Scientific Revolution
Melissa J, 2nd period
What was the change?
During the mid-1500s a major change in European thinking began. This was called the Scientific Revolution, where scholars began to to challange ideas that had been been accepted for hundreds of years. The scientific revolution was led when european explorers started traveling and exploring the world. They found new species in lands and, they knew from then that there were many new things to discover. When exploring and sailing, they found that ancient belifes wern't as accurate. These new ideas marked the world even up to todays' society.
Who were the people associated with the change?
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer, who began in the early 1500s to question the Geocentric theory (theory which was the idea of the Earth been in th center of the universe). Copernicus studied this idea for over 25 years, and he came to a conclude that the Planets revolved around the sun. He called this idea the Heliocentric theory and built the heliocentric model. He wrote a book called "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that had all his ideas, but he did not publish it until shortly after his death. The reason was because this idea opposed the powerful church. Thanks to Copernicus new theory, many scientist later started studying it and added evidence to it.
Johannes Kepler
Kepler was a matehematician who contined to support the Heliocentric theory. The heliocentric theory needed matematical support so in 1601 kepler came up with "Laws of Planetary mation." He also came to find that the planets revolve in elliptical orbits instead of circles. These ideas were a huge impact to the ancient belifes before.
Galileo Galilei
Galileo was an Italian Scientist who made new theories about austronmy. In 1609 he built a telescope to study the universe. He made many observations and published a book called "Starry Messanger." One of the observations he made was that the moon had an uneven surface, which opposed Aristoles theory. He also discovered that the sun had dark spots and jupiter had moons. Galileo introduced the law of motion, but he didnt expand it completly.
The church did not agree with his theories bc it contradicted its teachings. A year later after Galileo published the book "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems," in 1633 the pope took him to trial. Galileo was forced to deny his belifes and copernicus' theory if he didn't want to be tortured. Galileo spend the rest of his life in house arrest and died.
Isaac Newton
Newton was an English Scientist who brought together the ideas of Copernicus, kepler, and Galileo. He studied matematics and physics at Cambridge University, and by the time he was finished, he came up with the theory of motion, that was the same force ruled motion of the planets, and all matter in Earth and space. In 1687 he published he published "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," which included all his ideas and became the most important book until present day. Newtons' faous quote is "God was the creator of this orderly universe, the clockmaker who had set everything in motion."
How is that change evidenced in today's modern society?
The change is evedent in todays' society because thanks to copernicus, kepler, Galileo, and Newtons theories we were able to do many more things, like going to the moon and confirming the heliocentric theory. Even today, we still study laws of motion from newton in physics. Without the curiosity of kepler we might had still been under the churchs' influence and many things would had never been discovered.