HY 106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Scientific Method, Nicolaus Copernicus
Chapter 18: Toward a New World-View
The Scientific Revolution
1. Introduction
1. The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was the major cause of
the change in world-view and one of the key developments in the evolution of
Western society
2. Modern science— precise knowledge of the physical world based on the
union of experimental observations with sophisticated mathematics
2. Scientific Thought in 1500
1. European ideas about the universe were based on Aristotelian-medieval
ideas
1. Ten crystal spheres moved around a motionless earth fixed at the center
of the universe and beyond the spheres was heaven
2. Earth was made up of four imperfect, changeable elements: air, fire,
water, earth
3. A uniform force moved an object at a constant speed and the object
would stop as soon as that force was moved
2. Aristotle’s ideas about astronomy and physics were accepted with minor
revisions for two thousand years
1. Offered an understandable, commonsense explanation for what the eye
saw
2. Suited Christianity because it positioned human beings at the center of
the universe and established a home for God (science in this period was
primarily a branch of theology)
3. The Copernican Hypothesis
1. The desire to explain and thereby glorify God’s handiwork led to the first
great departure from the medieval system by Nicolaus Copernicus
2. Copernicus, a Polish clergyman and astronomer, believed that that the sun
was the center of the universe and that all the stars and planets, including
Earth, revolved around the sun (Copernican hypothesis)
1. Was cautious with this idea and did not publish his On the Revolutions of
the Heavenly Spheres until the year of his death (1543)
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