I strongly agree that the role of individuals was the biggest reason progress was made during the Renaissance due to the individual brilliance of people like Andreas Vesalius. Andreas Vesalius was a Belgian physician who made significant discoveries in anatomy through dissections. He proved a lot of Galen's theories wrong and largely impacted how physicians learnt medicine. For example, he proved that the human jawbone was one while Galen thought it was two. He also proved that our breastbone had three parts instead of seven. He encouraged physicians and surgeons to dissect bodies in order to learn more about the human body for themselves. This was different from the way most physicians at the time just blindly followed Galen and Hippocrates' old theories (Theory of Opposites and Theory of Four Humours) from the book. As a result, he was called "Vesalius (mad man) by his haters. Nevertheless, this didn't prevent him from publishing his important book "On the Fabric of the Human Body," which had detailed illustrations of the anatomy of our body. His book totally altered the course of medicine and made physicians begin to follow different methods and dissect bodies themselves. This led to more progress on how the body worked and operated. Another key individual who embodied the Renaissance "humanist" spirit was Thomas Sydenham. He was an English doctor physician working in London in the 1660's and 1670's who revitalized Hippocrates "Power of Observation". He knew how important it was to observe patients to get a diagnosis for the illness type and then treat it. This was a huge step up from medieval ideas of treating a person based on who they were and how they lived. He also recognized that some symptoms were from the same illness and classified illnesses like people classified plants and animals. This helped doctors to narrow down their diagnosis and prescribe treatments for the actual disease. This is still the basis of how doctors today diagnose and cure their patients. His encouragement of methods was probably what led to him being called the English Hippocrates. In addition to all this, he also spread the use of herbs from the New World to treat diseases. For example, he used cinchona bark to treat malaria. This worked because it contained quinine which cured malaria. He also suggested opium as pain relief and sweating out a fever. His new but good cures and old but gold observation techniques inspired medical students at the time and his books were used by physicians for a number of centuries after. Contrary to my view, some may argue that a technological advancement like the invention of the printing press was the biggest reason that progress was made during the Renaissance. The printing press was first invented in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440. However, it only began to be commercially used in the 1600s in England. It made the spread of information much faster. Before, books had to be hand written and so were slower, but after its invention books were faster and easier to make. As a result, more new ideas and developments in medicine were more widely spread and exchanged between scholars. On the Fabric of the Human Body and Sydenham's Medical Observations. Furthermore, the Church's monopoly on knowledge was broken since they couldn't control who wrote the new books like before. Monks had previously written books but now any fit enough person fairly middle class person could print books. Less mistakes and inaccuracies were made as the printing press' copies were perfect. So you could sensibly argue that The printing press did offer some major contributions to progress in the Renaissance. After reviewing both sides of the argument, my view remains strongly unchanged. Even if the printing press popularised and globalised the brilliant ideas, those brilliant ideas wouldn't exist without the likes of Sydenham and Vesalius. The printing press did have its time and place, but it didn't observe sick patients and record symptoms. It couldn't dissect bodies to understand the inner working of our body and it definitely didn't write a book on its own. So ultimately, the individuals were the major factor in why progress was made in the Renaissance.