Note: Also, it is important to understand that this is translated from the French version of Wikipedia.
From my point of view we are still going through a scientific revolution worldwide that sprang from this revolution regarding Copernicus and Galileo and Newton in past centuries. There is still a war going on in all countries to a greater or lesser degree between Science and religion. Religion predates the modern view of science by at least 1000 to 2000 to 10,000 years depending upon the country and civilization. So, in some ways it is easier for cultures to lean on Religion than the newer technologies and sciences even though they were very strong in Ancient Greece and also in the Arabic and Chinese World in a very ancient way too.
So, it is difficult to see how people eventually get to some equanymity in regard to all this.
Religions were created to prevent people from jumping off cliffs or otherwise killing themselves or each other when people they loved died unexpectedly.
Science was created from physical observations so less people would die unexpectedly. Both are necessary and useful tools for human survival. Science is useful for physical survival and religion is necessary so everyone doesn't just commit suicide at one point or another.
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Scientific revolution
The scientific revolution is generally considered as a discontinuity of scientific thought at a given time, this rupture leading one disciplinary field - or several - to reorganize itself around new principles and axioms .
The notion of "scientific revolution", supported in particular by Alexandre Koyré , Herbert Butterfield and Thomas Kuhn , has been the subject of a certain number of criticisms, because it implies a total break with ancient knowledge, based on image of an obscurantist Middle Ages opposed to a modern era, progressive and detached from religion.
Historical elements [ edit | modify the code ]
In the uses [ edit | modify the code ]
In the literature, by the mere expression of "scientific revolution", reference is often made to the upheavals that took place in the xvi th to the xviii th century in many areas of science: it is actually the mechanistic revolution , often called the Copernican revolution . Historically, this is arguably one of the greatest " scientific revolutions " for contemporary science historians.
Each scientific discipline has its “ modern evolutions ”: invention of infinitesimal calculus, discovery of genetics, appearance of relativity (special or general) and quantum physics. They are often described today as "revolutions".
All these developments are not ruptures and the current meaning of “revolution” therefore has a less closed meaning than its historical meaning. Revolution designates a variety of developments considered to be major and founders of a new science in science 1 .
The question remains open whether the major scientific developments of older times are to be considered on the same level (for example, the invention of zero).
History of the concept of scientific revolution [ edit | modify the code ]
The term "revolution" is in common use since the xviii th century. In the Encyclopedia , several authors describe the contributions of scientists such as Newton as revolutions in science, that is to say as initiating the beginning of an era 2 . The meaning evolves under the pen of scientists, historians of science and philosophers. Thus, Kant describes the transition from a geocentric to heliocentric system like the Copernican revolution in his Critique of Pure Reason .
In the xx th century, the concept of "scientific revolution" is redesigned to stick as close to major scientific developments in quick succession since the middle of the xix th century.
We can distinguish the vision of Thomas Samuel Kuhn , where the rupture is not understood specifically in terms of progress, but of position 1 (the actors of the revolutions make a scientific choice that can be criticized), and Bachelard's vision , where scientific revolutions are the engine of human progress (the actors of scientific revolutions tend towards better knowledge and a more complete approximation of the truth) 2 .
Scientific revolutions plural [ change | modify the code ]
The history of science highlights several of these revolutions:
- the foreground of rationality by the Greek presocratics ;
- the Copernican revolution (the abandonment of geocentrism);
- the Scientific Revolution of the xvi th and xviii th centuries;
- the evolution of species through variety and natural selection;
- special relativity and general relativity ;
- the discovery of the structure of DNA 3 .
An originality of revolutions of a scientific nature compared to political revolutions , for example, lies in the crucial conservation of acquired knowledge [ref. necessary] . Confronted with its own limits (often, the discovery of a mismatch with experience, as in physics ), a scientific theory brings the intellectual elements of its own failure and its replacement by another theory, more "successful" and more integral. This means that a scientific revolution is supposed to be both radical, because it expresses a new way of thinking, and conservative, because it must incorporate the old elements of scientific knowledge on which they are necessarily based.[ref. necessary] .
Notes and references [ edit | modify the code ]
- Breakthrough evolutionary point of view illustrated by Thomas Samuel Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions .
Kuhn observes that the great theoretical changes involve not a continuous remodeling of the concepts and axioms in place, but frank breaks whose obvious goal is the replacement of a failed paradigm by a more efficient and innovative one. In paradigm Kuhn includes both the pure scientific content and the social and technical organization supporting one of the sciences. Kuhn opposes "normal" science in a stable, productive situation to "extraordinary" science, in a crisis situation leading to a theoretical and innovative breakthrough. - B. Bensaude-Vincent, Scientific Revolution . In Dominique Lecourt et al. , Dictionary of History and Philosophy of Science , p. 840 , Paris, PUF , ( ISBN 2-13-052866-X )
- Victor K. McElheny, Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution on Google Books . Basic Books, 2004
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