The Scientific Revolution

Main Idea
• The Scientific Revolution gave Europeans a
new way to view humankind’s place in the
universe. 

Key Terms
• geocentric  • rationalism 
• Ptolemaic system  • scientific method 
• heliocentric  • inductive reasoning
• universal law of
gravitation 

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The Scientific Revolution
People to Identify
• Ptolemy  • Margaret Cavendish 
• Nicholas Copernicus  • Maria Winkelmann 
• Galileo Galilei  • René Descartes 
• Isaac Newton  • Francis Bacon 
• Robert Boyle 

Places to Locate
• Poland 
• Padua

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The Scientific Revolution
Preview Questions
• How did the Scientific Revolution begin? 
• What is the scientific method?

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Upon entering the University of Pisa in
1581, Galileo Galilei intended to study
medicine. Almost immediately, however,
he began to focus on mathematics and
philosophy. Although he left the school in
1585 without having obtained a degree,
his unconventional academic past did
not stop Galileo from becoming the chair
of mathematics at the university four
years later.
Background to the Revolution
• Medieval scientists, known as “natural
philosophers,” did not make observations
of the world and nature so much as rely
on ancient authorities, especially Aristotle,
for their scientific knowledge. 
• Changes in the 1400s and 1500s caused
European scientists to adopt new views
and methods.

(pages 511–512)

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Background to the Revolution (cont.)
• Renaissance humanists studied the
newly discovered works of Ptolemy,
Archimedes, Plato, and other ancient
thinkers. 
• They learned that some ancient thinkers
had disagreed with Aristotle and other
accepted authorities.

(pages 511–512)

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Background to the Revolution (cont.)
• Technical problems, like calculating how
much weight a ship could hold, spurred a
movement towards observation and
measurement. 
• New instruments like the telescope and
microscope made fresh observations and
discoveries possible. 
• Printing spread ideas more quickly than
ever before.

(pages 511–512)

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Background to the Revolution (cont.)
• The study of mathematics in the
Renaissance contributed to the scientific
achievements of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. 
• The great scientists of the day believed
that the secrets of nature were written in
the language of mathematics. 
• These intellectuals–Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo, Newton, and others–developed
new theories that became the foundation
of the Scientific Revolution.

(pages 511–512)

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Background to the Revolution (cont.)

What do you think was the Catholic

Church’s response to these developments
of the Scientific Revolution?

(pages 511–512)
A Revolution in Astronomy
• Born in the second-century A.D., Ptolemy
was antiquity’s greatest astronomer. 
• Medieval philosophers constructed a
geocentric (Earth is at the center) model
of the universe called the Ptolemaic
system. 
• It is a series of concentric spheres with a
motionless Earth in the middle.

(pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)
• According to Ptolemy, the planets are in
different, crystal-like spheres. 
• They rotate, which accounts for the
movements of the heavenly bodies. 
• The tenth sphere is the “prime mover,”
which moves itself and gives motion to the
other spheres. 
• Beyond this is Heaven, where God and all
the saved souls reside.

(pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)
• Nicholas Copernicus of Poland
published his famous work, On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres,
in 1543. 
• He believed his heliocentric (with the
Sun in the center) system was more
accurate than the Ptolemaic system. 
• Copernicus argued that all the planets
revolved around the sun, the Moon
revolved around Earth, and Earth rotated
on its axis.

(pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)
• The German mathematician Johannes
Kepler also helped destroy the Ptolemaic
system. 
• His observations confirmed that the Sun
was at the center of the universe, and he
tracked the elliptical orbits of the planets. 
• Ptolemy had insisted that the orbits were
circular.

(pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)
• The Italian scientist and mathematician
Galileo Galilei answered one of the
two remaining questions for the new
astronomy: What are the planets made
of? 
• He was the first European to make regular
observations with a telescope. 
• He saw mountains on the Moon and the
four moons orbiting Jupiter. 
• Ptolemy had said the heavenly bodies
were pure orbs of light, but now it
appeared they were material.
(pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)
• Galileo’s work began to make Europeans
aware of the new view of the universe. 
• He got into trouble with the Catholic
Church, which ordered him to abandon
the new system because the Copernican
conception contradicted that of the
Church and the Bible. 
• In the Copernican system, the heavens
were not spiritual but material, and God
was no longer in a specific place. 
• Most astronomers believed the new
conception, however.
(pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)
• The Englishman Isaac Newton responded
to the second question for the new
conception of the universe: What explains
motion in the universe? 
• He was a mathematics professor at
Cambridge University. 
• Newton published his views in
Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy, also known as the Principia. 
• He defined the three laws of motion in the
universe.
(pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)
• Crucial to his view was the universal law
of gravitation: every object in the
universe is attracted to every other object
by a force called gravity. 
• This explained why planetary bodies did
not go off in a straight line, but traveled in
elliptical orbits. 
• Newton gave the world a picture of the
universe as a huge, regulated, uniform
machine. 
• This picture dominated the modern
worldview until Einstein’s theory of
relativity. (pages 512–515)

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A Revolution in Astronomy (cont.)

Why would astronomy be where the new

scientists and the Church would clash?

Astronomy challenged the whole view of

the universe of the Church of the Middle
Ages, a view that emphasized God’s
role as creator.

(pages 512–515)

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Breakthroughs in Medicine
and Chemistry
• In the Late Middle Ages, medicine was still
dominated by the teaching of the Greek
physician Galen (second century A.D.). 
• His views about anatomy were often
wrong because he used animals, not
people, for dissection.

(page 515)

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Breakthroughs in Medicine
and Chemistry (cont.)
• The new anatomy of the sixteenth century
was based on the work of Andreas
Vesalius, published in his On the Fabric
of the Human Body (1543). 
• He reported his results from dissecting
human bodies as a professor of surgery
at the University of Padua, presenting an
accurate view of the individual organs and
general structure of the human body. 
• He erroneously believed that the body
had two kinds of blood.
(page 515)

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Breakthroughs in Medicine
and Chemistry (cont.)
• William Harvey’s On the Motion of the
Heart and Blood (1628) showed that the
heart, not the liver as Galen had thought,
was the beginning point of the blood’s
circulation. 
• He also showed that the same blood runs
through veins and arteries and that the
blood makes a complete circuit through
the body. 
• Harvey’s work was based on close
observation and experiment.
(page 515)

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Breakthroughs in Medicine
and Chemistry (cont.)
• The work of Robert Boyle in chemistry
was also based on close observation and
experiment. 
• He formulated Boyle’s Law about gases–
the volume of a gas varies with the
pressure exerted on it. 
• In the eighteenth century, Antoine
Lavoisier, the founder of modern
chemistry, invented a system of naming
the chemical elements.

(page 515)

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Breakthroughs in Medicine
and Chemistry (cont.)

How did the Scientific Revolution

connect to the Renaissance?
The ancient texts that were read in the
Renaissance conflicted with the authorities
the Church used for its claims about
nature. Further, the Scientific Revolution
was a development of the spirit of humans
relying on their own capacities and efforts
to understand the world and direct their
own affairs. (page 515)

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Women and the Origins of
Modern Science
• One of the most prominent female
scientists of the seventeenth century was
Margaret Cavendish. 
• In works such as her Observations Upon
Experimental Philosophy, she criticized
the belief that humans, through science,
were the masters of nature.

(pages 515–516)

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Women and the Origins of
Modern Science (cont.)
• In Germany, many women scientists were
astronomers. 
• They often received training in family
observatories from their fathers or
husbands. 
• Maria Winkelmann was the most
famous; she assisted her husband, the
famous Prussian astronomer Gottfried
Kirch, and discovered a comet.

(pages 515–516)

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Women and the Origins of
Modern Science (cont.)
• Winkelmann was denied a post as
assistant astronomer at the Berlin
Academy because of her gender. 
• In the view of most people of the
seventeenth century, science and
scholarship conflicted with the domestic
roles women were expected to fulfill.

(pages 515–516)

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Women and the Origins of
Modern Science (cont.)

Throughout history, many people believed

that women were not good at mathematics
and science. Are there subject areas today
in which girls are thought to have more
potential?

