(1) The first point of concern was what I saw in the lead, unsourced it will not surprise you to learn, which makes the rather grandiose claim that "The completion of the Scientific Revolution is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia." In the Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution: From Copernicus to Newton(2000, ed. W. Applebaum, Routledge, NY) I cannot find this phrase or sentiment. It continues "The work formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, thereby completing the synthesis of a new cosmology." Most certainly, but does that signify a "grand synthesis" that ended the Scientific Revolution? Perhaps, but I would be very skeptical,
(2) The first paragraph of the introduction proceeds reasonably and without controversy, highlighting how jolting, paradigm-shifting advances in science have often been term "revolutionary" (calling on the authority of conventionally celebrated figures of]the Scientific Revolution such as Alexis Clairaut[1] and Antoine Lavoisier[2]. However, the article then goes on to quote the English theologian and poet William Whewell... using a quote from him to say "this gave rise" to the "common view of the Scientific Revolution today", as elucidated by the Encyclopedia Britannica
(3) The next paragraph appears to me as a travesty of Original Research. Repeating my edit summary "the author of this paragraph seems to be making a lineal causal link from Copernicus to Newton to Bacon to Galileo as the "Beginning, Middle, and End" of the Scientific Revolution. Such a claim would require exquisite referencing to overcome its presumed extreme reductionism/oversimplification."
(4) In the section Significance we a treated to a conventional summation of the SR effects by one Joseph Ben-David. Followed by a 1611 poem from English religious writer John Donne (seriously!), some commentary from mid-20th-century English historian Herbert Butterfield and then we here from Australian gentleman called Peter Harrison, who largely focuses on religion and works at a 5th-rate University in Australia, who tells the reader that Christianity was a major contributor to the Scientific Revolution.
(5) In the section Empiricism, seven individuals are mentioned, all of them British, except for Descartes who is aligned against the empiricists as a rationalist (although this is not fully explained for the reader).
(6) In the section Baconian Science (what?), we are told "The philosophical underpinnings of the Scientific Revolution were laid out by Francis Bacon, who has been called the father of empiricism." Even Bacon himself acknowledged Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio, who had influenced Pierre Gassendi long before Bacon came on the scene. Instead we are only told of Hume, Berkeley, Hobbes, and William Gilbert. As if [[[Condillac]], Alhazen, Didorot, Helvétius, Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap never existed. Also the reader would have no idea that the extreme empiricist philosophy of Berkeley for instance, would not only be intolerable to contemporary scientific minds but his theories of optics have been decisively disproven by modern medical, technological, and scientific advances.
I could go on, but I'm running out of steam. Time fae ma bed. EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 08:31, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
Not Sure how do you do responses, but to the baconian science section issue, just saying that Alhazen was not read by all of these, and the scientific revolution was adopted somewhat independently, or maybe there is some kind of link I just do not know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.83.186.34 (talk) 06:39, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
Feel free to edit the article. Dan100 (Talk) 20:48, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
- @Dan100 this article is also highly eurocentric. Unfortunately not all users may edit the article. TheCatCameBack (talk) 17:29, 29 June 2025 (UTC)
- This description should reflect the article's eurocentric bias:
- from
- "This article is about a period in the history of science. For the process of scientific progress via revolutions, proposed by Thomas Kuhn, see Paradigm shift."
- to
- This article chronicles a period in the history of European science. For the process of scientific progress via revolutions, proposed by Thomas Kuhn, see Paradigm shift. TheCatCameBack (talk) 17:31, 29 June 2025 (UTC)
I suspect the author leaned heavily on Steven Shapin's "The Scientific Revolution" - the general scope of the article follows Chapter 1, at least. That said, I would consider challenging the term "revolution" and instead consider that the events that comprised the scientific revolution were in fact more evolutionary. And to Shapin's point, the "revolution" wasn't reverting back to anything; if anything, it was refuting Aristotelian philosophy. AFineClaret (talk) 19:00, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
References
a French mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist. He was a prominent Newtonian whose work helped to establish the validity of the principles and results that Sir Isaac Newton had outlined in the Principia of 1687
a chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology... Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), and opposed the phlogiston theory. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
