Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution was a period of major changes in European natural philosophy and scientific practice, roughly from the sixteenth through seventeenth centuries. It reshaped accounts of nature through new observations, instruments, mathematics, and methods.

Scientific method: A systematic approach to investigating questions through observation, testing, and reasoned conclusions. New standards for inquiry helped distinguish testable explanations from inherited authority.
Renaissance: A European cultural movement from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries marked by renewed engagement with classical learning. Humanist scholarship revived texts and debates that natural philosophers reexamined.
Nicolaus Copernicus: A Polish astronomer who proposed a heliocentric arrangement of the planets in his 1543 book. His Sun-centered model challenged the Earth-centered cosmology that had dominated European astronomy.
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium: Nicolaus Copernicus’s 1543 work presenting a mathematical model with the Sun near the center of planetary motion. Its publication placed heliocentrism into sustained mathematical and scholarly debate.
Royal Society: An English learned society founded in the seventeenth century to promote the study of nature. It institutionalized collaborative observation, experiments, and the reporting of results.
Experimental method: A way of testing explanations by deliberately manipulating conditions and observing outcomes. Controlled experiments made claims about nature answerable to repeatable tests.
Printing press: A machine for producing books and documents efficiently using movable type. Printed works spread diagrams, arguments, and observations to wider scholarly audiences.
Galileo Galilei: An Italian astronomer and natural philosopher who advanced telescopic astronomy and mathematical studies of motion. His observations and advocacy made the Copernican system a public controversy.
Sidereus Nuncius: Galileo Galilei’s 1610 pamphlet reporting telescopic observations of the Moon, stars, and Jupiter’s satellites. Its observations supplied visible evidence against aspects of traditional cosmology.
French Academy of Sciences: A state-sponsored scientific institution established in France in 1666. Its organized research showed how governments could support sustained scientific work.

Linked from 87 pages