The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key thinkers, discoveries, and concepts of the Scientific Revolution and the European Enlightenment based on lecture notes.

Natural Philosophy

An early modern discipline focused on studying the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it functioned; known today as science.

Thomas Aquinas

A medieval theologian who brought Aristotelian philosophy into harmony with Christian doctrines.

Copernican Hypothesis

The astronomical theory published in 1543 in On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus, proposing that the stars and planets, including Earth, revolve around the sun.

Tycho Brahe

A Danish astronomer who compiled detailed observations of planetary motion and a new star, funded by the king of Denmark and later Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, leading to the creation of the Rudolphine Tables.

Johannes Kepler

Brahe's assistant who used his predecessor's data to mathematically formulate three revolutionary laws of planetary motion: elliptical orbits, non-uniform planetary speed, and orbit time related to distance from the sun.

Galileo Galilei

A Florentine scientist who formulated the early concept of inertia, showed that a uniform force of gravity produces uniform acceleration, observed the moon's irregular surface via telescope, and authored The Sidereal Messenger (1610) and Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1632).

Law of Inertia

A principle stating that an object will continue in motion forever unless acted upon or stopped by an external force.

Isaac Newton

An English scientist who united the experimental and theoretical-mathematical sides of modern science in Principia (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), formulating the core laws of motion and universal gravitation.

Law of Universal Gravitation

Newton's law stating that all objects are attracted to one another with a force proportional to the objects' quantity of matter and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them: $F \text{ is proportional to } \frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}$.

Francis Bacon

An English politician and writer who rejected Aristotelian tradition, championed inductive reasoning and experimental methods, and authored Novum Organum (1620).

Empiricism

A theory of inductive reasoning that involves gathering evidence and analyzing data through direct observation and experimentation rather than relying on theoretical preconceptions.

René Descartes

A French thinker who developed coordinate geometry (linking algebra and geometry), viewed the universe as a mechanistic system made of corpuscles, and authored Discourse on the Method (1637) advocating systematic doubt and deductive reasoning.

Cartesian Dualism

René Descartes's philosophical view that all reality can ultimately be reduced to two fundamental substances: mind (thinking substance) and matter (extended physical substance).

Galen's Humoral Theory

An ancient Greek medical doctrine holding that the human body contains four humors—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile—and that disease or illness results from an imbalance among these fluids.

Paracelsus

A Swiss physician and alchemist who was an early proponent of utilizing the experimental method and chemicals in medicine.

Andreas Vesalius

A Flemish anatomist who dissected human cadavers and revolutionized anatomical understanding by publishing On the Structure of the Human Body (Fabrica) in 1543, featuring over 200 detailed drawings.

William Harvey

An English royal physician who discovered and demonstrated the continuous circulation of blood through the human body's veins and arteries in 1628.

Boyle's Law

A physical law formulated by Robert Boyle in 1662 stating that the pressure of a gas varies inversely with its volume: $P \text{ is proportional to } \frac{1}{V}$.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

A German philosopher and mathematician who co-invented calculus, posited that all matter is composed of an infinite number of substances called monads, and asserted in Theodicy (1710) that ours is the best of all possible worlds.

Enlightenment

The intellectual and cultural movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries (approximately 1680–1789) that introduced a worldview founded on the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress.

Rationalism

A secular, critical way of thinking in which nothing is accepted on faith alone, requiring that all knowledge and claims be submitted to critical examination through reason.

Pierre Bayle

A French Huguenot Enlightenment writer and religious skeptic who critically examined past beliefs in his Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), concluding that human beliefs are frequently varied and mistaken, and nothing can be known without doubt.

Baruch Spinoza

A Dutch-Jewish philosopher excommunicated by Amsterdam's Jewish community who applied natural philosophy to human society and advanced monism, arguing that mind and body are united in one substance, with God and nature being two names for the same thing.

Sensationalism

The philosophical idea, advanced by John Locke, that all human ideas and thoughts originate entirely as a result of sensory impressions.

Tabula Rasa

The concept articulated in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) portraying the human mind at birth as a blank tablet upon which all knowledge and development are inscribed through environment and education.

Locke's Social Contract

A political theory presented in Two Treatises of Government (1690) holding that government is a mutual obligation designed to protect the natural rights of individuals (life, liberty, and property), which citizens retain the right to overthrow if the government fails.

Thomas Hobbes

An English political thinker shaped by the English Civil War who authored Leviathan (1651), characterizing human beings as selfish, greedy, and brutish, and arguing that an absolute sovereign is necessary to maintain order without relying on the divine right of kings.

Philosophes

A group of French intellectuals who proclaimed they brought the light of knowledge to educate the public and reform society during the Enlightenment.

Republic of Letters

An idealized, transnational intellectual realm where critical thinkers and Enlightenment intellectuals engaged in free intellectual exchange.

Baron de Montesquieu

A prominent French philosophe who authored The Persian Letters (1721) to critique European society and The Spirit of Laws (1748), arguing that forms of government (monarchies, republics, despotisms) are shaped by history and geography and advocating for separated powers.

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

A renowned French philosophe who praised English institutions, wrote Candide, or Optimism (1759) to refute Leibniz, and advocated for an enlightened, reforming monarchy rather than socio-economic equality.

Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet

A French noblewoman and intellectual passionate about science who translated Isaac Newton's Principia into French and argued that women should have equal rights in education.

Deism

A religious belief common among Enlightenment thinkers that accepts the existence of a distant, supreme creator who set the universe into motion according to natural laws but does not intervene directly in human affairs.

Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts

A monumental multi-volume Enlightenment reference work containing approximately 72,000 articles written by leading thinkers that aimed to assemble and diffuse knowledge across science, art, and trade.