When did modern science arise? This is a question which has received divergent answers. Some would say that it started in the High Middle Ages , or that it began with th ‘via moderna’ of the fourteenth century. More widespread is the idea that the Italian Renaissance was also the re-birth of the sciences. In general, Copernicus is then singled out as the great revolutionary, and the ‘scientific revolution’ is said to have taken place during the period from Copernicus to (...) Newton. Others would hold that the scientific revolution started in the seventeenth century and that it covered the period from Galileo to Newton. Sometimes a second scientific revolution is said to have occurred in the first quarter of the twentieth century , a revolution which should be considered as great as the first one. (shrink)