Revolutions in the History of Science

Throughout the long history of science, one area which caught the interest of those studying
STS is that of scientific revolutions, starting with those that took place during the 16th and 17th
century. Scientific revolution is the term used to refer to a period in history when drastic changes
in scientific thought, scientific communities, and the scientific method took place. Prior to these
revolutions, the work of pre-Socratic Greek philosophers dominated widely held beliefs about
the nature of the universe, much of which focused on human society, ethics, and religion. The
Greek views about nature were popular for almost 2000 years before major shifts emphasized
abstract reasoning, quantitative thinking, and developing an experimental scientific method.
Given the vast new information which were emerging at the time, these scientific movements
began to question religions and moral beliefs and principles and traditional views about nature.
Needless to say, the scientific revolutions benefited from increasing secularism at the time,
which paved the way for the view of nature as a machine, rather than a divine providence. It
thus scrutinized traditional institutions, practices, and belief and demanded new modes of
communicating and disseminating information, which did not fit with the changing and emerging
science at the time. For one, it was no longer enough to publish results of scientific inquiry in
expensive books, which tended to be accessible only to the few who could afford them, vis-à-vis
the need for scientific information to be communicated efficiently-widely and quickly-for
communities to benefit from them. These revolutions introduced important innovations such as
scientific societies, which provided scientists a platform where they discuss and validate new
discoveries, and scientific papers, which served as a venue for scientists to report, disseminate,
and have their new discoveries reviewed by other scientists. Scientific societies and scientific
papers allowed for a more comprehensive, diligent, and reliable vetting of new discoveries and
hypotheses being advanced.

By and large, scientific revolutions were paradigm shifts They were changes in scientific
perspectives from the traditional to the novel, paving the way for the emergence of modern
science. In the words of 18th-century French astronomer, mathematician, and freemason Jean
Sylvain Bailley, scientific revolutions involved a two-stage process of sweeping away the old and
establishing the new. In the process, challenging long-held views about the nature of the
universe required presenting a more efficient alternative, one which was a result of a disciplined
and comprehensive experimental scientific method. At this backdrop, however, key figures
during different scientific revolutions in history did not have it easy. They and their discoveries
and hypotheses were often met with huge resistance and controversy. Governments and
churches, which were already at the losing end of an increasingly secular society. found the
need to pull society back to traditional beliefs and principles and away from an enlightened view
of nature and the universe. Power relations between traditional institutions and the scientific
communities and their key figures disproportionately favored the former, such that the
revolutions would have to drag on for decades and even for a few centuries before widescale
acceptance of alternative theories and principles was reached. Throughout this, it took entire
scientific communities and one key figure to another to corroborate and support each other in
order to dismantle old scientific beliefs, ways, and practices. The foregoing typification can be
used to make sense of the unfolding of many scientific revolutions from the 16th century to the
present. In this section, however, we zoom in on representative scientific revolutions from
representative centuries: the 16th- century Copernican Revolution in astronomy, the
19th-century Darwinian Revolution in evolutionary biology, and the 18th- 19th-century Freudian
Revolution in psychoanalysis.

Copernican Revolution

The Copernican Revolution refers to the 16th-century paradigm shift named after the Polish
mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus formulated the heliocentric
model of the universe. At the time, the belief was that the Earth was the center of the solar
system based on the geocentric model of Ptolemy (ie., Ptolemaic model).

Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model in a 40-page outline entitled Commentariolus. His
model was formalized in the publication of his treatise, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
(The Revolution of Celestial Spheres) in 1543. In his model, Copernicus repositioned the Earth
from the center of the solar system and introduced the idea that the Earth rotates on its own
axis. The model illustrated the Earth, along with other heavenly bodies, to be rotating around the
Sun. The heliocentric model is encapsulated in the following seven axioms or key ideas:

1. The celestial spheres do not have one common center. The Earth is not at the center of
everything.

2. Earth is not the center of the universe, only the center of gravity and the lunar orbit. Only the
Moon orbits Earth.

3. All the spheres orbit the Sun. "Spheres" means the planets.

4. Compared to the distance to the stars, the Earth to Sun distance is almost nonexistent. The
stars are very much farther away than the Sun.

