AP Euro Chapter 17

Kant

shared ideas about race in "On the Different Races of Man," European superiority, professor in East Prussia, greatest German philosopher of his day, asked "What is Enlightenment?" answered with "Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding is therefore the motto of enlightenment"

Vesalius

studied anatomy by dissecting human bodies, often those of executed crimunals

Kepler

assistant, inspired by belief that the universe was built on mystical mathematical relationships and a musical harmony of the heavenly bodies, discovered that planets have elliptical orbits around the sun, planets do not move at a uniform speed in their orbits, the time a planet takes to make its complete orbit is precisely related to its distance from the sun

Haskalah

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

Brahe

built observatory, observed stars for 20 years, believed that all planets except earth revolved around the sun and the planets revolved in turn around the earth-moon system

Hume

central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, argued that the human mind is nothing but a bundle of impressions that originate only in sense experiences and joining these experiences together, so our reason cannot tell us anything about questions that cannot be verified by sense experience such as the origin of the universe or the existence of God, also believed in Europeans as superior race-"Of Natural Characters"

Bacon

conducted experiments using the empirical method, formalized it, led to empiricism

Harvey

discovered the circulation of blood through the veins and arteries, first to explain that the heart worked like a pump and to explain the function of its muscles and values

Paracelsus

early proponent of the experimental method in medicine, pioneered the use of chemicals and drugs to address what he saw as chemical, rather than humoral, imbalances

Diderot

edited "Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences the Arts, and the Crafts"

deductive reasoning

form of reasoning which starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion

general will

fundamental concept contributed by Rousseau, that the general will is sacred and absolute, reflecting the common interests of all the people, who have displaced the monarch as the holder of sovereign power, but it is not necessary the will of the majority

Rond d'Allembert

helped edit "Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences the Arts, and the Crafts"

Locke

in "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," insisted that all ideas are derived from experience, human mind at birth is tabula rasa on which the environment writes the individual's understanding and beliefs, human development is determined by education and social institutions, contributed to sensationalism

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

empirical method

the general theory of inductive reasoning formalized by Bacon

Cartesian dualism

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

secular

worldly; denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis

Newton

English scientist, synthesized ideas of Brahe, Kepler Galileo, with mathematical laws that explain motion and mechanics, formed law of universal gravitation

Galileo

Florentine, challenged ideas about motion, elaborated and consolidated the experimental method, formulated law of inertia, proved Aristotelian physics wrong, made telescope and discovered first 4 moons of Jupiter, providing new evidence for Copernican theory

Bayle

French Huguenot who despised Louis XIV and found refuge in the Netherlands, critically examined his religious beliefs and persecutions of the past in his "Historical and Critical Dictionary," demonstrated that human beliefs had been extremely varied and very often mistaken, concluded that nothing can ever be known beyond all doubt- skepticism

Boyle

Irishman, founded the modern science of chemistry, undertook experiments to discover elements of nature, which he believed was composed on infinitely small atoms, first to create a vacuum and disproved Descartes, discovered Boyle's law which states that the pressure of a gas varies inversely with volume

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

Rousseau

Swissman, believed that only good government is government freely formed by the people and guided by the general will of society. He thought that some people need to give up some freedoms for the general will, common good-social contract- we give gov. right to rule us if they protect our rights. The needs of the people are determined by the intelligent minority

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

tabula rasa

a blank tablet, like the human mind at birth, on which the environment writes the individual's understanding and beliefs

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

law of inertia

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

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

rationalism

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

natural philosophy

an early modern term for the study of the nature of the universe, and how it functioned; it encompassed what we would call "science' today

Spinoza

philosopher excommunicated by the relatively large Jewish community of Amsterdam for controversial religious ideas, came to believe that mind and body are united in one substance and God and nature are two names for the same thing, envisioned a deterministic universe in which good and evil were merely relative values

Montesquieu

published "The Persian Letters and "The Spirit of Laws," saw relations between men and women as highly representative of the overall social and political system, argued for separation of powers with political power divided and shared by a variety of classes an legal estates holding unequal rights and priveleges

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

enlightened 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

experimental method

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

Aristotelian world-view

the idea that a motionless earth was fixed at the center of the universe

sensationalism

the idea that all human ideas and thoughts are produced as a result of sensory impressions

Copernican hypothesis

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

Enlightenment

the influential intellectual 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

Parlement of Paris

the thirteen high courts in France that Montesquieu believed were frontline defenders of liberty against royal despotism

skepticism

the view that nothing can ever be known beyond all doubt, concluded by Pierre Bayle, a French Huguenot

Voltaire

tolerance, freedom of religion, speech, press, wrote satire attacking clergy, aristocracy, government (especially the French government, he liked the English government)

Descartes

used deductive mathematical reasoning, discovered analytic geometry, formulated the theory of Cartesian dualism

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