn = 978-0-520-05538-4 | quote = It would be indefensible to maintain, with [[Reijer Hooykaas|Hooykaas]] and [[Stanley Jaki|Jaki]], that Christianity was fundamentally responsible for the successes of seventeenth-century science. It would be a mistake of equal magnitude, however, to overlook the intricate interlocking of scientific and religious concerns throughout the century.}}] For example, historian [[Peter Harrison (historian)|Peter Harrison]] argues that Christianity contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution because many of its key figures had deeply held religious convictions and believed "themselves to be champions of a science that was more compatible with Christianity than the medieval ideas about the natural world that they replaced."["...historians of science have long known that religious factors played a significantly positive role in the emergence and persistence of modern science in the West. Not only were many of the key figures in the rise of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new approaches to nature that they pioneered were underpinned in various ways by religious assumptions. ... Yet, many of the leading figures in the scientific revolution imagined themselves to be champions of a science that was more compatible with Christianity than the medieval ideas about the natural world that they replaced." {{cite web|last1=Harrison|first1=Peter|title=Christianity and the rise of western science|website=[[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]]|date=8 May 2012|url=http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/08/3498202.htm|access-date=28 August 2014|archive-date=9 August 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180809040202/http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/08/3498202.htm|url-status=live}}] In ''The Origins of Modern Science'', Butterfield observed that "the Christians helped the cause of modern rationalism by their jealous determination to sweep out of the world all miracles and magic except their own."[Butterfield, Herbert. ''The Origins of Modern Science'' (The Free Press, 1957). p.85.] Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton all sincerely believed that the order and perfection of the universe were reflections of the perfection of its Creator. Far from perceiving their work as irreligious,[{{cite book |last=Hall |first=A. Rupert |author-link=A. Rupert Hall |title=The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude |edition=2nd |publisher=Beacon Press |location=Boston |year=1970 |orig-year=1954 |isbn=0-8070-5093-8 | pages=104 |quote=A very high proportion of scientists up to the mid-seventeenth century were men of unusually profound religious conviction, and none used science as a lever against religion.}}] they saw uncovering the hidden perfection of the universe using mathematics as an act of devout worship.[{{cite book |chapter=''Il Saggiatore'' |last=Galilei |first=G. |trans-chapter=''[[The Assayer]]'' |editor1= [[Stillman Drake]] |editor2= C. D. O'Malley |date=1960 |orig-date=1623 |language=Italian |title=The Controversy on the Comets of 1618 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |quote=Philosophy [i.e. natural philosophy] is written in this grand book - I mean the Universe - which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics...without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it...}}]["It had almost been a mystical urge and a religious preoccupation which had impelled a man like Kepler to reduce the universe to mechanical law in order to show that God was consistent and reasonable - that He had not left things at the mercy even of his own caprice." Butterfield, Herbert. ''The Origins of Modern Science'' (The Free Press, 1957). p. 178.][{{cite book |last=Agassi |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Agassi|title=The Continuing Revolution: A History of Physics From The Greeks to Einstein | page=51 |quote=Galileo and Kepler said that even though no person is perfect, the "book of nature" was written not by man but by God, and God is perfect. Therefore nature must be perfect, and if we find the smallest mistake in our theories, we should make a great effort to correct it, to improve our theories so that they fit the facts perfectly. |year=1968 |publisher=McGraw-Hill |location=New York}}][{{cite book |last=Applebaum |first=Wilbur |title=The Scientific Revolution and the Foundations of Modern Science | page = 110 | quote=All natural philosophers during the Scientific Revolution saw their efforts as exhibiting formerly hidden details of God's creation. Johannes Kepler' first book, his [[Mysterium cosmographicum]] (The Cosmographic Mystery) of 1596 opens with his assertion that his aim is to reveal the hidden pattern in God's creation of the universe. |publisher=Greenwood Press |year=2005 |series=Greenwood Guides to Historic Events, 1500–1900 |location=Westport, CT |isbn=978-0-313-32314-0}}][{{cite book |last=Brooke |first=John Hedley |title=Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives |page=63 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |series=Canto Classics |year=2014 |orig-date=1991|isbn=978-1-107-66446-3 |quote=Among the physical scientists of the seventeenth century [harmony between religion and science] was achieved by stressing the harmony of the universe itself - a divinely conceived harmony, expressible in mathematical terms, and which, Copernicus had declared, it was the duty of the astronomer to display.}}]
=== Renaissance technology ===
{{Main|Renaissance technology|Glasses#Invention|Venetian glass|Printing press#Mass production and spread in Europe}}
[[File:Tommaso da modena, ritratti di domenicani (Ugo di Provenza) 1352 150cm, treviso, ex convento di san niccolò, sala del capitolo.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Detail of a portrait of Cardinal [[Hugh of Saint-Cher]] (wearing [[spectacles]]), painted by [[Tommaso da Modena]] in 1352]]
The earliest recorded comment on the use of [[glass]] for optical purposes was made in 1268 by [[Roger_Bacon#Optics|Roger Bacon]].[{{cite book |last=Bacon |first=Roger |editor-last=Bridges |editor-first=John Henry |title=The 'Opus Majus' of Roger Bacon |date=1897 |publisher=Horace Hart for the Clarendon Press | url=https://archive.org/stream/opusmajusofroger02bacouoft|location=Oxford |language=la, en}}] The first eyeglasses were made in central Italy, most likely in Pisa or Florence, by about 1290,[Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes, Vincent Ilardi, American Philosophical Society 2007 pages 118–125.] after which the widespread manufacture and use of optical glass for eyeglasses expanded rapidly in Europe. [[Venetian glass|Venice]] became an important center of its manufacture by 1300.[{{cite book |last=Mumford |first=Lewis |author-link=Lewis Mumford |title=[[Technics and Civilization]] |year=1963 |orig-year=1934 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace & World |location=New York |isbn=978-0-15-688254-5 |page=125 |quote=As early as 1300 pure colorless glass was made in [[Murano#Murano_glassmaking|Murano]]: a fact that is established by a law imposing a heavy punishment upon the utilization of ordinary glass for eye glasses.}}][{{Citation |last=Rasmussen |first=Seth C. |title={{title case|ADVANCES IN 13th CENTURY GLASS MANUFACTURING AND THEIR EFFECT ON CHEMICAL PROGRESS}} |date=2008 |url=https://archive.org/details/bhc2008v033p028 |work=Bulletin for the History of Chemistry |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=29–34 |access-date=24 March 2026}}.] In the mid-15th century, Venetian glassmakers developed the exceptionally clear colourless glass, ''[[cristallo]]'', made from high-purity quartz pebbles (instead of sand) and using manganese oxide as a "decolorizer" to neutralize the greenish tint caused by iron impurities. This was the "specialty" glass of the Renaissance era, a luxury product used for windows,[{{cite book |last=Mumford |first=Lewis |author-link=Lewis Mumford |title=[[Technics and Civilization]] |year=1963 |orig-year=1934 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace & World |location=New York |isbn=978-0-15-688254-5 |pages=124-125 |quote= At first [glass] was such a precious commodity that the glass panes were removable and were put in a safe place when the occupants left the house for any time. This high cost restricted glass to public buildings, but step by step it made its way into the private dwelling: [[Pope Pius II|Aeneas Sylvius de Piccolomini]] found in 1448 that half the houses in Wien had glass windows, and toward the end of the sixteenth century glass assumed in the design and construction of the dwelling house a place it had never had in any previous architecture.}}] mirrors, ships' lanterns, and lenses.[{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7ig5XnOx4RMC&pg=PA83|pages=83–90|title=Fundamental Building Materials|last=Ward-Harvey|first=K.|date=2009|publisher=Universal-Publishers|isbn=978-1-59942-954-0}}] When the first telescope was later invented during the Scientific Revolution, the first historical record of the invention did not appear in a work of natural philosophy but rather in a patent filed by a [[Hans Lipperhey|spectacle maker]].[{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KAWwzHlDVksC&dq=Hans+Lipperhey+inventor+of+the+telescope.&pg=PA30|title=The History of the Telescope|author=Henry C. King|date=January 2003 |page=30|publisher=Courier Corporation |isbn=9780486432656 }}][{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nhgUU3XAytgC&dq=Hans+Lippershey+inventor+of+the+telescope.&pg=PT58|title=Light Years: An Exploration of Mankind's Enduring Fascination with Light|author=Brian Clegg|date=26 December 2007 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=9780230553866 }}]
[[File:Printing towns incunabula.svg|thumb|alt=Map of Europe with dots marking cities where printing presses were established by the end of the fifteenth century|Starting in [[Mainz]], Germany around 1440, the [[movable type]] [[printing-press]] had [[Printing_press#Mass_production_and_spread_in_Europe|spread to ~270 cities]] and produced more than 20 million volumes by 1500.[Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean (1976). ''The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800''. London: New Left Books. Quoted in: Anderson, Benedict. ''Comunidades Imaginadas. Reflexiones sobre el origen y la difusión del nacionalismo''. Fondo de cultura económica, Mexico, 1993. {{ISBN|978-968-16-3867-2}}. pp. 58f.]]]
