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History glossary

Scientific Revolution

the early modern transformation in European ideas about nature, observation, mathematics, and experiment.

Category
Intellectual movement
Region
Europe
Date range
sixteenth-seventeenth centuries

What it means

The Scientific Revolution changed how educated Europeans studied nature. Thinkers such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton emphasized observation, mathematics, experiment, and new models of the cosmos, laying foundations for modern science.

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