Some basic features of the Scientific Revolution

A study of the Newtonian revolution in science rests on the fundamental assumption that revolutions actually occur in science. A correlative assumption must be that the achievements of Isaac Newton were of such a kind or magnitude as to constitute a revolution that may be set apart from other scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At once we are apt to be plunged deep into controversy. Although few expressions are more commonly used in writing about science than “scientific revolution”, there is a continuing debate as to the propriety of applying the concept and term “revolution” to scientific change. There is, furthermore, a wide difference of opinion as to what may constitute a revolution. And although almost all historians would agree that a genuine alteration of an exceptionally radical nature (the Scientific Revolution) occurred in the sciences at some time between the late fifteenth (or early sixteenth) century and the end of the seventeenth century, the question of exactly when this revolution occurred arouses as much scholarly disagreement as the cognate question of precisely what it was. Some scholars would place its origins in 1543, the year of publication of both Vesalius's great work on the fabric of the human body and Copernicus's treatise on the revolutions of the celestial spheres (Copernicus, 1543; Vesalius, 1543). Others would have the revolution be inaugurated by Galileo, possibly in concert with Kepler, while yet others would see Descartes as the true prime revolutionary. Contrariwise, a whole school of historians declare that many of the most significant features of the so-called Galilean revolution had emerged during the late Middle Ages.