Scientific revolution

The fascination of humanity with reason as a way of thinking is an aspect that has persisted since ancient philosophers, who were mostly scholars of mathematics. Pythagoras of Samos, in the 6th century BC, developed the famous "Pythagorean theorem" which is widely used in various areas of knowledge (whether studies in right triangles, vectors and even tensors). It was, however, between the 16th and 18th centuries that science as a way of thinking was consolidated, with the emergence of great scientists. This period became known as the "Scientific Revolution".

The scientific revolution arose in the context of the Renaissance era, in which critical and rational thinking was dominant. One of the first marks contained in this revolution was the proposal of the heliocentric model, which envisioned Earth revolving around the Sun, made by Nicolaus Copernicus. Because it was a very distinct idea of the geocentric model they had in mind at the time, in which the Sun revolves around the Earth. Copernicus's proposal was refused.

A few decades later, Galileo Galilei, considered the "father of modern astronomy", perfected existing lenses, being the first to make use of the telescope for astronomy. Based on his observations, Galileo provided evidence favorable to the heliocentric model, identified sunspots, some of Jupiter's moons, and the phases of Venus.

Johannes Kepler limited to pencils, paper and observations, was able to create three laws responsible for describing the dynamics of celestial bodies. Kepler's first law, called the "law of ellipses", finds that the planets do not describe a perfect circular orbit, but rather an ellipse, with a certain "eccentricity" (degree of distortion of a circumference). Kepler's second law states that the orbit of a planet describes equal areas at equal time intervals. Kepler's third law says that the ratio between the square of the period and the cube of the orbit radius of a planet is equal to a constant. But how were Kepler's statements validated? Through the agreement between the predictions made by the use of Kepler's laws and observations. Laws are accurate descriptions of observed phenomena and must remain valid under any circumstances (otherwise, they are not considered laws).

When the word "scientist" is mentioned, the image that refers is usually associated with Isaac Newton. During times of seclusion, due to the plague, Newton developed his greatest works, such as the three laws of dynamics and the law of gravitation. The first law of dynamics is the law of inertia, which states that every body at rest tends to remain at rest and that a body in rectilinear and uniform motion tends to remain in rectilinear and uniform motion. The second is the fundamental relation of dynamics, whose formula is known even by those who do not have affinity for mathematics and physics, that being F=m*a. The third is the law of action and reaction, which states that for all action there is a reaction of the same intensity and direction, but in the opposite direction. The law of gravitation describes how two massive objects interact with each other, given the gravitational forces exerted by each other, which depend on their masses and distance between the objects. Newton's works go even further, and he was also responsible for discovering the spectrum of white light and, along with Leibniz, created the infinitesimal calculus. One of the best-known books in science is Newton's Principia, in which he addresses his laws, demonstrates Kepler's (who previously had no mathematical derivation because calculus was needed) and, in general, underlies classical mechanics.

Later, the nineteenth century came to be marked in science by the presence of great names in the biological area, such as Gregor Mendel, botanist responsible for the development of the laws of genetics and Charles Darwin, responsible for the formulation of evolutionary theory.