CHAPTER 17
Toward a New Worldview 1540–1789
CHAPTER LEARNING 2. One of the most important disciplines— natural philosophy, based primarily on the OBJECTIVES ideas of Aristotle—focused on After reading and studying this chapter, students fundamental questions about the nature of should be able to: the universe, its purpose, and how it 1. Critique the changing attitudes toward the functioned. natural world that constituted the scientific 3. According to the revised Aristotelian revolution and what made those attitudes view, a motionless earth was fixed at the revolutionary. center of the universe and was 2. Analyze how the new worldview known as the encompassed by ten separate concentric Enlightenment affected the way people thought spheres that revolved around it. about society and human relations. 4. Aristotle’s views also dominated thinking 3. Discuss the impact the new way of thinking about physics and motion on earth. had on political developments and monarchical 5. The earth was believed to be made up of absolutism. four imperfect, changeable elements: the air, fire, water, and earth. 6. Aristotle’s ideas were accepted because ANNOTATED CHAPTER they offered an understandable, OUTLINE commonsense explanation for the natural world, and they also fit neatly with The following annotated chapter outline will help Christian doctrines. you review the major topics covered in this chapter. B. Origins of the Scientific Revolution I. How did European views of nature change in 1. The scientific revolution drew on long- this period? term developments in European culture, as A. Scientific Thought in 1500 well as borrowings from Arabic scholars. 1. Prior to the scientific revolution, many 2. The development of universities boosted different scholars and practitioners were philosophers’ inquiries as they pursued involved in aspects of what came together limited but real independence from to form science. theologians.
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3. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 1. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) gained the leading universities established new support of the king of Denmark to build the professorships of mathematics, astronomy, most sophisticated observatory of his day. and physics within their faculties of 2. For twenty years Brahe observed the stars philosophy, bringing the application of and planets with the naked eye, compiling critical thinking to scientific problems. much more complete and accurate data 4. The Renaissance also stimulated scientific than ever before, but he died in 1601 progress through the recovery of ancient before he could make much sense out of works. his mass of data. 5. Renaissance patrons played a role in 3. Brahe’s young assistant, Johannes Kepler funding scientific investigations, as they (1571–1630), examined Brahe’s did for art and literature. observations and from them developed 6. The rise of printing provided a faster and new and revolutionary laws of planetary less expensive way to circulate knowledge motion. across Europe. 4. Kepler demonstrated that the orbits of the 7. Navigational problems were critical in the planets around the sun are elliptical rather development of many new scientific than circular and that the planets do not instruments, which permitted more move at a uniform speed in their orbits. accurate observations and often led to 5. Whereas Copernicus had speculated, important new knowledge. Kepler proved mathematically the precise 8. Centuries-old practices of astrology, relations of a sun-centered (solar) system. magic, and alchemy remained important 6. In contrast to his scientific achievements, traditions for participants in the scientific Kepler also cast horoscopes as part of his revolution. duties as court mathematician; his own C. The Copernican Hypothesis diary was based on astrological principles, 1. The Polish cleric Nicolaus Copernicus an irony that exemplifies the complex (1473–1543) felt that Ptolemy’s interweaving of ideas and beliefs in the cumbersome and occasionally inaccurate emerging science of his day. rules of astronomy detracted from the 7. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) also majesty of a perfect creator. challenged the old ideas about motion, 2. Copernicus theorized that the stars and using mathematics in examining motion planets, including the earth, revolved and mechanics in a new way and around a fixed sun, but he did not publish formulating new laws such as the law of his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly inertia. Spheres until 1543, the year of his death. 8. Galileo’s great achievement was the 3. Protestant leaders Martin Luther and John elaboration and consolidation of the Calvin attacked the idea that the earth experimental method, which he applied to moved but the sun did not, and they astronomy as well as to motion. condemned Copernicus. 9. After making his own telescope, Galileo 4. In 1572 a new star appeared and shone quickly discovered the first four moons of very brightly for almost two years, which Jupiter, which provided new evidence to seemed to contradict the idea that the support the Copernican theory. heavenly spheres were unchanging and 10. In 1616 the Holy Office placed the works therefore perfect. of Copernicus and his supporters, D. Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo: Proving including Kepler, on a list of books Copernicus Right Catholics were forbidden to read. 300 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
11. Galileo silenced his beliefs until the F. Bacon, Descartes, and the Scientific Method publication in 1632 of his Dialogue on the 1. Scholars in many fields sought answers to Two Chief Systems of the World, which long-standing problems, sharing their defended the views of Copernicus. results in a community that spanned 12. Galileo was tried for heresy by the papal Europe and developing better ways of Inquisition. obtaining knowledge about the world. 13. Imprisoned and threatened with torture, 2. The English politician and writer Francis the aging Galileo recanted, “renouncing Bacon (1561–1626) was the greatest early and cursing” his Copernican errors. propagandist for the new experimental E. Newton’s Synthesis method. 1. Despite the efforts of the church, by about 3. Bacon argued that new knowledge had to 1640 the work of Brahe, Kepler, and be pursued through empirical research and Galileo had been largely accepted by the set about formalizing the empirical scientific community. method into the general theory of 2. English scientist Isaac Newton (1642– inductive reasoning known as empiricism. 1727) united the experimental and 4. In an intellectual vision in 1619, René theoretical-mathematical sides of modern Descartes (1596–1650) saw that there was science to explain the forces behind the a perfect correspondence between movement of the planets and objects on geometry and algebra and that geometrical Earth. spatial figures could be expressed as 3. Newton arrived at some of his most basic algebraic equations and vice versa. ideas about physics between 1664 and 5. Descartes’s discovery of analytic 1666, including his law of universal geometry provided scientists with an gravitation and the concepts of centripetal important new tool. force and acceleration. 6. All occurrences in nature could be 4. Not realizing the significance of his analyzed as matter in motion and, findings, it wasn’t until 1684 that Newton according to Descartes, the total “quantity returned to physics and the preparation of of motion” in the universe was constant. his ideas for publication. 