Pre-modernThere is one simple way to classify the difference between the modern and the pre-modern, and that would be to separate them by years. Unfortunately this would not be cut and dried; it would be a rough estimate because no one really knows when the change took place, or if there even was a change. What is known for sure is that things did change. The moderns (became) set against ancient modes of thought and practice (Shapin, p. 5), and this led to a so-called scientific revolution. In science the old ways of the pre-modern world were being questioned and torn apart by the people of the modern era. People began to lose faith in the medieval scholastic interpretation of the Bible and began to question all that they knew. Many discrepancies became obvious in what they knew at the time, how each came to the conclusion of what they knew, and finally what the knowledge that they had acquired was worth. This did have an adverse affect though, many Protestant movements turned even more back to the Bible to explain what was happening. The level of knowledge that was known in the pre-modern is minuscule compared to the amount of information that was added to what had already been established during the modern period. Of course the exception of subjects that interested people, then in that case they were very knowledgeable. This adding to and explanation of many old ideas was the ushering in of the new age. This questioning and explanation began somewhere around 1611 when Gaileo observed dark spots, apparently on (the suns) surface.(p.15). His interpretation of what these sunspots were was widely taken as a serious challenge to the whole edifice of traditional natural philosophy as it had been handed down(p.15). His predecessors believed that the sun was too great and perfect to have such blemishes and imperfections because it was created by God as a part of nature, and when he challenged them with his theory that they were a...
