Timeline
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)
- 313 Romans forced to legalize Christianity
- 392 All other religions banned in Roman empire
- 5th century, Roman empire crumbles; Christian Church fills the power vacuum
- 529 Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian closes all Greek schools of Philosophy,
including Plato’s Academy
- 12th century, first universities founded in Europe (e.g. Bologna [1088], Padua
[1222], Paris [c.1150], Oxford [1167], Cambridge [1229])
-First 'renaissance', classic Greek writings 'rediscovered' in Europe
-Beginning of the Crusades (Holy Wars against the 'infidels': Mohammedans, Jews, Turks)
- 1453 Ottoman Turk invasion of eastern europe; demise of the Eastern Roman Empire
(Constantinople); scholars forced to flee into the west, resulting in a New Learning
- 1455 Guttenberg Bible printed
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
- 1492 Columbus 'discovers' America; the world suddenly gets bigger
- 1517 Luther’s 95 treatises prompts Protestant Reformation, which leads to
widespread splintering of the Church and eventually to the rise of independent
nation-states
- 1543 Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Coelestium Orbium; (origin of our
use of the term 'revolutionary')
- Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
- Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
- 1572 Observation of new star (supernova) by Tycho Brahe
- 1600 Giordan Bruno (1548-1600) burnt at the stake for
endorsing Copernicanism and other heretical views
- 1616 Copernicus's De Revolutionibus banned by the Inquisition
- 1632 Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems
published
- 1633 Galileo forced to recant his advocacy of Copernicanism by the Holy
Roman Inquisition
- Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
- 1665-66 Newton's annus mirabilis (major scientific and mathematical
discoveries)
- 1687 Newton's Principia Mathematica published
- 1822 Copernicus's Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs removed
from the Index of Banned books
- 1835 Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems removed
from the Index of Banned books
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
- 1905 Einstein's annus mirabilis (papers on photoelectric effect,
Brownian motion, special relativity)
- 1992 Pope John Paul II declares Catholic Church wrong in its treatment
of Galileo and Copernicanism
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