7. Descartes’s greatest achievement was to 5. In Philosophicae Naturalis Principia develop his initial vision into a whole Mathematica, Newton, using a set of philosophy of knowledge and science; mathematical laws that explain motion his reasoning ultimately reduced all and mechanics, laid down his three laws substances to “matter” and “mind,” a of motion. view of the world known as Cartesian 6. The key feature of the Newtonian dualism. synthesis was the law of universal 8. Although insufficient on their own, gravitation: every body in the universe Bacon’s and Descartes’s extreme attracts every other body in the universe in approaches are combined in the modern a precise mathematical relationship based scientific method, which began to on the objects’ matter and the distance crystallize in the late seventeenth century. between them. G. Science and Society 7. Newton’s synthesis of mathematics with 1. The rise of modern science had many physics and astronomy prevailed until the consequences, including the formation of twentieth century and established him as an international scientific community. one of the most important figures in the 2. The new scientific community became history of science. closely tied to the state and its agendas, as CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 301
governments intervened to support and 3. Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius sometimes to direct research. (1516–1564) studied anatomy by 3. At the same time, scientists developed dissecting human bodies, and the two a critical attitude toward established hundred precise drawings in his authority that would inspire thinkers masterpiece On the Structure of the to question traditions in other Human Body (1543) revolutionized the domains. understanding of human anatomy. 4. New “rational” methods for approaching 4. English royal physician William Harvey nature did not question traditional (1578–1657) discovered the circulation of inequalities between the sexes, however, blood through the veins and arteries and and the new academies that furnished was the first to explain that the heart professional credentials did not accept worked like a pump. female members. 5. Following Paracelsus’s lead, Irishman 5. Noteworthy exceptions included Robert Boyle (1627–1691) undertook universities and academies in Italy that experiments to discover the basic elements offered posts to women, who worked as of nature and founded the modern science botanical illustrators, and female of chemistry; in the process, he discovered intellectuals who fully engaged in the Boyle’s law (1662), which states that the philosophical dialogue of the time. pressure of a gas varies inversely with 6. Because science had relatively few volume. practical economic applications, the II. What were the core principles of the scientific revolution had few Enlightenment? consequences for economic life and the A. The Emergence of the Enlightenment living standards of the masses. 1. The new worldview of the eighteenth- 7. The role of religion in the development of century Enlightenment grew out of a rich science is complicated. mix of diverse and often conflicting ideas. 8. The Catholic Church was initially less 2. Enlightenment thinkers submitted hostile to science than Protestant and everything to rationalism, using the Jewish leaders, but that changed with the methods of natural science to examine and trial of Galileo in 1633. understand all aspects of life. 9. Protestant countries became very 3. The European Enlightenment (ca. 1690– supportive of science, especially those 1789) gained strength gradually and did countries lacking a strong religious not reach its maturity until about 1750. authority that could impose religious 4. The excitement of the scientific revolution orthodoxy on scientific questions. also generated doubt and uncertainty, H. Medicine, the Body, and Chemistry contributing to a widespread crisis in 1. The scientific revolution began with the European thought. study of the cosmos but soon inspired 5. The devastation of the Thirty Years’ War renewed study of the microcosm of the prompted questions about the need for human body. ideological conformity in religious matters 2. Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus and about whether religious truth could (1493–1541) was an early proponent of ever be known with absolute certainty. the experimental method and pioneered 6. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a French the use of chemicals and drugs in Huguenot, examined the religious beliefs medicine. and persecutions of the past in his 302 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), travelers, through which Montesquieu and he concluded that nothing can ever be offered up a criticism of European known beyond all doubt, a view known as customs and beliefs. skepticism. 5. Taking inspiration from the example of 7. The Jewish scholar and philosopher the physical sciences, Montesquieu set out Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), one of the to apply the critical method to the problem most important thinkers of the early of government in The Spirit of Laws Enlightenment, came to believe that mind (1748). and body are united in one substance and 6. Montesquieu’s argument for a separation that God and nature were two names for of powers in government had a great the same thing. impact on the constitutions of the young 8. Through the rapid growth of travel United States in 1789 and of France in literature, Europeans were learning that 1791. the peoples of other lands had their own 7. The most famous and in many ways most very different beliefs and customs. representative philosophe was François 9. Educated Europeans began to look at truth Marie Arouet, who was known by the pen and morality in relative, rather than name Voltaire (1694–1778). absolute, terms. 8. Voltaire formed a mutually beneficial 10. Out of this period of intellectual turmoil relationship with Gabrielle-Emilie Le came John Locke’s Essay Concerning Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Human Understanding (1690), which Châtelet (1706–1749), a gifted woman introduced his theory that all ideas are from the high aristocracy who studied derived from experience. physics and mathematics and published B. The Influence of the Philosophes scientific articles and translations. 1. By 1775 a large portion of western 9. Voltaire wrote various works praising Europe’s educated elite had embraced England and popularizing English many of the new ideas, due to the work of scientific progress; in true Enlightenment a group of influential intellectuals known style, he mixed the glorification of science as the philosophes. and reason with an appeal for better 2. The Enlightenment reached its highest individuals and institutions. development in France in part because 10. Like most of the philosophes, Voltaire French was the international language of was a reformer, not a revolutionary, in the educated classes and because the social and political matters; he was French philosophes made it their goal to pessimistic about the ability of the masses reach a larger audience of elites. to govern themselves and did not believe 3. To appeal to the public and get around the in social and economic equality in human censors, the philosophes wrote novels and affairs. plays, histories and philosophies, 11. Voltaire clearly believed in God, but his dictionaries and encyclopedias, all filled was a distant, deistic God, and like most with satire and double meanings to spread of the philosophes Voltaire hated all forms their message. of religious intolerance, which he believed 4. The baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755) often led to fanaticism and savage, pioneered this approach in The Persian inhuman action. Letters, a social satire published in 1721 12. The greatest and most representative and consisting of amusing letters intellectual achievement of the supposedly written by two Persian philosophes was a group effort—the CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 303
