Coming to Terms with the Scientific Revolution

Abstract

Was there a Scientific Revolution at any time between 1550 and 1800? The question comes to asking whether ‘revolution’ is a good metaphor for the course of natural knowledge during early modern times. According to the findings presented here, the metaphor is useful, that is, productive of insights, if it is taken in analogy to a major political revolution. It then suggests a later onset, and a swifter career, for the Scientific Revolution than is usually prescribed, and reveals Newton not as its culmination but as its counterpoise. The analysis also discloses an unexpected analogy between the universities of the thirteenth century and the learned societies of the seventeenth.