The Scientific Revolution and the Problem of Periodization

Abstract

Because of its clear-cut and logical narrative structure, the story of the Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton is essential to an understanding of the shape of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European History. Moreover, the crucial role of scientific discovery in helping to bring about the victory of the ‘moderns’ over the ‘ancients’ in the late seventeenth century provides a central reason for marking this period as the end of the age of the Renaissance. Regardless of problems of definition, therefore, the Scientific Revolution is of crucial importance to the enterprise of organizing the past into distinct and coherent periods.