AP European History Unit 4 Notes: Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

Scientific Revolution

• Overview:

  • Unit 4 focuses on European intellectuals and their impact on society, politics, and economics.

• Three Categories of Change:

  • Astronomy

  • Medicine

  • Reasoning

Astronomy

• Geocentric Model:

  • Developed by ancient Greeks like Aristotle and Ptolemy, placing Earth at the center of the universe.

  • Supported by the Catholic Church.

  • Every other body circled around the earth, including the sun

• Heliocentric Revolution:

  • Nicolaus Copernicus:

    • Challenged the geocentric view with complex mathematics.

    • Proposed the heliocentric view, placing the sun at the center and the earth revolving around it.

    • Demonstrated Earth's spin on its axis.

  • Johannes Kepler:

    • Affirmed Copernicus' heliocentric model using complex mathematics.

    • Discovered that planets orbit the sun in ellipses.

  • Galileo Galilei:

    • Used telescopes to observe space.

    • Observed moons of other planets and found they were made of the same stuff as Earth.

    • He didn't invent the telescope, but he did build one himself

• Conflict with the Catholic Church:

  • Developments occurred during the Catholic Reformation.

  • Copernicus's and Kepler's books were banned.

  • The Church's View:

    • Biblical accounts (Genesis 1) suggest the earth is set upon foundations and there’s a firmament dividing earthly and heavenly realms.

    • The Bible puts the earth at the center of the created order.

  • Galileo, despite being Catholic, was charged with heresy and put under house arrest.

  • His findings were published after his death, confirming his accuracy.

Medicine and Anatomy

• Ancient Greek Influence:

  • Ancient Greek understandings of the human body and medicine were being overturned.

  • Galen: advanced the humoral theory.

  • Galen:his ideas dominated medical education for centuries, emphasizing the balance of the four bodily humors as essential to health and diagnosing diseases.

• Galen's Humoral Theory:

  • The body is composed of four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.

  • 25\% of your body is phlegm.

  • Health is maintained by balance, while imbalance causes sickness.

• Challenging Galen:

  • Paracelsus:

    • Rejected the humoral theory.

    • Proposed that chemical imbalances cause disease.

    • Advocated for chemical remedies (e.g., iron for iron deficiency).

  • William Harvey:

    • Discovered that the circulatory system is one integrated whole.

    • Blood is pumped out of the heart, through the body, and returns to the heart to do the whole thing again.

New Methods of Reasoning

• Empirical Experimentation and Mathematics:

  • Francis Bacon:

    • Pioneered inductive reasoning.

    • Knowledge comes from empirical research, starting with observing small parts and moving to general principles.

  • Rene Descartes:

    • championing deductive reasoning.

    • Started with largest principles, those things that cannot be doubted, for example, everything is made of matter.

    • From those big ideas, then you could work his way down to knowledge of specifics

• Scientific Method:

  • Emphasis on observation and experimentation to understand the physical world.

  • scientific method is a systematic approach that involves forming hypotheses, conducting experiments, and analyzing data to draw conclusions.

• Persistence of Older Beliefs:

  • Innovators continued to believe in God and spiritual forces.

  • Belief in astrology.

  • astrology: a practice that gained popularity during the Renaissance, suggesting that celestial bodies could influence human affairs and natural phenomena.

  • Pursuit of alchemy.

  • The scientific view of the world didn't replace the magical view of the world all at once

The Enlightenment

• Building on the Scientific Revolution:

  • Enlightenment thinkers applied new methods of reasoning to politics, society, and human institutions.

  • Challenged accepted ideas.

• Origins in France:

  • Began in France due to strong absolutist government and dissatisfaction with the monarchy.

  • A lot of the new ideas in the enlightenment started as reaction against absolutism

Society and Human Institutions

• Voltaire:

  Critic of religious intolerance and advocate for freedom of speech, famously stating, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

• • Criticized social and religious institutions in France.

