The “Scientific Revolution” is often mentioned and discussed as a crucial development in human civilization that fundamentally changed the entire course of history. World society after and before that event looks consistently yet radically different. For thousands of years before the Scientific Revolution, Earth was essentially a world of clashing empires fighting with sword and stone, driven by horse and ox, powered by water and wood, all right out of a fantasy novel (sans magic and elves). Then, suddenly, it’s a world of guns, rubber, and steel, driven by steam, powered by oil and coal, and rather soon, literally electrified. Even in the domain of pure knowledge, for thousands of years you have “scholars” mostly (though only mostly) just arm-chairing their ideas about the world, then suddenly you have state-funded labs and societies dedicated to experimental sciences, and PhDs in physics and geology and the like, and boom: we go from “four elements” to The Periodic Table; from “four humors” to cellular physiology; from geocentrism to a universally agreed, and fully explained, heliocentrism. What happened?

Scholars have struggled to even describe what happened, much less explain it. Many debates abound. There is a “standard narrative,” but almost every element of it is in some important way false (you’ll find both points articulated in Wikipedia’s article now on The Scientific Revolution). But most of the “alternative” narratives are even less credible. For example, the “continuity thesis,” that there was no Scientific Revolution, is obviously false: the world was radically changed, and in less than two centuries, after thousands of years of just cruising along in the same prior fashion. Something revolutionary most definitelly did occur. The “Christianity saved the West” thesis is likewise false, and not just because the purported cause—Christianity—had been in place for literally a thousand years to no such effect (and was actually a fierce cause of opposition to the ensuing changes). So it clearly can’t be what caused everything to change suddenly (“suddenly,” in the timescale of human empires) between 1500 and 1700 A.D. (see No, Tom Holland, It Wasn’t Christian Values That Saved the West and my chapter on the entire bogus “Christianity as savior” hypothesis in The Christian Delusion).

The Industrial Revolution?

Sometimes it is wondered, then, if we are confusing two different things. Guns, rubber, steel, steam, oil and coal, electricity; this was all the output of a different, parallel development in Western civilization called the Industrial Revolution. It could be that it was just a coincidence, or co-correlation (two separate products of a common cause), that the Scientific Revolution (all the developments in science, rather than technology) took place around the same time. This other revolution defines most of what looks radically different between eras of human history, before and after. But it looks like this other revolution could be a product of the Scientific Revolution, since it begins almost immediately as that ended, and its precipitating cause took place right around the same time as the culmination of that prior world change.

But some could say that examination of the Industrial Revolution’s causal development might rule that out. The steam engine was not invented by scientists, and it incorporated no components that didn’t already exist, in use, in the ancient world. Its only significant difference was immediate access to coal as a power source, which was an accidental happenstance of history; indeed, even the need of the device was caused by over-mining coal to below the water table necessitating pump technology to continue, which makes it even more of a coincidence that that specific need arose just as the Scientific Revolution was coming to a head. These two events were simply not connected in any way. They just happened to occur at the same time. The first steam pump was developed in 1606, perfected into field use by Savery in 1698, and advanced in efficiency and power by Newcomen in 1712; while Isaac Newton’s scientific synthesis, and the foundation of royal societies for experimental science, both representing the culmination of the Scientific Revolution, all took place in or just before the 1690s.

Still, there is arguably a connection. The “scientific mindset” that set the West aflame during the 16th and 17th centuries, characterizing the driving force behind the Scientific Revolution, could have been responsible for the Industrial Revolution to follow. The experimental turn toward developing coal-based steam power would fit as an example of the overall zeitgeist. Although it seems certain that the ancient Romans would have done this, too, had they been at the zenith of the same circumstance: dependent on coal for so long (to heat homes, forges, and kilns) that they had to start pumping vast volumes of water to get to more of it. But as it happens–again, by chance—the Romans only just discovered substantial sources of coal in the 2nd century (and their society began its rapid collapse just a hundred years later), and only in England, which then was far from the centers of scientific experimentation and innovation, and never needed pumps to access it (that need would only follow centuries of subsequent mining). Still, Heron of Alexandria, who developed the first known steam-powered machines in the 1st century, was based in Alexandria, Egypt—thousands of miles away; and all other centers of science, from Marseilles to Rhodes to Rome, all sat on the Mediterranean sea, equally far away (see my discussion of the history of steam in Imperial Roman Economics as an Example of an Overthrown Consensus). So coal-to-steam power wasn’t going to occur to anyone.

