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AP European History Unit 4
4.1-4.2 Contextualizing the Scientific Revolution and the Scientific Revolution
Contextualizing the Scientific Revolution
Scientific thought in the early 1500s was based on ancient and medieval ideas. The term science as we use it today came into use beginning in the 19th century.
One of the most important disciplines was natural philosophy, which focused on fundamental questions about the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it functioned.
European notions about the universe were based on Aristotelian principles.
Medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas brought Aristotelian philosophy into harmony with Christian doctrines.
A chief feature of this view was the belief in a motionless, static earth at the center of the universe.
The development of universities accorded philosophy a place alongside law, medicine, and theology, and philosophers acquired a limited independence from theologians and a sense of free inquiry.
Medieval universities drew on rich traditions of Islamic learning.
The Renaissance also stimulated scientific progress.
The Copernican Hypothesis, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo
Nicolas Copernicus was a Polish cleric who theorized that the stars and planets, including the earth, revolved around a fixed sun. We call this the heliocentric theory or the Copernican hypothesis, the idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe.
He published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, the year of his death. The implications of his theory were widespread. By contradicting Ptolemy and Aristotle, he contradicted not only that the earth was in the center of the universe, but also that heaven and earth were separate and that there were not crystal spheres moving the stars around the earth.
Religious leaders were divided in their responses to Copernicus, but most Catholics paid little attention, as the Catholic Church had not held to literal interpretations of the Bible. His work was declared as false in 1616.
Confirming the Copernican hypothesis was Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. The King of Denmark provided funds for Brahe to build a sophisticated observatory, where he complied an enormous amount of data. He believed all the plants except the earth revolved around the sun, but it would be his assistant that made more sense out of the data and would abandon Ptolemy's view of the world.
Johannes Kepler developed three revolutionary laws of planetary motion. He came up with the idea of planets moving in elliptical orbits and realized that they were moving at different speeds around the sun. He also realized that the farther away from the sun a planet was, the longer it took to make the journey around in its orbit.
Galileo Galilei challenged Aristotle’s ideas about motion on earth. He devised a mathematical formula to explain the law of accelerating bodies – 32 ft/sec/sec. He also improved a telescope and used it to look at the heavens and wrote the Starry Messenger, with depictions of the moon as imperfect with craters. This ontradicted the idea of perfect, heavenly bodies. After publishing an endorsement of the heliocentric theory, he was tried by the Inquisition and placed on house arrest.
The Newtonian Synthesis
Isaac Newton was born into the lower English gentry in 1642 and enrolled in Cambridge in 1661.
Newton united the experimental and theoretical mathematical sides of science. He arrived at some of his most basic ideas about physics between 1664 and 1666, during a break from studies at Cambridge caused by an outbreak of plague.
During this period he discovered his law of universal gravitation as well as the concepts of centripetal force and acceleration.
After spending some time studying optics, in 1684 Newton returned to physics and three years later published Principia Mathematica.
Integrating the astronomy of Copernicus, as corrected by Kepler’s laws, with the physics of Galileo and his predecessors.
Newton put forward three laws of motion and mechanics – the complexity of this thinking would take scientists and engineers 200 years to work out the implications.
The key feature of Newton’s synthesis was the law of universal gravitation – every body in the universe attracts every other body in a precise mathematical relationship.
Bacon, Descartes, and the Scientific Method
Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes both articulated versions of the scientific method. Bacon argued that new knowledge had to be pursued through empirical research and he formalized the general theory of inductive reasoning or empiricism. He began with systematic observations and experimentation and made generalizations from this knowledge. He believed that science should be useful and make people’s lives longer and more comfortable. In 1660, followers of Bacon created the Royal Society to discuss the findings of scholars all over Europe.
Rene Descartes was a brilliant mathematician who argued for a deductive approach to knowledge, one that moved from general principles to more particular cases through steps of reason in his Discourse on Method in 1637*.* He is also known for his idea of dualism, the idea that nature is made up of both a tangible substance that takes up space we call matter, and an intangible substance, the mind. His coordinate system was useful for architecture and engineering.
Medicine, the Body, and Chemistry
For many centuries the ancient Greek physician Galen’s explanation of the body carried the same authority as Aristotle’s account of the universe.
According to Galen, the body contained four “humors” and illness was believed to result from an imbalance of humors, which is why doctors frequently prescribed bloodletting to expel “excess blood.”
Paracelsus was an early proponent of the experimental method in medicine – pioneering the use of chemicals and drugs rather than relying on ‘bloodletting’.
Andreas Vesalius dissected human bodies and published On the Structure of the Human Body.
William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood through the veins and arteries in 1628 and was the first to explain that the heart worked like a pump and he was the first to explain the function of its muscles and valves.
Robert Boyle helped found the modern science of chemistry and discovered Boyle’s law (1662), which states that the pressure of a gas varies inversely with volume.
4.3-4.6 Enlightenment, Enlightened Absolutism
The Enlightenment
The Scientific Revolution contributed to a series of debates in the 18th century known as the Enlightenment , where intellectuals began to apply many of the principles of the Scientific Revolution to society and human institutions.
