What, if anything, was revolutionary about the Scientific Revolution Essay

What, if anything, was revolutionary about the Scientific Revolution - Essay Example he telescope, the dissection and the new conception of the universe will be used to discuss the causes of the Scientific Revolution as well as illustrate how the Scientific Revolution influenced society then and now. Before the mid-1500s, when the Scientific Revolution is generally agreed to have had its start, ideas regarding medicine, the body and the universe were not based on the same sorts of observations that are available to us today. For those who considered the placement of the earth in relation to the universe, it was understood that the earth was at the center with concentric bands of water, air and fire surrounding it. Surrounding these were further bands of the stellar spheres with Jesus and the saints existing even beyond the outermost stellar sphere. Another conception of the universe, the Ptolemaic Universe, was described as consisting of two spheres, the inner one was the earth and the outer one, the remainder of the universe, revolved around this inner core. These images originating in scientific books on the subject produced in this period help to illustrate the depth to which these ideas, born of Biblical interpretations, were believed. However, touching off the debate that w ould eventually change the world, Copernicus wrote to Pope Paul III regarding his soon-to-be published and revolutionary idea that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around (Copernicus 1543 cited in Levick, 2004: 524). Fearful of the backlash his observations might have on a public firmly entrenched in the idea of being central to the universe, Copernicus was working to gain the support of the Pope by pointing out the purely mathematical means by which he came to his conclusions as well as the support he found for this idea in ancient texts. In this letter, he informs the Pope that it is only by assuming a motion of the earth in addition to the observed motions of the other planets can the universe possibly retain its apparent