(pages 515–516)
Descartes and Reason
• The work of the French philosopher René
Descartes strongly reflects the Western
view of humankind that came from the
Scientific Revolution. 
• In his Discourse on Method (1637), he
asserts that he can rationally be sure of
only one thing–his own existence. 
• He asserted he would accept only those
things his reason said were true.

(pages 516–517)

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Descartes and Reason (cont.)
• Descartes asserted that while he could not
doubt the existence of his mind–“I think,
therefore I am”–he could doubt the
existence of the material world. 
• He concluded that the material world and
the mental world were two different
realms. He separated mind and matter. 
• This made matter something inert and
independent of the observer that could be
investigated by a detached rationality.

(pages 516–517)

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Descartes and Reason (cont.)
• Descartes has been called the father of
modern rationalism. 
• This system of thought is based on the
idea that reason is the chief source of
knowledge.

(pages 516–517)

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Descartes and Reason (cont.)

On what basis did Descartes claim he

could not doubt his own existence?
When Descartes inspected his thoughts
to judge which were false and which
were true, he realized that he could not
doubt he was thinking. Therefore, he
knew he had to exist because he was
thinking: “I think, therefore I am.”

(pages 516–517)

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The Scientific Method
• During the Scientific Revolution, people
were concerned about how they could
best understand the physical universe. 
• They created the scientific method. 
• The philosopher Francis Bacon was
most responsible for this method.

(page 517)

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The Scientific Method (cont.)
• Bacon emphasized arriving at conclusions
about nature using inductive reasoning,
or making generalizations from particular
observations and experiments organized
to test hypotheses. 
• He believed science was to give
humankind new discoveries and the
power to serve human purposes by
conquering “nature in action.” 
• The control and domination of nature
became an important concern of science
and its accompanying technology.
(page 517)

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The Scientific Method (cont.)

Some contemporary thinkers argue that

the goal of controlling nature has done a
lot of harm to the world. What might they
have in mind?
Possible answer: Such thinkers often
argue that extending our power over
nature through science has led us to
exploit the environment in ways that are
spiritually and physically harmful.

(page 517)

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Checking for Understanding
Define Match each definition in the left column with the
appropriate term in the right column.
__
C 1. literally, sun-centered; A. geocentric
the system of the B. Ptolemaic
universe proposed in system
1543 by Nicholas
Copernicus C. heliocentric
__
B 2. the geocentric model of D. universal law of
the universe that gravitation
prevailed in the Middle E. rationalism
Ages
__
D 3. one of the three rules of
motion governing the
planetary bodies set
forth by Sir Isaac
Newton in his Principia
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Checking for Understanding
Define Match each definition in the left column with the
appropriate term in the right column.
__
A 4. literally, earth-centered; A. geocentric
a system of planetary B. Ptolemaic
motion that places Earth system
at the center of the
universe C. heliocentric
__
E 5. a system of thought D. universal law of
expounded by René gravitation
Descartes based on the E. rationalism
belief that reason is the
chief source of
knowledge

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Checking for Understanding
Contrast the Ptolemaic, or geocentric,
system of the universe to the
heliocentric system developed by
Copernicus.

In the Ptolemaic system, the Earth is

the center of the universe. In the
Copernican system, the Sun is the
center of the universe.

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Checking for Understanding
List the pioneers of modern chemistry
who lived during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.

Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier

were pioneers of chemistry.

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Critical Thinking
Analyze Why did the Catholic Church
condemn the work of Galileo during
the seventeenth century?

The Catholic Church condemned the

work of Galileo for violating church
authority.

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Analyzing Visuals
Examine the painting of Galileo on
page 514 of your textbook. Why do
you think that Galileo is showing his
drawings to the clergyman standing
beside him? Why might the other man
be looking through Galileo’s
telescope? Based on what you have
read in this section, do you think these
men will support Galileo’s views? Why
or why not?
He may be presenting his theory.

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Close
Write the words Before and After on a
piece of paper. Choose a person
mentioned in this section and describe
an accepted theory before and after
this person’s work. For example, having
chosen Copernicus, you would
describe astronomy before and after
Copernicus’s work.