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14 - The Scientific Revolution

from Part III - Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2021

Michael Ruse
By
Michael Ruse
Edited by
Stephen Bullivant
Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Stephen Bullivant
Affiliation:
St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
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Summary

The Scientific Revolution is conveniently dated from 1543, when the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus published his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), in which he argued that the Earth goes around the Sun rather than the Sun around the Earth – the “heliocentric” picture of the universe from the “geocentric” picture of the universe (Kuhn 1957). It is as conveniently dated to 1687, when the English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) which, thanks to his three laws of motion and his law of gravitational attraction, gave the all-important causal explanation to what the Revolution had wrought (Westfall 1971, 1980)

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The Cambridge History of Atheism , pp. 258 - 277
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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