The Scientific Revolution is familiar to many students and readers. Everyone knows about Copernicus and the sun-centered universe, Galileo and his trial, Isaac Newton and the discovery of universal gravitation. Often the subject is presented as a series of great geniuses who challenged contemporary authorities and completely overturned the mistaken beliefs of the ancient and medieval scholars. But that is only part of the story.
The real history of Scientific Revolution is more complicated-and far more interesting. European society between the late fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries included a large number of men-and some women-who developed new methods of examining and thinking about the natural world. Scholars and their patrons formed the first scientific societies; inventors created instruments, such as the microscope, to study natural phenomena. Medicine, chemistry, natural history, astronomy, physics-the Scientific Revolution radically and permanently altered not only the content of these disciplines, but also how these subjects were studied.