The Scientific Revolution
The Scientific RevolutionBy Eman M. ElshaikhThe familiar story of the Scientific Revolution runs from Copernicus to Newton, but the full story extends far beyond Europe, beyond men, and beyond the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 1130L
2Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. ElshaikhThe universe doesn’t revolve around you. And by you, we mean your planet. That’s common knowledge now, but we used to think Earth was the center of the universe, and that the universe was made up of simple elements like earth, water, air and fire. Then we had the Scientific Revolution and boom, there are 118 elements, penicillin, a moon landing, and app-based scooters on every street.Or that’s the usual story, anyway. The Scientific Revolution is often portrayed as a frenzy of amazing discoveries by brilliant men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are bookended on one end by Copernicus (1473-1543 CE) and Newton (1643-1727 CE) on the other.And these smart guys did more than think up good ideas—they are said to have revolutionized our thinking and our world. Copernicus, for example, put the sun at the center of the cosmos, and Newton transformed how we think about motion, force and gravity. He was inspired, the story goes, by an apple falling on his head.But wait a minute. Is that really how it happened? Was the Scientific Revolution a parade of great male, European scientists? Was it as revolutionary as the familiar historical narratives describe? And what effects did it have on the world?Was it revolutionary?OK, it was revolutionary. Kind of. There were many continuities with earlier historical periods. We’re sometimes told that the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution emerged out of the mucky medieval “Dark Ages,” when we’ve been told ignorance prevailed. But women and men did plenty of intellectual and scientific stuff during the medieval period, laying the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution.For that matter, humans have always experimented and calculated—the hallmarks of the Scientific Revolution. Archaeologists have even found evidence of astronomical observations from the Neolithic period. So while experimentation and mathematical models took on a new form during the Scientific Revolution, they were not revolutionary practices.Individual scientific pursuits may have had their own revolutions, but most of the change was slow and fragmented. Throughout these two centuries, people maintained many of the same ideas, and religion continued to influence scientific thinking. But what really made the Scientific Revolution so revolutionary was the scale of it. People had been experimenting and sharing ideas here and there for millennia, and now A page from Nicole Oresme’s 1377 treatise showing the celestial spheres. Nicole Oresme, a medieval French scholar, explored whether the Earth or the Sun moved in his philosophical investigations. Public domain.
3Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. Elshaikhit was happening at a much larger, unprecedented scale. Technologies like the printing press and long-distance navigational tools helped create massive networks, where ideas could collide and cross-pollinate. There was simply more information, and it was being absorbed and evaluated by an even larger community.Was it European?So far, we’ve mentioned only European scholars, and the Scientific Revolution has traditionally been described as a European affair. More recently, however, historians question that narrative by looking for the global story. It turns out gravity, starry skies and insects are observable in all parts of the world.The first thing to remember is that those so-called “Dark Ages” were pretty bright outside of Europe. (In fact, they weren’t that dark inside of Europe either.) A lively intellectual life in both the Islamic world and China suggests, as many scholars note, direct and indirect global links to the Scientific Revolution. Even the Greek sources that inspired modern science and reason had to travel through the Islamic world to get back to Europe. Scholars in cities like Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad took on massive projects to translate ancient sources from Greek and other languages into Arabic.Scholars at an Abbasid library, called the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad. This was one center of the Translation Movement and intellectual activity more broadly. Illustration by Yahya al-Wasiti, 1237. Public domain.
4Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. ElshaikhMany Scientific Revolution achievements also have non-European antecedents (things that came before). Indian ideas about mathematical techniques inspired the modern system of mathematical proofs, some research suggests. Others point to Arab and Persian astronomers’ contributions to the Copernican system. These are specific examples of knowledge transfer, but others argue there were broader intellectual shifts that paved the way. A heliocentric (sun-centered) model was in the making for a while. Intellectuals across Asia had been questioning an Earth-centric model for centuries, creating space for Copernicus to elaborate his new system.But this is a pretty big historical debate. Some scholars still think there was something uniquely European about the Scientific Revolution. Many of these same scholars argue that parallel ideas across cultures don’t necessarily mean they reached and influenced European thinkers. Yet, others believe these cross-cultural influences must have existed, given the extensive networks and connections across Afro-Eurasia at the time. Though scholars debate the specifics, there’s a general consensus that the European Scientific Revolution relied on earlier knowledge systems both within and outside of Europe. Whose revolution?Even though it had a wide geographic spread—in origins and effects—the Scientific Revolution was generally limited to a small class of people. Most were elite and highly educated. And half the population was excluded, as women weren’t usually given access to scientific communities. There are a few significant exceptions, like French mathematician and physicist Émilie du Châtelet. She was famous for her French translation of and commentary on Newton’s work. Her commentary led to robust debates about the conservation of energy—the idea that energy is neither created nor destroyed—which helped clarify the idea and promote Newton’s principles across Europe. But there were other women, usually from the upper to middle classes, who participated as mathematicians, naturalists, astronomers, chemists and scientific illustrators.Then, as science became a formal institution and a profession, it became even harder for women to participate. This had not been the case before, when things like astronomical observation were mostly done in private homes and were open to women. Experimental science was also considered something of a hobby, like cooking—not as rigorous as the “manly” scholastic task of learning ancient Greek and Latin. But when science became regarded as an important, respected profession, women were excluded with the subtly of a sign on a treehouse reading: “No Girls Allowed.” In fact, the Royal Society of London’s stated purpose was to advance “Masculine Philosophy.”A lunar model by the Arab astronomer Ibn al-Shatir, who may have influenced Copernicus’ computations. However, it’s also possible that both men made these calculations independently. Public domain. Portrait of the French mathematician and physicist Émilie du Châtelet working on some calculations. Painted by Maurice Quentin de La Tour. Public domain.
5Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. ElshaikhWomen were routinely denied access to spaces like this, as well as universities. This further cemented ideas about what kind of knowledge was legitimate and who could make it. Women were considered too emotional and unscientific in their thinking to produce objective truth. Despite this severely limited access, women continued to make important contributions to science.Ideas from the Scientific Revolution often reinforced gender and racial hierarchies. They perpetuated the metaphor of nature as a feminine force, chaotic and needing to be conquered and controlled. These led to ideas about how to control the body and reproduction. Racial others1 were also grouped into the world of disorderly nature—and ideas about race emerged.2Just as some scientists sought to classify plants and animals, scientists also attempted to classify humans according to skin color, beginning around the time of the Scientific Revolution. This idea was further developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often to justify imperialism and slavery.Did it cause the Industrial Revolution?The Scientific Revolution led to the creation of new knowledge systems, social hierarchies, and networks of thinkers. It also affected production and distribution. But it’s tricky to draw a direct, causal link. People started to think about nature as machinelike and orderly, and they understood it as something that could be dominated and manipulated. But did that directly cause the Industrial Revolution?On the one hand, the Scientific Revolution was all high theory—not applied to actual devices and machines. The people who invented key industrial technologies weren’t slogging through Newton’s notoriously difficult texts. Most were not scholars at all, and had been educated only through practical apprenticeships. In fact, in many cases, the inventions came before the theory. For instance, scientists came up with the second law of thermodynamics by studying Watt’s engine!1 The word “other” can refer to the otherness of marginalized people. Anyone not belonging to the most powerful or privileged class can be a type of “other” due to race, gender, religion, socio-economic status, etc.2 It’s hard to say exactly when people started thinking about race, but it’s definitely not a natural and ancient idea. Of course, people had a sense of others outside their community, who they often looked down upon, but that wasn’t the same as seeing people as different races. For Europeans in the medieval period, humans were sorted into Christians, Jews, and heathens. For ancient societies, people were sorted into those who were citizens of the state or empire and those who lived outside of this system—barbarians.Illustration by Maria Sibylla Merian, a Swiss naturalist. Despite her detailed and realistic botanical observations, some considered Merian as simply an illustrator and not a scientist, though her male counterparts were given more prestige and recognition for similar work. Public domain.
6Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. ElshaikhBut in general, people were better educated, and scientists and industrialists did collaborate. The steam engine would never have taken off were it not for the partnership between the engineer James Watt and industrialist Matthew Boulton.This apparatus was designed to administer gasses for medical purposes and was another Boulton-Watt collaboration. Public domain. So, as historians, we can’t exactly use a scientist’s precision in showing the links between the Scientific Revolution and Industrial Revolution. But that’s because production and distribution on the scale of the Industrial Revolution is incredibly complex. The links look less like single threads and more like several overlapping spiderwebs. But without a doubt, the Scientific Revolution made the Industrial Revolution possible. We see how historical events depend on each other and on certain conditions being in place. Medieval European, Muslim, Chinese and Indian scholars created the conditions for the Scientific Revolution by illuminating many ideas. Similarly, the Scientific Revolution lit a path that—centuries later, with the help of a lot of steam and coal power, money, and labor—led to the Industrial Revolution.
7Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. ElshaikhSourcesArianrhod, Robyn. Seduced by Logic : Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Somerville, and the Newtonian Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bala, Arun, ed. Asia, Europe, and the Emergence of Modern Science Knowledge Crossing Boundaries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ———. The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Bala, Arun, and Prasenjit Duara, eds. The Bright Dark Ages : Comparative and Connective Perspectives. Leiden; Brill, 2016. Bekar, Cliff, and Richard Lipsey. “Science, Institutions and the Industrial Revolution.” Journal of European Economic History 3 (2004): 709–53.Bernal, John Desmond. Science in History. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971.Bosveld, Jane. “Isaac Newton, World’s Most Famous Alchemist” Discover Magazine, December 28, 2010. http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jul-aug/05-isaac-newton-worlds-most-famous-alchemist.Butterfield, Herbert. The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800. New York: Macmillan Company, 1951.Christian, David. “Science: An Overview.” In Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, edited by William Hardy McNeill, Jerry H. Bentley, and David Christian. Great Barrington, Mass.: Berkshire Pub. Group, 2010.Cohen, H. Floris. “The Rise of Modern Science as a Fundamental Pre-Condition for the Industrial Revolution.” Österreichische Zeitschrift Für Geschichtswissenschaften 20, no. 2 (2009): 107–32.Crowther, Kathleen. “The Scientific Revolution.” The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750, July 1, 2015. Dear, Peter Robert. Revolutionizing the Sciences : European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700. “Du Châtelet (1706-1749)—Project Vox.” Accessed July 17, 2019. http://projectvox.library.duke.edu/du-chatelet-1706-1749/#.Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie. Medieval Cosmology : Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds. Edited by Roger Ariew and 1861-1916 Duhem Pierre Maurice Marie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie. “Duhem; Le Systeme Du Monde,” September 28, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110928000346/http://ftp.colloquium.co.uk/~barrett/void.html.“Emilie Du Chatelet: The Woman Science Forgot.” Cosmos Magazine. Accessed July 17, 2019. https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/emilie-du-chatelet-woman-science-forgot.Hagengruber, Ruth, ed. Emilie Du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton. Archives Internationales d’histoire Des Idées ; Dordrecht ; New York: Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 2012. Hannam, James. God’s Philosophers : How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science. London: Icon, 2009.———. “Medieval and Early Modern Universities.” Accessed July 12, 2019. https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/students/research-guide/medieval-early-modern-universities.Heilbron, John L. “Was There a Scientific Revolution?” The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics, October 1, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199696253.013.2.Henry, John. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave, 2001.Hooke, Robert. “Micrographia,” 1665. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hooke/robert/micrographia/observ39.html.Huff, Toby E. Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution : A Global Perspective. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.———. “Review of The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective, Written by William E. Burns in: Journal of Early Modern History Volume 20 Issue 5 (2016).” Journal of Early Modern History 20, no. 5 (2016). ———. The Rise of Early Modern Science : Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
8Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. ElshaikhJacob, Margaret C. Practical Matter : Newton’s Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687-1851. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2004.Jacob, Margaret C. The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Johns, Adrian. The Nature of the Book : Print and Knowledge in the Making. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Jones, Peter. Industrial Enlightenment : Science, Technology and Culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760-1820. Manchester, UK ; New York : New York: Manchester University Press, 2008.Khan, B. Zorina, and Kenneth Sokoloff. “The Evolution of Useful Knowledge: Great Inventors, Science and Technology in British Economic Development, 1750-1930.” Working Paper. Economic History Society, April 2007. https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/ehswpaper/7005.htm.Knight, David. Voyaging in Strange Seas : The Great Revolution in Science. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2014.Lyons, Jonathan. The House of Wisdom : How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009.Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature : Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980.Mokyr, Joel. The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.Morus, Iwan Rhys, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.Musson, Albert Edward. Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution. Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1969.Newman, William Royall. Newton the Alchemist : Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s Secret Fire. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2019.O’Grada, Cormac. “Did Science Cause the Industrial Revolution?” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, November 12, 2014. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2523358.Osler , Margaret J., B. J. T. Dobbs, Richard S. Westfall , Peter Barker, Bruce Janacek, Pamela H. Smith, William E. Burns, et al., eds. Rethinking the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Ronan, Colin A. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the World’s Science. Cambridge Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1984.Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World : A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.Saliba, George. “Flying Goats and Other Myths.” Accessed July 16, 2019. https://www.academia.edu/15306127/Flying_Goats_and_Other_Myths.———. “FLYING GOATS AND OTHER OBSESSIONS: A RESPONSE TO TOBY HUFF’S ‘REPLY.’” BRIIFS 4, no. 2 (2002). ———. Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. Edited by George Saliba. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007. Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Stearns, Justin. “The Legal Status Of Science In The Muslim World In The Early Modern Period: An Initial Consideration Of Fatwās From Three Maghribī Sources.” The Islamic Scholarly Tradition, January 1, 2011, 265–90.“The Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project: Home.” Accessed July 16, 2019. http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/.Weinberg, Steven. To Explain the World : The Discovery of Modern Science. New York: Harper, 2015.Westfall, Richard S. The Construction of Modern Science : Mechanisms and Mechanics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. “Scientific Revolution.” In Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, edited by Bonnie G. Smith. Accessed July 14, 2019. Wolfe, Ross. “Race and the Enlightenment' The Charnel-House. Accessed July 12, 2019. https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/03/19/race-and-the-enlightenment/.Wootton, David. The Invention of Science : A New History of the Scientific Revolution, 2016.
