Scientific Revolution

Scientific Revolution

A series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature.

Muslim and Chinese science

Had a large amount of stagnation as the creation of Communism began to form.

Aristotelian methodology

Geocentrism, everything revolves around the earth and the crystalline sphere models. Natural philosophy, trying to think about things really hard to do science.

Medieval science

Included things like geocentrism and natural philosophy. Like most types of science it wasn’t very divided during this year and included everything from astrology to philosophy. Aristotelian Science is a big term to know from this, he is famous for his ideas like geocentrism.

Empiricism

A theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through observation and experimentation rather than reason and speculation.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Theorized that the stars and planets revolved around a fixed sun, he feared ridicule from other astronomers so he didn’t publish On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres until the year of his death. Main takeaway: created the idea that the sun, not the earth is the center of the universe.

*On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres*

Book written by Copernicus theorizing that the sun, not the earth is the center of the universe.

Heliocentrism

The thought that the sun in the center of the universe and everything revolves around it.

Johannes Kepler

Brahe’s assistant that used Brahe’s data to develop three revolutionary laws of planetary motion. First, he demonstrated that the orbits of the planets around the sun are elliptical rather than circular. Second, he demonstrated that the planets do not move at a uniform speed in their orbits. They accelerate when closer to the sun and decelerate when further away. His third law stated that the time a planet takes to complete an orbit is relative to the planet’s distance away from the sun.

Galileo Galilei 

Challenged Aristotelian ideas about the motion of the earth, he measured the movement of a rolling ball across a surface repeating his action again and again to verify his results, this would turn into the law of inertia.

Law of inertia

**Newton’s first law**, if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force. The law of inertia was first formulated by Galileo Galilei for horizontal motion on Earth and was later generalized by René Descartes. Before Galileo, it had been thought that all horizontal motion required a direct cause, but Galileo deduced from his experiments that a body in motion would remain in motion unless a force (such as friction) caused it to come to rest.

Isaac Newton

Wrote the Principa, which was a book that included many scientific rules like the three laws of motion, and the law of universal gravitation.

The *Principa*

A book written by Issac Newton that included things like the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. It was written/published in 1687.

Law of universal gravitation 

Newton’s law that all objects are attracted to one another and that the force of attraction is proportional to the object’s quantity of matter and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

3 laws of motion

These were created by Issac Newton and written down in his book the principia. They are the law of inertia, force equals mass times acceleration, and every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Alchemy

This has to do with the transformation of matter into something else. It is the medieval precursor to chemistry. During this time period Magic, astrology, and alchemy had little to no distinction between them. 

Rene Descartes

He was a mathematician who helped develop the fields of algebra and geometry with Arabic numerals. He also created math symbols, variables, and exponents. Not only did he have a large influence on modern math but he also did great work with optics as well.

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Robert Boyle 

He made advancements in the fields of chemistry and science. These were things like atoms/atomic theory, artificial vacuums, and he even had a law named after him that had to do with pressure and volume.

Tycho Brahe

Danish; agreed with the Copernican hypothesis, and established himself as Europe's leading astronomer with his detailed observations of a new star that appeared suddenly in 1572.

The Enlightenment

An intellectual and cultural movement in the late seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe and its colonies that used rational and critical thinking to debate issues such as political sovereignty, religious tolerance, gender roles, and racial difference.

Reason

The truth in anything can be found through logical thinking and can be used by humans to then improve their own condition.

Nature

The belief that everything natural is good and reasonable. According to this concept, there were natural laws of economics and politics just as there were natural laws of motion.

Happiness

All people have a natural right to seek happiness and society should be constructed with that in mind.

Progress

A belief that societies should and could improve.

Liberty

Society should be designed to give people control over their own lives and their own pursuits.

Social Contract

We the people have agreed and consented to the government they are in, a contract between us myself and the government that has been made.

Natural Rights

These were life, liberty, and property. People who believed in this thought that the government should protect everybody's right to these ideas. This meant freedom of speech, no unjust execution, and protection of one valuables. 

Thomas Hobbes 

He was an important figure during his time who is most famously known for his dislike of democracy. He believed that the government should be modeled after a leviathan, having control over the people to prevent them from falling into chaos. The English Civil War proved his point about government to him, making him more skeptical of democracy. **He also believed in the social contract theory which started the revolutionary idea that people give kings power not god.**

John Locke

Was a sensationalist who believed that all people were born like a blank template and needed to be nurtured in order to grow up into good people. He also believed in natural rights for all people, these are things like life, liberty and property. He said the government should ensure we keep out natural rights even under their control.

*Tabula Rasa*

This is the idea that at birth the (human) mind is a "blank slate" without rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences. **People are molded by their environment and experiences.**

Sensationalism

An idea, espoused by John Locke, that all human ideas and thoughts are produced as a result of sensory impressions.

Philosophes

A group of French intellectuals who proclaimed that they were bringing the light of knowledge to their fellow creatures in the Age of Enlightenment.

Montesquieu

He was an important figure who was known for wanting to prevent tyranny. He believed in many of the ideas the American government has today. They were things like the three branches of government, separation of powers, and check and balances in government.

Voltaire

Believed in god, but he rejected catholicism in favor of deism. He and most of the philosophers hated religious intolerance, which they believed led to fanaticism and cruelty.

Deism

Belief in a distant, noninterventionist deity, shared by many Enlightenment thinkers.

Rousseau

Enlightenment thinker; was passionately committed to individual freedom .

“General will”

A concept associated with Rousseau, referring to the common interests of all the people, who have replaced the power of the monarch.

Popular sovereignty 

This was the idea that people give states and governments their power. It is not up to divine forces but people collectively agreeing they have power. It doesn't apply to any specific government but we can see a good example of this is America where the people control the government by voting.

David Hume

Argued that the human mind is really nothing but a bundle of impressions. these impressions originate only in sensory experience and our habits of joining these experiences together. He also criticizes that reason can not tell us anything about questions that can’t be verified like the existence of god

Dumbed Down: the human minds pattern together impressions and experience and relate past experiences to the present.

Adam Smith

He argued that social interaction produced feelings of mutual sympathy that led people to behave in ethical ways, despite the inherent tendencies toward self-interest. He believed that the thriving commercial life of the eighteenth century was likely to produce civic virtue through the vales of competition, fair play, and individual autonomy. He believed that ordinary people were capable of forming correct judgments based on their own experience and should therefore not be hampered by government regulations.

*Wealth of Nations*

Smith wrote this to attack the laws and regulations created by mercantilist governments that, he argued, prevented commerce from reaching full capacity.

Economic liberalism 

The theory associated with Adam Smith, that the pursuit of self-interest in a  competitive market suffices to improve living conditions rendering government intervention unnecessary and undesirable 

Enlightened Absolutism 

Term coined by historians to describe the rule of eighteenth-century monarchs without renouncing their own absolute authority, adopted Enlightenment ideals of rationalism, progress, and tolerance.

Enclosure

The controversial process of fencing off common land to create privately owned fields that increased agricultural production at the cost of reducing poor farmers’ access to land.

Cottage Industry

Manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages and work sheds was a form of economic activity that became important in eighteenth-century Europe.

“Public sphere”

An idealized intellectual space that emerged in Europe during the enlightenment, here the public came together to discuss important social, economical, and political issues.

Salons

Regular social gatherings held by talented and rich Parisian women in their homes where philosophies and their followers met to discuss literature science and philosophy.