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The Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution

How Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton dismantled the ancient Aristotelian cosmos over a century and a half and, in its place, founded the mathematical, experimental method that still defines modern science.

Wikimedia Commons · Godfrey Kneller · Public domain

60-Second Review

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  1. Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler: A New Astronomy. Copernicus proposed a sun-centered cosmos; Brahe measured the sky with unmatched precision; Kepler found its true laws.
  2. Galileo: The Telescope and Its Consequences. Galileo's telescope revealed a changeable heaven, his kinematics founded modern physics, and both cost him his freedom.
  3. New Methods: Bacon, Descartes, and Harvey. Bacon and Descartes proposed rival new methods for knowledge, while Harvey used careful experiment to overturn Galenic medicine.
  4. Boyle, Hooke, and the Birth of Microscopy and Chemistry. Boyle refounded chemistry on corpuscular principles while Hooke and Leeuwenhoek opened up an invisible microscopic world.
  5. Newton and the Mathematical Laws of Nature. Newton's Principia and Opticks unified celestial and terrestrial physics under a small set of exact mathematical laws.
  6. Institutions, Instruments, and a New Cosmology. New academies, precision instruments, and rival theories of light replaced the closed Aristotelian cosmos with a mechanical universe.
  7. The Social and Intellectual World of Early Modern Science. Print, correspondence networks, religion, and alchemy shaped how the new science circulated and whom it excluded.
  8. Legacy: From Bruno to the Enlightenment. Bruno's infinite universe, the Copernican revolution's long reach, and later debate over the very term 'Scientific Revolution' define its legacy.

This is the starting point of The Scientific Revolution: you don't need any prior knowledge of this subject to begin.

Key points

Visual module map

1Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler: A New Astronomy
2New Methods: Bacon, Descartes, and Harvey
3Newton and the Mathematical Laws of Nature
4Institutions, Instruments, and a New Cosmology
5Legacy: From Bruno to the Enlightenment

Alternative visual view: a simplified sequence of some of the module's key points, in their order within the syllabus.

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Chronological Order

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Further reading

Bibliography and cited sources used to create this module.

  • Shapin, S. (1996). The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Kuhn, T. S. (1957). The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Cohen, I. B. (1985). Revolution in Science. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • Koyré, A. (1957). From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Westfall, R. S. (1980). Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.