Editing Scientific Revolution (section)

==Introduction==
Great advances in science have been termed "revolutions" since the 18th century. For example, in 1747, the French mathematician [[Alexis Clairaut]] wrote that "[[Isaac Newton|Newton]] was said in his own life to have created a revolution".<ref>
{{Cite journal|first=Alexis-Claude |last=Clairaut|year=1747|title=Du système du Monde, Dans Les Principes de la gravitation universelle}}
</ref> The word was also used in the preface to [[Antoine Lavoisier]]'s 1789 work announcing the discovery of oxygen. "Few revolutions in science have immediately excited so much general notice as the introduction of the theory of oxygen ... Lavoisier saw his theory accepted by all the most eminent men of his time, and established over a great part of Europe within a few years from its first promulgation."<ref>{{cite book|title=History of the inductive sciences|year=1837|first=William |last=Whewell|volume=2|pages=275, 280|url=https://archive.org/stream/historyinductiv05whewgoog#page/n279/mode/2up}}</ref>

In the 19th century, [[William Whewell]] described the revolution in [[science]] itself – the [[scientific method]] – that had taken place in the 15th–16th century. "Among the most conspicuous of the revolutions which opinions on this subject have undergone, is the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation of change and improvement."<ref>{{cite book|title=Philosophy of the Inductive sciences|year=1840|first=William |last=Whewell|volume=2|page=318|url=https://archive.org/stream/philosophyinduc04whewgoog#page/n328/mode/2up}}</ref> This gave rise to the common view of the Scientific Revolution today:
{{blockquote|A new view of nature emerged, replacing the Greek view that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years. Science became an autonomous discipline, distinct from both philosophy and technology, and came to be regarded as having utilitarian goals.<ref>
{{cite book|title=Encyclopædia Britannica|chapter=Physical Sciences|edition=15th|volume=25|page=830|year=1993}}</ref>}}

[[File:Galileo Galilei by Ottavio Leoni Marucelliana (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Portrait of [[Galileo Galilei]] by [[Ottavio Leoni|Leoni]]]]
[[File:Astronomia Nova.jpg|thumb|right|''[[Astronomia Nova]]'' by [[Johannes Kepler]] (1609)]]
The Scientific Revolution is traditionally assumed to start with the [[Copernican Revolution]] (initiated in 1543) and to be complete in the "grand synthesis" of Isaac Newton's 1687 ''[[Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica|Principia]]''. Much of the change of attitude came from [[Francis Bacon]]<ref name="Sweet Briar College">{{cite web |url=http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm |title=Empiricism: The influence of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and David Hume |publisher=Sweet Briar College|access-date=21 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130708012140/http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Empiricism.htm|archive-date=8 July 2013}}</ref> whose "confident and emphatic announcement" in the modern progress of science inspired the creation of scientific societies such as the [[Royal Society]],<ref>Syfret (1948) p. 75</ref> and [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]] who championed [[Nicolaus Copernicus|Copernicus]] and developed the science of motion.<ref name="Schuster 1996">{{cite book |author-last=Schuster |author-first=John A. |year=1996 |orig-year=1990 |editor1-last=Cantor |editor1-first=Geoffrey |editor2-last=Olby |editor2-first=Robert |editor3-last=Christie |editor3-first=John |editor4-last=Hodge |editor4-first=Jonathon |title=Companion to the History of Modern Science |chapter=Scientific Revolution |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6GIPEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA217 |location=[[Abingdon, Oxfordshire]] |publisher=[[Routledge]] |pages=217–242 |isbn=9780415145787}}</ref>

