Renaissance Scientific Movement | Bertrand Russell (essay date 1945)
Bertrand Russell (essay date 1945)
SOURCE: "General Characteristics" and "The Rise of Science," in A History of Western Philosophy, and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Simon and Schuster, 1945, pp. 491–95, 525–40.
[In the following excerpt, Russell puts in perspective both the achievements of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, and the advances made in astronomy, dynamics, scientific instruments, and mathematics.]
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century. The Italian Renaissance, though not medieval, is not modern; it is more akin to the best age of Greece. The sixteenth century, with its absorption in theology, is more medieval than the world of Machiavelli. The modern world, so far as mental outlook is concerned, begins in the...
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