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Scientific Revolution Influence

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Beginning in Europe during mid-sixteenth century and lasting until mid-eighteenth century, this period of time saw advancements in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, and chemistry which would lead into modern science. These advancements, however, challenged the doctrine of the Catholic Church and other previous beliefs. Scientific thinkers such as Copernicus, Newton, and Descartes helped impact Europe through challenging long-held religious beliefs, changing philosophical beliefs, and introducing new technology. Before the Scientific Revolution, popular beliefs concerning the world and its functions all led back to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps one of the most known beliefs of the Church was its geocentric theory, where the Earth was the center of the universe instead of the Sun. However this theory was refuted by men such as Copernicus and Galileo. In 1543, Copernicus wrote On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, where he discredited the Catholic Church’s long held belief. He had argued that the Sun was in the center of our solar system instead of the Earth, giving way to the heliocentric theory. Then in 1632, Galileo had published his book Dialogue on the …show more content…

The scientific method of the Middle Ages had been based around Aristotle's inductive method of reasoning, when a scientist gathers facts about individual cases and uses them to reach a conclusion or theory. Similarly, Bacon’s inductive method found answers by starting with many observations of nature, with the goal of finding a few, powerful statements about how nature works, which would then be turned into laws and theories. However, Descartes believed in the deductive method where reasoning is found in accordance to multiple premises that are generally found to be true. In short, deductive reasoning is a basic form of valid reasoning, while inductive makes broad generalizations from specific

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