Renaissance Scientific Movement - Overviews

OVERVIEWS

Allen G. Debus (essay date 1978)

SOURCE: "Tradition and Reform," in Man and Nature in the Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 1–15.

[In the excerpt below, Debus provides an overview of the scientific revolution of the Renaissance, emphasizing the new interest in classical texts, the broader use of vernacular languages, and the expanded roles of observation, mathematics, technology, and mysticism.]

Few events in world history have been more momentous than the Scientific Revolution. The period between the mid-fifteenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries witnessed the growing cultural and political influence of Western Europe over all other parts of the globe. The new science and technology of the West was a crucial factor in this development, a fact recognized by most scholars at the time. Thus, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) observed in the Novum organum (1620) that

[The entire page is 6571 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass