AP Euro ch. 16
Maria Theresa
Austria, young empress inherited the Habsburg dominions upon the death of her father Charles VI.
Ptolemy
Greco-Egyptian writer of Alexandria, known as a mathematician, astronomer, and poet.
Rudolphine Tables
1627, HRE, new and improved tables of planetary motions in Tycho Brahe's new observatory.
Historical and Critical Dictionary
A biographical dictionary written by Pierre Bayle, a Huguenot who lived and published in Holland after fleeing his native France due to religious persecution.
Cartesian Dualism
1596-1650, France, Descartes' view that all of reality could ultimately be reduced to mind and matter.
The Persian Letters
1721, France, written by baron de Montesquieu, it is considered the first major work of the French Enlightenment.
Adam Smith
1723-1790, Scotland, major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. He argued that the thriving commercial life of the eighteenth century produced civic virtue through the values of competition, fair play, and individual autonomy.
Moses Mendelssohn
1729-1786, major philosopher of the Jewish Enlightenment.
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.
Haskalah
2nd half of the 18th century, Jewish Enlightenment led by the Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
Aristotle
4th century BC, Greece, philosopher who's ideas shaped the base of natural philosophy.
Robert Boyle
1627-1691, Ireland, helped found the modern science of chemistry by undertaking experiments to discover the basic elements of nature, something that he believed was composed of infinitely small atoms.
Baruch Spinoza
1632-1677, Netherlands, Jewish philosopher that borrowed Descartes' emphasis on rationalism and his methods of deductive reasoning, but believed that God and nature were two names for the same thing.
Isaac Newton
1642-1727, England, scientist, a genius who spectacularly united the experimental and theoretical-mathematical sides of modern science.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
1646-1716, Germany, philosopher and mathematician, developed calculus, refuted both Cartesian dualism and Spinoza's monism and instead adopted the idea of an infinite number of substances from which all matter is composed.
Law of Universal Gravitation
1684, England, 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.
Copernican Hypothesis
1473-1543, Italy, created by Nicolaus Copernicus, the idea that the sun not the earth was the center of the universe.
Pierre Bayle
1647-1706, France, Protestant/Huguenot, took refuge from government persecution in the tolerant Dutch Republic.
baron de Montesquieu
1689-1755, France, one of the greatest philosophes, wrote the extremely influential social satire "The Persian Letters" in 1721.
Andreas Vesalius
1516-1564, Fleming, physician and experimentalist who studied anatomy by dissecting human bodies.
Tabula Rasa
Latin for "blank slate".
Johannes Kepler
1571-1630, Netherlands, brilliant mathematician, Tycho Brahe's assistant that reworked Brahe's mountain of observations.
William Harvey
1578-1657, England, royal physician, discovered the circulation of blood through the veins and arteries in 1628, and was the first to explain how the heart worked like a pump.
Rene Descartes
1596-1650, France, philosopher, multi-talented genius who made his first great discovery in mathematics. He saw a perfect correspondence between geometry and algebra.
Paracelsus
1493-1541, Sweden, physician and alchemist, an early proponent of the experimental method in medicine and pioneered the use of chemicals and drugs to address what he saw as chemical imbalances.
Natural Philosophy
1500, Europe, the study of the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it functioned. (what we call 'science' today)
Scientific Revolution
1540-1789, Europe, the discovery and introduction of new ways of understanding the natural world.
Tycho Brahe
1546-1601, Netherlands, Europe's leading astronomer with his detailed observations of the new star of 1572.
Francis Bacon
1561-1626, England, politician and writer, the greatest early propagandist for the new experimental method, and argued that new knowledge had to be pursued through empirical research.
Galileo Galilei
1564-1642, Florence, mathematics professor, greatest achievement was the elaboration and consolidation of the experimental method.
Law of Inertia
1564-1642, Italy, formed by Galileo, a law stating 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.
Experimental Method
1564-1642, Italy, formed by Galileo, the approach that the proper way to explore the working of the universe was through repeatable experiments rather than speculation.
Principia Mathematica
1684, England, Newton's publication of his studies and discoveries in physics. Integrated the astronomy of Copernicus, as corrected by Kepler's laws, with the physics of Galileo and his predecessors, as well as Newton's three laws of motion.
Two Treatises of Civil Government
1690, Europe, written by John Locke, insisted on the sovereignty of the elected Parliament against the authority of the Crown.
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
1690, Europe, written by John Locke, set forth a new theory about how human beings learn and form from their ideas. He also insisted that all ideas are derived from experience.
Enlightenment
1690-1789, Europe, a broad intellectual and cultural movement that introduced a new worldview based on the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress.
Rationalism
1690-1789, Europe, a secular, critical way of thinking where nothing was to be accepted on faith, and everything was submitted to reason.
Voltaire
1694-1778, France, most famous and most representative philosophe, used the pen name Voltaire but whose name was Francois Marie Arouet, wrote more than 70 books, socialized with royalty and died a millionaire.
David Hume
1711-1776, Edinburgh, his emphasis on civic morality and religious skepticism had a powerful impact at home and abroad.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712-1778, Switzerland, became a part of the Parisian Enlightenment through his brilliant intellect.
Denis Diderot
1713-1784, edited the seventeen-volume "Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts".
Immanuel Kant
1724-1804, East Prussia, professor, the greatest German philosopher of his day. He argued that if intellectuals were granted the freedom to exercise their reason publicly in print, enlightenment would almost surely follow.
Cesare Beccaria
1738-1794, northern Italy, a nobleman educated at Jesuit schools and the University of Pavia. He passionately plead for the reform of the penal system and advocated the prevention of crime over the reliance on punishment.
War of Austrian Succession
1740-1748, Maria Theresa was forced to cede almost all of Silesia to Prussia. Prussia now unquestionably stood as a European Great Power.
The Spirit of Laws
1748, France, written by baron de Montesquieu where he applied the critical method to the problem of government. The result was a complex, comparative study of republics, monarchies, and despotisms.
The Social Contract
1762, written by Rousseau, a contribution to political theory based on the general will and popular sovereignty.
Wealth of Nations
1776, written by Adam Smith, one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth.
Empiricism
17th century, Europe, a theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through observation and experimentation rather than deductive reason and speculation.
Rococo
18th century, Europe, a popular style known for its soft pastels, ornate interiors, sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed lovers protected by hovering cupids.
Deism
A system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe.
Philosophes
Age of Enlightenment, France, a group of French intellectuals who proclaimed that they were bringing the light of knowledge to their fellow humans in the Age of Enlightenment.
Salon
Late 17th century, Paris, regular social gatherings held by talented and rich Parisians in their homes, where philosophes and their followers met to discuss literature, science, and philosophy.
Enlightened Absolutism
Late 18th century, term created by historians to describe the rule of the monarchs that adopted Enlightenment ideals of rationalism, progress, and tolerance without renouncing their own absolute authority.
Reading Revolution
Late 18th century, the transition in Europe from a society where literacy consisted of patriarchal and communal reading of religious texts to a society where literacy was common-place and reading material was broad and diverse.
Cameralism
Late 18th century, the view that monarchy was the best form of government, that all elements of society should serve the monarch and that the state should in turn use its resources and authority to increase the public good.
Frederick the Great
r. 1740-1786, Prussia, during his youth he embraced culture and literature rather than militarism, but by the time he came to the throne he was determined to use the army he had inherited.
Catherine the Great
r. 1762-1796, Russia, a German princess whose mother's relation to the Romanovs of Russia proved to be Catherine's opening to power.
