The Scientific Revolution began in the 16th-17th centuries and challenged traditional views in physics, astronomy, biology, and medicine. Notable figures included Copernicus, who proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system; Galileo, who used the telescope to observe celestial bodies and supported the heliocentric theory, leading to his trial by the Catholic Church; and Kepler, who formulated laws of planetary motion. The Scientific Revolution established new methodologies like empiricism and the scientific method, shifting from medieval reliance on ancient authorities to approaches based on observation and experimentation.

1. The Scientific Revolution
AP European History
Capital High School

2. The Old School:
Ancient Science

3. The ancient scientists are
natural philosophers...

4. Aristotle
4th Century BCE Greece
Theory of Falling Objects
Foundation of ancient and
medieval science

5. Ptolemy
2nd Century Greece
Almagest

6. Image: Red Orbit

7. The Old School:
Medieval Science

9. What develops as science?
Alchemy
Witchcraft
Astrology

10. St. Thomas Aquinas
1225-1274 - Italy
Summa Theologica

11. Causes of the
Scientific Revolution

12. The Medieval University
system
The Renaissance
The Age of Discovery
Evolution of Scientific
Methodology
Image: Creative Commons by the Roman Empire

13. The Major Question: What
is the nature of the
universe?

14. Geocentric
vs.
Heliocentric

15. Nicholas Copernicus
1473-1543 - Poland
Concerning the REvolutions
of the Celestial Spheres
Pope Paul III
“...the book nobody read”

16. Tycho Brahe
1546-1601 - the Netherlands
The Dream

17. Johannes Kepler
157101630 - Germany
Kepler’s Three Laws of
Planetary Motion

18. Galileo Galilei
1564-1642 - Tuscan Region
of Italy
Revisiting The Theory of
Falling Objects
Starry Messenger

20. Dialogues on the Two Chief World
Systems
Introducing to the world...
Simplico!

21. The Trial of Galileo
Pope Urban VIII

22. Sir Isaac Newton
1642-1727 - England
“Lucasian Professor” at
Cambridge University
Principia

24. Newton’s Three Laws of Motion
The Law of Inertia
Fundamental Law of
Dynamics
Law of Reciprocal Actions

25. Major Question: What is
the best way to study
science?

26. Empiricism

27. Francis Bacon
1561-1626 - England
Inductive reasoning

28. Inductive Reasoning
vs.
Deductive Reasoning

29. Rene Descartes
1596-1650 - France
Discourse on Method
“I think, therefore I am...”

30. Scientific Method

31. Major Question:
How should we best treat
human sickness?

32. Galen
2nd Century - Greece
Studied Hippocrates
Four bodily humours

33. Medicine and the Catholic Church
Monastic movement =
healers

34. Andreas Vesalius
1514-1564 - Belgium
On the Fabric of the Human
Body!

36. William Harvey
1578-1657 - England
An Anatomical Exercise on
the Motion of the Heart and
Blood in Animals