Intellectual Revolutions That Defined Society

CHAPTER TWO- INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTIONS THAT DEFINED SOCIETY

Science is a broad field of study focused on discovering how nature works and using that knowledge to describe what is likely to happen in nature. While the immediate goal of science is to build knowledge of the natural world, that knowledge can be applied in a number of ways.

Science as an idea- It is an assumption that events in the physical world follow orderly cause-and-effect patterns that can be understood through careful observation, measurements, and experimentation. Science as an intellectual activity. It is a possible and testable answer to a scientific question or explanation of what scientists observe in nature.

Science as a body of knowledge. Science is a subject of discipline, a field of study, that describes the scientific methods and the importance of observation, experimentation, and models.

Science as a personal and social activity. Important and certain results of science done by human beings to develop better understanding of the world around us is based on the large body of evidence. This will lead to scientific theory as a means to improve life and to survive in life.

In European history, the term 'Scientific Revolution' refers to the period between Copernicus and Newton. But the chronological period has varied dramatically over the last fifty years.

Copernican Revolution

Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer who proposed a heliocentric system, that the planets orbit around the Sun; that Earth is a planet which, besides orbiting the Sun annually, also turns once daily on its own axis; and that very slow changes in the direction of this axis account for the precession of the equinoxes. In fifteen forty-three, Nicolaus Copernicus detailed his radical theory of the Universe in which the Earth, along with the other planets, rotated around the Sun. His theory took more than a century to become widely accepted