However the Industrial Revolution was not only characterized by steam power and developments dependent on it. Electricity was a separate scientific discovery that most definitely was caused by the Scientific Revolution; advanced chemical industry was driven by advances in the underlying science, likewise; and so on down the line. So there is certainly a significant component of the Industrial Revolution that is a product of the Scientific Revolution. It can correctly be described as an effect of it, and indeed an inevitable one at that, even if it could have taken longer to arrive. But once humans started intensively exploring the information-space of science (an activity definitive of what the Scientific Revolution changed about society), locating the tools to launch a corresponding Industrial Revolution was just a matter of time. This brings the Scientific Revolution back to the forefront in need of explanation.

You can think of it in contrafactual fashion. Had the Romans been at the apex of needing steam pumps to access enormous coal reserves, a steampunk Roman Empire would certainly have arisen. Despite many scholars trying to claim otherwise (though every such claim is easily debunked), there was no discernible cultural, intellectual, economic, technological or any other reason that that would not have as rapidly occurred as it eventually did in the British Empire. The Roman Empire already experienced its own industrial revolution, a miniature version of ours: a sweeping conversion of a significant segment of industrial power from animals to water (see Ancient Industrial Machinery & Modern Christian Mythology), and a concomittant rise in all manner of industrial innovations, from press-mold, assembly-line, and interchangeable-component manufacturing to gargantuan kiln operations, and beyond (see my discussions and examples in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire). And this was in part driven by its own prior Scientific Revolution, produced by the Greeks just before (ibid.).

The differences between the Roman industrial revolution and “the” Industrial Revolution were twofold. First, while water power has an even better Energy Return on Investment than fossil fuels (see The Shocking Reasons Why We Should Go Nuclear), it isn’t scalable. The sources of water power are limited, both in number and in capacity, and not mobile—so you can’t get, for example, trains and steamships out of it. Whereas fossil power allowed a vast “power up” of the entirety of global society, all the way to its transportation networks (shipping and rail). The effect was most definitely revolutionary. And second, the rapidity of innovative developments in chemistry and electricity and other areas, which also defined the modern Industrial Revolution, required the completion of the modern Scientific Revolution—which one could argue the Roman Empire was heading towards, but collapsed before it could get there (see The Mythical Stillbirth of Science in Greece and Rome vs. China: What Made the Difference?). Even if its pace of development would have taken longer, again, all indications are it would have also inevitably gotten there, too. Instead, we got The Dark Ages (see Yes, the Dark Ages Really Were a Thing).

So we really do just need to explain the Scientific Revolution.

Cause vs. Effect

Explaining the Scientific Revolution requires keeping distinct three separate things: what it was; what caused it; and its effects. Most failed attempts to explain it confuse one or more of these things. For example, some will say its cause was a sweeping societal and political shift in attitudes toward and support for scientists and their research; but that was actually its effect. This therefore cannot explain it. As I explain in my book (The Scientist) and some of my articles cited above, the rise of royal institutes dedicated to experimental science—principally The Royal Society and the Académie des Sciences (the Vatican having destroyed any hope of a comparable development in Italy; Germany only barely catching up; and Spain, its imperial fortunes already in decline, couldn’t get its shit together)—represent the completion of the Scientific Revolution. Those are the most visible examples of that revolution having successfully shifted societal and political perception of the value and importance of scientific research and knowledge. What we want to explain is how and why that shift in perception occurred. And you can’t just circularly appeal to that shift in perception to explain that shift in perception. That’s conspicuously a non-explanation.

Still, this does mean that part of what the Scientific Revolution “was” was a growing push for that shift in perception, by a small number of scholars arguing for it (who, yes, did happen to be Christian, because being Christian then was compulsory), against a lot of intellectual opposition—all of it, also, Christian. Which necessitated contriving “Christian” reasons to support the shift, but that in no way means Christian ideas caused that shift. To the contrary, finding “Christian reasons” for it was an ad hoc, post hoc strategy. The actual reasons causing a resort to that strategy were something altogether else. That’s why it didn’t happen at any prior time in a thousand years of Christian tenure. It clearly wasn’t anything Christianity had any tendency to inspire; and the fact that all push-back against it came from Christianity indicates that it was actually ideologically hostile to the development, not inspiring of it.