  • Advocated for religious tolerance, reforms in education, and free speech.

  • Believed in natural rights.

  • Didn't believe that people were capable of governing themselves.

  • Favored an enlightened monarch.

• Denis Diderot:

  • Sought to catalog the whole body of knowledge according to Enlightenment principles.

  • Edited and published the encyclopedia:

    • The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts.

  • Emphasized rational explanations of everything.

  • Exalted science while criticizing religion.

  • French government opposed his work.

New Ways of Thinking About God

• Deism:

  • Developed by Voltaire.

  • Argued that God created the world but doesn't intervene in human affairs.

  • God is like a cosmic clockmaker.

  • Rejected miracle stories.

  • God ruled the world by unchanging laws of physics, not miracles.

• Atheism:

  • Defined by Diderot as consciously rejecting God's existence.

  • Belief that knowledge comes from human senses interacting with the material world.

• David Hume:

  • Developed skepticism.

  • Ideas reflect sensory inputs.

  • Reason cannot convince us beyond what our senses interpret.

  • Questioned everything, including church dogmas.

  • dogma:a belief or set of beliefs that the members of a group accept without being questioned or doubted.

• Shift in Religious View:

  • Religion was viewed as a matter of private rather than public concern.

  • Shift from public to private belonging.

  • Emphasized personal conversion over state belonging.

• German Pietism:

  • Led by Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf.

  • Emphasized mystical personal religious experience.

  • Reacted against the rationalistic approach to Christ.

  • He who wishes to comprehend God with his mind becomes an atheist.

Rational Postulation Towards Politics

• John Locke:

  • Natural Rights: rights like life and liberty and property.

  • Humans possess natural rights given by the Creator.(god)

  • These rights cannot be taken away by a monarch or government.

  • Power of the states originates from the people, this idea is called popular sovereignty

  • Government can only govern by consent. and not by divine right of kings

  • If governments fail to do this, people have the right to dissolve it and install a new government

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

  • Associate Rousseau with the idea of the social contract.

  • Social Contract: People surrender some power to the government to protect their natural rights.

  • Government should act in accordance with the general will.

  • If the government fails to do that, then the people have the right to dissolve the contract and install a new government.

  • Advocated for rigid gender roles.

• Mary Wollstonecraft:

  • strongly opposed gender categories.

  • Argued that women are not inherently inferior to men.

  • Inferiority is due to lack of education and opportunity.

  • she publicly debated rousseau about gender roles

• Adam Smith:

• • The Wealth of Nations, attacked mercantilist policies.

  • laissez faire:an economic philosophy advocating minimal government intervention in the economy, allowing individuals to pursue their own economic interests. ↓ V

  • Governments should not interfere with the economy.

  • Let people make economic decisions based on supply and demand.

  • The invisible hand of the free market would increase prosperity.

  • Criticized the economic system of choice for absolutist monarchies.

Spread of Enlightenment Ideas

• Printing Press:

  • Facilitated the spread of Enlightenment ideas.

• Salons:

  • Private meetings in opulent houses for intellectual discussion.

  • Hosted by women (e.g., Madame DuDefonde).

  • like coffee shops

• Consequences:

  • Increased dissatisfaction with political institutions.

  • Influence on the American, French, and Haitian revolutions.

Enlightened Absolutism

• Influence on Monarchs:

  • Some monarchs sought to become enlightened absolutists.

  • They acted in enlightened ways when it benefited them.

  • Were very short sighted in reforms they enacted

• Frederick the Great (Prussia):

  • Strengthened Prussia militarily.

  • Reforms:

    • Considered himself a benefactor to his people.

    • deemed a philosopher king

    • Increased freedom of speech.

    • Reformed the judicial system.

• Catherine the Great (Russia):

  • Reforms:

    • Outlawed torture and capital punishment.

    • Reformed education.

    • Patronized the arts.

    • only did this to maintain her power (selfish)

• Religious Toleration:

  • Governments increased religious toleration to Christian minorities and Jews.

