Anna Kryzanekas

Mrs. Recktenwald
Honors World History
15 January 2016
Documentary Analysis
The documentary, Just the Facts: Scientific Revolution takes one through a journey of
natural philosophy and the developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, human
anatomy, and chemistry found during the Scientific Revolution. As an effect of the Renaissance,
people began to turn to the study of law, nature, and Gods law. Up until around 1543 when
Copernicus heliocentric theory emerged, the best minds of Europe assembled the church and
became students of theology: the study of the nature of God and religious belief. The Catholic
Church held supreme power over all of Western Europe and influenced people's ideas and the
sharing of these ideas. Therefore, when Copernicus suggested that perhaps the sun was the center
of the solar system, and contradicted the Bibles teachings, the Church had the power to censor
his writings. Copernicus foresaw the Churchs anger and waited until his death to publish his
book called, Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs where he described his
heliocentric theory and only the moon revolves around the Earth. While he kept many traditional
elements in his writings, such as planets moving in a perfect elliptical (Aristotles theory), the
Church was still angered. Many other scientists of the revolution did the same as Copernicus;
this includes Andreas Vesalius of whom challenged Galen's teachings concerning human
anatomy and set out to correct those errors in The Fabrica. In 1610, Galileo Galilei published
his observations of space in The Messenger of the Stars but came under criticism of the
church. Then in 1632, he published a new book. At age 70, he was charged with heresy and was

under house arrest for the rest of his life. Not only did the figures of the scientific Revolution
face the Church in disagreement later showing that it could not overpower the great minds of the
time, but also opened the doors of science which was passed to modern discovery. It greatly
improved the health and knowledge of people too, due to an increase in medical discoveries. For
example, Vesalius study of human anatomy provided accurate information to people in the field
of medicine and human anatomy. Marcello Malpighi, an Italian physician and biologist studied
and described animal tissue of organs such as the brain and liver. He also discovered capillaries.
William Harvey (1578-1657) learned the methods of Vesalius and discovered that the heart was a
pump while showing how blood traveled through the different chambers of the heart (away in
arteries and towards in veins). This disproved Galens belief that blood flowed in the same
direction in both arteries and veins. Luckily, his work was not severely criticized, and he laid the
foundation on which more than 300 years of physiology and anatomy have been built. Overall,
the Scientific Revolution impacted Europe in ways no other revolution had before. Intellectually,
it ushered in a new way of thinking, including the establishment of the Scientific Method (a
result of Bacons inductive reasoning). The Scientific Revolution led to the discovery of several
technologies that became incredibly helpful to the merchant class, improving Europes economy.
The equality of people was also exhibited through John Rays journey to the top. He started out
extremely poor, at the lowest class but worked his way to being funded at Cambridge and
eventually accurately classified various species of plants. He was later inducted into The Royal
Society of London, an honor for any scientist or natural philosopher of the time. Because of these
great discoveries by all the figures of the Scientific Revolution, near its ending Isaac Newton,
arguably one of the greatest natural philosophers of all time was exposed to advanced ideas and
was able to build upon them. He laid foundations of calculus, extended understanding of color

and light, advanced theories of planetary motion and discovered the laws of gravity. His
significant discoveries were vital to the basis of modern thought. However, without all of the
other great natural philosophers and scientists of the Scientific Revolution, an improved society
(both technologically, intellectually, and economically) would not have occurred and the world to
come would not have been the way it is today.