page_title: Timeline of the history of the scientific method
section_title: 1200–1700
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of the history of the scientific method / 1200–1700
caption_attribution_description: English: MS/187 – Robert Boyle notebook 1690-1691. Robert Boyle was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. The RS archives holds 46 volumes of philosophical, scientific and theological papers by Boyle and 7 volumes of his correspondence.
context_page_description: This timeline of the history of the scientific method shows an overview of the development of the scientific method up to the present time.
context_section_description: 1220–1235 – Robert Grosseteste, an English scholastic philosopher, theologian and later the Bishop of Lincoln during 1253, publishes his Aristotelian commentaries, laying out the framework for the proper methods of science.
  1265 – The English monk Roger Bacon, inspired by the writings of Robert Grosseteste, describes a scientific method based on a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. He recorded the manner in which he conducted his experiments in precise detail so that others could reproduce and independently test his results.
  1327 – Ockham's razor appears, a principle which states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
  1408 – The Yongle Encyclopedia (Chinese: 永樂大典), the largest encyclopedia in book form every made, is completed.
  1581 – The sceptic Francisco Sanches uses classical sceptical arguments to show that science, in the Aristotelian sense of giving necessary reasons or causes for the behavior of nature, cannot be attained.
  1581 – The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe builds Uraniborg and Stjerneborg on the island of Ven. Research done in the fields of astronomy, alchemy, and meteorology by Tycho and his assistants produces high precision measurements of the planets.
  1595 – The microscope is invented in the Netherlands.
  1608 – Evidence of the earliest known telescope appears in the Netherlands, when a patent is submitted by Hans Lipperhey.
  1609 – The first 'public chemical laboratory' is set up at the University of Marburg.
  1620 – The Novum Organum, fully Novum Organum, sive indicia vera de Interpretatione Naturae ("New Organon, or true directions concerning the interpretation of nature"), a philosophical work by English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, is published.
  1637 – The French philosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes publishes his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences, an important work in the development of the natural sciences.
  1638 – Galileo's Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (commonly known as Two New Sciences), his scientific testament covering much of his work in physics over the preceding thirty years, is published. It contains two thought experiments, now referred to as his Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment and Galileo's ship, each invented to disprove a physical theory by showing that it has a contradictory consequence.
  1650 – The world's oldest national scientific institution, the Royal Society, is founded in London. It establishes experimental evidence as the arbiter of truth.
  c.1665 – The British scientist Robert Boyle reveals his scientific methods in his writings, and commends that a subject be generally researched before detailed experiments are undertaken; that results that are inconsistent with current theories are reported; that experiments should be regarded as 'provisional' in nature; and that experiments are shown to be repeatable.
  1665 – Academic journals are published for the first time, in France and Great Britain.
  1675 – To encourage the publicising of new discoveries in science, the German-born Henry Oldenburg pioneers the practice now known as peer reviewing, by sending scientific manuscripts to experts to judge their quality.
  1687 – Sir Isaac Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), is first published. It laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus.
caption: Robert Boyle's notebook for 1690-1. Boyle was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society.
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