Miracles: The Scientific Revolution

The world is a constantly changing entity. Historians often try to pick years with similar event sin them to organize the changes of the world into periods with themes. One such period that can be created is called the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution is the title usually given to the years 1550-1700, during which many changes in the thought and belief systems of Europe developed and the ideas governing modern science came to exist. Why did this age of scientific discovery and advancements not happen sooner? This is a complex question requiring an answer that no one person could give. There are several factors that may have contributed. One small part of why it had not occurred earlier could be attributed to the separation …show more content…
This method is a way of discovery by forming an idea and proving or disproving it. One important aspect though, is that the proof must be repeatable. Miracles, according to Hume, have no proof, because they do not have enough uniform experiences. This means that not enough people have observed miracles, to validate their existence. He claims that “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature” (p 771). He explains the thought process of people, “The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events (p 771). Effectively, he is arguing that emotions are clouding the logic of people, resulting in them believing the improbable without evidence. Hume also touches on religion as being another source of logical clouding. Religious people believe in these miracles. They used these miracles to prove their religion. They then used their religion as proof for these miracles. The result was just a circle of proof that provides neither miracles nor religion any scientific basis. This new desire for proof represents a new way of thinking that was slowly spreading in Europe during the revolution. This new way of thinking gave people the mental ability to reject what previous philosophers had declared and allowed them to explore the workings of the universe from a mathematical …show more content…
Scientists were now using the newly developed mathematics to describe natural science phenomena. They were no longer limited to forcing their math to fit a preconceived notion, and could now explore things as they were. Hume shows us a changed in the way people accepted new information. They were no longer accepting things on face value, but instead questioning them. They developed a curiosity to prove things for themselves, a notion that is still present today. Even today we still maintain a healthy skepticism of new information and can use the tested experiments of past scientists, or develop our own tests to confirm this new information. We stand on the shoulders of giants, because those giants broke the mold and applied mathematics to the universe around