The Scientific Revolution was also enabled by advances in book production.[Owen Gingerich, "Copernicus and the Impact of Printing." ''Vistas in Astronomy'' 17 (1975): 201-218.][{{cite book | last = Eisenstein | first = Elizabeth L. | author-link = Elizabeth Eisenstein | title = [[Elizabeth_Eisenstein#The_Printing_Press_as_an_Agent_of_Change|The Printing Press as an Agent of Change]]: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe | date = 1979 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge; New York | isbn = 978-0-521-22044-6 }}][Anthony Corones, "Copernicus, Printing and the Politics of Knowledge." in ''1543 and All That'' (Springer, Dordrecht, 2000) pp. 271-289.] Before the advent of the [[movable type]] [[printing press]], introduced in Europe in the 1440s by [[Johannes Gutenberg]], there was no mass market on the continent for scientific treatises, as there had been for religious books. Printing decisively changed the way scientific knowledge was created, as well as how it was disseminated. Scholars in different countries now all studied the same mathematical and scientific diagrams and illustrations and read the same texts of a given author.[{{cite book | last= Grant | first = Edward | author-link=Edward Grant | year = 2007 | chapter = Transformation of medieval natural philosophy from the early period modern period to the end of the nineteenth century |quote="Numerous...significant books...appeared in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because they were produced by the printing press, these books were rapidly disseminated throughout Europe. Scholars in different countries studied the same mathematical and scientific diagrams and illustrations and read the same texts of a given author. Science was thus standardized in a way that was unimaginable before the 1450s."| title= A History of Natural Philosophy | url= https://archive.org/details/historynaturalph00gran | url-access= limited | pages = 287 | location = New York | publisher = Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-052-1-68957-1}}] Printing made scholarly books more widely accessible, allowing researchers to consult ancient texts freely and to compare their own observations with those of fellow scholars.["Printing made it possible for [[Tycho Brahe|Brahe]] to survey a wide range of publications (there were over a hundred on the [[Great_Comet_of_1577#Observations_by_Tycho_Brahe|comet of 1577]], though many were merely astrological prognostications) and demonstrate that the four best observers had produced results compatible with his own. It also ensured that Brahe's new system was quickly known throughout Europe, so that his arguments could be tested against the [[Kepler's Supernova|nova of 1604]] and the [[C/1618_W1#Scientific_evaluation|comets of 1618]]. Printing created a community of astronomers working on common problems with common methods and reaching agreed solutions." Wootton, David. ''The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution'' (Penguin, 2015). pp. 197-198. {{ISBN|0-06-175952-X}}.] Although printers' blunders still often resulted in the spread of false data (for instance, in Galileo's ''[[Sidereus Nuncius]]'' (The Starry Messenger), published in Venice in 1610, his telescopic images of the lunar surface mistakenly appeared back to front), the development of engraved metal plates allowed accurate visual information to be made permanent, a change from previously, when woodcut illustrations deteriorated through repetitive use. The ability to access previous scientific research meant that researchers did not have to always start from scratch in making sense of their own observational data.[Martyn Lyons, ''Books: A Living History''. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 71.]
Printing ended the [[manuscript culture]] of the Middle Ages, where [[fact|facts]] were few and far between, and replaced it with a Renaissance [[printing culture]] where reliable and documented facts rapidly proliferated and became the secure foundation for scientific knowledge.[{{cite book |last=Wootton |first=David |author-link=David Wootton (historian) |title=The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution |publisher=Penguin |year=2015 |page=282 |isbn=978-0-06-175952-9 |quote=...a manuscript culture, in which experience is unspecific, indirect, and amorphous...a print culture, in which experience is specific, direct, documented and retrievable...In comparison to the world of print, manuscript culture is one of rumour and gossip. The printing press represents an information revolution, and secure facts are its consequence.}}]
=== Ptolemy Is Wrong ===
[[File:Waldseemuller map 2.jpg|thumb|upright=1.65|''Universalis Cosmographia'', Waldseemüller's 1507 [[Waldseemüller map|world map]], which was the first to show the Americas separate from Asia.]]
{{further|New World#Mundus Novus|Waldseemüller map}}
After returning from Brazil in the spring of 1503, [[Amerigo Vespucci]]'s ''Mundus Novus'' letter contains the first explicit articulation in print of the hypothesis that the lands discovered by European navigators to the west were not the edges of Asia, as asserted by [[Christopher Columbus]] a decade earlier, but rather an entirely different continent (a "New World"):
In passed days I wrote very fully to you of my return from new countries, which have been found and explored with the ships, at the cost and by the command of this Most Serene King of Portugal; and it is lawful to call it a new world, because none of these countries were known to our ancestors and to all who hear about them they will be entirely new. For the opinion of the ancients was, that the greater part of the world beyond the equinoctial line to the south was not land, but only sea, which they have called the Atlantic; and even if they have affirmed that any continent is there, they have given many reasons for denying it is inhabited. But this opinion is false, and entirely opposed to the truth. My last voyage has proved it, for I have found a continent in that southern part; full of animals and more populous than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us.[English translation of ''Mundus Novus'' as found in Markham ({{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8wAuAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA42 |title=The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci and Other Documents Illustrative of His Career |last=Vespucci |first=Amerigo |translator-last=Markham |translator-first=Clements |translator-link=Clements Markham |year=1894 |pages=42–52 |via=Google Books |access-date=3 April 2026 |archive-date=20 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230920143728/https://books.google.com/books?id=8wAuAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA42 |url-status=live }})]
Vespucci's letter was a publishing sensation in Europe that was immediately and repeatedly reprinted in several other countries.[Varnhagen, ''Amerígo Vespucci'' (1865: [https://books.google.com/books?id=R9QOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA13 pp. 13–26]) provides side-by-side reproductions of both the 1503 Latin version ''Mundus Novus'', and the 1507 Italian re-translation "El Nuovo Mondo de Lengue Spagnole interpretato in Idioma Ro. Libro Quinto" (from ''Paesi Nuovamente retrovati''). The Latin version of ''Mundus Novus'' was reprinted many times (see Varnhagen, 1865: [https://books.google.com/books?id=R9QOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA9 p. 9] for a list of early reprints).]
[[Ptolemy|Claudius Ptolemy]]'s ''[[Geographia (Ptolemy)|Geographia]]'' was the basis for most maps made in Renaissance Europe in the 15th century.[{{Cite journal |last=Hunt |first=Arthur |date=2000 |title=2000 Years of Map Making |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40573370 |journal=Geography |volume=85 |issue=1 |pages=3–14 |doi=10.1080/20436564.2000.12219726 |jstor=40573370 |issn=0016-7487|url-access=subscription }}]
Since the [[Americas]] were completely absent from [[Geography (Ptolemy)|Ptolemy's maps]], the European [[New_World#Mundus_Novus|encounter with the Americas]] beginning at the end of the 15th century was a complete surprise.[{{cite book |last=Pagden |first=Anthony |author-link=Anthony Pagden |title=European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism |location=New Haven |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1993 |pages=5-6}}] And since [[Geocentrism#Ptolemaic_model|Ptolemy had been considered the leading authority on astronomy]] as well as geography by Europeans, the discovery of the Americas had the effect of calling into question the reliability of his astronomy.[{{cite book |last=Kuhn |first=Thomas S. |author-link=Thomas Kuhn|date=1992 |title=[[The Copernican Revolution (book)|The Copernican Revolution]]: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-17103-9 | quote=Men rapidly learned how wrong ancient descriptions of the earth could be. In particular, they learned how wrong Ptolemy could be, for Ptolemy had been the greatest geographer as well as the greatest astronomer and astrologer of antiquity. |page=124}}]
== Astronomy, the first modern science ==
=== ''De Nova Stella'' ===
[[Image:Tycho Cas SN1572.jpg|thumb|upright|A star map of the constellation [[Cassiopeia (constellation)|Cassiopeia]] showing the position (labelled I) of the [[SN_1572#Historic_description|supernova of 1572]]. From [[Tycho Brahe]]'s ''De Nova Stella.'']]
On a fall evening in 1572, just after sunset, a 25-year-old Danish nobleman named [[Tycho Brahe]] was looking at the night sky. He wrote about what he saw the following year:
"Last year, on the eleventh of November, in the evening after sunset, while gazing at the stars in a clear sky, as per my custom, I noticed a [[SN_1572#Historic_description|new and unusual star]] shining brightly just above my head. To me who, almost since childhood, had known all the stars of the sky perfectly (for there is no great difficulty in this skill), it was quite evident that there had never been any in that place before or, at least, no star of such conspicuous brightness. In the event, I was led to wonder whether, indeed, I could trust my own eyes. In fact, it could be noticed by others that a star appeared in the place I pointed out so I no longer had any doubt."[{{cite book | last = Brahe | first = Tycho | translator-last = McLaughlin | translator-first = Michael P. | title = On the New and Never Previously Seen Star (De Nova Stella) | year = 2005 | orig-year = 1573 | url = https://causascientia.org/science/Tycho/DeNova.pdf | access-date = August 3, 2026}}]
Brahe knew that what he was seeing could not be a star:
"All philosophers agree, and the very fact makes it plain, that, in the ethereal region of the heavenly world, no modification of creation or corruption takes place. Rather, heaven and the ethereal bodies which are contained therein are not increased, nor diminished, nor varied either in number, or in size, or in magnitude, or in any manner but continue to stay the same in every way over the years. Moreover, observations made by all experts, over thousands of years gone by, assert that stars have always maintained the same number, position, order, motion and quantity, even in our own time by those who take delight in heavenly things."
In [[Celestial spheres|Aristotle's cosmology]], Earth was the realm of imperfection, inconstancy, irregularity, and change while the heavens (Moon, Sun, planets, stars) were perfect, permanent, unchangeable and, in religious thought, the realm of heavenly beings.[The Earth was even composed of different material, the four elements "earth", "water", "fire", and "air", while sufficiently far above its surface (roughly the Moon's orbit), the heavens were composed of a different substance called "aether".][{{citation |last1=Lewis |first1=C.S. |title=The Discarded Image |publisher=Canto Classics |isbn=978-1-107-60470-4 |year=2012 |pages=3, 4 }}.] So if this was a new object it must be located not in the heavens but in the upper atmosphere - it could not be a star at all. However, Brahe observed that the object showed no daily [[Diurnal parallax|parallax]] against the background of the fixed stars. This implied that it was at least farther away than the Moon and those planets that do show such parallax. He found that the object did not change its position relative to the fixed stars over several months, as all planets did in their periodic orbital motions, even the outer planets, for which no daily parallax was detectable.[{{cite book|last=Christianson|first=John Robert |year=2000|title=On Tycho's Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants, 1570–1601|url=https://archive.org/details/ontychosislandty00chri/page/n5/mode/2up |url-access=registration |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|location=Cambridge |isbn=978-05210-0-884-6 |pages=17-18}}][{{cite book |last1=Thoren |first1=Victor E. |last2=Christianson |first2=John Robert |title=The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=1990 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F5a83U4B8XkC |isbn=978-05213-5-158-4 |pages=55-60}}] Brahe recorded its position and changing brightness over several months and then published his observations in ''De Nova Stella'' in 1573.