9Unit 3: IndustrializationThe Scientific RevolutionEman M. ElshaikhEman M. ElshaikhThe author of this article is Eman M. Elshaikh. She is a writer, researcher, and teacher who has taught K-12 and undergraduates in the United States and in the Middle East and written for many different audiences. She teaches writing at the University of Chicago, where she also completed her master’s in social sciences and is currently pursuing her PhD. She was previously a World History Fellow at Khan Academy, where she worked closely with the College Board to develop curriculum for AP World History.Image creditsCover: Folio from an c. 18th century astronomical manuscript illustrating the relative positions of the sun, the moon, Jupiter and Venus, From the collection established by a former pearl merchant. United Arab Emirates. Islamic. , c. 18th century CE. © Photo by Werner Forman / Universal Images Group / Getty ImagesA page from Nicole Oresme’s 1377 treatise showing the celestial spheres. Nicole Oresme, a medieval French scholar, explored whether the Earth or the Sun moved in his philosophical investigations. Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oresme_Spheres.jpgScholars at an Abbasid library, called the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad. This was one center of the Translation Movement and intellectual activity more broadly. Illustration by Yahya al-Wasiti, 1237. Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom#/media/File:Maqamat_hariri.jpgA lunar model by the Arab astronomer Ibn al-Shatir, who may have influenced Copernicus’ computations. However, it’s also possible that both men made these calculations independently. Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Shatir#/media/File:Ibn-al-shatir2.gifPortrait of the French mathematician and physicist Émilie du Châtelet working on some calculations. Painted by Maurice Quentin de La Tour. Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émilie_du_Châtelet#/media/File:Emilie_Chatelet_portrait_by_Latour.jpgIllustration by Maria Sibylla Merian, a Swiss naturalist. Despite her detailed and realistic botanical observations, some considered Merian as simply an illustrator and not a scientist, though her male counterparts were given more prestige and recognition for similar work. Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Sibylla_Merian#/media/File:Maria_Sibylla_Merian_Maulbeerbaum_samt_Frucht_plate_1.pngThis apparatus was designed to administer gasses for medical purposes and was another Boulton-Watt collaboration. Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_and_Watt#/media/File:Watt_apparatus_2.JPGArticles leveled by Newsela have been adjusted along several dimensions of text complexity including sentence structure, vocabulary and organization. The number followed by L indicates the Lexile measure of the article. For more information on Lexile measures and how they correspond to grade levels: www.lexile.com/educators/understanding-lexile-measures/To learn more about Newsela, visit www.newsela.com/about.The Lexile® Framework for ReadingThe Lexile® Framework for Reading evaluates reading ability and text complexity on the same developmental scale. Unlike other measurement systems, the Lexile Framework determines reading ability based on actual assessments, rather than generalized age or grade levels. Recognized as the standard for matching readers with texts, tens of millions of students worldwide receive a Lexile measure that helps them find targeted readings from the more than 100 million articles, books and websites that have been measured. Lexile measures connect learners of all ages with resources at the right level of challenge and monitors their progress toward state and national proficiency standards. More information about the Lexile® Framework can be found at www.Lexile.com.