SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Scientific revolution is the event which most historians of science call the scientific revolution can be dated roughly as having begun in 1543, the year in which Nicolaus Copernicus published his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres and Andreas Vesalius published his De humani corpari (On the Fabric of the Human body). As with many historical demarcations, historians of science disagree about its boundaries. The period is often dated to the 16th and 17th centuries, though some see elements contributing to the revolution as early as the 11th and 14th century, and finding its last stages in chemistry and biology in the 18th and 19th centuries. There is general agreement, however, that the intervening period saw a fundamental transformation in scientific ideas in physics, astronomy, and biology in institutions supporting scientific investigation, and in the more widely held picture of the universe. As a result, the scientific revolution is viewed as the foundation of modern science. The continuity thesis is the opposing hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between intellectual development over this period.