=== ''Astronomia Nova'' ===
{{Main|Astronomia nova}}
[[File:JKepler.jpg|thumb|Portrait of [[Johannes Kepler]], one of the founders and fathers of modern [[astronomy]], the [[scientific method]], [[Natural science|natural]] and [[modern science]].[{{cite web | url=https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/milestones/greatinventors/johanneskepler/index.html | title=DPMA | Johannes Kepler }}][{{Cite web |url=https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/education/johannes |title=Johannes Kepler: His Life, His Laws and Times | NASA |access-date=1 September 2023 |archive-date=24 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624003856/https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/education/johannes/ |url-status=dead }}][{{cite web | url=https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/kepler.html | title=Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Timeline - Johannes Kepler }}]]]
Kepler was an astronomer who is best known for his [[Kepler's laws of planetary motion|laws of planetary motion]], and Kepler's books ''[[Astronomia nova]]'', ''[[Harmonice Mundi]]'', and ''[[Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae]]'' influenced among others [[Isaac Newton]], providing one of the foundations for his theory of [[Newton's law of universal gravitation|universal gravitation]].[{{Cite journal|last=Voelkel|first=James R.|date=2001|title=Commentary on Ernan McMullin, "The Impact of Newton's Principia on the Philosophy of Science"|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3080920|journal=Philosophy of Science|volume=68|issue=3|pages=319–326|doi=10.1086/392885|jstor=3080920|s2cid=144781947|issn=0031-8248|url-access=subscription}}] One of the most significant books in the history of astronomy, the Astronomia nova provided strong arguments for heliocentrism and contributed valuable insight into the movement of the planets. This included the first mention of the planets' elliptical paths and the change of their movement to the movement of free floating bodies as opposed to objects on rotating spheres. It is recognized as one of the most important works of the Scientific Revolution.[{{Cite book | last=Voelkel | first=James R. | author-link=James R. Voelkel | title=The composition of Kepler's Astronomia nova | date=2001 | publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] | location=Princeton | isbn=0-691-00738-1 | pages=1}}] Using the accurate observations of [[Tycho Brahe]], Kepler proposed that the planets move around the Sun not in circular orbits but in elliptical ones.[{{cite book |last=Hall |first=A. Rupert |author-link=A. Rupert Hall |title=The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude |edition=2nd |publisher=Beacon Press |location=Boston |year=1970 |orig-year=1954 |isbn=0-8070-5093-8 | pages=120-121 |quote=To appreciate the relationship between Kepler and Tycho - the inventive mathematician and the patient observer - it must be realized that the balance of choice between Keplerian and Copernican astronomy is very narrow. Until measurements were available whose accuracy could be relied upon within a range of four minutes, or even less, there was no need to suppose that the planetary orbits were anything other than circles eccentric to the Sun. Kepler, in plotting the orbit of Mars, from which he discovered the ellipticity of planetary orbits in general, was able to calculate the elements of a circular orbit which differed by less than ten minutes from the observations. It was only because he knew that Tycho’s work was accurate within about half this range that he was dissatisfied and impelled to go further. Kepler’s famous "[[Kepler's laws of planetary_motion#First law|First Law]]" was thus the first instance in the history of science of a discovery being made as the result of a search for a theory, not merely to cover a given set of observations, but to interpret a group of refined measurements whose probable accuracy was a significant factor.}}][{{cite book |last=Agassi |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Agassi|title=The Continuing Revolution: A History of Physics From The Greeks to Einstein | page=55 |quote=...Galileo deceived himself, and Kepler, who started by cheating himself, slowly changed and became very precise and decided that the circle would not work. He thus became the first man in history who said that planets do not go in circles. |year=1968 |publisher=McGraw-Hill |location=New York}}] The science historian [[A. Rupert Hall]] identifies Kepler's work as a key milestone of the Scientific Revolution.[{{cite book |last=Hall |first=A. Rupert |author-link=A. Rupert Hall |title=The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude |edition=2nd |publisher=Beacon Press |location=Boston |year=1970 |orig-year=1954 |isbn=0-8070-5093-8 | page=121 |quote=The whole tendency of the scientific revolution was to rebel against [the] view of the astronomer as a mathematician, a deviser of models to save the phenomena, and to see astronomy as a science comprehending the totality of knowledge concerning the heavens and the relations of the earth to the celestial regions.}}]
=== ''Starry Messenger'' ===
{{Main|l1=Starry Messenger|Sidereus Nuncius}}
[[File:Pleiades_Sidereus_Nuncius_(cropped).png|thumb|200px|Galileo reported in the ''[[Starry Messenger]]'' (1610) that he saw at least ten times more stars through the telescope than are visible to the naked eye.]]
Galileo's main contributions to the acceptance of the heliocentric system were his mechanics, the observations he made with his telescope,[{{cite book |last=Wootton |first=David |author-link=David Wootton (historian) |title=The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution |publisher=Penguin |year=2015 |page=152 |isbn=978-0-06-175952-9 |quote=It is easy to show that conventional Ptolemaic astronomy was thriving until 1610 [when Galileo observed the [[phases of Venus]] with a telescope] and went into crisis immediately afterwards...The evidence is clear: Ptolemaic astronomy was unaffected by Copernicus; it went into crisis briefly with the [[SN 1572|new star of 1572]], but by the end of the sixteenth century it had fully recovered. The telescope, on the other hand, brought about its immediate and irreversible collapse.}}] as well as his detailed presentation of the case for the system. Using an early theory of [[inertia]], Galileo could explain why rocks dropped from a tower fall straight down even if the Earth rotates. His observations of the [[moons of Jupiter]], the phases of [[Venus]], the spots on the Sun, and [[List of mountains on the Moon|mountains on the Moon]] all helped to discredit the Aristotelian philosophy and the Ptolemaic theory of the Solar System. Through their combined discoveries, the heliocentric system gained support, and at the end of the 17th century it was generally accepted by astronomers.
=== ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' ===
{{Main|Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica}}
[[File:NewtonsPrincipia.jpg|thumb|[[Isaac Newton]]'s ''[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Principia]]'' developed the first set of unified scientific laws.]]
In 1679, Newton began to consider gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion. This followed stimulation by a brief exchange of letters in 1679–80 with Hooke, opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions.[''Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 2, 1676–1687'' ed. H.W. Turnbull, Cambridge University Press 1960; at page 297, document No. 235, letter from Hooke to Newton dated 24 November 1679.] Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680–81, on which he corresponded with [[John Flamsteed]].[[[#Westfall|Westfall]], pp. 391–92] After the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a [[centripetal force]] [[inverse-square law|inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector]]. Newton communicated his results to [[Edmond Halley]] and to the Royal Society in ''[[De motu corporum in gyrum]]'' in 1684.[Whiteside D.T. (ed.) (1974) ''Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton'', vol. 6, 1684–1691, Cambridge University Press. p. 30.] This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the ''Principia''.[[https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/newton_isaac.shtml Isaac Newton (1643–1727)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150310093436/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/newton_isaac.shtml |date=10 March 2015 }}, BBC – History]
The ''Principia'' was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley.[[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Halley.html Halley biography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090213164959/http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Halley.html |date=13 February 2009 }}. Groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved on 26 September 2011.] He used the Latin word ''gravitas'' (weight) for the effect that would become known as [[gravity]] and defined the law of universal gravitation. Newton's postulate of an invisible [[action at a distance|force able to act over vast distances]] led to him being criticised for introducing "[[occult]] agencies" into science.[Edelglass et al., ''Matter and Mind'', {{ISBN|0-940262-45-2}}. p. 54] Later, in the second edition of the ''Principia'' (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding "[[General Scholium]]," writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression "''[[hypotheses non fingo]]''").[On the meaning and origins of this expression, see Kirsten Walsh, [https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/2010/10/does-newton-feign-an-hypothesis/ Does Newton feign an hypothesis?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714120054/https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/2010/10/does-newton-feign-an-hypothesis/ |date=14 July 2014 }}, [https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/ Early Modern Experimental Philosophy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721051523/https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/ |date=21 July 2011 }}, 18 October 2010.]
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 [[comet]]s, the [[tide]]s, the precession of the [[equinox]]es, 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 prediction that the Earth should be shaped as an oblate spheroid was later vindicated by other scientists. His laws of motion were to be the solid foundation of mechanics; his [[Newton's law of universal gravitation|law of universal gravitation]] combined terrestrial and celestial mechanics into one great system that seemed to be able to describe the whole world in mathematical formulae, dominating scientists' view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.
==Scientific method==
{{Anchor|Scientific method}}
{{More citations needed section|date=February 2026}}
Under the [[scientific method]] as conceived in the 17th century, natural and artificial circumstances were set aside as a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted by the scientific community. The philosophy of using an [[Inductive reasoning|inductive]] and [[mathematics|mathematical]] approach to obtain knowledge—to abandon assumption and to attempt to observe with an open mind was championed by [[René Descartes]], Galileo, and Bacon—in contrast with the earlier, Aristotelian approach of [[deductive reasoning|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 question assumptions, yet also to interpret observations assumed to have some degree of validity.[{{cite book
|author=William Harvey
|title=On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
|publisher=George Bell and Sons
|location=London
|year=1889
|url=https://archive.org/details/onmotionheartan00harvgoog
|quote=william harvey.
}} [[William Harvey|Harvey]] explicitly uses Aristotle's four causes along with the [[scientific method]].]
By the end of the Scientific Revolution, the qualitative world of book-reading philosophers had been changed into a mechanical, mathematical world to be known through experimental research. Though it is certainly not true that Newtonian science was like modern science in all respects, it conceptually resembled ours in many ways. Many of the hallmarks of modern science, especially with regard to its institutionalization and professionalization, did not become standard until the mid-19th century.{{fact|date=April 2023}}
===Empiricism===
{{main|Empiricism}}
{{More citations needed section|date=February 2026}}
The Aristotelian scientific tradition's primary mode of interacting with the world was through observation and searching for "natural" circumstances through reasoning. Coupled with this approach was the belief that rare events which seemed to contradict theoretical models were aberrations, telling nothing about nature as it "naturally" was. 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 role.[{{Cite web |date=2010-05-06 |title=Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature |url=https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/events/warvan-copy/prog/dear_peter_m.pdf}}][{{Cite journal |last=Barseghyan |first=Hakob |last2=Overgaard |first2=Nicholas |last3=Rupik |first3=Gregory |title=Aristotelian-Medieval Worldview |url=https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/introhps/chapter/chapter-7-aristotelian-medieval-worldview/ |journal=Ontario's Postsecondary Educators |language=en}}]
By the start of the Scientific Revolution, empiricism had already become an important component of science and natural philosophy. [[European science in the Middle Ages|Prior thinkers]], including the early-14th-century [[Nominalism|nominalist]] philosopher [[William of Ockham]], had begun the intellectual movement toward empiricism.[[[#Hannam|Hannam]], p. 162] 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. [[Thomas Hobbes]], [[George Berkeley]], and [[David Hume]] were the philosophy's primary exponents who developed a sophisticated empirical tradition as the basis of human knowledge.{{fact|date=April 2023}}
An influential formulation of empiricism was [[John Locke]]'s ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]'' (1689), in which he maintained that the only true knowledge that could be accessible to the human mind was that which was based on experience. He wrote that the human mind was created as a ''[[tabula rasa]]'', a "blank tablet," upon which sensory impressions were recorded and built up knowledge through a process of reflection.{{fact|date=April 2023}}
===Bacon's contributions===
[[File:Somer Francis Bacon.jpg|thumb|left|[[Francis Bacon]] was a pivotal figure in establishing the [[scientific method]] of investigation. Portrait by [[Frans Pourbus the Younger]] (1617).]]
