Events
1605
Kepler discovers first law of planetary motion
1609
Galileo develops his first telescope
1618
Thirty Years’ War begins
1625
Grotius publishes On the Law of War and Peace
1633
Pope prosecutes Galileo for promoting sun-centered
theory of the solar system
1648
Thirty Years’ War ends
1687
Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica
Key People
-
Galileo Galilei
Italian astronomer who supported the sun-centered
Copernican model of the solar system, angering the Catholic Church
-
Johannes Kepler
German astronomer who discovered laws of planetary
motion
-
Francis Bacon
English
scholar who developed inductive method of reasoning
-
René Descartes
French
mathematician and philosopher who revolutionized algebra and geometry,
developed deductive method
-
Isaac Newton
English
mathematician and physicist who formulated fundamental laws of gravity
and motion
-
Baruch Spinoza
Dutch-Jewish
thinker who questioned many tenets of Judaism and Christianity
-
John Comenius
Czech
reformer who questioned necessity for war
-
Hugo Grotius
Dutch
scholar who explored concepts in international relations and outlined laws
of “fair” warfare
The Scientific Revolution
The Enlightenment was the product of a vast set
of cultural and intellectual changes in Europe during the 1500s
and 1600s—changes
that in turn produced the social values that permitted the Enlightenment to
sweep through Europe in the late 1600s
and 1700s.
One of the most important of these changes was the Scientific
Revolution of the 1500s
and 1600s.
During the Scientific Revolution, European thinkers tore down the
flawed set of “scientific” beliefs established by the ancients and
maintained by the Church. To replace this flawed knowledge, scientists
sought to discover and convey the true laws governing the phenomena
they observed in nature.
Although it would take centuries to develop, the Scientific
Revolution began near the end of the Middle Ages, when
farmers began to notice, study, and record those environmental conditions
that yielded the best harvests. In time, curiosity about the world
spread, which led to further innovation. Even the Church initially
encouraged such investigations, out of the belief that studying
the world was a form of piety and constituted an admiration of God’s
work.
Galileo and Kepler
The Church’s benevolent stance toward science changed
abruptly when astronomers such as Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
started questioning the ancient teachings of Aristotle and other
accepted “truths.” Galileo’s work in the fields of physics and inertia
was groundbreaking, while Kepler’s laws of planetary motion revealed,
among other things, that the planets moved in elliptical orbits.
Galileo especially encountered significant resistance from the Church
for his support of the theories of Polish astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus (1473–1543),
who had stated that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the
solar system—not vice versa, as Church teaching had always maintained.
Bacon and Descartes
Though up against considerable Church opposition, science
moved into the spotlight in the late 1500s
and early 1600s.
Galileo had long said that observation was a necessary
element of the scientific method—a point that Francis
Bacon (1561–1626)
solidified with his inductive method. Sometimes known as the Baconian
method, inductive science stresses observation and reasoning
as the means for coming to general conclusions.
A later contemporary, René Descartes (1596–1650),
picked up where Bacon left off. Descartes’ talents ran the gamut
from mathematics to philosophy and ultimately the combination of
those schools. His work in combining algebra and geometry revolutionized
both of those fields, and it was Descartes who came to the philosophical
conclusion “I think, therefore I am”—asserting that, if nothing
else, he was at least a thinking being. Descartes’ deductive approach
to philosophy, using math and logic, stressed a “clear and distinct
foundation for thought” that still remains a standard for problem
solving.
Newton
As it turned out, all of these developments of the Scientific
Revolution were really just a primer for Englishman Isaac
Newton (1642–1727),
who swept in, built upon the work of his predecessors, and changed
the face of science and mathematics. Newton began his career with
mathematics work that would eventually evolve into the entire field
of calculus. From there, he conducted experiments
in physics and math that revealed a number of natural laws that
had previously been credited to divine forces. Newton’s seminal
work, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687),
discussed the existence of a uniform force of gravity and
established three laws of motion. Later in his career,
Newton would release Optics, which detailed his
groundbreaking work in that field as well.