seventeen-volume Encyclopedia: The books and ushered in new ways of relating Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the to the written word, as reading became an Arts, and the Crafts, edited by Denis individual activity and texts were Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean le Rond questioned. d’Alembert (1717–1783). 3. From about 1740 to 1789, conversation, 13. The Encyclopedia, completed in 1765, discussion, and debate found fertile contained hundreds of thousands of ground in the salons of Paris, where a articles by leading scientists, writers, number of talented, wealthy women skilled workers, and progressive priests, presided over regular social gatherings and it addressed every aspect of life and and mediated the public’s freewheeling knowledge. examination of Enlightenment thought. C. The Enlightenment Outside of France 4. Through their invitation lists, salonnières 1. Scholars have described a more (salon hostesses) brought together conservative Enlightenment in England members of the intellectual, economic, and Germany that tried to integrate the and social elite, who intermingled and findings of the scientific revolution with influenced one another. religious faith. 5. Elite women also exercised great 2. The Scottish Enlightenment was marked influence on artistic taste in the by an emphasis on pragmatic and development of a style known as rococo, scientific reasoning and was stimulated by which was popular from 1720 to 1780 and the creation of the first public educational was characterized by soft pastels and system in Europe. ornate interiors. 3. Building on Locke’s teachings on 6. Some philosophies championed greater learning, David Hume (1711–1776) rights and expanded education for women, argued that the human mind is really claiming that the position and treatment of nothing but a bundle of impressions that women were the best indicators of a originate only in sense experiences and society’s level of civilization and decency. our habits of joining these experiences 7. The coffeehouses that first appeared in the together. late seventeenth century became meccas 4. Since our ideas reflect only our sense of philosophical discussion and created a experiences, our reason cannot tell us new public sphere that celebrated open anything about questions that cannot be debate informed by critical reason. verified by sense experience, such as the 8. Enlightenment philosophies did not direct origin of the universe or the existence of their message to peasants or urban laborers, God. believing that the masses had no time or 5. Paradoxically, Hume’s rationalistic talent for philosophical speculation and that inquiry ended up undermining the elevating them would be a long, slow, and Enlightenment’s faith in the power of potentially dangerous process. reason. E. Race and the Enlightenment D. Urban Culture and Life in the Public Sphere 1. As scientists developed more elaborate 1. Significant growth in the European taxonomies of plant and animal species, production and consumption of books they also began to classify humans into encouraged the spread of Enlightenment hierarchically ordered “races” and to ideas. investigate the origins of race. 2. The so-called reading revolution involved 2. In Of Natural Characters (1748), David a broader and ever-changing field of Hume argued that “all other species of 304 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
men” were “naturally inferior to the 5. Kant argued that if serious thinkers were whites.” granted the freedom to exercise their 3. Immanuel Kant shared and elaborated reason publicly in print, enlightenment Hume’s views about race in On the would almost surely follow. Different Races of Man (1775), claiming 6. Kant also tried to reconcile absolute that the white inhabitants of northern monarchical authority with a critical Germany were the closest descendants of public sphere, a balancing act that the supposedly original race of “white characterized experiments with brunette” people. “enlightened absolutism” in the eighteenth 4. Using the word race to designate century. biologically distinct groups of humans III. What did enlightened absolutism mean? was new. A. Frederick the Great of Prussia 5. Scientific racism helped legitimate and 1. Frederick II (r. 1740–1786), commonly justify the tremendous growth of slavery known as Frederick the Great, was that occurred during the eighteenth determined to use the splendid army that his century. father, Frederick William I, had left him. 6. Challenging claims of white superiority, 2. When the young Maria Theresa of Austria Scottish philosopher James Beattie (1735– inherited the Habsburg dominions, 1803) pointed out that Europeans had Frederick invaded her rich province of started out as savage as nonwhites and that Silesia. many non-European peoples in the 3. In 1742, as other greedy powers vied for Americas, Asia, and Africa had achieved her lands in the European War of the high levels of civilization. Austrian Succession (1740–1748), Maria 7. Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) Theresa was forced to cede almost all of criticized Kant, arguing that each culture Silesia to Prussia. was as intrinsically worthy as any other. 4. In 1756 Maria Theresa, seeking to regain F. Late Enlightenment Silesia, formed an alliance with the 1. After about 1770 a number of thinkers and leaders of France and Russia and initiated writers, including the Swiss Jean-Jacques the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), with Rousseau (1712–1778), began to attack the aim of conquering Prussia and the Enlightenment’s faith in reason, dividing up its territory. progress, and moderation. 5. In the end, Frederick was miraculously 2. Rousseau was passionately committed to saved when Peter III came to the Russian individual freedom, but he attacked throne in 1762 and called off the attack rationalism and civilization as destroying, against Frederick. rather than liberating, the individual. 6. The terrible struggle of the Seven Years’ 3. Rousseau contributed to political theory in War tempered Frederick’s interest in The Social Contract (1762) by arguing territorial expansion and turned it toward that the general will is sacred and absolute more humane policies for his subjects as a and reflects the common interests of all way to strengthen the state. the people, though he cautioned that the 7. Frederick allowed his subjects freedom in general will is not necessarily the will of their religious and philosophical beliefs, the majority. and he sought to enlighten them through 4. As the reading public developed, it joined the advancement of knowledge, improving forces with the philosophes to call for the his country’s schools and permitting autonomy of the printed word. scholars to publish their findings. CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 305