The philosophical underpinnings of the Scientific Revolution were laid out by Francis Bacon, who has been called the father of empiricism.[{{cite book |last1=Principe |first1=Lawrence |title=The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction |date=28 April 2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-956-741-6 |pages=120–121}}]
Bacon proposed a great reformation of all process of knowledge for the advancement of learning divine and human, which he called ''Instauratio Magna'' (The Great Instauration). For Bacon, this reformation would lead to a great advancement in science and a progeny of inventions that would relieve mankind's miseries and needs. His ''[[Novum Organum]]'' was published in 1620, in which he argues man is "the minister and interpreter of nature," "knowledge and human power are synonymous," "effects are produced by the means of instruments and helps," "man while operating can only apply or withdraw natural bodies; nature internally performs the rest," and "nature can only be commanded by obeying her".[{{Citation | last = Bacon | first = Francis | title = Temporis Partus Maximus | year = 1605}}.]
For this purpose of obtaining knowledge of and power over nature, Bacon outlined in this work a new system of logic he believed to be superior to the old ways of [[syllogism]], developing his scientific method, consisting of procedures for isolating the formal cause of a phenomenon (heat, for example) through eliminative induction. For him, the philosopher should proceed through inductive reasoning from [[fact]] to [[axiom]] to [[Scientific law|physical law]]. Before beginning this induction, though, the enquirer must free his or her mind from certain false notions or tendencies which distort the truth. In particular, he found that philosophy was too preoccupied with words, particularly discourse and debate, rather than actually observing the material world: "For while men believe their reason governs words, in fact, words turn back and reflect their power upon the understanding, and so render philosophy and science sophistical and inactive."[{{Citation | last = Zagorin | first = Perez | title = Francis Bacon | place = Princeton | publisher = Princeton University Press | year = 1998 | page = 84|isbn=978-0-691-00966-7}}]
Bacon considered that it is of greatest importance to science not to keep doing intellectual discussions or seeking merely contemplative aims, but that it should work for the bettering of mankind's life by bringing forth new inventions, even stating "inventions are also, as it were, new creations and imitations of divine works".[{{cite web|last= Bacon|first= Francis|title=Novum Organum|title-link= s:Novum Organum}}]{{Page needed | date = January 2014}} He explored the far-reaching and world-changing character of inventions, such as the [[printing press]], [[gunpowder]] and the [[compass]]. Despite his influence on scientific methodology, he rejected correct novel theories such as [[William Gilbert (physician)|William Gilbert]]'s [[magnetism]], Copernicus's heliocentrism, and [[Kepler's laws of planetary motion]].[{{cite book|last=Gillispie|first=Charles Coulston|url=https://archive.org/details/edgeofobjectivit00char|title=The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=1960|isbn=0-691-02350-6|page=74|author-link=Charles Coulston Gillispie}}]
===Scientific experimentation===
Bacon first described the [[scientific experimentation|experimental method]].
{{blockquote | There remains simple experience; which, if taken as it comes, is called accident, if sought for, experiment. The true method of experience first lights the candle [hypothesis], and then by means of the candle shows the way [arranges and delimits the experiment]; commencing as it does with experience duly ordered and digested, not bungling or erratic, and from it deducing axioms [theories], and from established axioms again new experiments. | Francis Bacon. ''Novum Organum.'' 1620.[Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy. Page 101 Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. 1926. {{ISBN|978-0-671-69500-2}}]}}
Gilbert was an early advocate of this method. He passionately rejected both the prevailing Aristotelian philosophy and the [[Scholasticism|scholastic]] method of university teaching. His book ''[[De Magnete]]'' was written in 1600, and he is regarded by some as the father of [[electricity]] and magnetism.[[[Merriam-Webster]] Collegiate Dictionary, 2000, CD-ROM, version 2.5.] In this work, he describes many of his experiments with his model Earth called the [[terrella]]. From these experiments, he concluded that the Earth was itself magnetic and that this was the reason [[compass]]es point north.{{fact|date=April 2023}}
[[File:Gilbert De Magnete Illo044.jpg|thumb|left|Diagram from [[William Gilbert (astronomer)|William Gilbert]]'s ''[[De Magnete]]'', a pioneering 1600 work of experimental science.]]
''De Magnete'' was influential because of the inherent interest of its subject matter as well as for the rigorous way in which Gilbert describes his experiments and his rejection of ancient theories of magnetism.[Gimpel, Jean (1976) ''The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages''. New York, Penguin. {{ISBN|0-7607-3582-4}}. p. 194.] According to [[Thomas Thomson (chemist)|Thomas Thomson]], "Gilbert['s]... book on magnetism published in 1600, is one of the finest examples of inductive philosophy that has ever been presented to the world. It is the more remarkable, because it preceded the ''Novum Organum'' of Bacon, in which the inductive method of philosophizing was first explained."[Thomson, Thomas (1812) [https://books.google.com/books?id=nqjjR4Qt9IgC ''History of the Royal Society: from its Institution to the End of the Eighteenth Century''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221208081358/https://books.google.com/books?id=nqjjR4Qt9IgC& |date=8 December 2022 }}. R. Baldwin. p. 461]
Galileo was one of the first modern thinkers to clearly state that the laws of nature are mathematical. In ''[[The Assayer]]'' he wrote "Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe ... It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures;...."[{{cite book |last=Drake |first=Stillman |date=1957 |title=Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo |location=New York |publisher=[[Doubleday & Company]] |isbn=978-0-385-09239-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/discoveriesopini00gali_0/page/237 237–38] |url=https://archive.org/details/discoveriesopini00gali_0/page/237 }}] His mathematical analyses are a further development of a tradition employed by late scholastic natural philosophers, which Galileo learned when he studied philosophy.[Wallace, William A. (1984) ''Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science,'' Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr. {{ISBN|0-691-08355-X}}.] He ignored Aristotelianism. In broader terms, his work marked another step towards the eventual separation of science from both philosophy and religion; a major development in human thought. He was often willing to change his views in accordance with observation. In order to perform his experiments, Galileo had to set up standards of length and time, so that measurements made on different days and in different laboratories could be compared in a reproducible fashion. This provided a reliable foundation on which to confirm mathematical laws using inductive reasoning.{{fact|date=April 2023}}
Galileo showed an appreciation for the relationship between mathematics, theoretical physics, and experimental physics. He understood the [[parabola]], both in terms of [[conic section]]s and in terms of the [[Abscissa and ordinate|ordinate]] (y) varying as the square of the abscissa (x). Galilei further asserted that the parabola was the theoretically ideal [[trajectory]] of a uniformly accelerated projectile in the absence of [[friction]] and other disturbances. He conceded that there are limits to the validity of this theory, noting on theoretical grounds that a projectile trajectory of a size comparable to that of the Earth could not possibly be a parabola,[[[#Sharratt|Sharratt]], pp. 202–04] but he nevertheless maintained that for distances up to the range of the artillery of his day, the deviation of a projectile's trajectory from a parabola would be only very slight.[[[#Sharratt|Sharratt]], 202–04][{{Cite book|ref= Reference-Favaro-1890|editor-last= Favaro|editor-first= Antonio|date= 1890–1909|title= Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, Edizione Nazionale|url= http://moro.imss.fi.it/lettura/LetturaWEB.DLL?VOL=8&VOLPAG=274|volume= 8|pages= 274–75|trans-title= The Works of Galileo Galilei, National Edition|language= it|place= [[Florence]]|publisher= Barbera|isbn= 978-88-09-20881-0|access-date= 20 July 2014|archive-date= 27 September 2007|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070927232006/http://moro.imss.fi.it/lettura/LetturaWEB.DLL?VOL=8&VOLPAG=274|url-status= live}}]
===Mathematization===
Scientific knowledge, according to the Aristotelians, was concerned with establishing true and necessary causes of things.[Dear, Peter (2009) ''Revolutionizing the Sciences''. Princeton University Press. {{ISBN|0-691-14206-8}}. pp. 65–67, 134–38.] To the extent that medieval natural philosophers used mathematical problems, they limited social studies to theoretical analyses of local speed and other aspects of life.[[[#Grant|Grant]], pp. 101–03, 148–50.] The actual measurement of a physical quantity, and the comparison of that measurement to a value computed on the basis of theory, was largely limited to the mathematical disciplines of astronomy and [[optics]] in Europe.[[[#Pedersen|Pedersen]], p. 231.][McCluskey, Stephen C. (1998) ''Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe''. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr. pp. 180–84, 198–202.]
In the 16th and 17th centuries, European scientists began increasingly applying quantitative measurements to the measurement of physical phenomena on the Earth. Galileo maintained strongly that mathematics provided a kind of necessary certainty that could be compared to God's: "...with regard to those few [mathematical [[theorem|propositions]]] which the human intellect does understand, I believe its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty..."[{{cite book |last=Galilei |first=Galileo |author-link=Galileo Galilei |title=Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems |title-link=Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems |publisher=University of California Press |others=Translated by [[Stillman Drake]] |year=1967 |edition=2nd |place=Berkeley |page=[https://archive.org/details/dialogueconcerni0000gali/page/103 103] |orig-year=Composed in 1632}}
*In the 1661 translation by [[Thomas Salusbury (translator)|Thomas Salusbury]]: "... the knowledge of those few comprehended by humane understanding, equalleth the divine, as to the certainty objectivè ..." p. 92 (from the [http://archimedes.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/toc/toc.cgi?page=92;dir=galil_syste_065_en_1661;step=textonly Archimedes Project] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110512190415/http://archimedes.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/toc/toc.cgi?page=92;dir=galil_syste_065_en_1661;step=textonly|date=12 May 2011}}).
*In the original Italian: "... ma di quelle poche intese dall'intelletto umano credo che la cognizione agguagli la divina nella certezza obiettiva, poiché arriva a comprenderne la necessità ..." (from the copy at the [[wikisource:it:Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico e copernicano/Giornata prima|Italian Wikisource]]).]
