Divinagracia, Jay Aimeen F.

July 20, 2018

BSEd – English I

Intellectual Revolution: The Thinkers and their Revolutionary Minds

The historical antecedents of science and technology paved way for many great things
that men used mainly for survival purposes only, nothing much more than that. Our brilliant
forefathers responded to the call of nature and created things that could make life easier for the
people. However, innovation and discoveries never stopped there. Up until the 16th century,
great scientists continue to understand the world, not just live within it. They never settled by just
sufficing their needs and wants, instead they aimed on grasping information on our existence, our
planet, our universe, and all about everything – and that marks the start of the Intellectual
Revolution.

On 1543, Nicolas Copernicus published his treatise De Revolutionibus Orbium

Coelestium (The Revolution of Celestial Spheres). His view of the world finally came to be a
watershed in the development in Cosmology: The Heliocentric Universe. He believed that the
sun, rather than the earth, was the center of our solar system. His idea became very controversial
for the reason that (1) it challenged the age long views of the way the universe worked and the
preponderence of the Earth and, by extension, of human beings. All the reassurances of
cosmology during the Middle Ages were gone, and a new view of the world came into being. It
would also discredit other great scientists before who believed that the universe was geocentric.
Also, (2) Copernicus was aware that these ideas would inevitably create conflicts with the
Church, and they really did. His work was the first and probably the strongest to blow the
Medieval Cosmology. The church banned this theory because it was considered heresy. The
Pope Paul III was not very critical, but his bishops and cardinals agreed with Luther and the
model was condemned by the Church.

The Darwinian Revolution was considered to be the one of the most talked-about
controversy in Science, that even until now, the debate still continues. Charles Darwin is an
English naturalist and biologist. On 1859, he published a book entitled “On the Origin of
Species”. He proposed the “theory of evolution” which states that evolution is a process by
which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral
traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and
have more offspring. Common examples of these evolution include primates that will eventually
turn into man, or even a hyena-like animal called Sinonyx will eventually turn into a humpback
whale overtime. This sparked a debate between biologists and those people with religious
objections. Despite the wealth of fossil records, genetics, and other fields of science, people still
question its validity for the reason that: (1) It is a great insult to the beliefs of religion, they had
always believed that there is a Creator who created everything. Some politicians and religious
leaders denounce the theory of evolution, invoking a higher being as a designer to explain the
complex world of living things, especially humans. (2) Also on genetics, some mutation cause
harm and cannot build such complexity. Thus, a few number of scientists believed that
Darwinian Theory is quite unrealistic since it relies merely on random mutations that are selected
by a blind, unguided process of natural selection. (3) Lastly, As for Paleontology, some fossil
records lack intermediate fossils. The fossil record’s overall pattern is one of abrupt explosions
of new biological forms, and generally lacks plausible candidates for transitional fossils,
contradicting the pattern of gradual evolution predicted by Darwinian theory. This non-
Darwinian pattern has been recognized by many paleontologists.

