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Jan 1, 1543
Nicolas Copernicus Publishes De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Celestial Bodies)
In Copernicus' book; he sets out the heliocentric theory.- the earth revolves aroun the sun -
Period: Jan 1, 1550 to
The Scientific Revolution
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Galileo Galilei Demonstrates the Properties of Gravity
Galileo demonstrates, from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa, that a one- pound weight and a one hundred-pound weight, dropped at the same moment, hit the ground at the same moment, refuting the contention of the Aristotelian system that the rate of fall of an object is dependent upon its weight. He expounds fully on this demonstration years later in his 1638 Discourse on Two New Sciences. -
Galileo Publishes Messenger of the Heavens
Galileo's 24-page booklet describes his telescopic observations of the moon's surface, and of Jupiter's moons, making the Church uneasy. The Inquisition soon warns Galileo to desist from spreading his theories -
Johannes Kepler Reveals His Third and Final Law of Planetary Motion
Kepler's laws of planetary motion describe the form and operation of planetary orbits, and were the final steps leading to the academic rejection of the Aristotelian system. -
Francis Bacon Publishes Novum Organum
Bacon attempts to create organization and cooperation within the scientific community by demonstrating how the diverse fields of science relate to one another. -
Galileo is Forced to Recant his Theories
The Inquisition forces Galileo to sign a recantation and condemns him to house arrest for the remaining nine years of his life. His Dialogue is ordered burned as heretical, and his sentence to be read at every university. -
Rene Descartes Publishes His Discourse on Method
Descartes' work sets forth the principles of deductive reasoning as used in the modern scientific method. -
Rene Descartes Publishes Geometry
In this landmark work, Descartes discusses how motion may be represented as a curve along a graph, defined by its relation to planes of reference. -
Evangelista Torricelli Invents the Barometer
Torricelli's invention measures air pressure, demonstrating that air does indeed have weight, and that the pressure caused by that weight differs in different situations. -
Otto von Guericke Invents the Air Pump
Van Guerick demonstrates the properties of a vacuum by using his air pump to take the air from within his famous "Magdeberg hemispheres," which, though easily separated in normal conditions, could not be parted by two teams of sixteen horses once he had removed the air. -
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli Publishes On the Motion of Animals
Borelli's work is the greatest early triumph of the application of mechanical laws to the human organism. -
Isaac Newton Publishes Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Perhaps the most important event in the history of science, the Principia lays out Newton's comprehensive model of the universe as organized according to the law of universal gravitation. The Principia represents the integration of the works of all of the great astronomers who preceded Newton, and remains the basis of modern physics and astronomy.