  • Influence of John Locke's separation of church and state.

  • Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen proclaimed religious freedom in France.

Social Changes

• Population Increase:

  • Birthrates increasing.

  • Death rates decreasing.

  • The bubonic plague suddenly died out

  • Edward Jenner's vaccine against smallpox decreased

• Thomas Malthus:

  • Observed that population increase would outpace the food supply.

  • Unless the population was cut off, then the result would be massive starvation

  • Resulting in massive death by starvation.

• Agricultural Revolution:

  • More land available for farming (e.g., dikes and drainage in England and the Netherlands).

  • Advances in crop rotation using crops like beans and clover replenish the soil.

  • Advances in technology:

    • Selective breeding of livestock.

    • Jethro Tull's seed drill.

  • Improved transportation (canals, roads, bridges).

  • made it cheaper and more efficient to deliver food

• European Marriage Pattern:

  • New emphasis on the nuclear family.

  • People were marrying later and later

  • People began marrying later and women were having fewer babies.

• Illegitimate Births:

  • Increased rate of babies born to unwed parents.

  • Indication of more intimate relations outside of marriage.

  • Social stigma against unwed mothers.

• Changing Views on Children:

  • Decreased infant and child mortality.

  • Families dedicated more time and space to children.

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Children should be elevated by attentive parents, therefore they should be playing before they got thrown into the adult world of work.

  • Shift from children being seen as small adults to recognizing childhood as a distinct phase.

• Urbanization:

  • Migration from rural to urban areas due to technological advances in farming.

  • Cities were crushed by the people streaming in, and that created some problems

  • Tenements: Hastily constructed apartment buildings with rooms that workers could rent for a pretty low price

• Urban Problems:

  • Lack of housing.

  • Tenements: Poorly ventilated, no indoor plumbing.

  • Prevalence of diseases like tuberculosis.

  • Crime and prostitution.

• Responses to Urban Problems:

  • England's Contagious Disease Act of 1864: Crackdown on prostitution

Cultural and Intellectual Life

• Reading Revolution:

  • Increased reading rates due to the printing press.

  • Variation in types of books: History, law, science, and arts increased, while religious books decreased.

  • Increased censorship, mainly religious.

  • Expansion of newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets.

• European Exposure to Cultures Outside Their Own:

  • Enlightenment thinkers, natural scientists, and explorers traveled the globe during this period and as they returned they wrote down their observations and that had two effects

    • Exposed the literate European population to cultures outside their own.

    • Some of these depictions challenged Europeans' accepted social norms.

• Shift in Artistic Themes:

  • Emphasis shifted from religious themes and royal power to private life and the public good.

  • Shift from celebration of religious themes and royal power to the private life and the public good.

• Baroque Style:

  • Promoted religious feeling and illustrated state power.

  • Sought to awe people with opulence, detail, and ostentatious features.

  • For Example: Gian Lorenzo Benigni sculpted magnificent piazzas and designed ornate chapels for the renovation of St. Peter's Basilica.

    • Johann Sebastian Bach wrote many of his compositions to be performed in a royal court or high church services.

• Neoclassicism:

  • New style of art

  • appealed mostly to bourgeoisie.

  • Emphasized simplicity and symmetry.

  • Notable works: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

• Consumer Revolution:

  • Increased disposable income led to increased demand for consumer goods.

  • People bought goods not necessarily because they needed them, but because they wanted them

• Consequences of the Consumer Revolution:

  • New concern for privacy.

  • New kinds of rooms such as the boudoir (room specifically designed for the wife of the house to be apart from her husband either alone or entertaining women).

  • Increasing venues for lesiure perhaps chief among them coffee houses.

• Coffee Houses:

  • Thanks to the Columbian Exchange, coffee was growing in popularity among Europeans and they built coffeehouses in order to drink that magnificent beverage.

  • Discussion of revolutionary ideas.