In the 17th century, the groundwork for the Enlightenment was laid by individuals such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, who both had philosophies based on natural law and ideas regarding a social contract.
Thomas Hobbes was negative about the nature of man and believed that humans would compete violently for power and wealth if left to themselves. In his work, Levithan, he outlined a social contract in which all members of a society were ruled by and absolute monarch who would maintain peace and order.
John Locke, disagreed with Hobbes’ negative view of man, believing instead that man is basically rational, and that man’s natural rights of life, liberty, equality and property come prior to the development of society. His Second Treatise on Government explains the social contract he believes in: one where the government should provide order and arbitrate disputes but can be removed if it becomes abusive to those natural rights. Locke also wrote an Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690, where he argued that humans learn from experience and are a tabula rasa, or blank slate, rather than being born with innate ideas.
The philosophes were a group of intellectuals in France who claimed to be bringing the light of reason to their fellow human beings. France, particularly Paris, was the center of the Enlightenment, and the philosophes wanted to reach a larger audience of elites.
Montesquieu wrote his most important work, The Spirit of Laws, in 1748. Here, he expressed his favor for government’s like Britain, which had a separation of powers and had checks and balances on the major political interests.
Voltaire was perhaps the most famous philosophe and his sarcastic wit and commitment to intellectual freedom created both admiration and resentment. He was a fierce proponent for religious toleration, shown in his famous cry ”crush the infamous thing!”
Denis Diderot was the one of the editors of the Encyclopedia, a 17-volume work that quite ambitiously tried to arrange the sum of human knowledge alphabetically.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau gained significant renown later in the Enlightenment. He also glorified the idea of the noble savage, exemplified by American Indians, who used instinct and emotion rather than reason. He wrote the Social Contract, where he described argued that the General Will needed to be realized through the pursuit of the common good.
The International Enlightenment
Outside of France, many strains of Enlightenment – Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish – sought to reconcile reason with faith.
David Hume, John Locke, and Adam Smith led the Scottish Enlightenment.
David Hume emphasized civic morality and religious skepticism.
Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations where he argued against laws and regulations that prevented commerce from reaching its full capacity.
The American Enlightenment was heavily influenced by John Locke and Montesquieu.
John Locke’s thinking about the social contract and Montesquieu’s arguments for checks and balances in government heavily influenced Americans such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
After 1760 Enlightenment ideas were debated in Germanspeaking states, often with Christian theology.
Immanuel Kant was a professor in East Prussia who published the pamphlet What is Enlightenment? Answering, “dare to know.”
Kant constructed incorrect ideas about race which had long-lasting consequences.
Women and the Enlightenment
Salons disseminated Enlightenment culture, and the women who ran them attracted speakers to stimulate conversation on a wide variety of topics such as philosophy and politics.
Madame de Geoffrin ran one of the most famous of these salons and hosted intellectuals and acted a patroness.
Despite the principles of equality espoused by the Enlightenment, Rousseau offered controversial arguments for the exclusion of women from political life. He argued that men and women were radically different by nature and should play roles in life limited to the domestic sphere.
In response to this, Mary Wollstonecraft rejected Rousseau’s view, writing Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. Later during the French Revolution, she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women, arguing that only physical strength separated the sexes and it was the inequity in educational opportunities that was the real difference in the sexes.
Enlightened Absolutism
Many philosophes believed that “enlightened” reform would come by way of “enlightened” monarchs.
The philosophes believed that a benevolent absolutism offered the best chance for improving society.
The philosophes distrusted the masses and felt that change had to come from above.
Frederick the Great of Prussia used the War of the Austrian Succession (1740—1748) to expand Prussia into a great power by seizing Silesia.
The Seven Years’ War (1756—1763) saw an attempt by Maria Theresa (Austria), with the help of France and Russia, to regain Silesia, but it failed.
Frederick allowed religious freedom and promoted education, legal reform and economic growth but never tried to change Prussia’s social structure.
Catherine the Great of Russia imported Western culture, supported the philosophes, and began a program of domestic reform.
The Pugachev uprising in 1773 led her to reverse the trend toward reform of serfdom.
She engaged in a policy of territorial expansion and, with Prussia and Austria, carved up Poland.
Maria Theresa (r. 1740-80) was a monarch that was more concerned with traditional power politics than Enlightenment ideals, but she did introduce reforms to make her state stronger and more efficient. She strengthened the state’s central bureaucracy and began taxing the nobles who had previously been exempt from taxation. It would be her son that would take her reforms further and show concrete Enlightenment policies in his rule.
Joseph II (r. 1780-1790) was one of the Enlightened despots that best brought Enlightenment principles to life during his reign.
Concerned with the plight of the lower classes, Joseph abolished serfdom and decreed that peasants could pay their landlords in cash rather than labor.
Through his Edict on Toleration, he granted religious toleration to minorities in 1781.
He granted liberty of the press and introduced equality before the law.
Elementary education was made compulsory for all boys and girls and higher education was made slightly more accessible. Scholarships for poor students were made and schools for Jews were allowed.