The hand-coloured title page of the Astronomicum Caesareum of 1540, with a turning paper disc for working out the positions of the planets
Astronomicum Caesareum, May 1540
Marked Padua

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Scientific Revolution

Between Copernicus’s book putting the Sun at the centre in 1543 and Newton’s laws of motion in 1687, European scholars came to test ideas by observation, experiment and mathematics.

Date
1543 to 1687IX · Oceans crossed
Place
Padua · Prague · Florence · LondonEurope
Laid out as
A revolutionHow things were before, the moment it turned, and how things were after.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

BeforeKnowledge came mostly from ancient authorities like Aristotle and Galen.

  1. IThe Sun at the centre
  2. IIVesalius opens the body
  3. IIIGalileo’s telescope
  4. IVGalileo on trial
  5. VThe Royal Society
  6. VINewton’s Principia

AfterKnowledge came from observation, experiment and mathematics.

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Nicolaus Copernicus
  • Andreas Vesalius
  • Galileo Galilei
  • Johannes Kepler
  • Margaret Cavendish
  • Isaac Newton

Objects

  • Galileo’s telescopes
  • Hooke’s Micrographia
  • The Principia

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1543 to 1687. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?