Ap Euro Chapter 16: Toward a New Worldview

Johannes Kepler's Three Law of Planetary Motion

(1) the orbits of planets are elliptical, not circular; (2) planets speed up when they are closer to the sun; (3) the time a planet takes to make its complete orbit depends on its distance from the sun.

Rise of the International Scientific Community

A new and expanding social community linked by shared values, journals, and learned scientific societies began to develop. Societies were founded in England, France, and Berlin in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Rococo

A popular style in Europe in the 18th century, known for its soft pastels, ornate interiors, sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed lovers protected by hovering cupids.

Rationalism

A secular, critical way of thinking in which nothing was to be accepted on faith, and everything was to be submitted to reason.

Ptolemy

2nd century Greek philosopher who argued planets moved in a series of epicycles that moved in larger circles.

Law of inertia

A law formulated by Galileo that states that motion, not rest, is the natural state of an object, and that an object continues in motion forever unless stopped by some external force.

Aristotelian Cosmology

A motionless earth was fixed at the center of the universe and surrounded by eight spheres that revolved around it, which contained the moon, sun, five known planets, and fixed stars. Beyond the tenth sphere was heaven.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Argued that rationalism and civilization had destroyed the individual and the basic goodness of the unspoiled child and the individual had to be preserved against cruel civilization. Author of The Social Contract (1762) and had ideas that influenced the early Romantic movement.

What was the Scientific consensus for centuries?

Aristotle's and Ptolemy's models conformed to common sense for centuries.

William Harvey (1578-1657)

English royal physician who discovered the circulation of blood through veins and arteries and described the function of the heart

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

German philosopher and author of What is Enlightenment? (1784) who attempted to reconcile absolute monarchial authority and religious faith with a critical public sphere.

Enlightenment

The influential intellectual and cultural movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that introduced a new worldwide based on the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress.

Catherine the Great

a German princess who married the hier to the Russian throne and then had him murdered so she could take the throne

Leopold II

canceled Joseph's edicts to reestablish order

Jewish life during the Enlightenment

characterized by legal discrimination, confinement to tiny ghettos, and prominence in international trade

mechanistic view of the universe

every action had an equal reaction, continuing in an eternal chain reaction, and that a vacuum was impossible

Copernican Hypothesis

idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe

experimental method

the proper way to explore the workings of the universe was through repeatable experiments rather than speculation

empiricism

theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through observation and experimentation instead of deductive reason and speculation

Carl von Linne

Swedish botanist and author of The System of Nature (1735) who claimed nature was organized into a God-given hierarchy with distinct species and races.

Philosophes

Group of influential French intellectuals who believed they were bringing light of knowledge to their fellow human beings in the Age of Enlightenment.

Astrology and Alchemy on the Scientific Revolution

Interest in astronomy was inspired by the belief that the stars influenced life on earth. Many astronomers were also astrologers.

Robert Boyle (1627-1691)

Irishman who helped found the modern science of chemistry. The first to create a vacuum, which disproved Descartes's belief that a vacuum couldn't exist.

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)

Italian nobleman who wrote on Crimes and Punishments (1764), a passionate plea for reform of the penal system that made an impact throughout Europe.

Haskalah

Jewish Enlightenment movement led by Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) that argued for freedom and civil rights for European Jews

Paracelsus (1493-1541)

Swiss physician, alchemist, and early proponent of the experimental method in medicine who helped pioneer the use of chemicals and drugs to address chemical (not humoral) imbalances in the human body

Gender and Science

Scientists used gendered categories in the Scientific Revolution and barriers arose for women in the scientific professions.

Marie Theresa

Austrian monarch who introduced reforms that included limiting the papacy's political influence in her realm, reforming and strengthening the bureaucracy, revamping the system of taxation, and improving the lot of the agricultural population

The Enlightenment Generation

Believed that the human mind is capable of progress and that skepticism toward religious truths was necessary.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

Brahe's assistant and brilliant mathematician who abandoned Ptolemy's notion of epicycles, developed three new laws of planetary motion, and united natural philosophy with mathematics.

David Hume and Immanuel Kant

Claimed there were four human races that had derived from an original race, with the closest descendants being the white inhabitants of northern Germany

Tyco Brahe (1546-1601)

Danish astronomer who created new tables of planetary motion

Cartesian Dualism

Descartes's view that all of reality could ultimately be reduced to mind and matter

Cartesian dualism

Descartes's view that all of reality could ultimately be reduced to mind and matter.

The Religious Enlightenment

Different strains of Enlightenment outside of France that tried to integrate the findings of the Scientific Revolution with religious faith.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

Dutch Jewish philosopher in Amsterdam who believed that mind and body were united in one substance (monism) and that God and nature were two names for the same things, and that good and evil were merely relative values.

