Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment
Explain how new scientific methods and Enlightenment ideas challenged older authorities and shaped political revolutions.
A lesson of World History, in The Early Modern World, about 10 minutes.
The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to describe the key figures and discoveries of the Scientific Revolution, explain how Enlightenment thinkers applied scientific reasoning to society and government, and analyze the long-term political and intellectual consequences of these movements.
Background: A New Way of Knowing
Medieval European thinkers relied on two authorities: the Bible and classical Greek philosophers (especially Aristotle). Both taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. By 1543, this consensus began to collapse — not through theology or philosophy, but through systematic observation and mathematics.
The Scientific Revolution (c. 1543–1700)
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543):
- Polish astronomer; proposed a heliocentric model — the Sun, not Earth, is the center of the solar system
- Published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (1543)
- Deeply threatening to Church authority, which taught Ptolemaic geocentrism
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642):
- Used a telescope to observe the moons of Jupiter, phases of Venus, and craters on the Moon — all contradicting Aristotle
- Championed Copernican heliocentrism; placed under house arrest by the Inquisition (1633)
- Developed early laws of motion; proposed that physical laws are mathematical
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630):
- Showed planets move in elliptical, not circular, orbits — mathematical laws describe planetary motion
Isaac Newton (1643–1727):
- Synthesized and extended the work of Galileo and Kepler
- Principia Mathematica (1687): Law of Universal Gravitation; three Laws of Motion
- Showed one set of mathematical laws governs both celestial and terrestrial motion
- Invented calculus (independently of Leibniz)
- Newton's system was the triumph of the Scientific Revolution — a rational, mathematical universe
The Scientific Method:
- Francis Bacon: inductive reasoning — gather data through observation and experiment, then generalize
- René Descartes: deductive reasoning — Cogito ergo sum; systematic doubt; mathematical approach to knowledge
- Together, the emphasis on empirical observation + mathematical reasoning defined modern science
The Enlightenment (c. 1685–1789)
If the Scientific Revolution showed that nature operates by rational laws discoverable through reason, the Enlightenment asked: can reason also reveal the best laws for governing human society?