Sample Solution

It is hard to establish a negative role that printed books had on the development of the scientific revolution. If being pedantic, the only negative which can be immediately highlighted is the environmental issues that arose from the printing press machinery. It is much clearer when observing the more positive roles printed text had on endeavours of science. As highlighted, when information and readings are controlled to a few, it’s very easy to hold an influence over entire societies, however the invention of the printing press meant that literacy levels climbed and promotion of an exchange of ideas lead to differing ideas growing populations emboldened by choice.

The scientific revolution changed the way society saw the world around it. Until the early modern period, there were only ‘scientific observers’ as such, who only read texts which had been published at a previous date and assumed its truth. The printing press and the Renaissance changed this and galvanised the scientific society. It was then that the three classic headers of early science, Ptolemaic astronomy, Galenic anatomy and Aristoleian physics, met their downfalls and were instead replaced by the science of new academics such as Newton and Copernicus.

The importance and success of the printing press within the scientific revolution is evident. The availability to spread theories and thoughts quickly and widely allowed for an “acceleration of scientific discovery and progress unlike anything that had been seen before.”By looking at Copernicus’s ‘De revolutionbus’ this is clear. The first edition in 1543 included around 450 copies followed by a similar figure in 1566, and eventually was established in the biggest libraries and known by the majority of astronomy professors in the sixteenth century.

Concluding, publication before printing was often portrayed through oral exchange; “print culture made possible the simultaneous distribution of well-made figures and charts” This meant that it laid the basis for new confidence within humans’ capacity to arrive at certain knowledge; “Alongside the truth of revelation comes now an independent and original truth of nature” is discussed by Cassirer and highlights a significant change in intellect within society at the time. Printed books massively allowed a growth of knowledge and communication in Europe, as well as allowing scientists to publish their own thoughts which influenced other academics in their own work. The printing of books was one of the most influential inventions of the century, and was a hugely significant part to the success of the scientific revolution