Scientific revolution

:This article is about the period in history, not the process of scientific progress via revolution, proposed by Thomas Kuhn and discussed at paradigm shift

Methodological developments

The most important changes were in the way that science was done. Three main developments can be identified as mathematisation, mechanisation, and empiricism.

Related Topics:
Mathematisation - Mechanisation - Empiricism

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Mechanisation

Aristotle recognised four kinds of causes, of which the most important was the "final cause". The final cause was the aim or goal of something. Thus, the final cause of rain was to let plants grow. Until the scientific revolution, it was very natural to see such goals in nature. The world was inhabited by angels and demons, spirits and souls, occult powers and mystical principles. Scientists spoke about the 'soul of a magnet' as easily as they spoke about its velocity.

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The rise of the so-called "mechanical philosophy" put a stop to this. The mechanists, of whom the most important one was René Descartes, rejected all goals, emotion and intelligence in nature. In this modern view, the world consisted of matter moving in accordance with the laws of physics. Where nature had previously been imagined to be like a living entity, the scientific revolution viewed nature as following natural, physical laws.

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Empiricism

"Look at the world, but don't experiment!"—such was the view of the natural philosophers before the scientific revolution. Nature, it was thought, should be looked at as it worked on its own. If one did an experiment, one was putting nature in "unnatural" circumstances, and hence the results of an experiment would not agree with the true way nature worked.

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Under the influence of philosophers like Francis Bacon, an empirical tradition was developed in the 17th century. The Aristotelian belief of natural and artificial circumstances was abandoned, and a research tradition of systematic experimentation was slowly accepted throughout the scientific community. Bacon's philosophy of using an inductive approach to nature -- to abandon assumption and to attempt to simply observe with an open mind -- was in strict contrast with the earlier, Aristotelian approach of deduction, by which analysis of "known facts" produced further understanding. In practice, of course, many scientists (and philosophers) believed that a healthy mix of both was needed -- the willingness to question assumptions, yet also interpret observations assumed to have some degree of validity.

Related Topics:
Francis Bacon - Inductive - Aristotelian - Deduction

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At the end of the scientific revolution the organic, quantitative world of book-reading philosophers had been changed into a mechanical, mathematical world to be known through experimental research. Though it is certainly not true that Newtonian science was like modern science in all respects, it closely resembled ours in many ways -- much more so than the Aristotelian science of a century earlier.

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