Shifting the Social Balance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Shifting the Social Balance - Essay Example This shift represents a major step in the development of civilization because it focuses on hard evidence, observable fact, and verifiable conclusions. Science opened up the possibility of questioning long-held beliefs and examining them for truth while the Enlightenment made it possible to hold these debates in public, even refuting concepts that proved inaccurate. Revolutionary tools and ideas illustrate how the Scientific Revolution influenced society while the Enlightenment firmly established science and reason as the only logical standard on which to base worldly human thought. Copernicus, somewhat by accident, touched off the Scientific Revolution in the early 16th century when he wrote to Pope Paul III for support in his recent astrological findings. Using solid math, appropriate research and direct observation, Copernicus concluded that the Earth revolved around the sun rather than, as the Church would have people believe, the Sun revolving around the Earth (Copernicus 1543 c ited in Levick, 2004: 524). His evidence was meticulously outlined and his conclusions were sound, but his ideas were introduced to a mostly unreceptive public who still preferred to believe they were central to God's creation. Galileo, introducing some of these same ideas, would gain greater exposure for the idea thanks to the recent invention of the telescope. This made it possible for other people to go and observe with their own eyes the rotations both Galileo and Copernicus had outlined - helped a bit with Galileo's high-class 'star-gazing' parties (Kaku, 2008). Through a simple telescope such as those used by Galileo and his friends, it is possible to see the craters of the moon and the orbits of some of the moons of Jupiter. These observations, combined with sound mathematic principles, made it possible for Galileo, and Copernicus, to prove reality. â€Å"All reasonings about mechanics have their foundations in geometry, in which I do not see that largeness and smallness mak e large circles †¦ subject to properties different from those of small ones† (Levick, 2004: 322).