Intellectual Revolution

- Greek speculation about the nature (period before Socrates ~600 to 400 BCE)
- Pre-socratic or non-theological or first philosophy that deals with physics and logic
- Period where paradigm shifts occurred
- Scientific beliefs that have been widely embraced & accepted by the people were
challenged & opposed

3 characteristic features:
- The world is a natural whole
- There is natural order
- Humans can discover laws

Natural philosophy

- Philosophical study of nature and the physical universe (dominant before the
development of modern science (Cahan, 2003))

Presocratic philosophy

- Philosophy before Socrates

- 6th to 5th BCE
- First Greek thinkers who introduced a new way of inquiring into the world and the
place of human beings in it
- Predecessors of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, among others
- Cosmological and physical speculations

The Ionian Thinkers

- Thales
- Anaximander
- Anaximenes

Miletus - 1 of the 12 Ionian city-states

1. Thales of Miletus (c. 625 - 545 BCE)

- The very first among the Milesian philosophers who held that water is the
basic stuff of all things (Fieser, 2020)
- Astronomy and geometry
- No evidence that he wrote something
 2. Anaximander (c. 610 - 545 BCE)
- Student of Thales and fellow-Milesian who introduced the Apeiron (the
boundless) as the beginning of everything
- First Greek known to produce a written account of the natural world
- Astronomer, made clocks, and first person who drew a map of the earth

3. Anaximenes (c. 585 - 525 BCE)

- Third founding philosopher from Miletus
- Student of Anaximander
- He that condensed and expanded air is the source of everything (Fieser, 2020)

Scientific Revolution

- Drastic change in scientific thought that took place during the 16th & 17th centuries
- A new view of nature emerged during the Scientific Revolution, replacing the Greek
view that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years

Copernican Revolution

- Geocentric Model (Geocentrism)

- Ancient Greek’s geocentric model (planets orbit Earth)

- Heliocentric Model (Heliocentrism)

- Planets orbit the sun

Claudius Ptolemy (100-170 AD)

- Egyptian astronomer, mathematician, and geographer
- Geocentrism
- Ptolemaic System

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543)

- Polish mathematician and astronomer
- Heliocentrism

The Birth of Modern Astronomy

Tycho Brahe
- Designed and built instruments to measure the locations of heavenly bodies
- Most precise observations before

Johannes Kepler
3 Laws of Planetary Motion
- Orbits of the planets are elliptical
- Planets revolve around the sun at varying speed
- Direct proportional relationship between a planet’s orbital period and its distance to the
sun