In The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire I outline what this Christian opposition actually consisted of and how it came from the very core structure of its ideology; and that by contrast, pagan ideology was entirely supportive and nurturing of the scientific mindset, undergirding the three most essential scientific values, without which scientific advancement will never occur, and in the presence of which it always occurs, at whatever pace, fast or slow: a commitment to empiricism (elevating evidence above all authority); a commitment to curiosity (not only being actively interested in understanding the secrets of the universe, but perceiving this interest as a positive good to be nurtured and encouraged); and a commitment to progress (seeing scientific advancement as not only achievable, but as also a positive good to be sought after).

Christianity was always against all of these things from its very origination (I have a whole chapter in Scientist thoroughly documenting this; but see also A Primer on Christian Anti-Intellectualism for a start). And during the Scientific Revolution it was a Herculean effort to try and persuade everyone that Christianity should change—indeed outright reverse itself—on all three values. There was actually an easier time of it under the Roman Empire, when just such things were also being argued (including calls for more imperial investment in research), and the only opposition was circumstantial disinterest rather than fear and disgust. The emperors were too busy trying to hold their empire together to be distracted by academic arguments for speculative research programs. They weren’t actively hostile to the project.

But one thing had finally made the transition easier in the later Christian period (compared to, say, the Dark Ages): the collapse of the Vatican’s monopoly over Christendom in the West in the 15th century Reformation made it easier to argue for changes in Christian values and attitudes. There is a reason the Scientific Revolution occurred precisely after that event, and why it nevertheless failed in Italy (where the example set by the punishment of Galileo ended all scientific advancement there for over a hundred years) but was an astounding success in England—where the political class flipped the finger at the Pope and started their own Christian religion—and France—where the Vatican’s hold on power was slipping, and the political class was eying a similar move to England’s, compelling Catholicism to eventually give-in and adapt. But all this development really did was finally weaken Christian opposition, allowing pockets of receptiveness that Vatican traditionalists could not crush. It didn’t exactly create an entirely friendly environment. It remained a struggle. But the idea eventually won on the merits of its demonstrated results, and the pragmatic recognition of its value to imperial ambitions and competition. Science was finally recognized by the wealthy and powerful as useful, and not just “interesting.”

Getting at the Causes

Once we recognize that the Scientific Revolution simply was an eventually successful drive to change public and elite perception of the value and importance of experimental science, and was driven by demonstrations of this in practice, we can get to asking what caused this new drive, and the determination to see it through, in enough scholars to succeed. Why did it arise in the 16th century and not, say, the 10th or the 6th—or the 2nd?

As to the where—why it happened in Europe and not, say, China or the Muslim world—I have covered that question already in Rome vs. China: What Made the Difference? The short of it is, all the tools to effect the Scientific Revolution were invented by the Greeks and developed by their enthusiastic successors, the Romans, and then abandoned by everyone after the collapse of the Roman Empire—for religious reasons. When the Muslim world started its own push for a Scientific Revolution (in the 9th to 10th centuries), the imams successfully crushed it. Whereas pre-modern China never came into significant contact with the cause (Greco-Roman scientific ideology). Western Europe had the latter (thanks to the Renaissance, ascending from the 13th to the 15th centuries), and was in a place to avoid the former—precisely because of the Reformation having shattered the power of the religious class a generation before. This was science’s moment. It struck when the iron was hot; and survived all attempts to cool it down. But really that just resumed a causal arc Rome was already in, the 2nd century corresponding in all measures (economic and scientific) to the 15th century. The only reason the 16th century didn’t happen in the 3rd century was that in the 3rd century civilization took a nose dive, from which it didn’t recover until the 15th century, whereas in the 16th century it was in the ascendant, and thus the causes in place could finally have their effect.

