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T
he Islamic Golden Age
was a great flowering of
the sciences and arts
that began in the capital of the
Abbasid Caliphate, Baghdad, in
the mid-8th century and lasted
for about 500 years. It laid the
foundations for experimentation
and the modern scientific method.
In the same period in Europe,
however, several hundred years
were to pass before scientific
thought was to overcome the
restrictions of religious dogma.
Dangerous thinking
For centuries, the Catholic Church’s
view of the universe was based on
Aristotle’s idea that Earth was at
the orbital center of all celestial
bodies. Then, in about 1532, after
years of struggling with its complex
mathematics, Polish physician
Nicolaus Copernicus completed his
heretical model of the universe that
had the Sun at its center. Aware of
the heresy, he was careful to state
that it was only a mathematical
model, and he waited until he
was on the point of death before
publishing, but the Copernican
model quickly won many advocates.
German astrologer Johannes Kepler
refined Copernicus’s theory using
observations by his Danish mentor
Tycho Brahe, and calculated that the
orbits of Mars and, by inference,
the other planets were ellipses.
Improved telescopes allowed Italian
polymath Galileo Galilei to identify
four moons of Jupiter in 1610. The
new cosmology’s explanatory
power was becoming undeniable.
Galileo also demonstrated the
power of scientific experiment,
investigating the physics of fallingobjects and devising the pendulum
as an effective timekeeper, which
Dutchman Christiaan Huygens
used to build the first pendulum
clock in 1657. English philosopher
Francis Bacon wrote two books
laying out his ideas for a scientific
method, and the theoretical
groundwork for modern science,
based on experiment, observation,
and measurement, was developed.
New discoveries followed thick
and fast. Robert Boyle used an air
pump to investigate the properties
of air, while Huygens and English
physicist Isaac Newton came up
with opposing theories of how light
travels, establishing the science
of optics. Danish astronomer Ole
Rømer noted discrepancies in
the timetable of eclipses of the
moons of Jupiter, and used these
to calculate an approximate valueINTRODUCTION
1543
1600
1620 S
1639
1609
1610
1643
Francis Bacon publishes
Novum Organum
Scientarum and The
New Atlantis, outlining
the scientific method.Astronomer William Gilbert
publishes De Magnete, a
treatise on magnetism,
and suggests that
Earth is a magnet.Johannes Kepler suggests
that Mars has an
elliptical orbit.Robert Boyle publishes
New Experiments
Physico-Mechanical:
Touching the Spring of
the Air, and its Effects,
investigating air pressure.Galileo observes the
moons of Jupiter and
experiments with balls
rolling down slopes.Nicolaus Copernicus
publishes De
Revolutionibus Orbium
Coelestium, outlining
a heliocentric
universe.Evangelista Torricelli
invents the barometer.Jeremiah Horrocks
observes the transit
of Venus.1660 S