5. The motion of the stars is due to the Earth rotating on its axis.

6. The motion of the Sun is the result of the Earth's motions (rotation and revolution).

7. The retrograde and forward motions of planets is caused by the Earth's motion. It is caused
by the fact that Earth's orbit is of a different length than the other planets.

The idea that the Sun is at the center of the universe instead of the Earth proved to be
unsettling to many when Copernicus first introduced his model. In fact, the heliocentric model
was met with huge resistance, primarily from the Church. Although Copernicus faced no
persecution when he was alive, resistance came after a wave of Protestant opposition, which
happened after Copernicus' death in 1543 and the publication of his book in the same year. The
idea that it was not the Earth, and, by extension, not man, that was at the center of all creation
was unthinkable for both Protestants and Catholics. This led to the Catholic Church prohibiting
the reading of De revolutionibus for two centuries beginning in 1616.

Moreover, although far more sensible than the Ptolemaic model, which as early as the 13th
century had been criticized for its shortcomings, the Copernican model also had multiple
inadequacies that were later filled in by astronomers who participated in the revolution.
Nonetheless, despite problems with the model and the persecution of the Church, the
heliocentric model was soon accepted by other scientists of the time, most profoundly by Galileo
Galilei. The contribution of the Copernican Revolution is far-reaching. It served as a to sway
scientific thinking away from age-long views about the catalyst position of the Earth relative to
an enlightened understanding of the universe, This marked the beginning of modern astronomy
Although very slowly, the heliocentric model eventually caught on among other astronomers
who further refined the model and contributed to the recognition of heliocentrism. This was
capped off by Isaac Newton's work a century later. Thus, the Copernican Revolution marked a
turning point in the study of cosmology and astronomy, making it a truly important scientific
revolution.

Darwinian Revolution

English naturalist, geologist, and biologist Charles Darwin is credited for stirring another
important scientific revolution in the mid-19th century. His treatise on the science of evolution,
On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859 and began a revolution that brought humanity
to a new era of intellectual discovery.

The Darwinian Revolution benefitted from earlier intellectual revolutions in the 16th and 17th
century in that it was guided by confidence in the human reason's ability to explain phenomena
in the universe. During a five-year surveying mission aboard the Royal Navy Brig HMS Beagle
to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin became fascinated by the 18th-century Scottish geologist
Charles Lyell, whose work on geology focused on uniformitarianism. In his Principles of
Geology, Lyell argued that observable processes occurring in the present are sufficient evidence
to explain all geological formations and features across a vast period of time. Darwin would
apply this theory of evolutionary uniformitarianism in his observations on board the Beagle and
at Galapagos Island to account for the varying features in living systems and organisms. For his
part, Darwin gathered evidence pointing to what is now known as natural selection, an
evolutionary process by which organisms, including humans, inherit, develop, and adapt traits
that favored survival and reproduction. These traits would be manifested in an offspring that is
more fit and well-suited to the challenges of survival and reproduction. His most important
observations applying the theory of evolution include the famous Darwin's finches, a group of 14
or so closely related specifies of finches, which went through rapid adaptation to an unstable
and challenging environment. Diversification and speciation then took place in the finches'
phenotypes, such as beak size and shape, body size, plumage, and feeding behavior. In his
book, On the Origin of Species, Darwin presented a logical argument for the mechanism of
natural selection based on two observations and inferences. First, he argued that individuals in
a species vary to some degree in traits. Second, a species produces more offspring than
actually survives to mature and reproduce. Out of these two observations and inferences,
Darwin explains that individuals with traits better fitted to their environments are more likely to
survive and reproduce; hence, their offspring are more likely to inherit their adaptive traits.

Darwin's theory of evolution was, of course, met with resistance and considered to be
controversial. Critics accused the theory of being either short in accounting for the broad and
complex evolutionary process or that the functional design of organisms was a manifestation of
an omniscient God. The Darwinian Revolution can be likened to the Copernican Revolution in
their demonstration of the power of a lawful system in nature-in this case evolution-in explaining
the biological phenomena of survival and reproduction. Nonetheless the importance of the
Darwinian Revolution in modern science cannot be underestimated. It made the Copernican
Revolution from three centuries earlier come in full circle by demonstrating that, even in the
case of biology and evolution, nature may be described as a lawful system that can be
explained through scientific thought. Through the Darwinian Revolution, the development of
organisms and the origin of unique forms of life and humanity could be rationalized by an
orderly process of change underpinned by the laws of nature.