8. Prussia’s laws were simplified and 9. Catherine succeeded well in her quest for stressed impartiality, and Prussian territorial expansion, subjugating the last officials became famous for their hard descendants of the Mongols and the work and honesty. Crimean Tartars and beginning the 9. After the Seven Years’ War ended in conquest of the Caucasus. 1763, Frederick’s government 10. When Catherine’s armies scored energetically promoted the reconstruction unprecedented victories against the Turks of agriculture and industry in his war-torn between 1768 and 1772, thereby country. threatening to disrupt the balance of B. Catherine the Great of Russia power in eastern Europe, Frederick of 1. Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1762– Prussia proposed that Turkey be let off 1796) was one of the most remarkable easily and that Prussia, Austria, and rulers of her age, and the French Russia divide up Polish territory as philosophes adored her. compensation. 2. Catherine came to the throne after her 11. By 1795, after three partitions, the ancient husband Peter III angered army officers republic of Poland had vanished from the by withdrawing from the Seven Years’ map. War and was murdered by Catherine’s C. The Austrian Habsburgs love and his three brothers. 1. Another female monarch, Maria Theresa 3. Setting out to rule in an enlightened (r. 1740–1780) of Austria, set out to manner, Catherine worked hard to reform her nation, primarily through continue Peter the Great’s effort to bring traditional power politics. the culture of western Europe to Russia, 2. After losing Silesia in the long War of the importing Western architects, sculptors, Austrian Succession in 1748, Maria musicians, and intellectuals. Theresa was determined to make the 4. As an intellectual ruler, Catherine wrote Austrian state stronger and more efficient. plays and loved good talk, and set the tone 3. Administrative reforms that strengthened for the entire Russian nobility. the central bureaucracy, smoothed out 5. In the way of domestic reform, Catherine provincial differences, and revamped the restricted the practice of torture, allowed tax system were some of Maria Theresa’s limited religious toleration, and tried to measures, along with improving the lot of improve education and strengthen local the agricultural population. government. 4. A strong supporter of change, Maria 6. In 1773, however, a common Cossack Theresa’s son Joseph II moved forward soldier named Emelian Pugachev sparked rapidly when he came to the throne in a gigantic uprising of serfs that resulted in 1780 and abolished serfdom in 1781. the slaughter of landlords and officials 5. A decree in 1789 that allowed peasants to over a vast area of southwestern Russia. pay landlords in cash rather than through 7. Pugachev’s rebellion was quickly put compulsory labor on their land was down by Catherine’s army, but it also put violently rejected by both the nobility and an end to any intentions Catherine might the peasants it was intended to help. have had about reforming the system. 6. When a disillusioned Joseph died 8. After 1775 Catherine gave the nobles prematurely at forty-nine, his brother absolute control of their serfs, extending Leopold II (r. 1790–1792) canceled serfdom into new areas and formalizing Joseph’s radical edicts and reestablished the nobility’s privileged position. order. 306 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
7. By combining old-fashioned state- rights throughout the rest of western building with the culture and critical Europe. thinking of the Enlightenment, the eastern 8. Emancipation in eastern Europe took even European absolutists of the later longer and aroused more conflict and eighteenth century succeeded in violence. expanding the role of the state in the life of society. D. Jewish Life and the Limits of Enlightened CHAPTER QUESTIONS Absolutism 1. Europe’s small Jewish populations lived Following are answer guidelines for the Review Questions that appear in the textbook chapter and under highly discriminatory laws that answer guidelines for the chapter’s Map Activity, confined them to tiny, overcrowded Visual Activity, Individuals in Society, and Listening ghettos and excluded them by law from to the Past questions located in the Online Study Guide most business and professional activities. at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestunderstanding. 2. In the eighteenth century, an Answer guidelines for Steps One, Two, and Three of Enlightenment movement known as the the Chapter Study Guide, found at the end of the Haskalah emerged from within the chapter in the text, have also been provided. European Jewish community, led by the Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who advocated freedom and civil rights Review Questions for European Jews. 1. How did European views of nature change in 3. Arguments for tolerance won some this period? ground, but a 1753 British law allowing • Decisive breakthroughs in astronomy and naturalization of Jews was later repealed physics in the seventeenth century demolished the due to public outrage. medieval synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and 4. Likewise in Austria, Joseph II instituted Christian theology. One of the most notable discoveries reforms intended to integrate Jews more was that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the fully into society, including eligibility for galaxy. Although the early scientists considered their military service and removal of special ideas to be in line with religion, their discoveries ran counter to long-held beliefs about the design of the clothing requirements, but the reforms universe by the Creator; therefore, Copernicus, Kepler, raised fears among traditionalists in the Galileo, and others were branded as heretics. general population. Meanwhile, Bacon promoted the experimental method 5. Although he permitted freedom of religion that drew conclusions based on empirical evidence, and to his Christian subjects, Frederick the Descartes championed deductive reasoning that Great of Prussia firmly opposed any speculated truths based on known principles. These two important methods eventually combined to form the general emancipation for the Jews. modern scientific method that relies on both 6. In 1791 Catherine the Great established experimentation and reason. Following these early the Pale of Settlement, a territory innovators, Newton devised the law of universal including parts of modern-day Poland, gravitation, which for the first time synthesized the Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and orbiting planets of the solar system with the motion of Belorussia, in which most Jews were objects on earth. These scientific breakthroughs had required to live. only limited practical consequences at the time, but their impact on intellectual life was enormous, 7. France, in the time of the French nurturing a new critical attitude in many disciplines. In Revolution, was the first European state to addition, an international scientific community arose, remove all restrictions on the Jews, and and state-sponsored academies, which were typically gradually Jews won full legal and civil closed to women, advanced scientific research. CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 307
