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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.
科学在16世纪取得了最伟大的进展，因为这时人们开始提出了有关自然的可以回答的问题，开始以对自然规律的系统研究代替了迷信，而且除了运用逻辑外，还运用实验来检验各种观点。以前人们曾试图用巫术和超自然的力量来影响自然事件，而现在有了科学来指导他们。 然而由于对科学方法和科学思想的强有力的反对，进展是缓慢的。
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，太阳是静止不动的，地球绕着太阳在旋转。他驳斥了地球是宇宙中心的观点。经过多年的犹豫，他发表了自己的研究成果，但他没等到自己的著作广为流传便去世了。他的著作被认为是危险的异端邪说，被教会查禁了200年之久。在哥白尼之后一百年，数学家布鲁诺被烧死在火刑柱上——主要原因就是他支持哥白尼，认为太阳是一颗恒星，空间是无限的。伽利略因普及哥白尼的理论和他对科学思想的其他贡献而遭到囚禁。然而，两个世纪之后，哥白尼的鼓吹者似乎就无害了。