Freudian Revolution

The 19th-century Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud is credited for stirring the 20th-century
scientific revolution named after him, the Freudian Revolution. Psychoanalysis, as a school of
thought in psychology, is at the center of this revolution. Freud developed psychoanalysis as a
scientific method of understanding inner and unconscious conflicts embedded within one's
personality, springing from free associations, and the dreams and fantasies of the individual.
Psychoanalysis immediately shot into controversy. Psychoanalytic concepts of psychosexual
development, libido, and ego were met with both support and resistance among scholars.

Freud suggested that humans are inherently pleasure- seeking individuals. These notions were
particularly caught in the crossfire of whether Freud's psychoanalysis fit in the scientific study of
the brain and mind. He also proposed the id, superego, and ego as the components of his
structure of personality. He refers to the id as the primitive and instinctual part of the mind,
containing sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories; the superego as the ethical
component, providing the moral standards and acting as the moral conscience of an individual;
and the ego as the realistic component, mediating between the desires of the id and superego.
Freud's arguments are hinged on the individuals' unconscious conflicts. According to him, the
human mind tends to keep evil thoughts and desires away, which in the process are banished to
the unconscious mind. This creates a two-sided personality (i.e., dual personality). Individuals
tend to keep things which do not threaten their self-esteem in the conscious mind, and those
which threaten their self-esteem in the unconscious. In Freudian theory, this dual personality
creates a "Jekyll and Hyde" situation in a person.

Scientists working on a biological approach in studying human behavior criticized

psychoanalysis for lacking vitality and bordering on being unscientific as a theory. Particularly,
the notion that all humans are destined to exhibit Oedipus and Electra complexes (ie., sexual
desire for the opposite- sex parent and exclusion of the same-sex parent) did not seem to be
supported by empirical data. In the same vein, it appeared to critics that psychoanalysis, then,
was more of an ideological stance than a scientific one. Amidst the controversy, Freud's
psychoanalysis is widely given credit for dominating psychotherapeutic practice from the early
20th century. Psychodynamic therapies that treat a myriad of psychological disorders still remain
largely informed by Freud's work on psychoanalysis.

Scientific Revolutions and Society- What's the connection?

Scientific revolutions across the history of mankind ushered in a renewed and enlightened world
through a better understanding of nature and the universe. Because of scientific revolutions,
more reliable scientific knowledge became available. In turn, the application of more reliable
scientific knowledge led to more comfortable, more efficient, and more meaningful lives-better
than those whose lives were constrained because knowledge about public health, internal
medicine, weather and climate change, and pollution and waste management was not as
robust. Truly, mankind today stands on the shoulders of men and women of science, whose
struggles laid the foundation of an enlightened, empowered, and healthy society. Even as more
daunting and more complex problems arise as society moves into the challenges of
21st-century living, society continues to benefit from the work and example of men and women
of science whose struggles for reliable science inspired generations that came after them to
continue the work and gift the future with an even more reliable science and its applications.
The University College London aptly puts this cycle of beneficence and progress as follows:

1. The progress-achieving methods of science need to be correctly identified.

2. These methods need to be correctly generalized so that they become fruitfully applicable to
any worthwhile, problematic human endeavor, whatever the aims may be, and not just
applicable to the one endeavor of acquiring knowledge.

3. The correctly generalized progress-achieving methods then need to be exploited correctly in

the great human endeavor of trying to make social progress towards an enlightened, wise world.

Indeed, social progress is the point of all of this. Society is only able to move forward because
science-based and technology-driven decision-making has become possible through the
scientific revolutions before us. As a member of the scientific community or community of
science, it is our reward and privilege to be living in a world that is safer, more connected, and
more efficient than ever before. Our responsibility, however, is to hold the line and continue to
refine and sharpen not only our understanding of the universe but also, and more importantly,
the application of traditional and new knowledge in the pursuit of social justice and equality.