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Europe’s Scientific Revolution
between mid-16th and early 18th centuries
no longer rely on Bible, church, ancients, or cultural traditions
challenges man’s place in the cosmos
challenges social hierarchies, politics, status quo
also used to uphold racial and gender inequalities
“creates awesomeness and awfulness of modernity (IR)” – Sherer
becomes chief symbol of modernity (think modern fundamental Islam)
a worldview open to all like Buddhism, Islam and Christianity
“The old rubbish must be thrown away…These are the days
that must lay a new Foundation of a more magnificent
Philosophy.” – English scientist
most scientific society from 800 to 1400 CE
astronomy, math, optics, medicine, libraries
Confucian society both secular and advanced
less religious dogma than both Christianity and Islam
technologically most advanced in the world
Europe’s political climate created units of self-regulation
towns, guilds, church, cities, universities
“corporation” –
universities critical = “zones of intellectual autonomy”
Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, Oxford, Cambridge grant a license to teach
rediscovered Aristotelian lectures
compare to Islamic madrassas which specialize in Qur'anic studies, Chinese Confucian scholars, or Medieval European scholasticism
“May God protect us from useless knowledge.” – Muslim
Arab medical, astronomical research and translations of
Greeks give birth to natural philosophy (science)
tidal wave of knowledge from Columbian Exchange
(adds to speculation)
Protestant Reformation challenges authority
mass literacy and increased education
secular professionals
“Certainties will be exchanged for uncertainties” – Italian scientist Girolamo Cardano
“fathers” of education for European elite
Poland’s Copernicus & On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
published 1543, the year of his death
the German Kepler (ellipses) and Italian Galileo (telescope)
France’s Pascal “The eternal silence of infinite space frightens me”
Newton, calculus and interconnectedness
“At the middle of all things lies the Sun” – Copernicus
“The machine of the universe is not similar to the divine animated
being but similar to a clock” - Kepler
Francis Bacon “The Truth is not at the beginning of an inquiry
but at the end”
Rene Descartes “seek no other knowledge than that which I
might find within myself or perhaps in the book of nature”
and more famously, “I think, therefore I am”
careful dissections of cadavers
heart is a pump (machine)
women were often excluded from this emerging gentleman’s club
exceptions existed: Cavendish, Winkelman
“ ‘mouths would gape’ if a women held such a position (in natural
philosophy)” – a Berlin chauvinist
obviously, the Church didn’t like this
(smell something burning?)
not necessarily mutually exclusive
church eventually gave way to some scientific thinking while
maintaining their superiority in issues involving salvation,
righteous behavior and the larger purpose of life
“Nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than in the
sacred statements of the Bible” – Galileo
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only
proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intellectual being” - Newton
THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
I. Philosophy in the Age of Reason
A. By the early 1700s, European thinkers ( )
thought nothing was out of reach for the human mind.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
I. Philosophy in the Age of Reason
“ Go, wondrous creature! Mount where science guides;
Go, measure the earth, weigh the air, and state the
tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the sun.”
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
I. PHILOSOPHY IN THE AGE OF REASON
1. began in the 1500s-1600s during the Renaissance
a. transformed the way educated Europeans looked at
the world
2. expanded during the 1700s
a. beginning of modern chemistry created
b. Jenner’s vaccine against smallpox
3. Human Reason
a. scientists used reason and logic to find laws that
governed the physical world
b. some began to seek natural laws that possibly govern
human nature
i. beginning of sociology
I. PHILOSOPHY IN THE AGE OF REASON
Questions: What are some problems of society?
4. Science + Philosophy = Sociology – the study of human
behavior and human societies
a. sociologists begin to ask questions such as:
i. What are the problems of society? Can they be
solved?
ii. What is the best form of government?
iii. Why are humans the way they are?
b. this application of science to social problems starts the
philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment
i. “Through the use of reason, people and governments
could solve EVERY social, political, and economic
problem…Heaven could be achieved on Earth.”
