Science fans rally on Boston Common against a return to the 16th century

Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius, in which he announced his discoveries of the mountains of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter, and the resolution of the Milky Way into individual stars, was published in 1610. Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, which was one of the first attmpts to formalize the scientific method, was published in 1620. In 1637 René Descartes published the Discourse on Method, which, among many, many other things, includes an appendix called La Géométrie, in which the methods of what we now call Analytic Geometry are introduced, including the Cartesian plane. In 1687 Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, the most influential of all scientific publications. There were important scientific developments in the 16th century - the theories and observations of Copernicus, for example - but the 17th century is when the floodgates burst, and rumors of a revolution became a revolution indeed.