1. The
Scientific
Revolution

4. Nicholas Copernicus
1473 - 1543
Polish astronomer and
astrologer
On the revolutions of the
celestial spheres, 1543
Proposed motion of the
Earth and fixity of the Sun.

8. On the revolutions of the
celestial spheres
“Let no one ignorant of
geometry enter here”
Owen Gingerich has called it
“the book no body read.”

9. The Copernican Revolution
“The Copernican Revolution was a
revolution in ideas, a transformation
of man’s conception of the universe
and of his own relation to it. Again
and again this episode in the history
of Renaissance thought has been
claimed as an epochal turning point
in the intellectual development of
Western man.”
(Kuhn, 1957, p. 1)

10. The Copernican “Revolution”
No immediate change in
astronomical theory or practice
and only began to have an
influence ~75 years after
publication.
Copernicus’ ideas were rapidly
overtaken by those of Kepler.
The “revolution” is an invention of
historians in the late 18th Century
and continued by Kuhn and others.

11. The Copernican “Revolution”
“Had it not been for the contribution of Tycho Brahe
and [Johannes] Kepler, the Copernican system would
have contributed to the perpetuation of the Ptolemaic
system in a slightly more complicated form but more
pleasing to philosophical minds” (O. Neugebauer, 1968,
p. 103)
“If there was a revolution in astronomy, that revolution
was Keplerian and Newtonian, and not in any simple or
valid sense Copernican” (I.B. Cohen, 1985, p. 125)

14. Tycho Brahe
1546 – 1601
First scientific institute
New instruments
New tables of atmospheric
refraction
New observational
protocols
Continual observation of
planets

18. Johannes Kepler
1571 – 1630
German astronomer,
mathematician & astrologer.
Assisted Brahe and inherited his
data
Astronomia Nova, 1609
Three laws of planetary motion
Largely a revolution on paper only.

25. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

26. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

27. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

28. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

29. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

30. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

31. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

32. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

33. A Time of Crisis &
Revolution
1609 – Kepler’s New Astronomy
1610 – Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1618 – Beginning of Thirty Year War
1620 – Bacon’s Novum Organon
1638 – Galileo’s Two New Sciences
1642 – English Civil War
1660 – Foundation of the Royal Society
1687 – Newton’s Principia
1688 – The “Glorious Revolution”

34. Key Innovations
Scientific methods (Descartes
& Bacon)
Return to observation
Reliance on experimentation
Networks of inquiry

35. Francis Bacon
1561 – 1626
English politician and philosopher
Novum Organum, 1620
Experimentally-based induction
as a method for attaining
knowledge
The importance of the “negative
instances” and “crucial
instances.”
Communal nature of inquiry

38. Robert Boyle
Anglo-Irish natural philosopher
and alchemist

39. Robert Boyle
Anglo-Irish natural philosopher
and alchemist

43. Robert Hooke
1635 – 1703
English experimental
philosopher
Curator of Experiments
for the RSL.
Micrographia, 1665
Hooke’s Law, 1676

44. “As the extension,
so the force.”

56. Galileo Galilei
1564 - 1642
Starry Messenger, 1610
Letters on Sunspots, 1613
The Assayer, 1623
Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems, 1632
Discourse on the Two New
Sciences, 1638

57. Hans Lippershey

63. Thomas Harriot (1609)

64. Thomas Harriot (1610)

84. The Assayer (1623)
“[Natural] Philosophy is written in this grand book -
the universe - which stands continuously open to
our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless
one first learns to comprehend the language and
interpret the characters in which it is written. It is
written in the language of mathematics, and its
characters are triangles, circles, and other
geometrical figures, without which it is humanly
impossible to understand a single word of it; without
these one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.”