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