12.8: Conclusion

The Scientific Revolution, while it certainly achieved many important breakthroughs and discoveries, was as much about a cultural and intellectual shift as the discoveries themselves. It was not, for example, accompanied by technological advances of note with a few exceptions like telescopes. Instead, its importance lay in the fact that, first, educated people came to believe that the workings of the universe could be discovered through inquiry and experimentation, and second, that the universe itself was structured along rational lines. Those conclusions would in turn lead to a monumental movement of philosophy and thought during the eighteenth century: the Enlightenment.

Image Citations (Wikimedia Commons):

Geocentric Illustration - Public Domain

Vesalius Illustration - Wellcome Library

Merian Entomological Drawing - Public Domain

Philosophical Transactions - Public Domain

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