Galileo anticipates the concept of a systematic mathematical interpretation of the world in his book ''[[The Assayer|Il Saggiatore]]'':
{{blockquote|Philosophy [i.e., physics] is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of [[mathematics]], and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth.[[[Galileo Galilei]], ''Il Saggiatore'' (''[[The Assayer]]'', 1623), as translated by [[Stillman Drake]] (1957), ''Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo'' pp. 237–38]}}In 1591, [[François Viète]] published ''In Artem Analyticem Isagoge'', which gave the first symbolic notation of parameters in [[algebra]]. In 1637, [[René Descartes]] greatly improved the scope and formalization of [[algebra]] in [[La Géométrie]]. Newton's development of [[infinitesimal calculus]] opened up new applications of the methods of mathematics to science. Newton taught that scientific theory should be coupled with rigorous experimentation, which became the keystone of modern science.{{fact|date=April 2023}}
===Mechanical philosophy===
{{More citations needed section|date=February 2026}}
[[File:Sir Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt.jpg|thumb|right|[[Isaac Newton]] in a 1702 portrait by [[Godfrey Kneller]]]]
Aristotle recognized four kinds of causes, and where applicable, the most important of them is the "final cause". The final cause was the aim, goal, or purpose of some natural process or man-made thing. Until the Scientific Revolution, it was very natural to see such aims, such as a child's growth, for example, leading to a mature adult. Intelligence was assumed only in the purpose of man-made artifacts; it was not attributed to other animals or to nature.
In "[[mechanical philosophy]]" no field or action at a distance is permitted, particles or corpuscles of matter are fundamentally inert. Motion is caused by direct physical collision. Where natural substances had previously been understood organically, the mechanical philosophers viewed them as machines.[[[#Westfall|Westfall]], pp. 30–33.] As a result, Newton's theory seemed like some kind of throwback to "spooky [[action at a distance]]". According to Thomas Kuhn, Newton and Descartes held the [[teleology|teleological principle]] that God conserved the amount of motion in the universe:
Gravity, interpreted as an innate attraction between every pair of particles of matter, was an occult quality in the same sense as the scholastics' "tendency to fall" had been.... By the mid eighteenth century that interpretation had been almost universally accepted, and the result was a genuine reversion (which is not the same as a retrogression) to a scholastic standard. Innate attractions and repulsions joined size, shape, position and motion as physically irreducible primary properties of matter.[Kuhn, Thomas (1970), [http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.pdf ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141020001221/http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.pdf |date=20 October 2014 }}. University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|0-226-45807-5}}. pp. 105–06.]
Newton had also specifically attributed the inherent power of inertia to matter, against the mechanist thesis that matter has no inherent powers. But whereas Newton vehemently denied gravity was an inherent power of matter, his collaborator [[Roger Cotes]] made gravity also an inherent power of matter, as set out in his famous preface to the ''Principia's'' 1713 second edition which he edited, and contradicted Newton. And it was Cotes's interpretation of gravity rather than Newton's that came to be accepted.{{fact|date=April 2023}}
===Institutionalization===
[[File:Gresham College from Record of RS.jpg|thumb|The [[Royal Society]] had its origins in [[Gresham College]] in the [[City of London]], and was the first scientific society in the world.]]
The first moves towards the institutionalization of scientific investigation and dissemination took the form of the establishment of societies where new discoveries were aired, discussed, and published. The first scientific society to be established was the [[Royal Society]] of London. This grew out of an earlier group, centered around [[Gresham College and the formation of the Royal Society|Gresham College]] in the 1640s and 1650s. According to a history of the college:
The scientific network which centered on Gresham College played a crucial part in the meetings which led to the formation of the Royal Society.[Chartres, Richard and Vermont, David (1998) [https://web.archive.org/web/20120612121813/http://www.gresham.ac.uk/greshamftp/historygreshm_bk2.pdf A Brief History of Gresham College]. Gresham College. {{ISBN|0-947822-16-X}}. p. 38]
These physicians and natural philosophers were influenced by the "new science", as promoted by Bacon in his ''[[New Atlantis]]'', from approximately 1645 onwards. A group known as ''The Philosophical Society of Oxford'' was run under a set of rules still retained by the [[Bodleian Library]].[{{cite web|url=http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Societies/RS.html|title=London Royal Society|publisher=[[University of St Andrews]]|access-date=8 December 2009|archive-date=14 April 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090414152731/http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Societies/RS.html|url-status=dead}}]
On 28 November 1660, the "1660 committee of 12" announced the formation of a "College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning", which would meet weekly to discuss science and run experiments. At the second meeting, [[Robert Moray]] announced that [[Charles II of England|King Charles]] approved of the gatherings, and a [[royal charter]] was signed on 15 July 1662 creating the "Royal Society of London", with [[William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker|Lord Brouncker]] serving as the first president. A second royal charter was signed on 23 April 1663, with the king noted as the founder and with the name of "the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge"; [[Robert Hooke]] was appointed as curator of experiments in November. This initial royal favour has continued, and since then every monarch has been the patron of the society.[{{cite web|url=http://royalsociety.org/News.aspx?id=973&terms=prince+of+wales|title=Prince of Wales opens Royal Society's refurbished building|date=7 July 2004|publisher=The Royal Society|access-date=7 December 2009|archive-date=20 May 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120520230010/https://royalsociety.org/news.aspx?id=973&terms=prince+of+wales|url-status=live}}]
[[File:Académie des Sciences 1698.jpg|thumb|The French [[Academy of Sciences]] was established in 1666.]]
The society's first secretary was [[Henry Oldenburg]]. Its early meetings included experiments performed first by Hooke and then by [[Denis Papin]], who was appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their subject area and were important in some cases and trivial in others.[Henderson (1941) p. 29] The society began publication of ''[[Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society|Philosophical Transactions]]'' from 1665, the oldest and longest-running scientific journal in the world, which established the important principles of [[scientific priority]] and [[peer review]].[{{cite web | url = http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/ | title = Philosophical Transactions − the world's first science journal | publisher = The Royal Society | access-date = 22 November 2015 | archive-date = 6 November 2018 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20181106193718/http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/ | url-status = live }}]
The French established the [[French Academy of Sciences|Academy of Sciences]] in 1666. In contrast to the private origins of its British counterpart, the academy was founded as a government body by [[Jean-Baptiste Colbert]]. Its rules were set down in 1699 by King [[Louis XIV]], when it received the name of 'Royal Academy of Sciences' and was installed in the [[Louvre]] in Paris.
==New ideas==
===Biology and medicine===
[[File:William Harvey ( 1578-1657) Venenbild.jpg|Image of [[vein]]s from [[William Harvey]]'s ''Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus''. Harvey demonstrated that blood circulated around the body, rather than being created in the liver.|left|thumb]]
In the 16th century, surgeon [[Ambroise Paré]] was a leader in surgical techniques and [[battlefield medicine]], especially the treatment of [[wound]]s.[Zimmer, Carl. (2004) ''Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain – and How It Changed the World.'' New York: Free Press. {{ISBN|0-7432-7205-6}}.]
[[William Harvey]] published ''De Motu Cordis'' in 1628. Harvey made a detailed analysis of the overall structure of the [[heart]], going on to an analysis of the [[Artery|arteries]], showing how their pulsation depends upon the contraction of the left [[Ventricle (heart)|ventricle]], while the contraction of the right ventricle propels its charge of blood into the [[pulmonary artery]]. He noticed that the two ventricles move together almost simultaneously and not independently like had been thought previously by his predecessors.[Harvey, William ''De motu cordis'', cited in Debus, Allen G. (1978) ''Man and Nature in the Renaissance''. Cambridge Univ. Pr. p. 69.]
Harvey estimated the capacity of the heart, how much blood is expelled through each pump of the heart, and the number of times the heart beats in half an hour. From these estimations, he demonstrated that according to Gaelen's theory that blood was continually produced in the [[liver]], the absurdly large figure of 540 pounds of blood would have to be produced every day. Having this simple mathematical proportion at hand—which would imply a seemingly impossible role for the liver—Harvey went on to demonstrate how the blood circulated in a circle by means of countless experiments initially done on serpents and fish: tying their veins and arteries in separate periods of time, Harvey noticed the modifications which occurred; indeed, as he tied the veins, the heart would become empty, while as he did the same to the arteries, the organ would swell up. This process was later performed on the human body: the physician tied a tight [[Ligature (medicine)|ligature]] onto the upper arm of a person. This would cut off blood flow from the arteries and the veins. When this was done, the arm below the ligature was cool and pale, while above the ligature it was warm and swollen. The ligature was loosened slightly, which allowed blood from the arteries to come into the arm, since arteries are deeper in the flesh than the veins. When this was done, the opposite effect was seen in the lower arm. It was now warm and swollen. The veins were also more visible, since now they were full of blood.
===Chemistry===
[[File:Sceptical chymist 1661 Boyle Title page AQ18 (3).jpg|upright=0.9|thumb|right|Title page from ''[[The Sceptical Chymist]]'', a foundational text of chemistry, written by Robert Boyle in 1661.]]
[[Chemistry]], and its antecedent [[alchemy]], became an increasingly important aspect of scientific thought in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries. The importance of chemistry is indicated by the range of important scholars who actively engaged in chemical research. Among them were the astronomer [[Tycho Brahe]],[{{Cite journal | doi = 10.1086/354267| title = Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe| journal = Isis| volume = 77| issue = 4| pages = 585–610| year = 1986| last1 = Hannaway | first1 = O. | s2cid = 144538848}}] the chemical physician [[Paracelsus]], [[Robert Boyle]], [[Thomas Browne]] and Isaac Newton. Unlike the mechanical philosophy, the chemical philosophy stressed the active powers of matter, which alchemists frequently expressed in terms of vital or active principles—of spirits operating in nature.[Westfall, Richard S. (1983) ''Never at Rest''. Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-27435-4}}. pp. 18–23.]
Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their extraction to [[Smelting|smelt]] metals were an important source of information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them [[Georgius Agricola]], who published his great work ''[[De re metallica]]'' in 1556.[[http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/exhibit/agricola.htm Agricola, Georg (1494–1555)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081123032301/http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/exhibit/agricola.htm |date=23 November 2008 }}. Scs.uiuc.edu. Retrieved on 26 September 2011.] His work describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the time. His approach removed the mysticism associated with the subject, creating the practical base upon which others could build.[[[Karl Alfred von Zittel|von Zittel, Karl Alfred]] (1901) ''History of Geology and Palaeontology'', p. 15.]
