The Scientific Revolution can be seen as a struggle between evidence and authority. Before the Scientific Revolution began, the Church provided most of the information and ideas that people believed. Those people who questioned the authority and the ideas of the Church often were viewed in negative terms. For example, Galileo built a telescope and supported the theory developed by Copernicus that the sun was the center of the universe, leading the Church to accuse him of heresy. Additionally, the summary that Copernicus wrote about a sun-centered universe was banned for nearly two hundred years.
The Scientific Revolution offered evidence as proof of the theories and ideas that were being presented. The evidence was based on data that was collected, not just on the word of an authority figure. With the arrival of the Scientific Revolution, it was no longer acceptable to just say something was the truth, as people wanted to see the evidence that proved these ideas to be the truth. This often brought people into conflict with the ideas that had been accepted by the authorities for long periods of times.
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Prior to the Scientific Revolution, much of "authority" in Western civilizations lay within the Church and within historical figures and their pronouncements, as pohnpei397 correctly points out. The driving force of the Scientific Revolution was the quest to collect evidence and analyze it in order to answer questions.
When decisions are based on reasonable analysis of evidence, rather than simple reliance on respected authorities (that may or may not have evidence to support their assertions), then science and other disciplines are removed from control of any particular institution. This is why the Scientific Revolution was, in fact, a revolution.
The extent to which the Scientific Revolution can be said to be a conflict between authority and evidence is determined by how this revolution is historically framed. For instance, if one dates the beginning of the Scientific Revolution at Johannes Kepler's correct orientation of a heliocentric solar system and Galileo Galilei's further propagation of this idea, then--after Galileo was forced to recant his views because he used them to challenge traditional ecclesiastical teachings--the conflict between authority and evidence is obvious. (In actuality, it is not as obvious as is often thought; Galileo was, in some ways, inviting censure when, in the "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems," he named the Church's spokesman Simplicius.)
On the other hand, if one orients the Scientific Revolution toward the latter half of the Rennaissance, with Francis Bacon--who conceptualized the scientific method--as its first revolutionary and Isaac Newton as the most important, then there is much less conflict between authority and experience. Newton held unconventional (Socinian) religious views, but this did not prevent him from lecturing at Cambridge.
Nonetheless, science itself is, by nature and methodology, always to one degree or another in conflict with authority that is inconsistent with experience. Experience (or the inductive method) is the basis of science. For this reason, while science does not exist to challenge authority, it often does.
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