For many people, the 1633 trial of Galileo Galilei by the highest officials of the Catholic Church is the supreme epitome of conflict and incompatibility between organized religion and modern science. For many years prior to his trial, Galileo had been a widely known proponent of Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory of heliocentrism, which clearly contradicted Scriptural teachings about the creation of the natural world. Yet for most of his life, Galileo had been left alone by the Catholic Church, which was arguably powerful enough to have stopped him from publicly speaking or publishing any time it chose. The Church actually took action first against Copernicus; in 1616, the Catholic Inquisition banned further publication and reading of his work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Quite naturally, Galileo disagreed with this prohibition and he continued to serve as an advocate for heliocentrism. Events finally converged in 1633, when Galileo was arrested and accused of promoting Copernicanism and possibly also of possessing the astronomer’s banned works. Galileo was tried before a Church court, staffed by the highest Catholic officials (including the Pope). He was found guilty, forced to publicly revoke his support for Copernicus, and had to spend the remaining nine years of his life living under house arrest in Florence. Centuries later, in 1992, the Catholic Church issued a formal apology to Galileo and vindicated his beliefs and his courage.

The printing press was invented, in Europe, by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. The invention of the printing press allowed for pamphlets and essays to be widely produced for the first time in European history. This facilitated the spread of ideas in Europe and allowed for the rapid spread of the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century.

The feudal system, in both Europe and Japan, was built on the premise that certain individuals are more skilled and have better training in weapons than others.  Archery and swordsmanship were both difficult skills, which had to be mastered over a period of years. Those skilled individuals were able to gain power for themselves by agreeing to fight on behalf of landowners and in defense of serfs living on the land. However, the introduction of firearms changed this arrangement. Suddenly anyone with access to a gun could shoot and kill with very little training. This contributed to the decline of the feudal system in Europe, and, when guns were introduced to Japanese society, threatened to disrupt the feudal system in Japan.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is most often remembered for his pioneering work in microbiology. He made dramatic refinements to the technology of microscopes, allowing them to magnify to much greater extremes. He made many of the first human observations of different types of cells.

The Three Laws of Motion were first proposed by Isaac Newton. The Three Laws of Motion (which Newton published in the late seventeenth century) revolutionized, some might say invented, the area of science known as physics, and established Newton as one of the leading scientific figures in human history.

Gerardus Mercator was a “cartographer” (mapmaker) in the sixteenth century. He made several adjustments to the way maps are made that continue to persist to this day and which made navigation much easier during his own time period.

The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century changed a great deal about European society. For the first time ideas could be spread quickly around the continent. It also led to a marked rise in European literacy rates as more reading material begat more consumers.

Caravels are sailing ships that were invented by the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century. They allowed European explorers to traverse the globe for the first time in human history. The Portuguese invention of the caravel is one of the many reasons why much of the earliest discoveries and voyages of exploration were made by Portuguese explorers like Vasco de Gama, Henry the Navigator, and Ferdinand Magellan.

The Printing Press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, in the Holy Roman Empire, in the fifteenth century. The invention of the printing press allowed ideas to be spread quickly around European society - it contributed to the momentum of the Protestant Reformation.

The printing press had a greater impact in Europe than in Asia, primarily as a result of the Latin alphabet being smaller than the Chinese alphabet. The Latin alphabet, with its twenty-six characters, allowed mass production to be carried out far more efficiently.