ABSTRACT
The period witnessed many significant changes in virtually every realm of life and thought. If every age is to some degree an age of transition, the seventeenth century seemed to mark a more dramatic transition than most. In particular, the Scientific Revolution challenged the authority of ancient authors and contemporary religion with its discovery and advocacy of new ideas about the universe and the natural world-a challenge that reverberated throughout thought, art, literature, and everyday life in Europe and in India as well. Most scientific thinkers in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe were Christians, although their scientific achievements are often anachronistically taught or studied without reference to their religious beliefs. The portrayal of religion and science as separate spheres during the Scientific Revolution usually derives from Galileo's conflict with the Catholic Church over the Copernican theory. Challenges to traditional authorities in religion and science inevitably gave way to challenges to other types of authority, including political authority.
