Science, it’s how we know our place in the universe, how we know what natural phenomena
are, how we know what this thing was, how we know how to not die at the ripe old age
of 36, and how we know how to write complex mathematical equations to determine how a
ball rolls down a hill.
Because of science, we were able to go from this to this, which is honestly a pretty good
thing.
In fact, those two images were only 500 years apart, so what happened about 500 years ago
that changed the course of our modern world?
By the way, this video is part of a huge collaboration between a bunch of history YouTube channels,
called Project Revolution, hence the intro.
Now, most of these people (whose videos you should check out once you’re done with this
one) are covering revolutions that birthed new nations and changed other nations forever,
and while that is totally my thing, I decided I‘d cover a slightly different kind of revolution.
The scientific revolution obviously didn‘t topple any regimes (at least on its own) nor
was it necessarily one single event, but a whole paradigm shift taking place over a couple
hundred years, granted only intellectuals really knew it would even have been happening
at the time, but it is still consequential!
Before the Scientific Revolution, most scientific knowledge in the ancient world (at least in
Europe) was based on the teachings of various Greek and Roman scientists and philosophers,
like Aristotle, Ptolemy and Galen, who all had one thing in common: they were kind of
wrong about everything.
Granted, everything they said seemed plausible at the time (and was probably the best they
could have done), but by the middle of the second millennium AD, it was starting to become
clear that they weren‘t necessarily right about what they taught.
Back then, the scientific method was a long way from being invented, so basically everything
that made sense was good enough.
Of course, the most well-known instance of this is with Ptolemy‘s geocentric model
of the solar system, which described the Earth as one single, giant, stationary sphere in
the middle of the universe, of which everything else orbited.
The other planets, the Sun, all the stars, everything.
This model of the heavens was basically the general model throughout the ancient world,
and was actually debunked by many different scientists, but the only one of them people
actually seemed to listen to was Nicolaus Copernicus, and his heliocentric model of
the solar system.
You know, for being… right.
Well, it was actually full of tiny flaws that made the calculations infeasible, but nothing
that couldn’t be fixed up by later scientists.
That’s kind of the basis of science after all, measuring Data and improving on work
done by others.
Copernicus, and many other astronomers at the time made many revolutionary discoveries
in the field, and were all rewarded for their contributions to human civilization by…
being arrested for heresy.
The church (Catholic and Protestant) didn‘t like the idea of Earth not being the center
of everything, because I mean, if they were wrong about their place in the Universe, what
else could they be wrong about?
Galileo was sentenced to house arrest, and Copernicus actually got away with it, but
only by dying just after his book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, was published
in 1543.
Giordano Bruno of course also argued that the other stars in the sky were no different
from our Sun (relatively speaking) and could thus have their own planets, possibly even
with their own life forms.
So, arguing that this would mean that humanity wasn’t the pinnacle of creation, the church
of course burned him at the stake.
So, if these early astronomers had such a hard time convincing their peers of this new
model, what eventually changed?
Basically, overwhelming evidence.
After Copernicus published his book, other physicists and astronomers discovered more
arguments in favor of the heliocentric model.
For one, Galileo discovered that Jupiter had at least four different moons of its own (at
least four), which orbited it, without a care in the universe for whether or not Earth existed.
The phases of Venus were also discovered to have had nothing to do with the Earth, but
everything to do with the Sun.
Eventually, opposition to the heliocentric model started to fade, with heliocentric works
finally starting to be unbanned in the church by 1758, as its influence also started to
fade with the Enlightenment.
It’s pretty easy to confuse the Scientific Revolution with the Enlightenment, but they
are different things.
The Scientific Revolution was a paradigm shift in how we did science, whereas the Enlightenment
was more of a philosophical and religious movement that took place a bit later, often
touted as an extension of the former.
So, even if you don’t care much about space, why should you care about all this?
Well, first off, why don’t you care about space?
Second, while the scientific revolution might not have been a revolution in the traditional
sense, it did still change how we think of the world; and while this may not have been
something initially known about by the common person, the new knowledge brought on by this
series of events did eventually come down to the common person.
Nowadays, not only do we all know how the solar system works, no one would even think
to keep that knowledge from us (at least, no one whose theories actually work out).
It wasn’t just math, physics, and astronomy that saw significant advancements during this
time though, but things like biology and chemistry, which is more helpful in the not-pushing-the-average-lifespan-down-to-thirty
department.
The study of human anatomy expanded from merely the teachings of Galen, who likely never actually
dissected a human body.
This whole paradigm shift can be seen in the motto of the Royal Society, founded in 1660,
“nullius in verba”, meaning “on the word of no one”.
If you find, through your own findings, that an old teaching is bad, reject it and replace
it with a better finding.
Just because something may work somewhat decently, doesn’t mean it can’t still be improved.
This way of thinking, of calling the authority of past sources and high officials into question,
would start to become the dominant way of thinking around the world for the next few
hundred years, starting many numerous revolutions all across the planet.
If you want to learn more about some of those revolutions, might I point out that this video
is actually part of a huge group collaboration between myself and some amazing history YouTubers,
called Project Revolution.
Click here for the previous video, from Soliloquy, and here for the next, from The Cynical Historian.
Be sure to check out the rest of the playlist, and subscribe to learn something new every
Sunday.