An outline, era by era

Scientific Revolution (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton)

Early Modern Era · ~1500 – ~1800

The Scientific Revolution was a period, roughly from the 1540s to the late 1680s, in which European thinkers changed how people studied nature. It is usually dated from 1543, when Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the Earth moves around the Sun and Andreas Vesalius published his book on human anatomy. Galileo Galilei then turned the telescope on the sky and argued for the new astronomy, and Isaac Newton's Principia of 1687 joined earthly and heavenly motion under a single set of laws.

The change was about method as much as conclusions. Observation, measurement, experiment and mathematics gradually replaced reliance on ancient authorities such as Aristotle and Ptolemy. Printing, universities, courts and new societies such as the Royal Society of London helped ideas spread. Historians still debate whether it was one revolution or a long series of changes, but it shaped modern science and prepared the ground for the Enlightenment.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Copernicus publishes On the Revolutions

    Event

    What happened

    Nicolaus Copernicus, a canon in Frombork in Poland, works for decades on a Sun-centred model of the planets. A short outline, the Commentariolus, circulates in manuscript before 1514. His full book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, is printed at Nuremberg in 1543, the year he dies.

    The rest is history

    The book put the Sun near the centre and made the Earth a planet, but it still used circular orbits and many small adjustments, so it was not simpler or more accurate than Ptolemy's system. Its mathematics was used by astronomers, who at first often treated it as a calculating tool. Over the next century Kepler, Galileo and others turned it into a physical claim about the world. The Catholic Church placed the book on its Index of prohibited books in 1616 until corrected, and it was removed from the Index in the 19th century.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryCopernicus, Nicolaus. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Nuremberg: Johannes Petreius, 1543.
    2. BookKuhn, Thomas S. The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957.
    3. BookGingerich, Owen. The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. New York: Walker, 2004.

  2. Vesalius and the new anatomy

    Event

    What happened

    In 1543 Andreas Vesalius, a professor at Padua, publishes De humani corporis fabrica at Basel, with detailed woodcut illustrations. He bases it on his own dissections of human bodies. He points out many errors in the anatomy of Galen, which had been taught for some 1,400 years.

    The rest is history

    Vesalius showed that Galen had relied largely on animal dissection and that careful looking could correct an ancient authority. His book set a standard for illustrated, observation-based science and for anatomical teaching. Later anatomists, including William Harvey, who published his account of the circulation of the blood in 1628, built on this habit of direct inquiry. The Fabrica is often paired with Copernicus's book as a marker of the start of the Scientific Revolution.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryVesalius, Andreas. De humani corporis fabrica libri septem. Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1543.
    2. BookNutton, Vivian. Ancient Medicine. London: Routledge, 2004.

  3. Tycho Brahe's observations and Kepler's laws

    Event

    What happened

    In 1572 Tycho Brahe observes a new star in Cassiopeia and shows it lies far beyond the Moon. He then spends years at his observatory on the island of Hven making unusually precise naked-eye measurements of the planets. After his death in 1601 Johannes Kepler uses the data on Mars and publishes the first two laws of planetary motion in Astronomia nova in 1609.

    The rest is history

    Kepler found that planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus, ending the ancient rule of perfect circles. His third law followed in 1619. The new star and later comets also undermined the Aristotelian idea that the heavens never change. Kepler's laws gave Newton the motions that his theory of gravity had to explain.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryKepler, Johannes. Astronomia nova. Heidelberg: Voegelin, 1609.
    2. BookGingerich, Owen. The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler. New York: American Institute of Physics, 1993.

  4. Galileo's telescope and the Sidereus Nuncius

    Event

    What happened

    In 1609 Galileo builds an improved telescope and points it at the sky. In March 1610 he publishes Sidereus Nuncius, reporting mountains on the Moon, many unseen stars, and four moons circling Jupiter. Later in 1610 he also observes the phases of Venus.

    The rest is history

    The moons of Jupiter showed that not everything orbits the Earth, and the phases of Venus fit the Copernican system and not Ptolemy's simple one. Galileo's public support for Copernicus led to a warning from the Church in 1616. His Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems of 1632 led to his trial in 1633, and he spent his remaining years under house arrest near Florence. His last book, the Two New Sciences, was printed in Leiden in 1638.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryGalilei, Galileo. Sidereus Nuncius. Venice: Thomas Baglioni, 1610.
    2. BookDrake, Stillman. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
    3. BookHeilbron, J. L. Galileo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

  5. Bacon, Descartes and the new methods

    Event

    What happened

    In 1620 Francis Bacon publishes the Novum Organum, calling for knowledge built on organised observation and experiment. In 1637 René Descartes publishes the Discourse on Method, which argues for reasoning from clear first principles and for explaining nature by mathematics and mechanism.

    The rest is history

    The two approaches, one stressing experiment and the other mathematical reasoning, became the main strands of early modern natural philosophy. Bacon's ideas helped inspire the founders of the Royal Society, and Descartes's mechanical philosophy and analytic geometry shaped Newton and Leibniz. Neither man's method was used in pure form by working scientists, who mixed them. Together they gave the movement a shared vocabulary about how to find truth.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryBacon, Francis. Novum Organum. London: John Bill, 1620.
    2. PrimaryDescartes, René. Discours de la méthode. Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637.
    3. BookGaukroger, Stephen. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.

