The Scientific Revolution 

“Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”

 Alexander Pope

This couplet is probably the best expression of the way humans saw the world around them during this perfect storm of the Reformation, the rise of capitalism and the scientific revolution. In Part I, we explored the world before these three changes. In Parts II and III, we examined the Reformation and the rise of capitalism. Here, in Part IV, we will look at the scientific revolution.  

On Christmas Day in the year 1642, a child was born. This child would grow to be one of the major influences of Western Thought. Isaac Newton would be a major force in changing the world view from a Medieval point of view to a more scientific world view. Although famous scientists like Copernicus and Galileo lived and died before Newton’s birth, it would be Newton that would change humanity’s idea of how things worked from a theistic point of view to deterministic and mechanistic concepts. 

After Newton, humans saw the world around them as a giant machine. Perhaps God existed; but if he did, He was merely the One who started the machine and did nothing more to intervene in human affairs except to merely observe.

Newton’s writings and ideas set firmly in the human mentality the idea the nature’s laws determined everything. This idea of a deterministic universe was so set that the French scientist, Pierre Laplace, suggested that if we knew both the laws of physics and the location of every particle in the universe, we would be able to predict everything that would happen in the future.

As a result of the scientific revolution, we would see natural phenomena as a machine. Need a new heart or kidney? A doctor can transplant it. Your car needs repair? Buy a new starter, or battery. It would not be long until humans began to be seen as replaceable. 

If we only knew all the laws of nature, we could create the perfect society. The future looked bright and sunny. We were in an age of optimism. All we needed to do was to discover natural law and apply it to social affairs. Such was the optimism of the age. The Reformation took us from the shackles of the church, the rise of capitalism showed us a new way forward, and science would show us how to get there.

Unfortunately, there were several flies in the ointment. At the turn of the twentieth century, quantum mechanics would destroy the mechanism of science; capitalism would show its ugly face with corporations controlling our lives, and many other factors too numerous to discuss here would show us the futility of this economic system, and the promises of the Reformation with its direct connection to God and personal autonomy would lead to just more organizations and religions seeking more and more power and money.

This perfect storm seems to be ending. This perfect storm would lead to the Victorianism, the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, and two World Wars. 400 years of this three-horse-troika have shown the futility of these systems being the final answer to human problems. 

The bright side is that quantum physics seems to be show the promise of using concepts such as using observation to change things, higher dimensions. Perhaps the quantum age will turn out to be the great solution, but if history is any indication, this will be another stepping stone to even better change. Let us hope so.