So that also gets us to the when—why it happened in Europe then and not earlier (or later). Recognizing this requires knowing that every single thing typically claimed to be innovative about the Scientific Revolution, wasn’t. Wikipedia correctly says that “by the end of the Scientific Revolution the qualitative world of book-reading philosophers had been changed into a mechanical, mathematical world to be known through experimental research.” But all of that stuff was already the norm in the Roman Empire, when science was just as empirical, just as mathematical, and just as based on physical-mechanical worldviews, and employed every component of the modern scientific method. There were some, but actually relatively few new ideas in the Scientific Revolution. Inertia, universal gravitation, heliocentrism, nascent understandings of the physics of gases and the physiology of human organs, evolving ideas about classical relativity and laws of motion, experimental optics, acoustics, hydrostatics, and physiology, a particle theory of light, controled experiments, cumulative and converging experimentation, trigonometry and algebra, mathematical laws of physics, the use of scientific instruments of all varieties, even a germ theory of disease; these were all well-known and discussed by Roman scientists, and even science enthusiasts, who loved their books, and having them over for dinner (I document all of this in Scientist; but see, for a start, Ancient Theories of Gravity: What Was Lost? and The Sociology of Ancient Scientists Cannot Be Based on Medieval Source Selection as a couple of examples).

So the only actual difference between the 16th-17th century and the 2nd-3rd century was that the latter saw civilization waning; while the former, waxing. Otherwise, all the same causes were in place. Rome was poised to reach the culmination of Newton and the Royal Society in one or two, maybe three centuries at most. But world affairs went the other way. Society collapsed, and in virulent reaction to that was thoroughly infected with a rabidly anti-scientific worldview granted near absolute political power across the entirety of the Western world. The effect was much the same as the Medieval imamate, and post-Han isolationism in China (see Alan Cromer’s Uncommon Sense). The world would have to await another bite at the apple, a second chance to pull the effect through. The right conditions for that at long last converged in the 15th century, setting the stage for the developments of the 16th century, which drove through the developments of the 17th century. We are only fortunate that civilization didn’t again fall apart in either of those two centuries. This time it stuck.

Conclusion

What was the Scientific Revolution? The persuasion of society and principally the wealthy power-elite to invest in empirical scientific research on a significant scale. Everything else is merely an inevitable effect of that development. And this meant persuasion to endorse and support, as well, the required values for any such thing as “empirical scientific research” to exist in any substantial way: curiosity, empiricism, and progressivism; as well as, of course, the methodology of science: mathematical description, controled experimentation, and a recourse to physical-mechanical explanatory models. These then became, in contrast to the Middle Ages, the defining epistemic values of modern Western society. Everything else is history. That alone radically changed the entire world.

Why did the Scientific Revolution happen when and where it did? Random happenstance had a lot to do with it. The Greek miracle was key—its memo just didn’t reach China, and while the Muslim world eventually turned its back on it, the Romans reacted in an entirely opposite fashion and thus were poised to get there, but for the collapse of their empire, which was due to yet more unrelated random happenstances (mainly, the lack of an effective constitutional government ensuring a continuous peaceful succession of power, and a poor understanding of how to productively manage a global fiduciary economy). This opened the door for Christendom to take over, which brought with it a persistent hostility to all the values needed to resume scientific progress. The power of Christian ideology had to be broken before those values could ever have a chance to reign again, and that finally came with the 15th century Reformation. And society also had to hold together, and remain in a state of economic growth and relative political stability, long enough for the “bread to bake,” as it were, this time around.

This in turn is all why there was, by the end of the 17th century and in all ensuing centuries to date, a sudden jump in the number and scale of scientific and technological advances that made the results of the Scientific Revolution so visible as a powerhouse of progress. And this in turn was because of a massive—easily an order of magnitude or more—jump in imperial and elite investment in science—and, of course, scientific engineering; which, despite jokes to the contrary, is just another science. So one might still ask, why was there such a massive jump in imperial investment in science? And the answer is, quite simply, because the agents of change in this event—the scientists who saw the merit of their enterprise and its undergirding values and methods, after having rediscovered all that from the ancient world, after its once being all but lost and forgotten—managed to succeed in convincing those in power that their enterprise was valuable to their imperial ambitions, and would allow them to out-compete rivals for global power. Which of course required there to be such empires, with a rising surplus of wealth to invest in the project.

Attempts to claim the story was somehow different from this suffer from one of two flaws, or both: a lack of evidence for their premises; or an abundance of evidence against their premises. The only story that fits all the actual facts as they actually are, is the one I’m telling you today. But if you want to dive into any aspect of that debate, feel free to ask questions and pose alternatives in comments, so we can explore them. Much of what you might come up with is probably already covered in my other writings (as linked above); but I can still zero you in on where, and précis it here.

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