World Civilization 2: Chapter 19 - New World Views And Ways Of Life

cottage industry

Manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages and work sheds, a form of economic activity that became important in sifted through-century Europe.

public sphere

An idealized intellectual space that emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment. Here, the public came together to discuss important social, economic, and political issues.

deism

Belief in a distant, noninterventionist deity, shared by many Enlightenment thinkers.

Haskalah

A Jewish Enlightenment movement led by Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

general will

A concept associated with Rousseau, referring to the common interests of all the people, who have replaced to the power of the monarch.

enlightened absolutism

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

Copernican hypothesis

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

economic liberalism

The theory, associated with Adam Smith, that the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive market suffices to improve living conditions, rendering government intervention unnecessary and undesirable.

philosophies

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

law of inertia

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

empiricism

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

sensationalism

An idea, espoused by John Locke, that all human ideas and thoughts are produced as a result of sensory impressions.

Enlightenment

An intellectual and cultural movement in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and its colonies that used rational and critical thinking to debate issues such as political sovereignty, religious tolerance, gender roles, and racial difference.

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.

salons

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

enclosure

The controversial process of fencing off common land to create privately owned fields that increased agricultural production at the cost of reducing poor farmers' access to land.