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Science made its greatest headway in the sixteenth century when people began asking answerable questions about nature --- when they began replacing superstition by a systematic search for order --- when experiment in addition to logic was used to test ideas. Where people once tried to influence natural events with magic and supernatural forces, they now had scienceto guide them. Advance was slow, however, because of the powerful opposition to scientific methods and ideas.
科學在16世紀取得了最偉大的進展，因為這時人們開始提出了有關自然的可以回答的問題，開始以對自然規律的系統研究代替了迷信，而且除了運用邏輯外，還運用實驗來檢驗各種觀點。以前人們曾試圖用巫術和超自然的力量來影響自然事件，而現在有了科學來指導他們。 然而由于對科學方法和科學思想的強有力的反對，進展是緩慢的。
In about 1510 Copernicus suggested that the sun was stationary and that the earth revolved about the sun. He refuted the idea that the earth was the center of the universe. After years of hesitation, he published his findings but died before his book was circulated. His book was considered heretical and dangerous and was banned by the Church for 200 years. A century after Copernicus, the mathematician Bruno was burned at the stake --- largely for supporting Copernicus, suggesting the sun to be a star, and suggesting that space was infinite.Galileo was imprisoned for popularizing the Copernican theory and for his other contributions to scientific thought. Yet a couple of centuries later, Copernican advocates seemed harmless.
哥白尼在1510年前后指出，太陽是靜止不動的，地球繞著太陽在旋轉。他駁斥了地球是宇宙中心的觀點。經過多年的猶豫，他發表了自己的研究成果，但他沒等到自己的著作廣為流傳便去世了。他的著作被認為是危險的異端邪說，被教會查禁了200年之久。在哥白尼之后一百年，數學家布魯諾被燒死在火刑柱上——主要原因就是他支持哥白尼，認為太陽是一顆恒星，空間是無限的。伽利略因普及哥白尼的理論和他對科學思想的其他貢獻而遭到囚禁。然而，兩個世紀之后，哥白尼的鼓吹者似乎就無害了。