2. What were the core principles of the • Unchanged Border: Eastern Prussia, which Enlightenment? had been separated from the rest of Prussia by the region around Danzig, did not change hands. Prussia, • Interpreting scientific findings and Newtonian unlike Poland, was a major European power at this laws in a manner that was both anti-tradition and time, and was not vulnerable to having its territory anti-religion, Enlightenment philosophes extolled the taken away by another power. superiority of rational, critical thinking. This new method, they believed, promised not just increased Connections: Why was Poland vulnerable to knowledge but even the discovery of the partition in the latter half of the eighteenth century? fundamental laws of human society. Believing that What does it say about European politics at the time all aspects of life were open to question and that a country could simply cease to exist on the skepticism, Enlightenment thinkers opened the doors map? Could that happen today? to religious tolerance, representative government, and general intellectual debate. One important • Vulnerable: Poland had a constitutionalist downside of the new scientific method was that it led monarchy, unlike its absolutist neighbors. This to the classification of human races, with white meant that the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian Europeans placing themselves at the top of a new monarchs could raise taxes and field large armies racial hierarchy. much more easily than the Polish king. • Politics and Disappearing States: European 3. What did enlightened absolutism mean? kings clearly put their own interests above those of • The ideas of the Enlightenment were an another country. Respect for a weaker state’s inspiration for monarchs, particularly absolutist sovereignty was not a concern for these rulers. rulers in central and eastern Europe who saw in them Students will have varying answers for whether this important tools for reforming and rationalizing their could happen today. Some will point out that governments. Their primary goal was to strengthen international organizations like the United Nations their states and increase the efficiency of their serve to protect smaller states from larger powers. bureaucracies and armies. Enlightened absolutists They may bring up the example of the Iraqi invasion believed that these reforms would ultimately of Kuwait as an example. Others may note that states improve the lot of ordinary people, but this was not have disappeared for other reasons, as with the their chief concern. With few exceptions, they did collapse of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union not question the institution of serfdom. The fact that into many smaller states. leading philosophes supported rather than criticized Eastern rulers’ policies suggests some of the limitations of the era. Visual Activity Enlightenment Culture Map Activity Analyzing the Image: Which of these people do you think is the hostess, Madame Geoffrin, and why? Map 17.1: The Partition of Poland, 1772–1795 Using details from the painting to support your Analyzing the Map: Of the three powers that answer, how would you describe the status of the divided the kingdom of Poland, who benefited the people shown? most? How did the partition affect the geographical • Madame Geoffrin: Madame Geoffrin is boundaries of each state, and what was the probably the woman in the yellow dress, standing significance? What border with the former Poland behind the seated man reading from the play. It remained unchanged? Why do you think this was the would make sense for her to be placed at the focal case? point of the painting, since she is hosting the • Benefit: The Russian Empire gained the most gathering. territory from the former kingdom of Poland. • Upper Class Status: The people shown in the • Boundaries: The three powers in Eastern painting are probably members of the upper class. Europe, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, lost the buffer The men wear brightly colored clothing, some with state between them with the partition of Poland. sashes, others with gold thread, and most wearing These powers now shared common borders. This elaborate wigs; the women wear brightly colored would increase the chances of conflict among them. dresses, and some wear unique hats. All of the 308 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
clothing appears expensive, and very clean, • The Human Family: The speaker states that suggesting that those in attendance have wealth and both Europeans and Tahitians are “children of free time to spend. nature,” and therefore both are brothers and equals. • Comparison: The speaker compares his people Connections: What does this image suggest about to the Europeans by claiming both would react in the the reach of Enlightenment ideas to common people? same way to particular situations. He says the To women? Europeans would rather die than be enslaved, and • Common People and Women: The image suggests that Tahitians feel the same. Likewise, he suggests that common people were not greatly states that the Tahitians treated Europeans with involved in Enlightenment ideas, as all the guests in respect and therefore the Tahitians deserve to be the painting appear to be members of the wealthy treated with respect in turn. upper class. Women were somewhat involved with 2. What is the good life according to the Enlightenment ideas, since there are a few depicted speaker, and how does it contrast with the European in the painting. However, even though Madame way of life? Which do you think is the better path? Geoffrin was the hostess of the gathering, some unidentified man is reading Voltaire’s play, • The Good Life: The Tahitians live the good suggesting that men were the ones actively life, according to the speaker. This appears to mean a distributing Enlightenment ideas. communal environment, in which food, clothing, and other possessions are shared among all members of the community. The Tahitians also only work to the Individuals in Society “bounds of strict necessity,” and then cease toiling in order to enjoy life. Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish • European Way of Life: According to the text, Enlightenment the European way of life is full of painful toil, with 1. How did Mendelssohn seek to influence not much time for leisure or enjoyment. The speaker Jewish religious thought in his time? suggests Europeans create unnecessary wants and desires that they never achieve, because they are • Acceptance of Reason and Religion: constantly trying to work harder and harder to attain Mendelssohn was convinced that both reason and these impossible desires. religion could compliment and strengthen each other, • The Better Path: The Tahitian way of life is though they would remain as distinctly separate almost certainly an idealized picture of native life. spheres. He attempted to harmonize Enlightenment However, the concept of working to meet only your thought with Jewish belief. needs, and then saving the rest of your time for leisure, is certainly an appealing one when contrasted 2. How do Mendelssohn’s ideas compare with with a life full of painful work and few rewards. those of the French Enlightenment? • Supported Established Religion: Mendelssohn, 3. In what ways could Diderot’s thoughts here and other German Enlightenment philosophers, be seen as representative of Enlightenment ideas? sought to make reason and religion separate yet Are there ways in which they are not? compatible influences. In contrast, the French • Enlightenment Ideals: The speaker in the text Enlightenment used reason to attack established makes an argument for the Enlightenment ideal of religion rather than support it. tolerance, suggesting that it would be just to leave the Tahitians to their own lifestyle. However, the speaker’s position seems to contradict the Listening to the Past Enlightenment ideal of technical innovation and progress; instead, he argues that progress is a bad Denis Diderot’s “Supplement to Bougainville’s thing, and that Tahitian culture should remain as it is. Voyage” 4. How realistic do you think this account is? 1. On what grounds does the speaker argue for Does it matter? How might defenders of colonial the Tahitians’ basic equality with the Europeans? expansion respond to Diderot’s criticism? CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 309
