Chapter 17

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.

Philosophes

A group of French intellectuals who proclaimed that they were bringing the light of knowledge to their fellow creatures in the Age of Enlightenment.

Enlightenment Absolutism

Term coined by historians to describe the rule of eighteenth-century monarchs who, without renouncing their own absolute authority, adopted Enlightenment ideals of rationalism, progress, and tolerance.

Montesquieu (1689-1755)

The Persian Letters (1721); The Spirit of Laws (1748)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract ( 1762)

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.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

What is Enlightenment? (1784); On the Different Races of Man (1775)

Ratioanalism

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

Empiricism

A theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through observation and experimentation rather than reason and speculation.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Advocated experimental method, formalizing theory of inductive reasoning known as empiricism

Natural Philosophy

An early modern term for the study of the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it functioned; it encompassed what we would call "science" today.

Public Sphere

An 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.

Reading Revolution

The transition in Europe from a 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.

Maria Theresa

This was the queen of Austria as a result of the Pragmatic Sanction. She limited the papacy's political influence in Austria, strengthened her central bureaucracy and cautiously reduced the power that nobles had over their serfs

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

Used Brahe's data to mathematically prove the Copernican hypothesis; his new laws of planetary motion united for the first time natural philosophy and mathematics; completed the Rudolphine Tables in 1627

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Used telescopic observation to provide evidence for Copernican hypothesis; experimented to formulate laws of physics, such as inertia

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Used deductive reasoning to formulate the theory of Cartesian dualism

Scientific Revolution

1540-1690 1

Baruh Spinoza (1632- 1677)

Early Enlighenment thinker excommunicated from the Jewish religion for his concept of a deterministic universe

Issac Newton (1642-1727)

Principia Mathematica (1687); set forth the law of universal gravitation, synthesizing previous findings of motion and matter

Enligthenment

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

Enlightenment

1690- 1789 2

Growth of book publishing

1700-1789 3

Rococo style in art and decoration

1720-1780 4

War of Austrian Succession

1740- 1748 5

Reign of the empress Maria Theresa

1740-1780 6

Reign of Frederick the Great of Prussia

1740-1786 7

Fredrick the Great of Prussia

1740-1786, reformed Prussia, granted religious freedoms, improved education, reduced censorship, however was against slavery did not act upon it

French salons led by elite women

1740-1789 8

Seven Years' War

1756-1763 9

Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia

1762-1796 10

Philosophes publish Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts

1765 11

Reign of Joseph II of Austria

1780-1790 12

Establisment of the Pale of Settlement

1791 13

Rococo

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

Robert Boyle (1627-1691)

Boyle's law (1662) governing the pressure of gases

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)

Built an observatory and compiled data for the *Rudolphine Tables*, a new table of planetary data.

David Hume (1711-1776)

Central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment; Of Natural Characters (1748)

Cartesian Dualism

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

William Harvey (1578-1657)

Discovery of circulation of blood (1628)

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783)

Editors of Encyclopedia; The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts (1763)

John Locke (1632-1704)

Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)

Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697)

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.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543); theorized that the sun, rather than the earth, was the center of the galaxy

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

On the Structure of the Human Body (1543)

Salons

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

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Renowned French philosophe and author of more than seventy works

Catherine the Great (1762-1796)

Strongly influenced by the Englightenment, Catherine the Great cultivated the French philosophers and instituted moderate reforms, only to reverse them in the aftermath of Pugachev's rebellion

Haskalah

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

Experiemental Method

The approach, pioneered by Galileo, that the proper way to explore the workings of the universe was through repeatable experiements rather than speculation.

Copernican Hypothesis

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