Chemist [[Robert Boyle]] is considered to have refined the modern scientific method for alchemy and to have separated chemistry further from alchemy.[[https://web.archive.org/web/20131203073012/http://understandingscience.ucc.ie/pages/sci_robertboyle.htm Robert Boyle]. understandingscience.ucc.ie] Although his research clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method. Although Boyle was not the original discoverer, he is best known for [[Boyle's law]], which he presented in 1662:[{{cite journal |author=Acott, Chris |title=The diving "Law-ers": A brief resume of their lives. |journal=[[South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal]] |volume=29 |issue=1 |year=1999 |issn=0813-1988 |oclc=16986801 |url=http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/5990 |access-date=17 April 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110402073203/http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/5990 |archive-date=2 April 2011 |url-status=usurped }}] the law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a [[closed system]].[Levine, Ira. N. (1978). "Physical Chemistry" University of Brooklyn: [[McGraw-Hill]]. p. 12]
Boyle is also credited for his landmark publication ''[[The Sceptical Chymist]]'' in 1661, which is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry. In the work, Boyle presents his hypothesis that every phenomenon was the result of collisions of particles in motion. Boyle appealed to chemists to experiment and asserted that experiments denied the limiting of chemical elements to only the classic four: earth, fire, air, and water. He also pleaded that chemistry should cease to be subservient to medicine or to alchemy, and rise to the status of a science. Importantly, he advocated a rigorous approach to scientific experiment: he believed all theories must be tested experimentally before being regarded as true. The work contains some of the earliest modern ideas of [[atom]]s, [[molecule]]s, and [[chemical reaction]], and marks the beginning of modern chemistry.
=== Physical ===
==== Optics ====
In 1604 Johannes Kepler published ''Astronomiae Pars Optica'' (''The Optical Part of Astronomy''). In it, he describes the inverse-square law governing the intensity of [[light]], reflection by flat and curved mirrors, and principles of [[pinhole camera]]s, as well as the astronomical implications of optics such as [[parallax]] and the apparent sizes of heavenly bodies. ''Astronomiae Pars Optica'' is generally recognized as the foundation of modern [[optics]].[Caspar, Max (1993) ''Kepler''. Courier Corporation. {{ISBN|0-486-67605-6}}. pp. 142–46]
[[Willebrord Snellius]] found the mathematical law of [[refraction]], now known as [[Snell's law]], in 1621. It had been published earlier in 984 AD by [[Ibn Sahl (mathematician)|Ibn Sahl]]. Subsequently René Descartes showed, by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes' law), that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42° (i.e. the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the rainbow's centre is 42°).[{{Cite book|last=Tipler|first=P.A. and G. Mosca|year=2004|title=Physics for Scientists and Engineers|publisher=W.H. Freeman|isbn=978-0-7167-4389-7|page= 1068}}] He also independently discovered the [[Specular reflection|law of reflection]], and his essay on optics was the first published mention of this law. [[Christiaan Huygens]] wrote several works in the area of optics. These included the ''Opera reliqua'' (also known as ''Christiani Hugenii Zuilichemii, dum viveret Zelhemii toparchae, opuscula posthuma'') and the ''[[Traité de la lumière]]''.
Newton investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a [[Dispersive prism|prism]] could decompose white light into a [[Visible spectrum|spectrum]] of colours, and that a [[lens]] and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white light. He also showed that the coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects. Newton noted that regardless of whether it was reflected or scattered or transmitted, it stayed the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as [[Early life of Isaac Newton#Newton's theory of colour|Newton's theory of colour]]. From this work he concluded that any refracting [[telescope]] would suffer from the [[dispersion (optics)|dispersion]] of light into colours. The interest of the Royal Society encouraged him to publish his notes ''On Colour''. Newton argued that light is composed of particles or ''corpuscles'' and that are refracted by accelerating toward the denser medium, but he had to associate them with [[wave]]s to explain the [[diffraction]] of light.
In his ''Hypothesis of Light'' of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the [[luminiferous aether|ether]] to transmit forces between particles. In 1704, Newton published ''[[Opticks]]'', in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ...and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[{{Cite journal |last=Dobbs |first=J. T. |date=December 1982 |title=Newton's Alchemy and His Theory of Matter |journal=Isis |volume=73 |issue=4 |pages=523 |doi=10.1086/353114 |s2cid=170669199 }} Quoting ''Opticks''.]
[[Antonie van Leeuwenhoek]] constructed powerful single lens microscopes and made extensive observations that he published around 1660, paving the way for the science of microbiology.
File:Kepler - Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur, 1604 - 158093 F.jpg|The first treatise about optics by [[Johannes Kepler]], ''Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur'' (1604)
File:Opticks.jpg|[[Isaac Newton]]'s 1704 ''[[Opticks|Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light]]''
==== Electricity ====
[[File:Guericke Sulfur globe.jpg|thumb|right|[[Otto von Guericke]]'s experiments on [[electrostatics]], published 1672]]
William Gilbert, in ''De Magnete'', invented the [[Neo-Latin]] word ''electricus'' from ''{{lang|grc|ἤλεκτρον}}'' (''elektron''), the Greek word for "amber". Gilbert undertook a number of careful electrical experiments, in the course of which he discovered that many substances other than amber, such as sulphur, wax, glass, etc.,[Priestley, Joseph (1757) ''History of Electricity''. London] were capable of manifesting electrical properties. Gilbert discovered that a heated body lost its electricity and that moisture prevented the [[electrification]] of all bodies. He noticed that electrified substances attracted all other substances indiscriminately, whereas a magnet only attracted iron. The many discoveries of this nature earned Gilbert the title ''founder of the electrical science''.[Maver, William, Jr.: "Electricity, its History and Progress", [https://archive.org/stream/encyclopediaame21unkngoog#page/n210/mode/1up The Encyclopedia Americana; a library of universal knowledge, vol. X, pp. 172ff]. (1918). New York: Encyclopedia Americana Corp.] By investigating the forces on a light metallic needle, balanced on a point, he extended the list of electric bodies and found that many substances, including metals and natural magnets, showed no attractive forces when rubbed. He noticed that dry weather with north or east wind was the most favourable atmospheric condition for exhibiting electric phenomena—an observation liable to misconception until the difference between [[Electrical conductor|conductor]] and [[Insulator (electricity)|insulator]] was understood.[Dampier, W.C.D. (1905). The theory of experimental electricity. Cambridge physical series. Cambridge [Eng.: University Press.]
Robert Boyle worked frequently at the new science of electricity and added several substances to Gilbert's list of electrics. He left a detailed account of his researches under the title of ''Experiments on the Origin of Electricity''.[Benjamin, P. (1895). [https://books.google.com/books?id=hkMPAAAAMAAJ A history of electricity] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221208081359/https://books.google.com/books?id=hkMPAAAAMAAJ |date=8 December 2022 }}: (The intellectual rise in electricity) from antiquity to the days of Benjamin Franklin. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.][Boyle, Robert (1676). ''Experiments and notes about the mechanical origin or production of particular qualities''.][Boyle, Robert (1675) ''Experiments on the Origin of Electricity'']
This was followed in 1660 by [[Otto von Guericke]], who invented an early [[electrostatic generator]]. By the end of the 17th century, researchers had developed practical means of generating electricity by friction with an electrostatic generator, but the development of electrostatic machines did not begin in earnest until the 18th century when they became fundamental instruments in the studies about the science of electricity. The first usage of the word ''electricity'' is ascribed to [[Thomas Browne]] in his 1646 work ''[[Pseudodoxia Epidemica]]''. In 1729 [[Stephen Gray (scientist)|Stephen Gray]] demonstrated that electricity could be "transmitted" through metal filaments.[{{cite book | last = Jenkins | first = Rhys | title = Links in the History of Engineering and Technology from Tudor Times | publisher = Ayer Publishing | year = 1936| page = 66 | isbn = 978-0-8369-2167-0}}]
==Mechanical devices==
As an aid to scientific investigation, various tools, measuring aids and calculating devices were developed in this period.
===Calculating devices===
[[File:Napier's Bones.JPG|thumb|upright|right|An ivory set of [[Napier's Bones]], an early calculating device invented by [[John Napier]]]]
[[John Napier]] introduced [[logarithm]]s as a powerful mathematical tool. With the help of [[Henry Briggs (mathematician)|Henry Briggs]] their logarithmic tables embodied a computational advance that made calculations by hand much quicker.[{{cite DNB|wstitle=Napier, John}}] His [[Napier's bones]] used a set of numbered rods as a multiplication tool using the system of [[lattice multiplication]]. The way was opened to later scientific advances, particularly in astronomy and [[dynamics (mechanics)|dynamics]].
At [[Oxford University]], [[Edmund Gunter]] built the first [[analog device]] to aid computation. The 'Gunter's scale' was a large plane scale, engraved with various scales, or lines. Natural lines, such as the line of chords, the line of [[Trigonometric functions|sines and tangents]] are placed on one side of the scale and the corresponding artificial or logarithmic ones were on the other side. This calculating aid was a predecessor of the [[Slide rule#History|slide rule]]. It was [[William Oughtred]] who first used two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division and thus is credited as the inventor of the slide rule in 1622.
[[Blaise Pascal]] invented the [[Mechanical calculator#The 17th century|mechanical calculator]] in 1642.[{{cite book|title=Histoire des instruments et machines à calculer, trois siècles de mécanique pensante 1642–1942 |first=Jean|last=Marguin|year=1994|publisher=Hermann|isbn=978-2-7056-6166-3|page=48}} citing {{cite book|ref=Taton|title=Le calcul mécanique|first=René|last=Taton|year=1963|publisher=Presses universitaires de France|location=Paris}}] The introduction of his [[Pascal's calculator|Pascaline]] in 1645 launched the development of mechanical calculators first in Europe and then all over the world.[{{cite journal|author=Schum, David A.|journal=Michigan Law Review|volume=77|issue=3|year=1979|title=A Review of a Case against Blaise Pascal and His Heirs|pages=446–83|jstor=1288133|doi=10.2307/1288133|url=https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3673&context=mlr|access-date=3 December 2019|archive-date=5 March 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200305124054/https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3673&context=mlr|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}][[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Pascal.html Pascal biography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081219055935/http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Pascal.html |date=19 December 2008 }}. Groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved on 26 September 2011.] [[Gottfried Leibniz]], building on Pascal's work, became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators; he was the first to describe a [[pinwheel calculator]] in 1685,[{{cite book |last=Smith |first=David Eugene |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rOQHAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA173 |title=A Source Book in Mathematics |publisher=McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. |year=1929 |location=New York and London |pages=173–181 |url-access=registration}}] and he invented the [[Leibniz wheel]], used in the [[arithmometer]], the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the [[binary number]] system, the foundation of virtually all modern computer architectures.[
{{cite journal|author=McEvoy, John G. |title=A "Revolutionary" Philosophy of Science: Feyerabend and the Degeneration of Critical Rationalism into Sceptical Fallibilism |journal=Philosophy of Science|volume= 42|issue= 1 |pages=49–66 |date=March 1975|jstor=187297 |doi=10.1086/288620|s2cid=143046530 }}]
[[John Hadley]] was the inventor of the [[octant (instrument)|octant]], the precursor to the [[sextant]] (invented by [[John Bird (astronomer)|John Bird]]), which greatly improved the science of [[navigation]].