• Unrealistic: The account is probably empiricism: A theory of inductive reasoning that unrealistic. The Tahitians probably did not think that calls for acquiring evidence through observation they lived in such a perfect society. In all likelihood, and experimentation rather than reason and their society contained flaws and difficulties that speculation. they resented and tried to fix. An idealized version of Cartesian dualism: Descartes’s view that all of Tahitian society, however, is necessary in order for reality could ultimately be reduced to mind and Diderot to point out the hypocrisy inherent in the matter. colonizers arguments. Enlightenment: The influential intellectual and cul- • Colonial Defenders: Colonial defenders would tural movement of the late seventeenth and have responded to this criticism by saying that the eighteenth centuries that introduced a new natives were barbarians, and therefore were unaware worldview based on the use of reason, the of all of the benefits of European civilization. They scientific method, and progress. may have also responded with a religious argument, rationalism: A secular, critical way of thinking in by stating it was their duty to bring salvation to the which nothing was to be accepted on faith, and natives by spreading Christianity. everything was to be submitted to reason. philosophes: A group of French intellectuals who proclaimed that they were bringing the light of END OF CHAPTER STUDY knowledge to their fellow creatures in the Age of Enlightenment. GUIDE reading revolution: The transition in Europe from a society where literacy consisted of patriarchal Step 1 and communal reading of religious texts to a society where literacy was commonplace and reading material was broad and diverse. Getting Started salons: Regular social gatherings held by talented Below are basic terms about this period in the history and rich Parisian women in their homes, where of Western civilization. Can you identify each term philosophes and their followers met to discuss below and explain why it matters? literature, science, and philosophy. rococo: A popular style in Europe in the eighteenth century, known for its soft pastels, ornate Terms interiors, sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed natural philosophy: An early modern term for the lovers protected by hovering cupids. study of the nature of the universe, its purpose, public sphere: An idealized intellectual space that and how it functioned; it encompassed what we emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment, would call “science” today. where the public came together to discuss Copernican hypothesis: The idea that the sun, not important issues relating to society, economy, the earth, is the center of the universe. and politics. experimental method: The approach, pioneered by enlightened absolutism: Term coined by historians Galileo, that the proper way to explore the to describe the rule of eighteenth-century workings of the universe was through repeatable monarchs who, without renouncing their own experiments rather than speculation. absolute authority, adopted Enlightenment ideals law of inertia: A law formulated by Galileo that of rationalism, progress, and tolerance. states that motion, not rest, is the natural state of Haskalah: The Jewish Enlightenment of the second an object, that an object continues in motion half of the eighteenth century, led by the forever unless stopped by some external force. Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. law of universal gravitation: Newton’s law that all cameralism: View that monarchy was the best form objects are attracted to one another and that the of government, that all elements of society force of attraction is proportional to the object’s should serve the monarch, and that, in turn, the quantity of matter and inversely proportional to state should use its resources and authority to the square of the distance between them. increase the public good. 310 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
Step 2 descriptions of the major contributions of key people. Be sure to include both concrete discoveries Moving Beyond the Basics and contributions to the development of the scientific The exercise below requires a more advanced method. When you are finished, consider the understanding of the chapter material. Examine following questions: How did these thinkers build off the contributions of key figures of the scientific of each other’s discoveries and insights? What revolution by filling in the chart below with common goals did they share?
Discoveries and Contributions Nicolaus Copernicus Heliocentric model of the universe. Tycho Brahe Compiled data on planetary motion. Johannes Kepler Theorized mathematical relationship among planets. Planetary orbits are ellipses. Francis Bacon Argued that research must be based on empirical research. Used inductive reasoning. René Descartes Analytic geometry. Dualism of mind and matter. Rational speculation. Deductive reasoning. Galileo Galilei Used experiments to formulate law of inertia. Used a telescope to see rings of Saturn, moons of Jupiter, sun spots. Isaac Newton Universal laws of motion, gravity.
Step 3 mathematics and experimentation as the source of knowledge. Putting It All Together 2. How did Newton’s ideas build on the Now that you’ve reviewed key elements of the contributions of his predecessors? Is it fair to chapter, take a step back and try to see the big describe his work as the culmination of the scientific picture. Remember to use specific examples from the revolution? Why or why not? chapter in your answers. • Model Answer: Natural philosophers had been The Scientific Revolution trying to understand the motion of the planets for some time. Newton built on the work of Copernicus, 1. What was revolutionary about the scientific Galileo, Kepler, and Brahe, but synthesized them revolution? How did the study of nature in the with his study of mathematics. In one sense he was sixteenth century differ from the study of nature in the culmination of the scientific revolution, as his the Middle Ages? ideas dominated astronomy until the twentieth • Model Answer: Science did not start with the century. On the other hand, Newton was not Scientific Revolution, but changed the way natural involved in all forms of science. Others were making philosophers studied the world instead. In the Middle similar advances in medicine and biology. Ages, Aristotelian thought, which offered 3. How did religious belief both stimulate and commonsense explanations for what people observed hinder scientific inquiry? and fit with Christian theology, dominated the way people understood the world. In the scientific • Model Answer: Contrary to popular revolution, Aristotelian ideas were replaced with understanding, not all religious men were opposed to CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 311 the new science. Many of the new scientists were Enlightened Absolutism churchmen or sponsored by the church. Men like 1. Why did many Enlightenment thinkers see Kepler and Newton sought to discover the musical absolute monarchy as a potential force for good? What harmony of the universe or the laws of alchemy light do the political views of the philosophes shed on through their research. After the trial of Galileo, the nature and limits of Enlightenment thinking? however, science was in decline in Italy, but not in all Catholic countries. • Model Answer: Many Enlightenment thinkers lived in absolutist states, and they generally accepted The Enlightenment that their monarchs were best suited to rule. They could point to the examples of Frederick the Great 1. How did the scientific revolution contribute and Maria Theresa as examples of monarchs who to the emergence of the Enlightenment? What new ruled by reason. These Enlightened monarchs kept ideas about the power and potential of human reason order through absolutist policies, which may seem were central to both developments? unenlightened now. This shows that Enlightenment • Model Answer: The Enlightenment was a thinkers were products of their time and their movement to popularize the new science and reason. understandings of equality and social justice were Enlightenment philosophers believed that they could limited to what was acceptable in the eighteenth improve society by promoting rationalism, a way of century. thinking in which nothing was accepted on faith. 