6. Astronomy, Mechanics, Literature 天文學、力學、文學 （1580-1610）

This 30-year period saw revolutionary change on all fronts. Galileo’s telescope and Kepler’s planetary theory were the birth of modern astronomy; Galileo’s De motu launched classical physics; literature took big steps forward with Cervantes’ Don Quixote (the earliest novel still widely read) and Montaigne’s Essays (which created that genre), and a guy named Shakespeare turned out a bunch of sonnets, plus Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and the rest. Islamic architecture reached a late peak in Isfahan and Istanbul.

這三十年見證了所有前沿事物的革命性變革。伽利略的望遠鏡和開普勒的行星理論是現代天文學的起源；伽利略的《論運動》開啟了經典物理學；文學也取得了跨越式的進展，代表著作包括塞萬提斯的堂吉訶德（至今依然被廣泛閱讀的最古老小說）、蒙田的隨筆（創建了隨筆這個文體）、莎士比亞的大量十四行詩和《哈姆雷特》《李爾王》《麥克白》等等。而伊斯蘭建筑藝術在伊斯法罕和伊斯坦布爾到達了后期的頂峰。