How was the medieval view of the universe, people, and their place in nature changed by the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton?
Before the Scientific Revolution, people did not question the universe and did not long to further their knowledge, largely because of religion. The Catholic Church, for example, felt that one should not question how heaven works, but rather how to get to heaven. This was completely different from the views of scientists, especially Copernicus and Galileo, who challenged whether the sun or earth was in the center of the universe, which consequently led to questioning of where heaven was located. People began to question the location of God because the geocentric theory,proposed by Ptolemy, claimed that
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Galen used animal dissection to come to a conclusion of what a human’s anatomy looked like, which was obviously inaccurate. However, since this was the first and only view, people still used his presented image when doing human dissection. Galen also believed that there was two different blood systems, one of which controlled muscular activity and the other controlling digestive functions. Eventually, Vesalius was able to produce a much more accurate image. He used personal dissection of the human body in order to create his illustrations, and these artistic depictions superior to those that had been previously presented. His approach of personally dissecting a body allowed Vesalius to catch many errors that were in Galen’s work. Not only did he correct Galen’s errors of the human anatomy, but he found that blood vessels originated from the heart rather than the liver as Galen thought. Finally, William Harvey was able to prove both Galen and Vesalius wrong in that there is only one blood system, and it is an entire circuit that flows blood through veins and arteries, whereas the other two thought there were two opposing blood