Sample Solution

breakup of Europe’s religious unity corresponded with the spread of printed text; there was a direct impact which shifted a focus onto more scientific ideologies rather than religious ones.

On the other hand, there are arguments present that the printing press did not have a role that as significant as may been seen. There were many cases of exploitation of the print being seen; “exploitation of the mass medium was more common among pseudoscientists and quacks than among Latin-writing professional scientists, who often withheld their work from the press”. Essentially, when important ideas did appear in print, they did not reach the status of becoming a bestseller. This lead to a higher circulation of outdated materials rather than ones posing newer ideas supporting the scientific revolution, which has led to some academics suggesting that printed texts were not as influential as what is frequently argued. “There is no evidence that, except in religion, printing hastened the spread of new ideas… In fact the printing of medieval scientific texts may have delayed the acceptance of… Copernicus.” Obviously, the spread of knowledge is only one of several features that the printing press introduced that needs to be considered when looking at the developments of scientific change. As with any historical demarcation, historians often disagree about the boundaries of the scientific revolution, with some seeing elements contributing to the revolution as soon as the 14th century and having its final stages in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, despite these disagreements, there is a general acceptance that there was a period between that saw a fundamental change in scientific ideas and institutions, and the more widely held ‘picture of the universe’