The SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION (roughly 16th–17th centuries CE) transformed European intellectual life by:
AConfined to a single generation and substantially reversed by later regimes, with no lasting institutional legacy and no direct influence on the developments that followed in subsequent centuries.
BChronologically misplaced in most popular accounts, occurring substantially earlier or later than commonly claimed, and involving different actors from those usually named.
CReplacing much of medieval Aristotelian and Ptolemaic natural philosophy with empirical, mathematical approaches — canonical figures include Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.
DWidely rejected in modern historical scholarship as an inaccurate 19th-century reconstruction of a much more limited underlying event, with little primary-source basis.
Explanation
The Scientific Revolution (16th–17th centuries CE) replaced much of medieval Aristotelian and Ptolemaic natural philosophy with empirical, mathematical approaches. Canonical figures: Copernicus (heliocentric solar system), Galileo (telescope, mechanics), Kepler (planetary motion), Newton (universal gravitation, mathematical principles of natural philosophy). It laid the intellectual foundation for later Enlightenment thought and modern natural science.