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Advances in science have been termed "revolutions" since the 18th century. In 1747, Clairaut wrote that "Newton was said in his own lifetime to have created a revolution".[9] The word was also used in the preface to Lavoisier's 1789 work announcing the discovery of oxygen. "Few revolutions in science have immediately excited so much general notice as the introduction of the theory of oxygen...Lavoisier saw his theory accepted by all the most eminent men of his time, and established over a great part of Europe within a few years from its first promulgation."[10] In the 19th century, William Whewell established the notion of a revolution in science itself (or the scientific method) that had taken place in the 15th-16th century. "Among the most conspicuous of the revolutions which opinions on this subject have undergone, is the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation of change and improvement."[11] This gave rise to the common view of the scientific revolution today: "A new view of nature emerged, replacing the Greek view that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years. Science became an autonomous discipline, distinct from both philosophy and technology and came to be regarded as having utilitarian goals."[12] It is traditionally assumed to start with the Copernican Revolution (initiated in 1543) and to be complete in the "grand synthesis" of Newton's 1687 Principia. Much of the change of attitude came from Galileo who championed Copernicus and developed the science of motion and Francis Bacon whose "confident and emphatic announcement of a New Era in the progress of science" inspired the creation of scientific societies such as the Royal Society In the 20th century, Alexandre Koyré introduced the term "Scientific Revolution" centring his analysis on Galileo, and the term was popularized by Butterfield in his Origins of Modern Science. More recently historians of science have stressed the continuity that can be discerned from the late medieval period and have cast doubt on the inherently progressive nature of science. Much of this reassessment follows the work of Thomas Kuhn whose 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, emphasized that different theoretical frameworks, such as Einstein's relativity theory and Newton's theory of gravity, which it replaced, cannot be directly compared. |
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