During the fourteenth and fifteenth century the Italian city-states (Florence, Milan, Pisa, Venice, Genoa, et al.) were the center of trade between Europe and Asia. As the volume of trade grew so too did the interaction between people of various cultures. Middle Eastern mathematics and technology were introduced into European society, as was eastern philosophy.

CERN was established 1954 on the border between Switzerland and France. It is a pan-European cooperative venture designed to encourage scientific innovation and a pooling of research and resources. It is currently the world’s largest particle physics laboratory and is also where the World Wide Web was implemented.

Britain had a number of environmental factors which put them in the lead over other nations when it came to industrializing. The island of Great Britain had large reserves of coal for fuel burning that was easily accessible. The British government also exerted extreme control over its populace, leading to large-scale industrial and manufacturing operations. Thirdly, Britain was a small country in comparison to most in Western Europe, and its small but relatively wealthy population helped facilitate industrial modernization. 

The Ptolemaic system of the solar system was developed by a classical-era Roman scholar named Claudius Ptolemy. It is more often referred to as the geocentric model of the universe, or the geocentric model of the solar system. It was widely influential throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period as the primary model for understanding the movement of the planets and the sun. According to this model of the solar system, the Earth is at the center and all the other planets, the sun, and the stars revolve around the Earth. This was later disproved by Copernicus, who postulated the heliocentric model of the solar system in which the planets revolve around the sun.

The introduction of the printing press into European societies around 1440 CE allowed for the publication and proliferation of Bibles and other works of religious literature. While the other answers refer to events (very) roughly contemporaneous with the advent of the printing press, none can logically be considered consequences of it.

The Scientific Revolution saw scientific writing published in the vernacular, which encouraged the spread of ideas outside of academia. This was a period when scientists embraced the power of reason and observation, which led to the increased acceptance of the heliocentric model of the solar system, rather than the geocentric model.

The Scientific Revolution saw the development of deductive reasoning (typified by the work of Rene Descartes) and inductive reasoning (typified by the work of Sir Francis Bacon).

While there were tensions between some scientists and the church, all learning was not secularized in this period and some, like Bacon, remained devout in their religious beliefs and practice. 

Copernicus is famed for being the one to come up with the idea of heliocentricity. This means he was the one to first propose the idea that the universe revolved around the Sun rather than around the world. Galileo is often thought of as the father of this idea, but he was actually a follower of Copernicus and he simply popularized the idea.

Due to the plethora of scientific and academic fields that the Scientific Revolution help to create, there was a major upswing in the number of people who returned to academic study, thus giving rise to the Enlightenment, which saw the educational systems of Europe become more widespread.

The Scientific Revolution was the birth of modern science. It came in the wake of the Renaissance, and the revival of the arts and academic thought that came with it. Notable thinkers of the Scientific Revolution included Isaac Newton and Galileo.

Following the Renaissance in the 1400's academic thought was reborn in Europe. This combined with the modern tool of the Printing Press, which allowed academics to read the works of others from far away, and the legacy of Alchemists, who sought to expand human understanding, helped to push great academics of the time to discover and create. The Enlightenment was an 18th century philosophical movement that included such seminal thinkers as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.