Natural Philosophy

Early modern term for the study of the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it function. Its what we would call "science" today and was based on Aristotle's teachings.

Diderot (1713-1784) and d'Alembert (1717-1783)

Editors of a 17-volume encyclopedia with 72,000 articles that exalted science and the industrial arts, questioned religion, and criticized introlerance, legal injustice, and anachronistic social institutions.

The Scottish Enlightenment

Emphasis on pragmatic and scientific reasoning.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

English mathematical and scientific genius who published Philosophicae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which assimilated Copernicus's astronomy, Kepler's laws, and Galileo's physics. His synthesis of math and physics prevailed until the twentieth century

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

English politician, writer, and propagandist for empiricism. His followers established the Royal Society in 1660.

New World Scientific Expeditions

European governments sponsored scientific expeditions to learn about and profit from their imperial holdings.

Andreas Vesalius (1516-1564)

Flemish physician who studied anatomy by dissecting corpses and published On the Structure of the Human Body, which had 200 precise drawings that revolutionized the understanding of human anatomy.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Florentine scientist who pioneered the experimental method and formulated the law of inertia.

Frederick's Enlightened Rule

Frederick supported religious and philosophical tolerance for all his subjects, encouraged the advancement of knowledge, simplified the laws, and abolished torture.

Frederick the Great's Territorial Expansion

Frederick used the army his father left him to fight Austria in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748)

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)

French Huguenot exile and noted skeptic who wrote the Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), concluding that nothing can be known beyond all doubt (skepticism).

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

French philosophical and mathematical genius who helped create a mechanistic view of the universe and developed a new principle of reasoning where it was necessary to doubt the senses and use deductive reasoning from self-evident principles to ascertain scientific laws.

Rococo

From 1720-1780, this popular artistic style was known for its soft pastels, ornate interiors, sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed lovers protected by hovering cupids.

Problem With Aristotelian Cosmology

His model could not explain the problem of backward motion in which planets closer to the sun appear to overtake the earth

Public Sphere

Idealized intellectual space that emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment, where the public came together to discuss important issues relating to society, economics, and politics. This was made possible through lending libraries, coffeehouses, book clubs, Masonic lodges, journals, and rising literacy.

the Renaissance on the Scientific Revolution

Lead to new scientific investigations in art, geography, and botany.

Navigation on the Scientific Revolution

Long sea voyages resulted in better tables and spurred the invention of new scientific instruments (telescopes, barometers, air pumps, pendulum clocks).

Law of universal gravitation

Newton's law that all objects are attracted to one another and that the force of attraction is proportional to the object's quantity of matter and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Philosophe and social and political commentator with a strong faith in reason and science. Reformer who belived monarchy was the best form of government

Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Philosophe who wrote The Persian Letters (1721), which satirized European society and customs, and The Spirit of the Laws (1748), which applied the critical method to the problem of government and developed a theory of the separation of powers. This work had a strong influence on the constitutions of the United States and of France.

Changes in Universities During the Scientific Revolution

Philosophers developed an independence from theologians and a sense of free inquiry, and new professorships of mathematics, economy, and physics developed at these institutions.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Physician and author of Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which argued that all ideas are derived from sensory experience (sensationalism) and that human mind is a blank slate (tabula rosa) at birth.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Polish cleric who studies astronomy, medicine, and church law and realized Ptolemy's model had flaws. Published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres the year of his death.

Reading Revolution

Production and consumption of new books grew significantly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The transition from a European society where literacy consisted of patriarchal and communal reading of religious texts to a society where literacy was commonplace and reading material was broad and diverse.

Salon

Regular social gathering held by talented and rich Parisians in their homes, where philosophes and their followers met to discuss literature, science, and philosophy.

Salons

Regular social gatherings held by talented and rich Parisians in their homes, where philosophes and their followers met to discuss literature, science, and philosophy.

David Hume (1711-1776)

Religious skeptic and figure of the Scottish Enlightenment who argued that the human mind in nothing but a bundle of sensory exeriences and that reason can tell us nothing about questions that cannot be verified through sensory experiences.

Haskalah

The Jewish Enlightenment of the second half of the eighteenth century, led by the Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

Impact of the Copernican hypothesis

The stars were put at rest, a universe of staggering size was suggested, and the notion that the earthly sphere was different than the heavenly one was destroyed. Protestant scholars had mixed views on this, and the Catholic Church declared it false in 1616.

The Concept of "Race"

Used to designate biologically distinct groups of humans and contained assumptions of superiority and inferiority.

Cameralism

View that monarchy was the best form of government, that all elements of society should serve the monarch, and that, in turn, the state should use its resources and authority to increase the public good.

Enlightened Absolutism

rule of 18th-century monarchs, who adopted Enlightenment ideals of rationalism, progress, and tolerance