AP
Eurpean
History
Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment
New ideas in science based on observation, experimentation, and mathematics challenged classical views of the cosmos, nature, and the human bidy, through folk traditions of knowledge and the universe persisted.
From the sun-centered universe proposed by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus to the great synthesis of physics and astronomy accomplished by the English scientist Isaac Newton, as well as Galileo challenging new ideas of motion, a new revolutionary new understanding of the universe had emerged by the end of the seventeenth century.
William Harvey was the one to discover the circulation of the blood through the veins and arteries in 1628. Harvey was the first to explain that the heart worked like a pump and to explain the function of its muscles and valves. This is how Harvey presented the body as an integrated system.
Two important thinkers, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, were influential in describing and advocating for improved scientific methods based, respectively, on experimentation and mathematical reasoning. Both Bacon's inductive experimentalism and Descartes deductive mathematical reasoning had their faults.
Rational and empirical thought challenged traditional values and ideas
Voltaire
Montesquieu
Voltaire wrote more than seventy witty volumes, hobnobbed with royalty, and died a millionaire through shrewd speculations. While he had been living in Cirey, Voltaire wrote works praising England and popularizing English science. Voltaire mixed the glorification of science and reason with an appeal for better individuals and institutions.
The baron de Montesquieu had gotten fame by using the wit as a weapon against cruelty and superstition, Montesquieu turned to the study of history and politics. Montesquieu got inspired by physical sciences, and he set out to apply the critical method to the problem of governmnt in The Spirit of Laws. Montesquieu focused mainly on the conditions that would promote liberty and prevent tyranny
Diderot
Diderot did not work alone. His partner that he worked with was Jean Le Rond D' Alembert. They both went out for coauthors who would examine the rapidly expanding whole of human knowledge They set out to teach people how to think critically and objectively about all matters.
Rousseau was a person who was passionately committed to individual freedom. He attacked rationalism and civilization as destroying, rather than liberating, the individual. His ideals greatly influenced the early romantic movement, which rebelled against the culture of the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century. John Locke was also a contribution on how all people were born with natural rights. Locke insisted that all ideas are derived by experience. The human mind at birth is like a blank tablet, or tabula rasa, on which the environment writes the individual's understanding and beliefs.
A Vandication of the Rights of Woman: with structures on Political and Moral Subjects, written by the 18th century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. She responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who did not believe women should have an education. A French feminist Olympe de Gouges had published her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, due to the fact that the question of women's rights became central to political debates in both France and Britain. The Rights of Woman engages not only specific events in France and in Britain but also larger questions being raised by political philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
New public venues such and print mica popularized Enlightenment ideas
There was a variety of institutions that explored and disseminated Enlightenment ideas such as Salons and Coffee houses. The salons was a regular social gathering held by talented and rich Parisian in their homes, where philosophes and their followers met to discuss literature, science, and philosophy. The coffee houses contributed to the Enlightenment because they helped spread the ideas and values of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.
A series of new institutions and practices encouraged the spread of enlightenment ideas in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, The first production were books which its production and consumption grew rapidly. Conversation, discussion, and debate also played a role in the Enlightenment.
New political and economic theories challenged absolutism and mercantitlism
John Locke
Political theories such as John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, concieved of society as composed individuals driven by self interest and argued that the state originate in the consent of the governed rather than in divine right or tradition. Locke insisted that all ideas are derived from experience. He believes that the environment writes an individual's understandings and beliefs.
John Adam's
Adam Smith was a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith developed the general idea of freedom of enterprise and established the basis for modern economics in his groundbreaking work Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
During the Enlightenment, the rational analysis of religious practices led to natural religion and the demand for the religoius toleration
Throughout the Enlightenment there had been individuals such as Voltaire, Diderot, and Hume who had concepts of deism, skepticism, and atheism. Voltaire had written works praising England and popularizing English science. Voltaire was a reformer, not a revolutionary, in politics. He pessimistically concluded that the best one could hope for in the way of government was a good monarch, since human beings, "are very rarely worthy to govern themselves." Diderot had had a goal to teach people how to think critically and objectively about all matters. Diderot had a great relationship with the Encyclopedia as he wanted it to change the world. Science and the industrial arts were exalted, religion and immortality questioned. Intolerance, legal injustice, and out of date social institutions were openly criticized. A central figure in Edinburgh was David Hume, whose emphasis of civic morality and religious skepticism had a powerful impact at home and abroad.
Religion was increasingly viewed as a private matter rather than a public concern because as societies progress, particularly through modernization and rationalization, religion loses its authority in all aspects of social life and governance.
Two governments that had extended religious toleration to Christian minorities or civil equality for jews were the Austrian and the French governments because they passed laws that gradually incorporated jews and it go to the point to where jews got full civil rights.
Sources
Mckay Text Book