Concept
Scientific Revolution
Overview
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. The New Science that emerged departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions, was more mechanistic in its worldview and more integrated with mathematics, and was focused on the acquisition and interpretation of new evidence.
The Scientific Revolution is a convenient boundary between ancient thought and modern science. While the 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 (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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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No one man, no limited society of men, and no one epoch can think of everything at once. Accordingly for the sake of eliciting the various impacts of science upon thought, the topic has been treated historically. In this retrospect I have kept in mind that the ultimate issue of the whole story is the patent dissolution of the comfortable scheme of scientific materialism which has dominated the three centuries under…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Scientific Revolution is; the author is tied to Scientific Revolution in the knowledge graph.
For there is either motion without limit, or continuance within a certain limit, or a translation toward a certain limit. The eternal motion of revolution appears peculiar to the heavenly bodies, rest to this our globe, and the other bodies (heavy and light, as they are termed, that is to say, placed out of their natural position) are borne in a straight line to masses or aggregates which resemble them, the light…
Francis Bacon, Novum organum
States what Scientific Revolution is; the author is tied to Scientific Revolution in the knowledge graph.
19. The Revolutions of the Sun and Moon, the properest Measures of Time for mankind. The diurnal and annual revolutions of the sun, as having been, from the beginning of nature, constant, regular, and universally observable by all mankind, and supposed equal to one another, have been with reason made use of for the measure of duration. But the distinction of days and years having depended on the motion of the sun…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
The author is tied to Scientific Revolution in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Scientific Revolution
- Francis Bacon
- Alexandre Koyré
- René Descartes
- Renaissance
- Thomas Kuhn
- Imre Lakatos
- Ernst Cassirer
- Aldous Huxley
- Hasdai Crescas
Related ideas
- Royal charter
- Francis Bacon
- Florence
- World Scientific
- George Berkeley
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Princeton University Press
- Harmonice Mundi
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Isaac Newton
- Almagest
- Ancient Greek mathematics
- Herbert Butterfield
- Paracelsus
- Abingdon-on-Thames
- Johannes Kepler
- John Locke
- Novum Organum
- Ibn al-Haytham
- William Gilbert (physicist)
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Louvre
- Kepler's laws of planetary motion
- Light
Opposing perspectives
- Potentiality and actuality
- Kepler's laws of planetary motion
- Mathematics
- Newton's law of universal gravitation
- Theory
- Philosophy of science
Place in the tradition
Part of British philosophy.