6. Astronomy, Mechanics, Literature 天文学、力学、文学 （1580-1610）

This 30-year period saw revolutionary change on all fronts. Galileo’s telescope and Kepler’s planetary theory were the birth of modern astronomy; Galileo’s De motu launched classical physics; literature took big steps forward with Cervantes’ Don Quixote (the earliest novel still widely read) and Montaigne’s Essays (which created that genre), and a guy named Shakespeare turned out a bunch of sonnets, plus Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth and the rest. Islamic architecture reached a late peak in Isfahan and Istanbul.

这三十年见证了所有前沿事物的革命性变革。伽利略的望远镜和开普勒的行星理论是现代天文学的起源；伽利略的《论运动》开启了经典物理学；文学也取得了跨越式的进展，代表著作包括塞万提斯的堂吉诃德（至今依然被广泛阅读的最古老小说）、蒙田的随笔（创建了随笔这个文体）、莎士比亚的大量十四行诗和《哈姆雷特》《李尔王》《麦克白》等等。而伊斯兰建筑艺术在伊斯法罕和伊斯坦布尔到达了后期的顶峰。