C. TWO VIEWS OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
1. both John Locke and Thomas Hobbes lived
through the English Civil War a. they asked the same sociological questions, but got very
different answers
b. disagreed on the best government
c. disagreed on human nature
C. TWO VIEWS OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
2. Thomas Hobbes (English)
a. wrote the Leviathan
b. argued humans were naturally
cruel, greedy, and selfish
c. argued life without laws and a strong
government would result in a “solitary,
nasty, brutish, and short” life
d. to escape this terrible life, humans
enter into a theoretical “social
contract”
i. an agreement where we give up our
state of nature for an organized
society
e. favored an absolute monarchy for
better or worse
C. TWO VIEWS OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
3. John Locke (English) a. thought humans were basically
reasonable and moral
b. because humans are born “good,” we
have natural rights
i. rights that belong to ALL humans: life,
liberty and property
c. wrote Treatises of Government
d. argued humans form governments to
protect their natural rights
i. if a government fails at this, then people
have a right to overthrow that government!
(advocates revolution)
e. favored a limited monarchy
i. when a monarchy is limited by laws
D. SEPARATION OF POWERS
1. Baron de Montesquieu (French)
a. traveled and studied various European forms of
government
b. read about ancient and foreign governments
c. published The Spirit of Laws in 1748
2. Montesquieu argued for a separation of
powers in government
a. legislative, executive and judicial branches
b. each branch can “check” the other two’s powers
c. favored the limited monarchy of England
D. SEPARATION OF POWERS
E. PHILOSOPHIES AND SOCIETY
1. many of the ideas of the Enlightenment were
discussed in France in salons
a. originated as house parties hosted by noble women
b. art, philosophy, and other intellectual subjects were
discussed; sometimes to parlor music (Mozart for ex.)
E. PHILOSOPHIES AND SOCIETY
2. François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
a. most famous of the Enlightenment philosophers
b. battled inequalities, injustices and superstitions with
his witty writings
i. spoke out about the slave trade and religious prejudice
c. major champion of free speech
d. eventually imprisoned and exiled due to his criticizing
the Catholic Church and the French government
“I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to
the death your right to say it!”
Voltaire
E. PHILOSOPHIES AND SOCIETY
3. Denis Diderot
a. produced a 28-volume encyclopedia
i. to change the “general” way of
thinking
b. contained articles on
i. evils of human slavery
ii. Praised freedom of expression
iii. universal education for all
iv. attacked divine right and absolutism
c. 20,000 copies in less than 40 years
i. eventually translated into many languages
E. PHILOSOPHIES AND SOCIETY
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau a. the most controversial Enlightenment philosopher
i. from a poor family
ii. seen as strange and difficult to work with
b. agreed with Locke that people in their natural state were basically “good”
i. the evils of society were what made people turn “bad”
ii. biggest evil was the unequal distribution of wealth
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754
E. PHILOSOPHIES AND SOCIETY
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
c. wrote The Social Contract
i. government should be freely elected by
the people
ii. governments should not limit too
much personal behavior
d. stressed the community was more
important than the individual
e. Rousseau’s ideas would be read and
adapted by early socialists
F. WOMEN AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT
1. the Enlightenment slogan of “Free and
Equal” did not apply to women
2. some leading women spoke out against the
hypocrisy
a. Germaine de Staël, Catharine Macaulay, and
Mary Wollstonecraft
G. NEW ECONOMIC THINKING
1. physiocrats a. focused on economic issues
b. looked for natural laws that governed economics
2. physiocrats rejected mercantilism / embraced laissez faire
a. allowing business to operate with little to no government
interference
b. real wealth was not possession of gold and silver, but rather
making your “land” more productive
c. supported free trade rather than high tariffs
G. NEW ECONOMIC THINKING
3. Adam Smith (British)
a. wrote Wealth of Nations
b. pioneered and championed the ideas behind laissez
faire economics
i. Smith's ideas used during the Industrial Revolution
c. showed how jobs, wages, unemployment, profits,
supply and demand are all related
i. rule of the invisible hand
H. THE CHALLENGE OF NEW IDEAS
1. most peasant’s would not become hip to these new ideas until the end of the 1700s and beginning of the 1800s.
2. European governments and church authorities attempted to censor Enlightened ideas that threatened to drastically change society a. they believed God had created the
“Old Order”
b. performed censorship – restricting access to ideas and information
i. banned literature, burned books and imprisoned writers
What is our “state of nature?”
What is the “social contract?”
Worth it?
The Enlightenment and the
American RevolutionPhilosophy in the Age of Reason