The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Imagine you and your friends are playing with a ball in a field. Suddenly, the ball starts moving in a different direction and you have to quickly change the direction you were running in to catch it. This is what happened in the world of science and technology in the 17th century. People started thinking in a new way and changing the direction of how they did things.
Before this time, people mostly believed what they were told by important people, like kings or religious leaders. But some clever people started asking questions and trying to find out why things happened the way they did. They called this "science". They used experiments and observations to learn about the world.
One of these scientists was named Galileo. He watched things fall and figured out that they all fell at the same rate, no matter how heavy they were. This was very different from what people had thought before. He also looked at the stars and saw that the earth went around the sun, not the other way around like people had always believed.
Another scientist was named Isaac Newton. He came up with a bunch of rules, called "laws of motion", that explained how things moved and why. For example, he figured out that things kept doing what they were doing unless a force made them change. This was hard for people to understand at first, but it helped them make better machines and things that moved.
These new ideas and ways of thinking led to more discoveries and inventions. People started building things like steam engines, telegraphs, and railroads. They could communicate with each other faster and travel farther than ever before. This changed the way people lived and worked.
So, the "swerve" basically means that people started thinking and doing things differently in the 17th century, which led to a lot of progress and modernization in science and technology.
Before this time, people mostly believed what they were told by important people, like kings or religious leaders. But some clever people started asking questions and trying to find out why things happened the way they did. They called this "science". They used experiments and observations to learn about the world.
One of these scientists was named Galileo. He watched things fall and figured out that they all fell at the same rate, no matter how heavy they were. This was very different from what people had thought before. He also looked at the stars and saw that the earth went around the sun, not the other way around like people had always believed.
Another scientist was named Isaac Newton. He came up with a bunch of rules, called "laws of motion", that explained how things moved and why. For example, he figured out that things kept doing what they were doing unless a force made them change. This was hard for people to understand at first, but it helped them make better machines and things that moved.
These new ideas and ways of thinking led to more discoveries and inventions. People started building things like steam engines, telegraphs, and railroads. They could communicate with each other faster and travel farther than ever before. This changed the way people lived and worked.
So, the "swerve" basically means that people started thinking and doing things differently in the 17th century, which led to a lot of progress and modernization in science and technology.