SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

Experimentation – Observation - Discovery

• Scientific Method:  a process used to answer scientific questions

• Copernicus and Galileo:

• proved the Sun was the center of the Solar System (Heliocentric Theory)

• this proved that the church could be wrong about something  (the Church had said the Earth was the center)

• Persecuted for beliefs.

• Heliocentric Theory:  “sun-centered” theory   -  it raised the question, “If the Church could be wrong about this issue,  could it be wrong about other issues?”   - such as divine right?

Geocentric theory -  or that the earth was the center of the solar system was wrong.

• Isaac Newton – Argued that universe is governed by Natural Laws (Motion, Gravity)

AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

A time when people were enlightened (exposed) to new ideas and ways of thinking  -  especially about politics

• Age of Reason:  people used reason to guide them in their decisions  (this comes from the scientific approach to learning)

• Enlightenment thinkers:

• John Locke:

• all people Natural Rights (Life, Liberty, Property)

• governments should protect people’s rights

• if the government does not – people can overthrow the government

Other Enlightenment thinkers:

Jean Jacques Rousseau:

1.There is a social contract between people and govt.

2.  the majority should rule.

Barron de Montesquieu:   there should be a separation of powers –executive, judicial, legislative and Checks and Balances*.*

Voltaire: Personal freedoms, religious tolerance and freedom of the press and speech.

wrote plays and stories that poked fun of nobility and absolute government.

His work is responsible for the first Amendment for the United States Constitution.

Mary Wollstonecraft – championed womans rights and mother to Frankenstien author Mary Shelley.

Their influence:  the ideas expressed by Enlightenment thinkers got people to consider changing their governments (from Monarchies to Republics)

Helped inspire the American, French, and Latin American Revolutions