Rebirth and Reformation

Galileo Galilei, a contemporary of Kepler, built a telescope and began fixing its lens on the planets. He made a series of remarkable discoveries: that the moon was not flat and smooth, there were spots on the sun, Jupiter had moons that orbited it, Venus had phases like the moon, which proved th...

Human history is often framed as a series of episodes, representing sudden bursts of knowledge. The Agricultural Revolution, the Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution are a few examples where it is generally thought that innovation moved quicker than at other points in history, leading to a ...

Several decades later, the English mathematician Isaac Newton proved the Copernican heliocentric model. Newton's discoveries in many ways marked the end of the Scientific Revolution. His achievements became the foundation for modern physics.

In 1687, Newton described three laws of motion t...

The man who started the scientific revolution was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus.

Copernicus developed a heliocentric alternative to Ptolemy's planetary system. His system placed the Sun at the center instead of the Earth. The detailed controversial t...

Much of the knowledge about the natural world during the middle ages dates back to the teachings of the Greeks and Romans. Many did not question these ideas, despite the many flaws.

• Aristotle taught everything beneath the moon was comprised of four elements: earth, air, water, an...