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May 18, 1543
Copernicus publishes book
Nicolaus Copernicus was a mathematician from Poland and published "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres", a book which consisted of his "heliocentric" theory, which means sun-centered. According to Nicolaus the sun was the center of the universe, not the earth. Because of this idea, it challenged the authority of the Catholic church and changed the thinking on the entire universe. -
Johannes Kepler 1st Law
As a German mathematician, Kepler ended the Ptolemaic system by stating his laws in 1605. His observations confirmed that the sun was at the center of the unicerse, and showed that the planets' orbits around the sun were not circular, as Copernicus had thought. -
Galileo Galilei
As an Italian scientist that taught mathematics, he made regular observations of the heavens using a telescope. Galileo's discoveries were published in The Starry Messenger in 1610. The Catholic Church was not in favor of his ideas. -
Francis Bacon
Bacon did not propose an actual philosophy, but rather a method of developing philosophy. Argued that although philosophy at the time used the deductive syllogism to interpret nature, the philosopher should instead proceed through inductive reasoning from fact to axiom to law.The Novum Organum is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon published in 1620. -
Rene Descartes
He was a French philosopher whose work, La géométrie, includes his application of algebra to geometry from which we now have Cartesian geometry. Descartes published his major philosophical work, "A Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy" in 1637. In Descartes' view, the universe was created by God on whose power everything depends.
