SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
By: Stilian Babadaliev
The Change
Before the scientific revolution, people thought that the earth was the center of the universe. The main reason that everyone thought that was because the Church supported the theory. This theory was also taken from Aristotle and Ptolemy. The scientific revolution changed the way people thought about the natural world. It changed people from thinking that everything revolved around the earth to thinking that everything revolved around the sun. That was called the Heliocentric Theory and was later on changed into a law. People never thought the same way about the natural world after the revolution.
The People Involved
The people that contributed the most in the scientific revolution went by the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. Copernicus was an astronomer that was first to suggest the Heliocentric Theory. He decided not to publish his work quickly because he thought that his findings would cause a lot of controversy and they would contradict popular religious views. Kepler proved that the Heliocentric Theory was true. He also expanded on Copernicus' findings by stating that planets revolve around the sun in elliptical orbits instead of circles. Galileo was an Italian math professor who set out to prove Aristotle's theories about nature wrong. He said that objects accelerate at a predictable and fixed rate. He also discovered 4 moons of Jupiter that he had named after himself (Galilean Moons). The Church disagreed with Galileo's work and asked him to stop, but he refused. The Church finally decided to put him on house arrest until he died. Isaac Newton was a physicist who advanced math and science into the modern era. He had two theories; The Law of Universal Gravitation and The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. The Law of Universal Gravitation stated that every object in the universe attracts every other object. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was the theory that compared the universe to a giant clock. All in all, these scientists led to the reason that we know that the sun is in the middle of the solar system. They are the reason we have modern mathematics.
Galileo Galilei looking through his telescope
How The Change Impacted Society Back Then
People strongly believed in the Geocentric Theory during the scientific revolution, mainly because it was supported by the Church. The Geocentric Theory was also supported by Aristotle. Scientists and mathematicians set out to prove this theory wrong. They proved many previous philosopher's theories wrong and changed the way people view the natural world. The revolution also developed new technologies such as the printing press, the telescope, and weapons. These technologies made life much easier for people at the time.
A printing press
How the Change is Evident in Today's Modern Society
Today, science has peaked people's interest about the natural and it has gathered a lot of attention from people. This revolution started improvements in medicine and scientific instruments and to this day we are working on improving everything for the future. Telescopes help scientists study the sky and go more in depth with Galileo's research and findings. Galileo had discovered 4 moons of Jupiter that he had named after himself. Today, we have found over 150 moons in just our solar system that are known to us. The scientific revolution was just the start of something big and people during the Renaissance didn't even know about how wonderful it would turn out to be.
Moons in our solar system compared to the size of the Earth