Scientific Revolution
Copernican era's transformation
The Scientific Revolution is the transformation in European thought during the 16th and 17th centuries that established modern science.
Figures like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton replaced ancient authorities with observation, experimentation, and mathematical reasoning.
The period marks the emergence of the scientific method as we understand it. (Lowercase scientific revolution describes any major paradigm shift.)
- CopernicusRenaissance astronomer, heliocentrism
- NewtonFamous scientific surname
- laws of motionPrinciples governing physical dynamics
- mathematical principlesFoundational rules of quantitative reasoning
- clockwork universeReality as divine machinery
falling apple · Kepler · Galileo · Royal Society · heliocentrism · Vesalius · Francis Bacon · Galileo Galilei · telescope lens · Johannes Kepler · Huygens · Tycho Brahe · empiricism · Descartes · Leibniz · mechanistic · Enlightenment · Age of Reason
- historyancient civilizations, past events, historian, epochs, era
- European HistoryRoman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Napoleonic Wars, Middle Ages
- 1700sMozart, Voltaire, colonial period, William III, Declaration of Independence
- historical erasStone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Middle Ages, Renaissance
- Early ModernRenaissance, 1500s, 1600s, Reformation, sixteenth century
- Cultural MovementsRenaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Harlem Renaissance, Enlightenment
Scientific Revolutiondogmatism
Unyielding adherence to doctrine
superstition · occultism · magical thinking · Aristotelianism · religious authority
Scientific RevolutionDark Ages
Post-Roman European decline
Middle Ages · medieval period · Medieval period · geocentrism · Counter-Reformation