Psychology was considered more of an art rather than a science. In the late 19th century,
Sigmund Freud was able to cahnge people’s perception of psychology with this revolutionary
theory of psychoanalysis. Freud was a physiologist, medical doctor, and father of
psychoanalysis, and is generally recognized as one of the most influential and authoritative
thinkers of the twentieth century. His psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human
behavior is the result of the interactions among three component parts of the mind: the id, ego,
and superego. As a therapy, psychoanalysis is based on the concept that individuals are unaware
of the many factors that cause their behavior and emotions. These unconscious factors have the
potential to produce unhappiness, which in turn is expressed through a score of distinguishable
symptoms, including disturbing personality traits, difficulty in relating to others, or disturbances
in self-esteem or general disposition. Even with his intensive scientific explanations and
experiments on this case, there are many who still oppose to this. (1) Grünbaum (1986) believes
that the reasoning on which Freud based his entire psychoanalytic theory was "fundamentally
flawed, even if the validity of his clinical evidence were not in question" but that "the clinical
data are themselves suspect; more often than not, they may be the patient's responses to the
suggestions and expectations of the analyst". Grünbaum concludes that in order for
psychoanalytic hypotheses to be validated in the future, data must be obtained from extraclinical
studies rather than from data obtained in a clinical setting. In other words, Grünbaum and other
critics assert that psychoanalysis lacks in empirical data. (2) Additional critics contend that
Freud's clinical data are flawed or invalid. Greenberg (1986) believes that Freud's case studies do
not place enough stress on revealing the outcome of the treatment and that Freud's aim was more
to illustrate his theoretical points. In addition, Freud fully presented only twelve cases, but he
mentioned over one hundred minor cases. Greenberg asserts that many of the presented cases
would not even be considered acceptable examples of psychoanalysis and, in short, that virtually
all of the case studies had basic shortcomings. (3) Finally, Greenberg finds it "both striking and
curious" that Freud chose to illustrate the usefulness of psychoanalysis through the display of
unsuccessful cases. "We were forced to conclude," maintains Greenberg, "that Freud never
presented any data, in statistical or case study form, that demonstrated that his treatment was of
benefit to a significant number of the patients he himself saw". Many other powerful criticisms
about Freud's inaccurate and subsequently flawed evidence have been published. These critics
contend that Freud's evidence is flawed due to the lack of an experiment, the lack of a control
group, and the lack of observations that went unrecorded. In addition, critics find fault with the
demographically restricted sample of individuals on which Freud based the majority of his data
and theory.

The three aforementioned scientists were actually the leading scientists during the
scientific revolution. Amidst the many bashing and contoversies along their way, they decided to
believe in theirselves. Now, the big question is, why did the people accept these new discoveries
despite being contradictory to what was widely accepted at that time?
 Copernican’s model was accepted because of the further studies conducted by Galileo.
He had prevailing evidences that contradicted the geocentric worldview. The heliocentric earth
later became a fact with all the evidences provided – and then, schools began teaching it,
astronomers began to believe in geocentrism, the Catholic church permitted it’s publishing
publicly and up until the present, it is still a universal fact that the sun is the middle if our solar
system. On the other hand, Darwin’s theory is still on the verge of being accepted. Darwinism is
not properly construed as simply a scientific idea that transformed society but rather as a
metaphysic based upon a dogmatic methodological naturalism that had been brewing in England
for some time. It became widely accepted on 1869 when nearly 75 percent of all scientists had
accepted Darwinian evolution,of course with in its developed and updated form. Lastly, Freud’s
theory may be wrong “for some” in so many ways, however, it is still an accepted theory in
psychology, neuroscience and culture. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Sigmund
Freud was a giant in his field. When it comes to his influence on psychology, psychoanalysis,
and our theories of mind, he’s often credited for kindling a revolution; with Freud, it’s kind of a
before-and-after thing. In summation, Westen says there are five broad areas in which the work
of Sigmund Freud remains relevant to psychology: the existence of unconscious mental
processes, the importance of conflict and ambivalence in behavior, the childhood origins of adult
personality, mental representations as a mediator of social behavior, and stages of psychological
development.

To conclude, scientific revolution indeed forever changed the course of science and
technology. Just as we think that we already understand everything, great minds come into
picture and corrects every wrong thing that we believed in for years. And does this revolution
changed the society? Definitely, YES! Our society is complex and there are much more fallacies
in it than there are the truths. This sceintific revolution taught us, the ones living in the society
that, (1) it is alright to claim something different from the traditional norms in the society
UNLESS you can correctly and scientifically prove it, (2) many people from that society may
disapprove our ideas but if we must continue our fight for the truth, then we will, (3) to be great
scientists, it will take millions of failures before we get to triumph but we must always give a
fight and lastly, (4) we must not easily believe to the information around us, it is our duty to
investigate on our own. The instances in advancements of science changed, changes, and will
continually change our perception and beliefs. And because science is continues to prosper, our
learning will also never stop.