As times goes on, things change. People start to adapt things to suit their needs and changes are made where they are deemed necessary. One of the things that changed the way the world works is science, specifically in an event called the Scientific Revolution. The scientific revolution took place in Europe towards the end of the Renaissance and this phenomenon continued throughout the eighteenth century. The Scientific revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of what was called modern science during the early modern period and it is characterized by its developments in astronomy, mathematics, biology (specifically in human anatomy) and biology that transformed societies views about nature. The start of the scientific revolution is often debated but most believe that it was the works of Nicolaus Copernicus that sparked the beginning of the revolution. But it is also believed that Francis Bacon laid the foundation for the scientific revolution due to his focus on empiricist.
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher who’s works were credited with developing the scientific method as he remained highly influential throughout the course of the Scientific Revolution. Francis Bacon is known as the father of Empiricism and he believed in he possibility of scientific knowledge based solely on the use of inductive reasoning and the use of careful observation of what was going on in nature which out human influence. According to Bacon in his work Part II, Reason and Nature, the human race “can do and understand so much and so much only has he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature ”, this reinforcement Bacon’s belief man can learn more from nature by using observation and studying what you observe to properly understand the world around them. Bacon put a particular emphasis on knowledge and not on practice, unlike many of the scientist before the revolution. This changed the way people viewed nature since it created the idea that people can learn more about the world that they live in instead of just believe that everything was God’s doing. Bacon set out an entirely new method based solely on observation to help learn about phenomena. He did this by gathering all the instances and information that was possible and taking notes on them and when that was done compile them into a history that would help people better understand the phenomena. Much of the work that bacon did was based on experimentation on page 39 of the Enlightenment Reader, Bacon states that it is the “Instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding” , he is saying that using instruments (which could mean experimenting) can help on gather and interpreted the knowledge gained from experiment. Bacon opened up an entirely new world for scientists with the use of the observation method to better understand nature and the method of experimenting to gain a deeper understanding of certain things. After observing the limitations of the current and past natural philosophies, Bacon presented his own philosophy and methods. Bacon retains the Aristotelian causes, but redefines them in interesting and more modern ways.
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Galileo Galilei is known as the father of modern physics and as the father of modern observational astronomy. Galileo’s contributions to the science of motion were made through an innovative combination of mathematics and experiments.
Galileo published his work The Starry Herald in 1610. In his work he provided the readers an account of his telescopic work and discussed his observations of the moon and he discussed his discovery and observation of four planets around the planet Jupiter that according to him were “neither known nor observed by any one of the astronomers before my time” and that each observation that he made were “discovered and observed … by the help of a telescope devised by me” . Through the use of his new and improved telescope, Galileo was able to discover something never to have been seen before and with this discovery some knowledge that was not previously known to astronomers. The lunar observation that Galileo made depicted the surface of the moon as being filled with craters and that it was rough and uneven, not smooth or perfectly spherical as was the previous belief held by many. The observation that Galileo made about the four new planets showed that earth was not the only center of the universe as he states that the four planets “have their orbits round a bright blue star…and are sometimes in front of it, sometimes behind it though they never depart from it beyond certain limits” . The observations that he made were blows to the Aristotelian world view, which was geocentric (had the world as the centre of everything). From the reading of his work, it seemed that Galileo rejected or ignored Aristotle’s views as his views and observations directly contradicted the Aristotelian view of the universe, which was widely accepted by both scientists and theologians during his time. The moon’s rugged surface went against the idea of heavenly perfection, and the orbits of four planets violated the geocentric notion that the heavens revolved around Earth.
In simple terms, Galileo works marked another step towards a separation of science from philosophy which is turn served as a large and important development in the way humans think.
Galileo’s experiments and inventions, mainly his updated version of the Dutch telescope, helped revolutionize astronomy and mathematics. His desire for inventive experimentation helped push the scientific method towards the modern form we have today. Francis Bacon’s theories began to have a major influence on the evolving field science in Europe. In the 21st century, Francis Bacon is still regarded as a major figure in the scientific revolution. He advocated a new method of obtaining knowledge about nature and its phenomena with a humanitarian goal in mind and as such, Bacon is credited with brining a new understanding of the world in the early modern era.
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