Scientific Revolution

Topic: Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 5 "Changing Cultural Traditions"

Meaning

The Scientific Revolution is the name historians give to the change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from Copernicus to Newton, when people in Europe began to separate knowledge, built on observation and experiment, from belief, built on scripture and Church authority. It began in astronomy and spread to physics, chemistry and biology. It also changed how people explained creation: many sceptics now saw Nature, not God, as its source.

Explanation

Background: the old picture of the universe

• The Christian Church taught that the earth was sinful and immobile (not moving), and that it sat at the centre of the universe. Everything else went round it.
• Humanists had already questioned the idea of "man as sinner". Scientists now questioned the physical picture that went with it.
• Moving the earth weakened the religious story:
• If the earth was just one planet moving round the sun, it was not a special sinful rock at the centre.
• So the Church's teaching lost its physical base, even though no scientist attacked it head-on.

The sequence: from Copernicus to Newton

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). He was a devout Christian and lived at the same time as Martin Luther.
• He worked out the heliocentric (sun-centred) idea roughly between 1508 and 1514. He first wrote it down in a short hand-written sketch, the Commentariolus ("Little Commentary") [3].
• His claim was that the planets, including the earth, go round the sun.
• He was afraid of traditionalist clergymen, so he did not publish for most of his life.
• His follower Joachim Rheticus, a Lutheran from the University of Wittenberg, stayed with him at Frauenburg for about two and a half years (1539–1542) [3].
• The first printed summary, the Narratio prima ("First Narration", 1540 and 1541), came out under Rheticus's name. It was a way of testing how people would react [3].

• On his deathbed Copernicus handed the manuscript to Rheticus. The full book, De revolutionibus, was printed in 1543, the year he died [3].

• Slow acceptance. It took more than half a century for the idea to be accepted.

• Johannes Kepler (1571–1630). He wrote the Cosmographical Mystery.

• Why his correction mattered:

  • He showed that planets move round the sun in ellipses (stretched ovals), not perfect circles.
  • The old astronomy held that the heavens were perfect, and that the circle was the perfect shape.
  • So the ellipse broke another old belief.

• Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). He wrote The Motion, which showed a dynamic world (a world of things in motion, not a fixed one).

• His 1610 treatise was the first scientific work based on telescope observations. He reported moons going round another planet and hundreds of stars that the naked eye cannot see [4].

• Moons circling another planet were strong proof that not everything goes round the earth.

• Isaac Newton: the climax. The revolution reached its peak with Newton's theory of gravitation in Principia Mathematica (1687).

• His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) solved the main problems of the revolution in mechanics (the study of motion and force) and cosmology (the study of the universe) [5].
• He explained Kepler's laws with a gravitational pull that gets weaker with the square of the distance between two bodies. From this he could re-derive Kepler's laws [5].
• He put heavenly and earthly physics under one set of laws: the same rule moves an apple and a planet. For the first time, the study of planets became a branch of physics [5].

Main features: knowledge separated from belief

• Belief rests on scripture and authority.
• Knowledge rests on observation (careful watching) and experiment (a planned test).
• This method spread out of astronomy into physics, chemistry and biology.
• Galileo drew the line between the two clearly. He said the Bible "that lights the road to heaven does not say much on how the heavens work".
• In other words, scripture teaches people how to live. It does not explain how the sky works.

Results

• New ideas about God:
• Among sceptics (people who doubt), Nature began to replace God as the source of creation.

• Even believers changed their view. They spoke of a distant God who does not interfere in the daily running of the world.

• Science became public:

• The Royal Society, London (1662) and the Paris Academy (1670; the NCERT timeline also gives 1673) held lectures and public experiments.

• Ordinary educated people could now watch science being done.

• Practical results in the same period:

• Mercator's cylindrical map (1569): a flat world map on which sailors could draw a straight course.
• The Gregorian calendar (1582), issued by Pope Gregory XIII. The Church itself used the new astronomy to fix the calendar.
• William Harvey (1628) linked the heart to the circulation of blood.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It runs from Copernicus (died 1543) to Newton's Principia (1687). It came after the Renaissance and the Reformation, and partly overlapped with them.
• Region: Europe. Named places include Frauenburg (where Copernicus lived), the University of Wittenberg (Rheticus's university), London (Royal Society) and Paris (Paris Academy).
• Key people: Copernicus, Rheticus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and William Harvey.
• How we know: mainly from the scientists' own writings:
• the Commentariolus (c. 1508–1514) and the Narratio prima (1540/1541) [3]
• De revolutionibus (1543); a 1543 copy is held in the Rare Book collection of the Library of Congress, Washington [2]
• Kepler's Cosmographical Mystery, Galileo's The Motion and his 1610 telescope treatise [4]
• Newton's Principia (1687) [5]

• the records of the Royal Society and the Paris Academy

• NCERT: Class 11, Ch 5 "Changing Cultural Traditions".

Don't confuse with

• Copernican Revolution: this is only the first step, the sun-centred model of Copernicus. The Scientific Revolution is the whole shift from Copernicus to Newton, across physics, chemistry and biology.
• Commentariolus vs Narratio prima vs De revolutionibus: the Commentariolus was Copernicus's early hand-written sketch (c. 1508–1514). The Narratio prima (1540/1541) was the first printed summary, under Rheticus's name. De revolutionibus was the full book, printed in 1543 [3].
• Cosmographical Mystery vs The Motion: the first is by Kepler (planets move in ellipses). The second is by Galileo (a dynamic world).
• Royal Society vs Paris Academy: the Royal Society was in London (1662). The Paris Academy was founded in 1670 (the NCERT timeline says 1673). Do not swap the cities or the years.

Prelims Hooks

• Copernicus (1473–1543) was a devout Christian and lived at the same time as Luther. On his deathbed he gave the De revolutionibus manuscript to Joachim Rheticus, and it was printed in 1543 [3].
• The first printed account of the heliocentric idea was the Narratio prima (1540/1541), published under Rheticus's name, not Copernicus's [3].
• Kepler (1571–1630) wrote the Cosmographical Mystery: planets move in ellipses, not circles.
• Galileo (1564–1642) wrote The Motion. His 1610 treatise was the first scientific work based on telescope observations [4].
• Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) gave the theory of gravitation and is the climax of the Scientific Revolution.
• Correct order: Mercator's map (1569) → Gregorian calendar, Pope Gregory XIII (1582) → Harvey on blood circulation (1628) → Royal Society, London (1662) → Paris Academy (1670) → Principia (1687).

Mains Points

• Change came from inside Christian society, not from outside it. Copernicus was a devout Christian. He did not attack the Church, yet moving the earth from the centre removed the physical base of the "sinful earth at the centre" idea. Even Pope Gregory XIII used the new astronomy for the 1582 calendar. Europe's intellectual change came slowly and from within.
• Separating knowledge from belief is the lasting result. Galileo's line, that the Bible lights the road to heaven but says little about how the heavens work, marks the start of a secular method. Humanists checked original texts for themselves, and scientists checked nature for themselves. This method later fed the Enlightenment and the modern view that science and religion answer different questions.
• Institutions made science permanent. The Royal Society (1662) and the Paris Academy (1670) turned private discoveries into public knowledge. Through lectures and public experiments, a community grew up that checked and repeated results. Science could now correct its own mistakes and build on earlier work. Newton's joining of heavenly and earthly physics [5] shows how far this shared effort had come by 1687.

Related concepts

• Copernican revolution
• Johannes Kepler
• Galileo Galilei
• Isaac Newton
• Gregorian calendar

Read more

• The Copernican and Scientific Revolutions