During the period of the Crusades in the Middle Ages, Islamic scholars came into contact with Christian scholars in Europe. The Muslims were responsible for the recovery and restoring of classical Greek texts in philosophy; mathematics; branches of science such as astronomy, physics, and alchemy; medical theory; and agricultural knowledge. These discoveries, chief among them works related to Aristotle, were a boon to those researching and teaching in universities and monastic centers of education. All these and many other contributions came with aid from Islamic culture and learning (“Islamic World Contributions to Medieval Europe,” n.d.).

Transition from Natural Philosophy to (What We Call) Science

The current premises of the Royal Society, 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, London

The term natural philosophy was a term that encompasses what came to be called science. Although the term science (as a designator for what we call science) was not developed until the 1840s, the ways of knowing that we could identify as science were being developed much earlier (Ross, 2015).

Science was a new way of approaching the study of the world and its many subject areas. Science was based on the discovery of natural laws that involved observation, experiment, and empirical evidence. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) forwarded an inductive process that assembled data, subjected it to experimentation, and reviewed, as the appropriate process from which conclusions about the world could be drawn. No longer was the rationalistic approach with logical proofs sufficient to establish what was true or scientific. No longer was it sufficient to argue from first principles which could be misleading and involve philosophical errors in making statements about the nature of the natural world (“Francis Bacon, 1561–1626,” n.d.).

Science’s three hallmarks included a body of knowledge, a method or system of inquiry, and a community of supportive practitioners and institutions. Bacon felt that the last feature was significant, for science would not be advanced without the support of patrons, societies and institutions which enabled them to do their work. Additionally, the lessons learned from the empirical study of nature would be improved on as they were reviewed by later researchers. Formal societies for the advancement of science quickly formed (“Francis Bacon, 1561–1626,” n.d.).

In 1662, the Royal Society of London was created. The English king, Charles II, gave a charter to a group of natural philosophers and mathematicians, giving them the right to establish the Royal Society of London, for the “improvement of natural knowledge.” Its members were committed to support and collaborate with other members, conduct formal experiments, record results, and share results, both internally and internationally with others who pursued science. As other societies sprang up, a growing consensus emerged as to what constituted legitimate research, and it began the tradition of crediting discoveries to whomever first published the results. Thus, the wider distribution of scientific methods, theories, and published results was attained, and more consistent standards of scientific work were advanced.

From Geocentric (Self) to Heliocentric (Beyond Self) Views of the Cosmos

Copernicus monument by Thorwaldsen

This important period of scientific and philosophical advance began with the heliocentric (sun-centered cosmos) discovery of Nicholas Copernicus (De Revolutionibus—On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, 1543) in the mid-16th century and progressed into the 17th-century age of Enlightenment with Sir Isaac Newton (Principia, 1687). Newton proposed universal laws for gravity and the movement of terrestrial and celestial bodies. He discovered a wondrous order to the universe. Older beliefs were questioned as new ways of understanding and viewing the world were advanced (“From Copernicus to Newton,” n.d.). Swept along were changing conceptual, social, and institutional relationships with nature, knowledge, and religious belief—as well as with the self.

Sources of authority and foundations of certainty were questioned: in particular the church’s understanding and embrace of Ptolemy’s (100–178 CE) view of a universe centered from the earth. Man was the center of God’s plan. This was to be challenged by evidence that the sun—not the earth—was at the center of the solar system. Direct observation of the heavens by Tyco Brahe (1557–1630) and Galileo (1564–1642) with the aid of telescopes and new mathematical computations of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) confirmed Copernicus’s theories, which placed the earth moving around the sun (“From Copernicus to Newton,” n.d.).

It is hard, in this day and time, to imagine how important these discoveries were. The import could not be greater; it presented a new paradigm of the cosmos and our place in it. No longer could it be asserted that humans were at the center of the universe; our place was moved to the margin, empirically, scientifically, and philosophically. This was a shift in human consciousness of earth-shaking magnitude. With it came a challenge to the authority of the Church as the final word on all matters of faith as well as science.

Francis Bacon (ca. 1590)

This period of scientific advancement brought practical advancement as well as new theories of explaining the universe. Inventors and innovators took this new body of practical knowledge to create technological achievements such as the telescope. Developments of this kind paved the way toward the eventual industrialization of the West (“From Copernicus to Newton,” n.d.).

Sir Francis Bacon would place the importance of these developments in perspective: “Printing, firearms, and the compass . . . no empire, sect or star appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries” (Bacon, 2016, p. 32).

The late medieval explosion in recovery of ancient classical knowledge, the arrival and dissemination of knowledge by way of the printing press, the fractious and ongoing warfare following the Reformation with shifting political maneuvers, and the discovery of the New World (unmentioned by ancient authorities) did much to shake confidence in older ways of thinking. At the same time the revolution in scientific and technological advancement assisted, enhanced, and confirmed the importance of these coinciding developments in European culture.