The Scientific Revolution was enabled by advances in book production.<ref>Owen Gingerich, "Copernicus and the Impact of Printing." ''Vistas in Astronomy'' 17 (1975): 201-218.</ref><ref>Anthony Corones, "Copernicus, Printing and the Politics of Knowledge." in ''1543 and All That'' (Springer, Dordrecht, 2000) pp. 271-289.</ref> Before the advent of the [[printing press]], introduced in Europe in the 1440s by [[Johannes Gutenberg]], there was no mass market on the continent for scientific treatises, as there had been for religious books. Printing decisively changed the way scientific knowledge was created, as well as how it was disseminated. It enabled accurate diagrams, maps, anatomical drawings, and representations of flora and fauna to be reproduced, and printing made scholarly books more widely accessible, allowing researchers to consult ancient texts freely and to compare their own observations with those of fellow scholars.<ref name="Martyn Lyons 2011">Martyn Lyons, ''Books: A Living History''. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011, 71.</ref> Although printers' blunders still often resulted in the spread of false data (for instance, in Galileo's ''[[Sidereus Nuncius]]'' (The Starry Messenger), published in Venice in 1610, his telescopic images of the lunar surface mistakenly appeared back to front), the development of engraved metal plates allowed accurate visual information to be made permanent, a change from previously, when woodcut illustrations deteriorated through repetitive use. The ability to access previous scientific research meant that researchers did not have to always start from scratch in making sense of their own observational data.<ref name="Martyn Lyons 2011"/>

In the 20th century, [[Alexandre Koyré]] introduced the term "scientific revolution", centering his analysis on Galileo. The term was popularized by [[Herbert Butterfield]] in his ''Origins of Modern Science''. [[Thomas Kuhn]]'s 1962 work ''[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]]'' emphasizes that different theoretical frameworks—such as [[Albert Einstein|Einstein]]'s [[theory of relativity]] and [[Newton's theory of gravity]], which it replaced—cannot be directly compared without meaning loss.

===Significance===
The period saw a fundamental transformation in scientific ideas across mathematics, physics, astronomy, and biology in institutions supporting scientific investigation and in the more widely held picture of the universe.<ref name="Schuster 1996"/> The Scientific Revolution led to the establishment of several modern sciences. In 1984, [[Joseph Ben-David]] wrote:

{{blockquote|Rapid accumulation of knowledge, which has characterized the development of science since the 17th century, had never occurred before that time. The new kind of scientific activity emerged only in a few countries of Western Europe, and it was restricted to that small area for about two hundred years. (Since the 19th century, scientific knowledge has been assimilated by the rest of the world).<ref>{{Cite book  | last = Hunt  | first = Shelby D.  | title = Controversy in marketing theory: for reason, realism, truth, and objectivity  | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=07lchJbdWGgC | publisher = M.E. Sharpe  | year = 2003  | page = 18  | isbn = 978-0-7656-0932-8}}</ref>}}

Many contemporary writers and modern historians claim that there was a revolutionary change in world view. In 1611 English poet [[John Donne]] wrote:
{{blockquote|[The] new Philosophy calls all in doubt,<br />
The Element of fire is quite put out;<br />
The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit<br />
Can well direct him where to look for it.<ref>Donne, John ''An Anatomy of the World'', quoted in Kuhn, Thomas S. (1957) ''The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought''. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Pr. p. 194.</ref>}}

Butterfield was less disconcerted but nevertheless saw the change as fundamental:
{{blockquote|Since that revolution turned the authority in English not only of the Middle Ages but of the ancient world—since it started not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics—it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements within the system of medieval Christendom.... [It] looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.<ref>Herbert Butterfield, ''[https://archive.org/details/originsofmoderns007291mbp The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800]'', (New York: Macmillan Co., 1959) p. viii.</ref>}}

Historian [[Peter Harrison (historian)|Peter Harrison]] attributes Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution:
{{blockquote| historians of science have long known that religious factors played a significantly positive role in the emergence and persistence of modern science in the West. Not only were many of the key figures in the rise of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new approaches to nature that they pioneered were underpinned in various ways by religious assumptions. ... Yet, many of the leading figures in the scientific revolution imagined themselves to be champions of a science that was more compatible with Christianity than the medieval ideas about the natural world that they replaced.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Harrison|first1=Peter|title=Christianity and the rise of western science|website=[[Australian Broadcasting Corporation]]|date=8 May 2012|url=http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/08/3498202.htm|access-date=28 August 2014|archive-date=9 August 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180809040202/http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/05/08/3498202.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>}}