Scientific Revolution

Enlightenment and Classical Liberalism

Enlightened Despotism

1. Today -- we kill God
2. Role of Religion in people's lives before 1600 -- Protestant or Catholic
3. God as the Center of the Universe
4. Earth-centered universe

1. centered around Christian views of God -- God created Earth at the center of the universe
2. observations: sun, moon. Stars revolve around Earth
3. originally from the Greeks
4. to challenge was to challenge God -- dangerous -- Why?

1. Science and Enlightenment

Scientific Revolution: 16^th and 17^th century -- must come first

Enlightenment: 17^th and 18^th centuries -- starts in Western Europe and spreads east -- eventually reaches autocratic Russia late in the 18^th century under Catherine the Great

 

1. The Reconception of the Universe
1. The Ptolemaic universe: A motionless earth surrounded by 9 spheres -- grasped by the Church to explain how God created the world -- human beings only ones out here -- fundamental to Christian teaching
2. The Copernican universe
1. Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, 1543
2. The sun stood at the center of the universe
3. New theory was also a challenge to cherished religious beliefs
2. The Scientific Revolution
1. Galileo Galilei
1. Kepler (1571-1630): Demonstrated planetary orbits to be elliptical
2. Galileo used a telescope, saw spots on the sun, four moons of Jupiter
3. Galileo's theory of velocity of falling bodies anticipated the modern law of inertia
2. Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
1. Published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1686
2. Offered mathematical explanations of laws that govern movements of bodies
3. Newton's work symbolized the scientific revolution--direct observation and mathematical reasoning

(Scientific Revolution: Results must be repeatable using Francis Bacon's SCIENTIFIC METHOD)

 

What does it really mean? A shift from God to man -- observations now important

Problem: if man is now at the center of the universe, and all things are knowable, what does this say regarding divine right of kings?

 

 

 

3. The Enlightenment
1. Science and society
1. Enlightenment thinkers sought to discover natural laws that governed human society in the same way that Newton's laws governed the universe
2. John Locke: All human knowledge comes from sense perceptions
3. David Hume -- I look around the world and everything I observe is complicated. Something complicated must have created everything, but if God is complicated, who created him? If God is simple, he could not have created everything complicated.
4. Adam Smith: Laws of supply and demand determine price (laissez-faire economics)
5. Rousseau -- despised by most philosophes

1. Social Contract between people and government. If the govt. does not rule according to the "general will" than it has failed the people and should be brought down (advocates the right of revolution)
2. Perfect state: democratic republic with no private property
3. Critical, however, about an "international" brotherhood -- calls for an early sense of national identity in Poland -- apart from Russia

1. DeCartes -- "I think therefore I am" -- no sense of God needed -- power of the human spirit and mind
2. French philosophes popularized enlightenment ideas through histories, novels, dramas, satires, and pamphlets on religious, moral, and political issues

1. Voltaire (1694-1778)
1. French philosophe, wrote some seventy volumes in life
2. Championed freedom, attacked French monarchy and Roman Catholic church
2. Deism
1. Believed existence of a god but denied supernatural teachings of Christianity
2. The universe was an orderly realm which operated according to rational and natural laws
3. "Watchmaker Theory" -- God there, but only at the beginning
3. The theory of progress -- the ideology of the philosophes

 

4. Classical Liberalism (Western Europe and America)

• not the "liberalism" of today -- talk about it in class
• classical liberalism: middle class rule (bourgeoisie)
• heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, especially in American Revolution (Jefferson and Ben Franklin are two prime examples)
• Seen by Karl Marx as the step between Absolutism and Socialism
• Many of the Founding Fathers in America studied the enlightened thinkers
• Social Contract and Republicanism important
• Moderate phase of the French Revolution (explain in class briefly)

1. Enlightened Despotism (Eastern Europe)

• idea that the leaders of Europe took hold of and tried to reform their states, particularly in Eastern Europe
• Many studied under the philosophes, then took their ideas and tried to modify them for absolutism
• Still believed in absolutism, but in a "kindlier, gentler version" -- ultimate expression of the general will
• Three notable examples (all eastern European looking to the West -- all three in autocratic, developing countries)

• Maria Theresa / Joseph II (Austria)
• Fredrick the Great (Prussia)
• Catherine the Great (Russia)
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• Enlightened despots in the end instituted some reforms, but the chaos of the French Revolution would cause many of these changes to be repealed

• Significance of Enlightenment movement
• Weakened the influence of organized religion -- rise of secular humanism
• Subjected society to rational analysis, promoted progress and prosperity
• Beginning of Bourgeois liberalism (middle class rule)
• Heavily influenced both American and French revolutions -- ideas of humanism and rationalism combined with republicanism and the social contract
• Eventually beaten in most of Europe, however, by conservatives against Napoleon (1815)

• child of the Enlightenment
• Classical Liberalism and Bourgeois Revolution
• Jefferson and Locke
• Social contract and the rights of man, at least in theory (go over Declaration)
• Thomas Paine and "Common Sense"
• Revolution or war for independence?
• The king is dead
• Confederation period
• Constitution and conservatives
• Revolution of 1800
• Model for others to follow
• France
• Latin America
• Africa
• Asia