Scientific Method

The Scientific Revolution

People have known about and adopted various dimensions of scientific investigation throughout human history. For example, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) offered detailed theories of physics, biology, and cosmology. However, for much of this history, science was not clearly distinguished from religious, philosophical, or magical reasoning. A significant shift took place with what is now commonly referred to as the Scientific Revolution, lasting from the 16th to the mid-18th centuries.

In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) published a book challenging the dominant view that Earth is stationary and at the center of the universe. Instead of this geocentric picture, Copernicus insisted that various observations suggested the sun was at the center of the universe, orbited by Earth. Copernicus's theory encountered great resistance, in part because it implied that humans are not at the center of the cosmos; the Catholic Church banned the publishing of any books promoting heliocentrism. Nevertheless, the theory gained widespread acceptance by the mid-17th century. This was due in large measure to significant developments of the theory by astronomers such as Johannes Kepler (1571–1630).

While Kepler improved on the Copernican theory of planetary motion, Galileo Galilei (1564– 1642) introduced significant methodological changes that also influenced theory. By devising vast improvements on the telescope, Galileo went on to make a number of astronomical discoveries that confirmed the heliocentric model. Perhaps more importantly, Galileo developed a more comprehensive theory of natural motion that included terrestrial dynamics and that was also based on experimental observations. Galilean science heavily emphasized mathematics, especially geometry, as a method of modeling the dynamics of moving bodies. Because of his strong commitment to hypothesis testing and mathematical rigor in describing physical phenomena, many consider Galileo the first true modern physicist.

Further developments in physics stemmed from the contributions of thinkers such as Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and René Descartes (1596– 1650). Bacon reasserted the importance of Aristotle's inductive method, whereby the laws of nature are revealed through repeated observations. By contrast, Descartes's conception of knowledge famously deemphasized the role of observation while stressing the critical role of deductive reasoning from basic principles. Both men promoted “mechanism”—the idea that the physical world operates like a machine in which the behavior of complex physical systems is due to the lawlike behavior of constituent minute particles (“corpuscles”).

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