The Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution of the 1500s and 1600s changed how Europeans sought knowledge, shifting trust from ancient authorities toward observation, experiment, and mathematics. In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus argued that Earth orbits the Sun, and Andreas Vesalius published detailed human anatomy based on dissection. Johannes Kepler showed that planets move in ellipses, and Galileo Galilei used a telescope to gather evidence for a Sun-centered system, leading the Catholic Church to put him on trial in 1633. Francis Bacon promoted drawing conclusions from careful observation, and Rene Descartes emphasized reason and doubt, ideas that shaped the scientific method. In 1687 Isaac Newton's laws of motion and universal gravitation explained the motion of both falling objects and planets with the same mathematics. The movement built on earlier Greek and Islamic science, spread through new scientific societies such as England's Royal Society, and inspired the Enlightenment belief that reason could improve government and society, eventually shaping scientific thinking worldwide.

This explanation is AI-generated and can occasionally be wrong. 🚩 Report