Sunday, October 4, 2009

Q. What is the Scientific Revolution??

A. After advances that were pushed from the middle ages the scientific revolution was a break from Christian dogma. That's a big weight. The 17th century laid the road for modern science and because ]superstition and fear was lifted, there was a renaissance of reason and knowledge by many scholars. People like Newton, Galileo and Bacon became interested in the world around them beginning to formulate theories about it. The field of abstracted human knowledge was subdivided into separate fields of thought and science was one of them. Large changes in the way people experienced, perceived and viewed the world began to shift.

The revolution didn't just pick up and begin at a certain date, it is said that people like da Vinci and Copernicus prepared people for a new direction by guiding the field with major scientific works and inventions. The fact that these people, da Vinci for example, lived under extreme law and were faced with things like treason or conspiracy make it even more remarkable to view their works. There was no single "Great Idea", instead the scientific revolution is said to be marked by the following:

-The replacement of the Earth by the Sun as the center of the solar system
-The replacement of the Aristotelian theory that matter was continuous and made up of the elements Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Aether by rival ideas that matter was atomistic or corpuscular or that its chemical composition was even more complex
-The replacement of the Aristotelian idea that heavy bodies, by their nature, moved straight down toward their natural places; that light bodies, by their nature, moved straight up toward their natural place; and that ethereal bodies, by their nature, moved in unchanging circular motions with the idea that all bodies are heavy and move according to the same physical laws
-The replacement of the Aristotelian concept
that all motions require the continued action of a cause by the inertial concept that motion is a state that, once started, continues indefinitely without further cause
-The replacement of Galen's treatment of the venous and arterial systems as two separate systems with William Harvey's concept that blood circulated from the arteries to the veins "impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion"
See Wikipedia.

This period of time offers a lot of insight and research possibilities into the scientific world, it is also encouraging when giant leaps are taken in the history of mankind and should be observed carefully.

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