The Scientific Revolution

c. 1610 CE — Europe, Early modern Europe

Today: Europe (Padua, Prague, Cambridge)

When Galileo turned a telescope on the night sky and saw moons circling Jupiter, he found physical proof that not everything revolves around the Earth — and the Church convicted him for saying so. But the deeper revolution was the method: test claims against evidence rather than authority, and let anyone repeat the test. Within a century Newton had written laws that governed both a falling apple and the moon. The method was the discovery: a repeatable way to find things out, which could then be turned on any question at all.

Worth knowing: Isaac Newton spent more of his life on alchemy and biblical prophecy than on physics, and calculated that the world would not end before 2060 — the man who invented modern science was also one of history's last great magicians.

Pattern: Information-medium revolution — A new way to record or transmit information lowers the cost of copying ideas and reorders who holds knowledge and power.

Entry 165 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.