Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and Cultural Accommodation

Flashcards defining key terms, historical figures, and concepts from the lecture covering the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and Jesuit missions in East Asia.

Vitruvian Man

A famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci featuring a male figure in a square and a circle with scale markings at the bottom, designed to demonstrate perfect physical body proportions using a scientific approach.

Scientific Method

An empirical approach to research where individuals collect data and sources themselves, perform observations and measurements, analyze results, and repeat experiments to reach answers.

Aristotelian Universe

A cosmological model conceived by Aristotle that placed Earth at the center surrounded by spheres of water, earth, air, fire, the moon, the sun, and five planets, which was later integrated into Christian theology.

Nicholas Copernicus

A Polish astronomer and mathematician who used a telescope and calculations to formulate the heliocentric hypothesis that the sun, not the Earth, sits at the center of the universe.

Johannes Kepler

An astronomer who created the three laws of planetary motion by combining observational data with mathematical analysis to explain how planets orbit the sun.

Galileo Galilei

An Italian scientist who built a dual-axis rotating telescope, discovered the four moons revolving around Jupiter, and was tried for heresy by the Catholic Church in $1633$.

The Enlightenment

An intellectual movement during the late 17th and 18th centuries that extended scientific thinking and rational inquiry to human society, politics, and civilizations beyond the natural sciences.

Salon

An urban gathering during the Enlightenment, often organized and hosted by elite women in living rooms, where intellectuals met to discuss and debate contemporary ideas.

Pre-18th Century Concept of Race

A term originally used to denote a swift current stream, a task of speed, or a family lineage, rather than innate biological differences.

Enlightenment Concept of Race

A biological categorization system developed by 18th-century European scholars to divide human populations into distinct groups and construct racial hierarchies.

Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

A disease outbreak in Philadelphia that killed about $5{,}000$ people and caused $20\text{--}\text{percent}$ of the population to flee, contributing to the relocation of the U.S. capital to Washington, D.C.

Benjamin Rush

A prominent physician and Founding Father who incorrectly concluded that the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic was caused by a pile of rotting coffee on the city docks.

Jesuits

A Catholic religious order established partly as a response to the Protestant Reformation to strengthen Catholic faith through education and international missionary activities.

Francis Xavier

A co-founder of the Jesuit order who traveled to Japan in $1549$ and initially used the Buddhist term Dainichi to explain the concept of the Christian God to local Japanese populations.

Cultural Accommodation

A missionary strategy where Jesuits adapted Christian rituals, terminology, and behavior to local Asian customs and languages, heavily guided by local cultural elites.

Jerusalem Compromise

A historical precedent from the early Christian church where converts were not required to adopt Jewish customs, which Jesuits cited to justify adapting Christianity to East Asian cultures.

Pedro Gomez

The vice-provincial of Japan from $1596$ to $1600$ who compiled a textbook combining classical Roman texts with traditional Japanese and Chinese classical literature.

Diago Mesquita

A Portuguese Jesuit who brought a Gutenberg hand press from Lisbon to Japan in $1586$, enabling moveable type printing in the Japanese language for the first time.