ABSTRACT
The desire to understand how the world worked was inherent in the learning of the Renaissance, and therefore it is not surprising that important scientific developments occurred during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The methods which are now seen as being scientific were the methods which were applied to all aspects of life: questioning the existing order of things and using observation to test accepted authority. At the same time, the new technologies of the Renaissance, themselves in part the result of scientific research, made change more likely and assisted in the spread and cross-fertilisation of ideas. The need for technological support helps to explain why, in the main, the scientific developments followed those in the fields of art, architecture and literature, and stretched over longer periods than is expected in modern science.