===Industrial machines===
[[File:Savery-engine.jpg|upright|thumb|The 1698 ''[[Thomas Savery|Savery Engine]]'' was the first successful [[steam engine]].]]
[[Denis Papin]] was best known for his pioneering invention of the [[steam digester]], the forerunner of the [[steam engine]].[{{Cite ODNB|id=21249|title=Papin, Denis}}][{{Cite book|last=DK|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4M01NTdvu3kC&q=%22Steam+digester%22+%22papin%22+%22steam+engine%22&pg=PA106|title=Engineers: From the Great Pyramids to the Pioneers of Space Travel|date=16 April 2012|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-1-4654-0682-8|pages=106|language=en|access-date=18 November 2020|archive-date=2 January 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240102074010/https://books.google.com/books?id=4M01NTdvu3kC&q=%22Steam+digester%22+%22papin%22+%22steam+engine%22&pg=PA106#v=snippet&q=%22Steam%20digester%22%20%22papin%22%20%22steam%20engine%22&f=false|url-status=live}}] The first working steam engine was patented in 1698 by the English inventor [[Thomas Savery]], as a "...new invention for raising of water and occasioning motion to all sorts of mill work by the impellent force of fire, which will be of great use and advantage for drayning mines, serveing townes with water, and for the working of all sorts of mills where they have not the benefitt of water nor constant windes."[{{cite book | last = Jenkins | first = Rhys | title = Links in the History of Engineering and Technology from Tudor Times | publisher = Ayer Publishing | year = 1936 | pages = 66 | isbn = 978-0-8369-2167-0}}] The invention was demonstrated to the Royal Society on 14 June 1699, and the machine was described by Savery in his book ''The Miner's Friend; or, An Engine to Raise Water by Fire'' (1702),[{{cite book | last = Savery | first = Thomas | author-link = Thomas Savery | title = The Miner's Friend: Or, an Engine to Raise Water by Fire | publisher = S. Crouch | year = 1827 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=v_-yJ5c5a98C | access-date = 7 November 2015 | archive-date = 2 January 2024 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20240102074106/https://books.google.com/books?id=v_-yJ5c5a98C | url-status = live }}] in which he claimed that it could pump water out of mines. [[Thomas Newcomen]] perfected the practical steam engine for pumping water, the [[Newcomen atmospheric engine|Newcomen steam engine]]. Consequently, Newcomen can be regarded as a forefather of the Industrial Revolution.[[https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/newcomen_thomas.shtml Thomas Newcomen (1663–1729)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191224060234/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/newcomen_thomas.shtml |date=24 December 2019 }}, BBC – History]
[[Abraham Darby I]] was the first, and most famous, of three generations of the Darby family who played an important role in the Industrial Revolution. He developed a method of producing high-grade iron in a [[blast furnace]] fueled by [[Coke (fuel)|coke]] rather than [[charcoal]]. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the Industrial Revolution.
===Telescopes===
[[Refracting telescope]]s first appeared in the Netherlands in 1608, apparently the product of spectacle makers experimenting with lenses. The inventor is unknown, but [[Hans Lipperhey]] applied for the first patent, followed by [[Jacob Metius]] of [[Alkmaar]].[{{Cite web |url=http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/instruments/telescope.html |title=galileo.rice.edu ''The Galileo Project > Science > The Telescope'' by Al Van Helden "The Hague discussed the patent applications first of Hans Lipperhey of Middelburg, and then of Jacob Metius of Alkmaar... another citizen of Middelburg, Sacharias Janssen had a telescope at about the same time but was at the Frankfurt Fair where he tried to sell it" |access-date=20 July 2014 |archive-date=23 June 2004 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040623033108/http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/instruments/telescope.html |url-status=live }}] Galileo was one of the first scientists to use this tool for his astronomical observations in 1609.[{{cite book|author=Loker, Aleck|title=Profiles in Colonial History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lq1rd1ecFCYC&pg=PA15|date=2008|publisher=Aleck Loker|isbn=978-1-928874-16-4|pages=15–|access-date=7 November 2015|archive-date=2 January 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240102074055/https://books.google.com/books?id=Lq1rd1ecFCYC&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}] The [[reflecting telescope]] was described by [[James Gregory (mathematician)|James Gregory]] in his book ''Optica Promota'' (1663). He argued that a [[parabolic reflector|parabolic mirror]] would eliminate the [[spherical aberration]] inherent in then-known [[reflecting telescope]] designs having spherical mirrors.[{{cite web |last=Dhillon |first=Vik |title=reflectors |url=https://vikdhillon.staff.shef.ac.uk/teaching/phy217/telescopes/phy217_tel_reflectors.html |access-date=30 January 2026}}] It was not until ten years after Gregory's publication, aided by the interest of experimental scientist [[Robert Hooke]], that a working [[Gregorian telescope]] was built.[{{cite web |title=Gregorian Telescope |url=https://www.hsm.ox.ac.uk/gregorian-telescope |first=Lynn |last=Atkin |publisher=History of Science Museum, University of Oxford |access-date=5 January 2023}}]
In 1666, Newton argued that the faults of the refracting telescope were fundamental because the lens refracted light of different colors differently. He concluded that light could not be refracted through a lens without causing [[chromatic aberration]]s.[Newton, Isaac. ''Optics'', bk. i. pt. ii. prop. 3] From these experiments Newton concluded that no improvement could be made in the refracting telescope.[''Treatise on Optics'', p. 112] However, he was able to demonstrate that the angle of reflection remained the same for all colors, so he decided to build a [[Newton's reflector|reflecting telescope]].[{{cite book|author=White, Michael |title=Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l2C3NV38tM0C&pg=PA170|year=1999|publisher=Perseus Books|isbn=978-0-7382-0143-6|page=170}}] It was completed in 1668 and is the earliest known functional reflecting telescope.[Hall, Alfred Rupert. [http://www.mymathdone.com/isaac-newton-adventurer-in-thought/ ''Isaac Newton: adventurer in thought''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181229171649/https://www.mymathdone.com/isaac-newton-adventurer-in-thought/ |date=29 December 2018 }}. p. 67] 50 years later, Hadley developed ways to make precision aspheric and [[Parabolic reflector|parabolic]] [[Objective (optics)|objective]] mirrors for reflecting telescopes, building the first parabolic Newtonian telescope and a Gregorian telescope with accurately shaped mirrors.[{{cite book|author=King, Henry C. |title=The History of the Telescope |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KAWwzHlDVksC&pg=PA77 |date= 2003 |publisher=Courier Dover Publications |isbn=978-0-486-43265-6 |pages=77–}}][[http://www.telescope-optics.net/two-mirror.htm telescopeѲptics.net – 8.2. Two-mirror telescopes] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225070614/https://www.telescope-optics.net/two-mirror.htm |date=25 February 2021 }}. Telescope-optics.net. Retrieved on 26 September 2011.] These were successfully demonstrated to the Royal Society.[{{cite web |url=http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations//groundup/lesson/scopes/hadley/index.php |title=Hadley's Reflector |publisher=amazing-space.stsci.edu |access-date=1 August 2013 |archive-date=26 May 2012 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120526002533/http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations//groundup/lesson/scopes/hadley/index.php |url-status=dead }}]
===Other devices===
[[File:Boyle air pump.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Air pump]] built by [[Robert Boyle]]. Many new instruments were devised in this period, which greatly aided in the expansion of scientific knowledge.]]
