What is an intellectual revolution?

The Copernican Revolution refers to the 16th

century paradigm shift named after Polish
In Science and Technology, intellectual mathematician and astronomer
revolutions refer to a series of events that led Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus formulated
to the emergence of the heliocentric model of the universe. At the
modern science and more current scientific time, the geocentric model of Claudius
thinking across critical periods in history. Ptolemy was the widely
held belief about the universe
An intellectual revolution is a period where (i.e., Ptolemaic model).
paradigm shifts occurred and where scientific
beliefs that have been widely embraced and The idea that it is the Sun and not the
accepted by the people were challenged and Earth that is at the center of the universe
opposed. Historically, this intellectual proved to be unsettling in the beginning. In
revolution can be summed up as the fact, the heliocentric model was met with huge
“replacement of Aristotelian ethics and resistance, primarily from the Church, who
Christian morality by a new type of decision accused Copernicus of being a heretic.
making which may be termed instrumental At the time, the idea that it is not the Earth,
reasoning or cost-benefit and, by extension, not man too, that is at the
analysis” (Wootton as cited by McCarthy, center of all creation proved to be
2019). uncomfortable.

Intellectual revolutions as paradigm shifts The contribution of the Copernican Revolution

is, until today, far-reaching. It catalyzed to
Intellectual revolutions can be considered sway scientific thinking away from age-long
paradigm shifts resulting from a renewed and views about the position
enlightened of the Earth relative to an enlightened
understanding of how the universe behaves. understanding of the universe. This marked
the beginning of the birth of modern
They challenged long-held views about the astronomy.
nature of the universe. Thus, these
revolutions were not met with huge resistance More developments:
and controversy, especially during their onset.
Tycho Brahe
- tracked the entire orbits of various stars and
Jean Sylvain Bailley’s Two-Stage Process planets, using only the naked eye.
• Stage 1: ‘sweeping away the old’ - kept extensive records of his observations,
• Stage 2: ‘establishing the new’ but did not really know what to do with them.

Foci of this discussion: Johannes Kepler

• Copernican Revolution - was a brilliant mathematician who had a
•Darwinian Revolution mystical vision of the
• Freudian Revolution mathematical perfection of the universe that
owed a great deal to the ancient Greek
Copernican Revolution mathematician Pythagoras.
- was open-minded enough to realize that
Brahe's data showed the planetary orbits were
not circular and finally, his calculations survival and reproduction.
showed that those orbits were elliptical.
Darwin’s theory of evolution was, of course,
Galileo Galilei met with resistance. Critics accused the
- armed with a new invention, the telescope, theory of being either short in accounting for
which would further shatter the old theory and the broad and complex evolutionary process
lead the way to a new one. or that the functional design of organisms was
- saw the sun's perfection marred by a manifestation of an omniscient God that of a
sunspots, the moon's perfection marred by theory of evolution.
craters, and Jupiter’s four orbiting moons.
Freudian Revolution
Isaac Newton
- who realized that the same force pulling the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud is
apples to earth was keeping the moon in its credited for stirring a 20th century scientific
orbit, the theory of gravity. revolution named after him, the Freudian
- had to invent a whole new branch of math, Revolution. Psychoanalysis is at the center of
calculus, for figuring out rates of motion and this revolution. Freud developed
change. Psychoanalysis as a scientific method of
- His three laws of motion were simple, could understanding inner and unconscious conflicts
be applied everywhere, and could be used springing from free associations, dreams, and
with calculus to solve any fantasies of the individual.
problems of motion that came up.
Scientists working on a biological approach to
Darwinian Revolution human behavior criticized Psychoanalysis for
lacking vitality and bordering on being
English naturalist, geologist, and unscientific as a theory. Particularly, the
biologist Charles Darwin is credited for stirring notion that all humans are destined to exhibit
another important scientific revolution in the Oedipus and Electra complexes, i.e., sexual
mid-19th century. His treatise on the science desire to the opposite sex parent and
of evolution, On The Origin of Species, was exclusion of the same sex parent, seemed to
published in 1859 and began a revolution that not be supported by empirical data.
brought
humanity to a new era of intellectual Amidst the controversy, Freud’s
discovery. Psychoanalysis is widely credited
for dominating psychotherapeutic
Darwinian Revolution benefited from practice from the early 20th century.
earlier scientific revolutions in the 16th Psychodynamic therapies that treat
and 17th centuries in that it was guided by a myriad of psychological disorders
confidence in human remain still largely informed by
reason’s ability to explain phenomena Freud’s work on Psychoanalysis.
in the universe. For his part, Darwin
gathered evidence pointing to what is
now known as natural selection, an
evolutionary process by which
organisms, including humans, inherit,
develop, and adapt traits that favored