'The Scientific Revolution may have increased knowledge, but it made little practical difference to people's lives.' Is this a fair comment?

To this question one can answer either 'yes' or 'no' and be correct with both conclusions as I will explain in this essay. It is all a matter of time. To the peasant, the servant and even the aristocracy of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, not only did the scientific revolution have little or no practical effect on their lives, most of them never even knew what it was or that it was happening. However, today in the twenty-first century not only are we aware that the scientific revolution took place at that time it is also obvious that our daily lives would be completely different had the scientific revolution not taken place.

In view of the above we need to look at both eras to assess both answers and also to establish exactly what was the scientific revolution.

The shift in the western mind from the medieval to the modern world was underpinned by the growth of science. Around the sixteenth, seventeenth and the eighteenth century, changes in the fields of Biology (looki...