The Emergence Of The Scientific Revolution In The 16th Century

The emergence of the Scientific Revolution in the mid 16th century featured a new emphasis on sense as early scientists began to qualify nature according to what they learned through experimentation and observation. Moreover, many have also correlated the rise of the scientific method with the growth of humanism and humanists’ emphasis on the individual and reason. However, as the Baconian method reduced the human to a series of basic and instinctual senses, the Scientific Revolution demonstrated a newfound mistrust in human reasoning. For example, with the emergence of botanical gardens, scientists and observers began constructing microcosms of nature that established the human as a spectator rather than participant. Furthermore, as scientists rejected Aristotelian logic and deduction, theories about the natural world had to include evidence and sources outside of the human mind. For scientific thought and knowledge of the natural world to …show more content…
This shift greatly impacted how humans viewed themselves in nature as they ultimately rejected a system of thought that had tried to reconcile the natural world with aspects of human society, such as Christianity. While Aristotle’s works were pre-Christian, influential medieval scholars such as Thomas Aquinas reconciled Aristotelian logic and theories with the principles and dogmas of Christianity. Scholastic philosophers’ need to consolidate the natural world with religion in turn placed scientific theory and nature firmly within– and inseparable from– human society. By rejecting scholasticism, scientists of the Scientific Revolution thus rejected the proximity and blending of the natural world with human society. Instead, they disowned the notion that the human was at the centre of nature, and observed the natural world in its actual state rather than how it appeared in Aristotle’s