  6. The Royal Society is founded

    Event

    What happened

    In November 1660, after a lecture by Christopher Wren at Gresham College, a group of men in London agrees to form a society for experimental learning. Charles II grants a royal charter in 1662. The Society publishes Philosophical Transactions from 1665, one of the first scientific journals, and its motto is Nullius in verba, roughly 'take nobody's word for it'.

    The rest is history

    The Society made experiments public and witnessed, and reported results in print so others could check them. Similar bodies followed, such as the Académie des sciences in Paris, founded in 1666. Robert Hooke's Micrographia of 1665, published under its auspices, showed what the microscope could reveal. Such institutions gave science a lasting social base beyond individual patrons and universities.

    Sources

    1. BookHunter, Michael. Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989.
    2. BookShapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

  7. Newton's Principia

    Event

    What happened

    In 1684 Edmond Halley visits Isaac Newton at Cambridge to ask what path a planet would follow under an inverse-square force. Newton had worked on the problem, and with Halley's urging and financial help the Royal Society publishes his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. It states three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation.

    The rest is history

    The Principia derived Kepler's laws from gravity and explained tides and the paths of comets with the same mathematics. It showed that one set of laws covered both heavens and earth, completing the argument begun by Copernicus. Newton and Leibniz each developed calculus in these years, and a priority dispute followed. Newtonian physics remained the base of mechanics until the early 20th century.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryNewton, Isaac. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. London: Joseph Streater for the Royal Society, 1687.
    2. BookWestfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
    3. BookCohen, I. Bernard. The Newtonian Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

  8. Instruments and print spread the new learning

    Event

    What happened

    The microscope and telescope appear in the Netherlands in the early 1600s, and Galileo quickly improves the telescope. Robert Boyle's air-pump experiments in the 1650s and 1660s show the properties of air. Printing, in use since the 1450s, lets observations, tables and diagrams be copied exactly and widely.

    The rest is history

    Scholars debate how much instruments and print, as opposed to new ideas, drove the changes. Elizabeth Eisenstein argued that print was an agent of change, a view others have qualified. What is clear is that Europe's networks of letters, journals and printed books let results be compared across countries and checked. This shared record made later advances cumulative.

    Sources

    1. BookEisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
    2. BookShapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

  9. Newton and the falling apple

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Newton sits under an apple tree, and an apple falls and strikes him on the head. In a flash he realises that the force pulling the apple is the force that holds the Moon in its orbit, and he discovers gravity.

    The rest is history

    Newton himself told the story of watching an apple fall, in his old age, to friends including William Stukeley, who recorded it in 1752 in his memoir of Newton's life. Voltaire also repeated a version in print. No early source says the apple hit his head, and the idea was not a single flash. Newton's theory developed over years, with the key mathematical work done in the 1680s. The tree in the garden at Woolsthorpe Manor is a National Trust site today.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryStukeley, William. Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life. Written 1752, manuscript held by the Royal Society, London.
    2. BookWestfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

  10. Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Galileo climbs the Leaning Tower of Pisa and drops two balls of different weight in front of a crowd. Both hit the ground together, proving Aristotle wrong.

    The rest is history

    The story comes from Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo's pupil, who wrote a biography of him decades after the supposed event. There is no record by Galileo of such a public demonstration. His own work on falling bodies used inclined planes, which slowed the motion enough to measure it, and he argued the point in his writings, including the Two New Sciences of 1638. Others, including Simon Stevin in the Low Countries around 1586, reported dropping weights. Astronaut David Scott dropped a hammer and a feather on the Moon in 1971 to show the principle.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryViviani, Vincenzo. Racconto istorico della vita del Signor Galileo Galilei. Written c. 1654, published Florence, 1717.
    2. BookDrake, Stillman. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

  11. Galileo's 'And yet it moves'

    Popular belief

    The legend

    After the Inquisition forces him in 1633 to say that the Earth does not move, Galileo mutters under his breath, 'Eppur si muove', 'And yet it moves'.

    The rest is history

    No contemporary account records the words. They first appear in print in 1757, in a book by Giuseppe Baretti, more than a century after the trial. Galileo did abjure his views on 22 June 1633 and was sentenced to imprisonment, changed to house arrest. The trial documents survive in the Vatican archive. The Church formally acknowledged errors in its handling of the case in 1992, under Pope John Paul II.

    Sources

    1. BookFinocchiaro, Maurice A. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
    2. BookHeilbron, J. L. Galileo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

  12. The Church against science

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The medieval Church kept Europeans ignorant, burned scientists who spoke out, and science only began when it escaped religion's grip. Giordano Bruno is often named as a martyr for the new astronomy.

    The rest is history

    The picture is much too simple. Many leading figures, including Copernicus, Kepler, Boyle and Newton, were devout, and clergy and Jesuit astronomers made real contributions. Galileo's conflict mixed science, theology and personal politics. Bruno was burned in Rome in 1600 chiefly for heresy in theology, such as his views on the Trinity, though he also taught an infinite universe. The 19th-century 'conflict thesis' of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White spread the myth, and historians now widely reject it.

    Sources

    1. BookNumbers, Ronald L., ed. Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
    2. BookBrooke, John Hedley. Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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