The Scientific Revolution began in the late 1300s-1500s with the Renaissance and Reformation which led to the rediscovery of ancient learning and challenges to traditional thinking. In the late 1400s-1600s, the Age of Exploration resulted in the discovery of new lands, people, flora, and fauna. During the mid-1500s-1700s, the Scientific Revolution brought new explanations of nature. Key figures like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Boyle helped establish the heliocentric model of the solar system and develop the scientific method through observations, experimentation, and mathematics.

1. The Scientific Revolution
Late 1300s-1500s:
Renaissance and Reformation 
rediscovery of ancient learning and challenges to traditional thinking
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Late 1400s-1600s:
Age of Exploration  discovery of new lands, people, flora, and fauna
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Mid-1500s-1700s:
New explanations of nature  Scientific Revolution

2. Heliocentric Theory
• Geocentric model: Ancient Greek philosopher Ptolemy put Earth at center of universe with
heavenly bodies in orbit around Earth.
• Heliocentric theory: Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolution of Celestial Spheres (1543), put
Sun at center of universe with heavenly bodies including Earth in orbit around Sun.


3. Heliocentric Theory
• Tycho Brahe made precise astronomical
observations.
• Johannes Kepler gave laws of planetary motion.

4. Heliocentric Theory
• Galileo Galilei improved the telescope; saw Moon's craters, Jupiter's moons, Saturn, and
Neptune; and connected ocean tides to Moon's gravity. He was tried by the Roman Catholic
Church in 1633 for supporting Copernicus’ heliocentric theory.

5. Newtonian Cosmology
• Isaac Newton established laws of motion
and universal gravitation.
• Principia Mathematica (1687) modeled
Newtonian classical mechanics.

6. Newtonian Cosmology
• The clock-like mechanical, predictable Newtonian model was the basis of scientific
understanding of the physical universe until the 1900s.

7. Newtonian Cosmology
• Newton and Gottfrieb Liebniz
simultaneously developed calculus to
mathematically describe motion, surface
area, and volume.
• Liebniz also invented the mechanical
calculator and binary code.

8. Scientific Method
• Francis Bacon (New Atlantis, 1627) developed the scientific method of experimentation and
inductive reasoning.

9. Scientific Method
• René Descartes used deductive reasoning to prove his existence. "I think, therefore I am"
(Meditations, 1641). Skeptical human reasoning became the cornerstone of modern
Western philosophy.

10. Scientific Method
• Bacon’s inductive reasoning + Descartes’s
deductive reasoning = scientific method

11. Scientific Method
• The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge was chartered 1660.

12. Scientific Method
• Robert Boyle (Sceptical Chymist, 1661) founded
modern chemistry.

13. Scientific Method
• Margaret Cavendish wrote about her Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666)
and the early sci-fi novel Blazing World (1666).

14. Renaissance-Era Medical Advances
• Paracelsus rejected the medical knowledge of
ancient Greeks Aristotle and Galen. He founded
toxicology and pioneered the use of chemicals and
minerals in medicine.

15. Renaissance-Era Medical Advances
• Andreas Vesalius conducted dissections to produce the well-illustrated anatomy book
On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543) and was court physician to Charles V.

16. Renaissance-Era Medical Advances
• William Harvey mapped the circulatory system was physician to English kings James I and
Charles I.

17. Renaissance-Era Medical Advances
• Juan Luis Vives studied gender roles,
emotion, memory, learning, and argued
for humane treatment of mentally ill as
forerunner of modern psychology.

18. Renaissance-Era Medical
Advances
• Ambroise Pare was the
father of battlefield
medicine and modern
surgery.

19. Renaissance-Era Medical Advances
• Anthony van Leeuwenhoek developed the microscope.

20. Later Medical Advances
• Edward Jenner developed
a smallpox vaccine in
1796.