The invention of the [[vacuum pump]] paved the way for the experiments of [[Robert Boyle]] and Robert Hooke into the nature of [[vacuum]] and [[atmospheric pressure]]. The first such device was made by [[Otto von Guericke]] in 1654. It consisted of a piston and an [[Air gun#History|air gun cylinder]] with flaps that could suck the air from any vessel that it was connected to. In 1657, he pumped the air out of two conjoined hemispheres and demonstrated that a team of sixteen horses were incapable of pulling it apart.[{{cite book | first=John | last=Lienhard | title=Rain Steam & Speed | chapter=Gases and Force | year=2005 | publisher=[[KUHF]] FM Radio | chapter-url=http://www.kuhf.org/cons/cdprojects/steam/track7.html | access-date=20 March 2015 | archive-date=20 September 2015 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150920010118/http://www.kuhf.org/cons/cdprojects/steam/track7.html | url-status=dead }}] The air pump construction was greatly improved by Hooke in 1658.[{{cite journal |journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh |title=On the Early History of the Air-pump in England |author=Wilson, George |date=15 January 1849 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QNosAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA207}}]
[[Evangelista Torricelli]] invented the mercury [[barometer]] in 1643. The motivation for the invention was to improve on the suction pumps that were used to raise water out of the mines. Torricelli constructed a sealed tube filled with mercury, set vertically into a basin of the same substance. The column of mercury fell downwards, leaving a Torricellian vacuum above.[{{cite book|last1=Timbs|first1=John|title=Wonderful Inventions: From the Mariner's Compass to the Electric Telegraph Cable|date=1868|publisher=George Routledge and Sons|location=London|isbn=978-1-172-82780-0|page=41|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vGMJAAAAIAAJ|access-date=2 June 2014}}]
=== Materials, construction, and aesthetics ===
Surviving instruments from this period[{{Cite web|url=https://chsi.harvard.edu/|title=The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments|website=chsi.harvard.edu|language=en|access-date=30 May 2017|archive-date=7 June 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170607113032/https://chsi.harvard.edu/|url-status=live}}][{{Cite web|url=http://collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/|title=Search Home|website=collections.peabody.yale.edu|language=en|access-date=30 May 2017|archive-date=30 May 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170530182003/http://collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/|url-status=live}}][{{Cite web|url=https://utsic.escalator.utoronto.ca/home/|title=University of Toronto Scientific Instruments Collection|website=utsic.escalator.utoronto.ca|language=en-US|access-date=30 May 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170526141806/http://utsic.escalator.utoronto.ca/home/|archive-date=26 May 2017|url-status=dead}}][{{Cite news|url=http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/collections/|title=Adler Planetarium Collections Department|work=Adler Planetarium|access-date=30 May 2017|language=en-US|archive-date=10 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170710100852/http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/collections/|url-status=live}}] tend to be made of durable metals such as brass, gold, or steel, although examples such as telescopes[{{Cite web|url=http://www.dioptrice.com/|title=Dioptrice : pre-1775 refracting telescopes|website=www.dioptrice.com|language=en|access-date=30 May 2017|archive-date=17 May 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517235301/http://dioptrice.com/|url-status=live}}] made of wood, pasteboard, or with leather components exist.[{{Cite web|url=http://www.dioptrice.com/telescopes/466?search=wooden|title=Dioptrice : Accession #: M-428a|website=www.dioptrice.com|language=en|access-date=30 May 2017|archive-date=6 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170806091743/http://www.dioptrice.com/telescopes/466?search=wooden|url-status=dead}}] Those instruments that exist in collections today tend to be robust examples, made by skilled craftspeople for and at the expense of wealthy patrons.[{{Cite book|last=Kemp|first=Martin|title=Interpretation and Cultural History |chapter='Intellectual Ornaments': Style, Function and society in Some Instruments of Art |year=1991|publisher=St. Martin's Press|pages=135–52|doi=10.1007/978-1-349-21272-9_6|isbn=978-1-349-21274-3}}] These may have been commissioned as displays of wealth. In addition, the instruments preserved in collections may not have received heavy use in scientific work; instruments that had visibly received heavy use were typically destroyed, deemed unfit for display, or excluded from collections altogether.[{{Cite journal|last=Schaffer|first=Simon|title=Easily Cracked: Scientific Instruments in States of Disrepair|journal=Isis|volume=102|issue=4|pages=706–17|doi=10.1086/663608|pmid=22448545|bibcode=2011Isis..102..706S|year=2011|s2cid=24626572}}] It is also postulated that the scientific instruments preserved in many collections were chosen because they were more appealing to collectors, by virtue of being more ornate, more portable, or made with higher-grade materials.[{{Cite web|url=http://www.refa.org.ar/contenido-autores-revista.php?idAutor=75.|title=REFA, Revista Electrónica de Fuentes y Archivos del Centro de Estudios Históricos Prof. Carlos S.A. Segreti, publicacion periodica digital.|last=Anderson|first=Katharine|website=www.refa.org.ar|language=es|access-date=30 May 2017|archive-date=6 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106173943/http://www.refa.org.ar/contenido-autores-revista.php?idAutor=75.|url-status=dead}}]
Intact air pumps are particularly rare.[{{Cite journal|last=Bennett|first=Jim|date=1 December 2011|title=Early Modern Mathematical Instruments|journal=Isis|volume=102|issue=4|pages=697–705|doi=10.1086/663607|pmid=22448544|s2cid=22184409|issn=0021-1753}}] The pump at right included a glass sphere to permit demonstrations inside the vacuum chamber, a common use. The base was wooden, and the cylindrical pump was brass.[{{Cite web|url=http://www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions/specialcollections/to-scrutinize-nature/boyle-and-hooke/boyles-air-pump|title=King's Collections : Online Exhibitions : Boyle's air-pump|website=www.kingscollections.org|language=en|access-date=31 May 2017|archive-date=20 May 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170520111812/http://www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions/specialcollections/to-scrutinize-nature/boyle-and-hooke/boyles-air-pump|url-status=live}}] Other vacuum chambers that survived were made of brass hemispheres.[{{Cite web|url=http://waywiser.rc.fas.harvard.edu/view/objects/asitem/search@/4/displayDate-asc?t:state:flow=efd7f60c-909c-47d9-8399-d61d27444422|title=Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet Air Pump|website=waywiser.rc.fas.harvard.edu|access-date=31 May 2017}}{{dead link|date=August 2017|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}]
Instrument makers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries were commissioned by organizations seeking help with navigation, surveying, warfare, and astronomical observation.[{{cite book |last1=Shapin |first1=Steven |title=The Scientific Revolution |date=5 November 2018 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-39834-1 |pages=1–4, 67-68 |edition=Second}}][[[#Grant|Grant]]][Hannam, James (31 October 2012) [http://biologos.org/blog/medieval-christianity-and-the-rise-of-modern-science-part-2 Medieval Christianity and the Rise of Modern Science, Part 2] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140307003619/http://biologos.org/blog/medieval-christianity-and-the-rise-of-modern-science-part-2 |date=7 March 2014 }}. biologos.org][Hassan, Ahmad Y. and Hill, Donald Routledge (1986), ''Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History'', p. 282, [[Cambridge University Press]].][[[Abdus Salam|Salam, Abdus]], Dalafi, H.R. and Hassan, Mohamed (1994). ''Renaissance of Sciences in Islamic Countries'', p. 162. [[World Scientific]], {{ISBN|9971-5-0713-7}}.][Briffault, Robert (1919). [https://archive.org/details/makingofhumanity00brifrich ''The Making of Humanity'']. London, G. Allen & Unwin ltd. p. 188.][Huff, Toby E. (2003) ''The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West'', 2nd. ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-52994-8}}. pp. 54–55.] Champions of the [[continuity thesis]], such as Pierre Duhem, John Hermann Randall, Alistair Crombie and William A. Wallace, argue that the scientific "revolution" is a myth.
Arun Bala suggests the changes involved in the Scientific Revolution were shaped by non-Western influences - [[Ibn al-Haytham|Arabic optics]], [[Hindu–Arabic numeral system|Indian mathematics]] and [[History of science and technology in China|Chinese mechanical technologies]] - which Europeans synthesized into a new framework.[{{cite book|title=The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science|last=Bala|first=Arun|date=13 November 2006 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DZyIDAAAQBAJ|page=176|publisher=Springer |isbn=978-0-230-60121-5 }}]
Some scholars have suggested that there was no Scientific Revolution but only an extension of the Renaissance. This view holds that 'modern' breakthroughs were actually just rediscoveries of ancient [[Greek philosophy]] and [[Greek mathematics]] from figures like [[Archimedes]] and [[Pythagoreanism|Pythagoras]]. According to this view, no new knowledge was created in the 17th century; everything that seemed new was only a recovery of classical theories that had been eclipsed by Aristotelian orthodoxy.[{{cite journal|jstor=228080|title=Copernicus' Relation to Aristarchus and Pythagoras|author=Africa, Thomas W. |journal=Isis|volume=52|issue=3 |year=1961|pages=403–09|doi=10.1086/349478|s2cid=144088134}}][A survey of the debate over the significance of these antecedents is in Lindberg, D.C. (1992) ''The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450''. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr. {{ISBN|0-226-48231-6}}. pp. 355–68.]
Finally, recent scholarship challenges the period’s male-dominated history[{{Cite book|title=The Structure of Scientific Revolutions|last=Kuhn|first=Thomas|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1962|isbn=978-0-226-45811-3}}] by highlighting the marginalization of women from education, the unreliability of historical records, and the significance of scientific advances made in informal settings.[{{Cite journal|last=Silva|first=Vanessa|date=2014|title=Beyond the Academy – Histories of Gender and Knowledge|journal=Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology|pages=166–67}}]
== See also ==
{{Portal|History of science|Science|World}}
* {{anl|History of science}}
* {{anl|History of astronomy}}
* {{anl|History of gravitational theory}}
* {{anl|Chemical revolution}}
* {{anl|History of science and technology in China}}
* {{anl|History of science and technology in India}}
* {{anl|Islamic Golden Age#Natural sciences|Science during the Islamic Golden Age}}
* {{anl|Science in the Renaissance|Science during the Renaissance}}
* {{anl|Science in the Enlightenment|Science during the Enlightenment}}
* {{anl|Industrial Revolution}}
* {{anl|Science and the Catholic Church}}
* ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'' (book)
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==Further reading==
{{Refbegin}}
* Burns, William E. (2016). ''The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective'' Oxford University Press. xv + 198 pp.
* Cohen, H. Floris (2015). ''The Rise of Modern Science Explained: A Comparative History''. Cambridge University Press. vi + 296 pp.
* {{cite book |title=The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts |publisher=Cambridge Univ. Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-521-56762-6 |ref=Grant |author=Grant, E.}}
* {{cite book |title=The Genesis of Science |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-59698-155-3 |ref=Hannam |author=Hannam, James |publisher=Regnery}}
* Henry, John (2008). ''The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science''. 176 pp.
* Knight, David (2014). ''Voyaging in Strange Seas: The Great Revolution in Science''. Yale University Press. viii + 329 pp.
* Lindberg, D. C. (1992). ''The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450''. Univ. of Chicago Press.
* {{cite book |last1=Lyons |first1=Martyn |title=Books: A Living History |location=Los Angeles |publisher=The J. Paul Getty Museum |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-60606-083-4}}
* {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z7M8AAAAIAAJ |title=Early Physics and Astronomy: A Historical Introduction |publisher=Cambridge Univ. Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-521-40899-8 |ref=Pedersen |author=Pedersen, Olaf}}
* {{cite book |title=Galileo: Decisive Innovator |last=Sharratt |first=Michael |date=1994 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-56671-1 |location=Cambridge |ref=Sharratt}}
* {{cite book |title=The Scientific Revolution |last=Shapin |first=Steven |date=1996 |publisher=Chicago University Press |isbn=978-0-226-75020-0 |location=Chicago |ref=Shapin |url=https://archive.org/details/scientificrevolu00shap_0}}
* Weinberg, Steven (2015). ''To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science''. xiv + 417 pp.
* Westfall, Richard S. (1983). ''Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton''.
* {{cite book |author=Westfall, Richard S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ED76ljJ6CD0C |title=The Construction of Modern Science |publisher=John Wiley and Sons |year=1971 |isbn=978-0-521-29295-5 |ref=Westfall |place=New York}}
* Wootton, David. ''The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution'' (Penguin, 2015). xiv + 769 pp. {{ISBN|0-06-175952-X}}.
==External links==
* {{Commons category-inline|Scientific revolution}}
* {{Wikiquote-inline}}
{{Refend}}
{{Nicolaus Copernicus}}
{{Galileo Galilei}}
{{Johannes Kepler}}
{{Francis Bacon}}
{{Isaac Newton}}
{{History of science}}
{{Western culture}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Innovation]]
[[Category:Scientific Revolution| ]]