2. How did Enlightenment ideas contribute to They believed that the potential of human reason was the expansion of the role of the state in central and unlimited if all things were submitted to rational eastern European society? What existing social and inquiry. economic structures were least susceptible to 2. In what ways did the Enlightenment enlightened reform? Why? influence eighteenth-century European society and • Model Answer: Enlightened monarchs in politics? In what ways was its influence limited? central and eastern Europe sought to expand the role • Model Answer: By 1750, most of the of the state in daily life. Some, like Maria Therese, European elite had accepted the values of the limited the power of the church in their kingdoms. Enlightenment. Enlightened views on government, Others, like Catherine the Great, tried to reform their science, society, and politics were discussed openly law codes based on rationalism. Not all economic in the salons, and books by enlightened philosophers and social structures were easily reformed. Noble circulated widely across Europe. The privileges over serfs, for example, were not easy to Enlightenment’s influence was limited by the lack of change and attempts to improve the lives of peasants literacy in European countries. Common people were in both Russia and Austria failed. not unaware of the new ideas, but they were not allowed into the salons or academies. IN YOUR OWN WORDS 3. How did Enlightenment thinkers deal with Imagine that you must explain Chapter 17 to issues of gender and race? What does this tell us someone who hasn’t read it. What would be the most about the nature of the Enlightenment? important points to include and why? • Model Answer: Women were active • Model Answer: The new science of the participants in the Enlightenment as authors and seventeenth century was popularized in the patrons of salons. Even so, Enlightenment thinkers Enlightenment. The Enlightened philosophers were divided on women’s ability to understand believed that humanity could progress if society was Enlightenment ideas. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for reformed to be based on rationalism. Philosophes example, thought that women were naturally inferior argued for reforms in government, education, to men. This same division can be seen on the society, and politics. They did not always agree on subject of race. Some thought of Europeans as a reforms, but they held in common the belief that all naturally superior race, but others argued that this human thought and activity should be based on position was not based on reason. human reason. 312 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
LECTURE STRATEGIES illustrator, or Emilie du Chatelet. Of course, one must also address the issue of why so many of women’s contributions have slipped from historical See also the maps and images for presentation in memory. The suppression of Maria Winkelmann’s “Additional Bedford/St. Martin’s Resources for astronomical discoveries can illustrate that point Chapter 17.” well. The overall point of the lecture is to challenge Lecture 1: “The (Unexpected) Origins of some of the “myths of scientific revolution”— Modern Science” namely, that science is always objective and value neutral, is highly technical and detached from the The heroic interpretation of the rise of modern social realm, and is done only in universities and science is one with which students are often overly laboratories. Sources: Londa Schiebinger, The Mind familiar: they have come to expect a narrative Has No Sex: Women in the Origins of Modern animated by elite, white men making dramatic Science (1989); Judith P. Zinsser, ed., Men, Women, discoveries through sheer genius. (Indeed, the text and the Birthing of Modern Science (2005); Lisa uses the term “genius” several times.) To provide a Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific counterbalance, this lecture focuses on the lesser- Revolution (1999). known origins of modern science and brings some unexpected players (namely non-westerners and Lecture 2: “The Enlightenment and the women) into view. Creation of the Public Sphere” Emphasize that “Science” was not created in the sixteenth century. What we now call modern science Was the Enlightenment a “crisis of elites,” as had its roots in medieval traditions of alchemy, Jonathan Israel has observed, or did it trickle down astrology, and natural philosophy, and many of the into a broader public? What impact did the “great” scientists mingled old forms of science with intellectual crisis make on the attitudes of ordinary the new. Johannes Kepler, for example, pursued individuals? To answer these questions, share with numerological relationships among music, students the theories of Jürgen Habermas, who mathematics, and the physical world, alongside his posited that the bourgeois public sphere arose during work in optics and astronomy. Nor was science a the Enlightenment as a discursive space where public western creation. As the text emphasizes, Arabic opinion could form. This “public sphere” provided translations of original Greek, Latin, and Chinese an intermediary zone between the “private sphere” texts were key to early western scientific and the “public sphere of authority,” and it formed breakthroughs, and in the Arab-Muslim world the basis of democracy as well as a potential fulcrum medicine and mathematics were more advanced in of resistance and rebellion. France’s salons, Britain’s the fourteenth century. coffee houses, and Germany’s Tischgesellschaften Next, explore the varieties of scientific enquiry provided the “institutional criteria” for discussion underway. Astronomy usually takes center stage, so and exchange to flourish. By organizing a lecture draw students’ attention to early-modern research in around the concept of the “public sphere,” students such areas as chemistry, botany, and entomology. are able to see the implications of Enlightenment Emphasize how a broad definition of “science,” one ideas and make comparisons to their own world. that includes craft and household traditions of The challenge in teaching the Enlightenment is to midwifery, nursing, and home economics (e.g., soap convey some of the intellectual passion and excitement and candle making), allows us to recognize the that surrounded the publication of new books and contributions made by artisans and women (as spread of new ideas. As you present the various strands daughters and wives of artisans, artisans’ assistants, of intellectual exploration—on human psychology, and widows who inherited family business, etc.). theories of government, ideas about race and gender— Following the lead of Lisa Jardine, give some stress the practical implications. If implemented, what examples of the people who contributed the revolutions would transpire from these ideas? Who technological innovations that made possible the would benefit? grand syntheses and enduring axioms. It’s also important to stress the many You might end with further exploration of Enlightenments occurring around Europe. France women’s contributions to the rise of modern science. usually takes center stage, but Britain, Germany, and Use the example of Maria Sibylla Merian, a leading the United States were also centers of intellectual eighteenth-century entomologist and botanical ferment, each with a slightly different emphasis. In CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 313
