To clarify, this is for school, and the answer I want is that it SHOULD take place from around 1200-1800... here's my paper so far, but I'm looking for where to look to find more information. I'm kinda stuck where I am:
The scientific revolution is widely regarded as one of the greatest periods of mankind’s written history. The phrase was coined in 1939 by Alexandre Koyré. According to most modern day historians, it started with Copernicus’s book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, and went until Newton’s book Principia in 1687. But why is Copernicus considered to have started the revolution? Back in the early 13th century, there were universities being erected all throughout Europe. These places taught seven different subjects: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. There are those who say that although there was much groundbreaking work done during the antiquity and Middle Ages, this was merely a preparation for what was to come; but the impact of the hundred and forty four years of the scientific revolution far surpasses anything ever done previously. No preceding time has ever had as much influence as this period of time. However, this reasoning seems to be flawed. Although it’s true that the period from Copernicus to Newton made incredible advances in natural science, it could never have been done without the groundwork laid by the universities of the Middle Ages. Therefore, it would make more sense to periodize this revolution to take place during the period of time known as Old Europe, spanning from 1200 to 1800.
What was taught in the medieval universities that made their teachings so invaluable to what was later named as the scientific revolution? There were many things. The way they looked at the world during the 16th-18th centuries can be directly traced back to what was discussed during the first universities. According to Grant , “The scientific revolution was built upon the foundation of ancient Greek learning and science in the Middle Ages…” First, though, it’s important to discuss exactly what it was that was taught during this medieval era. And could what happened during the scientific revolution have occurred without this?
It seems that not many scientific advancements were made during the Middle Ages, and yet, the contributions that were made did not have to necessarily be scientific in nature. The preparations paved the way for the scientific revolution.
You might want to take a look at Steven Shapin's The Scientific Revolution. He basically makes the case that there wasn't one in the Koyréan sense. (He opens the book with the wonderful phrase, "There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.")
What do we mean by a "Scientific Revolution"? What Koyré and others usually mean is that there was a distinct period in which scientific thinking emerged and became a dominant force in European thought. People like Shapin say, well, for one, there is nothing really distinct about it. You can trace the origins of that work back more or less continuously into medieval and ancient and even pre-ancient times. There is no place to draw a line and say, "Before this point, no scientific thinking. After this point, all scientific thinking." It has always been a messy blend of things (and continues to be, even in our so-called scientific times, as even a cursory reading of a newspaper will tell one).
Separately, there is a whole question about what the heck we mean by "science" or "scientific thinking" in general. Historians, sociologists, and most philosophers of science have all but given up on the idea of a demarcation line between "science" and "not science" (whether one means pseudoscience, theology, cult science, metaphysics, whatever). This "demarcation problem" has deep implications for studying the history of science, much less trying to identify the origins of "science," because it means that you no real benchmark by which to measure who started thinking scientifically and who didn't. And indeed, many of the much vaunted figures of the "Scientific Revolution" spent at least half of their time, and made half of their scientific reasonings, on topics that we would judge as "not science."
Something interesting does happen in the 16th-18th centuries, but that "something interesting" is not people suddenly being "scientific," but often is people creating institutions, applying mathematical techniques to domains they were previously not applied to, and changes wrought by things like standardized type and image reproduction technology (which lets you circulate knowledge more widely and reliably). (The real "professionalization" of science — when you get a category of something like a "scientist" as a viable career path and not just an eccentricity of the wealthy — happens later, in the 19th century. And the term "scientist" was not coined until the 1830s.) So some have argued that you can salvage something of a "Scientific Revolution" as a useful category if you turn it into something more specific, e.g. a "Quantifying Revolution" or something like that.
So, sure, you can make an argument for the medieval period being important to later developments in what we define as "science." There was much more going on in that period than most people know, in terms of research, the creation of pedagogical institutions, and experimentation. And some of the most important stuff being done was not located in Europe, which meant that it gets excluded from a lot of the Eurocentric historiography of the "Scientific Revolution." But the broader question is whether or not this clunky term, "Scientific Revolution," actually does useful historical work. Does arguing that it started earlier than people think help us understand it? Well, maybe — it might emphasize that there was more going on in the medieval period than people realize, and argue against the idea of some kind of "revolution" sprouting up from nowhere.
But you should be aware that this is a historian's category, and nothing like a "natural" category. It is entirely a construction and arguably not a very useful one. By proclaiming one set of time period, and specifically one group of people and ideas, as being a "turning point," the historian is making not just a historical argument but something of a present-day one as well — we are saying that the people in the past who mattered were Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, at the exclusion of other viable candidates (like Christoph Clavius, the top Jesuit astronomer of the 16th century, who is largely ignored because he is judged to be on the "wrong side of history" despite his extreme importance during this time). We are drawing a line between the "modern" and the "not modern," and this might just be a story we like to tell ourselves so we feel superior.
Non-"natural" categories of history can be very useful, but just never lose sight that they are somewhat arbitrary constructions. If you want to broaden one, great — make the argument for it. But just don't forget that it's not set in stone.