Scientific revolution definition and cause and features
Answers
The Scientific Revolution
Political revolutions are easy to identify. They often accompany recognizable, life-altering events. America's, for example, featured the iconic Boston Tea Party and Washington's triumphant victory at Yorktown.
Social, cultural and intellectual revolutions are harder to ascertain. They are often slower; the changes they precipitate are less momentous, though their impact on human society may be far greater than any political upheaval. As such, the periodization and components of intellectual revolutions are often debated and argued.
Such is the case with the Scientific Revolution in Western Europe. Though historians often disagree on when the revolution started, when it ended and which thinkers qualify as members, nearly all agree that its impact on the collective worldview and mindset of Europeans was unlike anything Europe had ever seen.
Definition
The Scientific Revolution is a complicated and disjointed movement upon whose periods and actors historians do not always agree. Some scientists of the period built on the works of those who came before them. Others made their own contribution strictly from their own observations and at times contradicted the evidence and conclusions of their contemporaries. With that caveat made, many historians claim that it began with Copernicus and ended with Isaac Newton 150 years later. But we'll get to them later.
During this century and a half of scientific innovation, numerous achievements were made in science and astronomy. The modern scientific method of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, analysis and conclusion was sculpted and refined in this era, and important discoveries were made concerning gravity, the skeletal and muscular systems of the human body and the rotations of the planets.
Background and Debate
The traditional view of the millennium preceding the Scientific Revolution was that the era was intellectually dormant after the fall of the Roman Empire. This is perhaps best exemplified by the name which early historians gave the period from roughly 500 to 1500 A.D.: the Dark Ages.
In recent years, this theory has been refuted by those who study the period. They 'enlightened' the Dark Ages - if you will - and highlighted the important scientific and mathematical work of European thinkers, such as Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste and Nicole Oresme. Furthermore, historians of science importantly note that scientific and mathematical achievements continued to be made in the Muslim world during the Middle Ages, including in territory that would become Spain.
Regardless of this debate, the burst of scientific and intellectual activity that took place during the Scientific Revolution is important because it laid the foundations for many of the modern scientific disciplines, and in some cases drastically altered our view of ourselves, the world and humanity's place in the universe.
Thinkers: Copernicus
As mentioned earlier, the man who arguably began this revolution was the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Born in Thorn in 1473, Copernicus studied in Krakow, Bologna, Padua and Rome before returning to Warmia, Poland to teach and study for the remainder of his life.
Copernicus worked on a heliocentric model - where the sun, and not the Earth, was the center of the solar system - for nearly his entire life. Unlike previous astronomers and mathematicians who had used heliocentric models simply to make their mathematical calculations of the planet's orbits more accurate, Copernicus firmly believed the sun to be at the center of the solar system. Likely due to fears of potential backlash from church authorities, Copernicus waited to publish his theories and calculations until shortly before his death.