November 7, 2024

What makes a revolution?

When you hear the term “revolution,” you tend to think of some sudden, drastic change resulting in a fundamental difference. Perhaps that is why so many individuals including Shapin do not think too kindly about the term Scientific Revolution. To summarize the many steps over time it took to culminate in the supposed Scientific Revolution would greatly gloss over many inconsistencies and errors in making it seem like one single event. This is to say that I agree with Shapin in that scientific revolution is misleading in its wording and labelling. 

As Kuhn had described in his paradigm theory, a revolution had to begin with some time honored theory being questioned and replaced with a new view that transformed the scientific view. This would usually be highly charged with controversy, then be followed by a period of “normal science.”  The general starting point for the Scientific Revolution seems to be when philosophers began to realize the Earth was not the center of the universe. This is one reason why many don’t consider there to have been a scientific revolution. At this point in history, the scientists did not consider themselves as such, rather they thought of themselves as philosopher studying the book of nature. Their use of natural philosophy to deduce meaning in the world is what we now consider science, so calling their discovery of the sun being at the center the beginning of the Scientific Revolution might seem strange.

One key part in realizing the heliocentric truth was due to Galileo’s work with his telescope. He was able to see things such as the moons of Jupiter and the stars in the Milky Way. His work along with others such as Copernicus helped people realize heliocentrism was the correct arrangement of the solar system. This was one of the biggest debunks of all time, since people thought the Earth was the middle. Newton greatly changed the scientific world with his work on physics like his laws of motion still used today. These discoveries certainly came in a process that one could see as a general change in science, but they are so scattered in time and areas of study that lumping them all into one revolution seems absurd. It wasn’t like the other revolutions we learned about, like the Industrial or French. There was no single catalyst or event that could explain the process of change for some specific ideal, like machinery for the Industrial Revolution or freedom for the French Revolution. Science always changes and adds something new, so if anything I would say we’re still in the revolution if it even exists.

Technology has never moved faster in advancement than in today’s time. If we want to call the many advancements I described the Scientific Revolution, then I’m not sure what we would call today’s improvements in technology/science. Our lives literally change faster than ever before in terms of generational difference. The life I had with technology is already vastly different from kids only 7 years younger than me. When I was in my elementary school, we didn’t have chromebook circle chats or online bingo in the classroom. My friends and I all didn’t have iPads and iPhones starting kindergarten. If the Scientific Revolution is rightly named, then today’s constant updates in the tech world might as well be called the Digital Revolution. 

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