Britain, for example, the Toleration Act of 1689 from the Habsburg dynasty—formerly the great insured freedom of worship and education to most champions of Rome—implementing religious freedom, British and Irish Protestants, and the lapsing of the dissolving monasteries, and abolishing serfdom. But Licensing Act in 1695 created the world’s freest you might also decide to build the lecture around a press, so British intellectuals did not feel compelled lesser-known despot, such as Sebastião José de to challenge church and state in the same way as Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal. Kenneth Voltaire and others. Instead, the British tended to Maxwell argues that Pombal’s “enlightenment,” while focus on virtue, public spirit, and compassion for far-reaching, was primarily a mechanism for enhancing one’s neighbor. Adam Smith’s Theory of Modern autocracy at the expense of individual liberty. His Sentiments (1759) was once as well-known as The reforms became an apparatus for crushing opposition, Wealth of Nations (1776). Within countries, as well, suppressing criticism, and furthering colonial economic plural manifestations of the Enlightenment could exploitation. occur. The towering figures we now remember— Leave students with some questions to ponder and Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau—were joined by point to what was coming in 1789: How does one hundreds of other aspiring writers and hacks. And create a free society? Could one force men to be free? these self-styled intellectuals gathered in coffee When Turgot entered the ministry of Louis XVI in shops and salons, read newspapers, wrote books and 1774, he prayed “Give me five years of despotism and pamphlets, and argued vehemently with each other France shall be free.” In retrospect, his words are (unless they were Scottish, in which case they chilling. Sources: Isabel de Madariaga, Catherine the nodded gruffly and cooperated). With luck, a few Great: A Short History (1990); G. MacDonagh, glimpses of Enlightenment discussion from both the Frederick the Great (2001); J. Gagliardo, Enlightened upper and under-side can excite and motivate your Despotism (1967); Kenneth Maxwell, Pombal: students. (See the Coffeehouse exercise under Paradox of the Enlightenment (1995). Cooperative Activities.) Sources: Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (1996); Roy Porter, COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (2001); Gertrude Himmelfarb, The AND DIFFICULT TOPICS Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and 1. Science and Technology: Make sure students American Enlightenments (2004). understand the differences between these concepts: science is the intellectual enterprise Lecture 3: “Enlightened Despotism?” of understanding the natural universe; This lecture shifts the gaze to eastern and southern technology is the means by which humans gain Europe and helps students understand Europe’s mastery over the natural processes for their own entrenched conservatism and the problems of productive or reproductive ends. The two are implementing Enlightenment ideas. Remind students distinct, yet as Lisa Jardine has emphasized, the of the potential for change: with Europe’s scientific revolution would not have happened burgeoning book culture, ideas freely flowed across without the technological instruments (clocks, the continent, and figures like Voltaire and Diderot telescopes, and microscopes) that helped were guests in the courts of Potsdam and St. scientists collect and interpret data. Artisans Petersburg. But emphasize that the philosophes’ and engineers (i.e., technicians) were as much vision of change was ultimately a conservative one: the architects of the scientific revolution as they did not necessarily promote democracy or astronomers and chemists. Robert Boyle needed revolution. Reforms would come from above. Robert Hooke’s microscope; Newton’s In addition to the “Greats”—Frederick of Prussia Principia was based on astronomical data and Catherine of Russia—the club of royal despots compiled at the Royal Observatory in might include Marquis Pombal in Portugal, Count Greenwich. Source: Lisa Jardine, Ingenious Aranda in Spain, and Joseph II of Austria. You might Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution focus the lecture around Catherine the Great, who (1999) perhaps deserves the greatest rehabilitation in the 2. The Limits of Reason: When assessing the popular mind, or Joseph II of Austria, who historians role of reason in Enlightenment thought, Tim have labeled the “star pupil” of the philosophes. The Blanning points out, “one has to tread irony of this situation is too great to ignore: a monarch carefully—as indeed the ‘philosophes’ did 314 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
themselves.” Well-aware of the limitations of subtitles. Set in the eighteenth-century court of reason, seventeenth-century philosophes liked Versailles on the eve of the Revolution, it portrays to poke fun of the great rationalist systems of the vicious wit and verbal warfare of nobility about seventeenth-century philosophers like Descartes to fall from power. Dangerous Liaisons (1998; 119 and Leibniz. “The Enlightenment was not an mins) follows a similar vein, without the subtitles. Age of Reason, but a Revolt against Older options include Dinner at Baron d’Holbach’s Rationalism,” Peter Gay wryly observes. (1981; 24 min.), an educational video made by Furthermore, in light of all the new religious Britain’s Open University dramatizing a dinner party developments of the age (Methodism, German in 1770 Paris with Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and Pietism, and the spread of Quakerism), the Frederick the Great (available from the British Film eighteenth-century might be dubbed an “Age of Institute). If you’re lucky and have a theater nearby, Religion” just as easily as an “Age of Reason.” perhaps Candide: The Musical might come to town. Sources: Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: For Russia’s Catherine the Great, The Scarlet The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Empress (1934; 110 min.) is a luminous and Europe, 1648–1815 (2007); Peter Gay, The memorable classic that draws on Catherine’s Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom (1996). memoirs but, alas, is a gross distortion of historical reality. As Carolly Erickson has observed, the film “reduces Catherine’s life—and an important era in IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES Russian history—to a dark fairy tale.”
Using Film and Television in the Class Discussion Starters Classroom 1. In what ways did political, religious and The Scientific Revolution is a difficult topic to teach social factors shape the work of scientists in the without moving visuals. What exactly were sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Ptolemy’s crystalline spheres? How did Kepler’s laws of planetary motion describe the universe? Students should be able to analyze how historical Fortunately, a number of good documentaries exist contexts shaped the development of scientific to provide students with the animation they have inquiry. To help them answer this question, you come to expect. The Day the Universe Changed (or might suggest a case study, like Copernicus or A Personal View by James Burke) is old but good. Galileo, and have students gather information on First broadcast in ten one-hour segments on the BBC their critics and supporters. Historians have argued in 1985, it was subsequently picked up by PBS and that Galileo, for example, fashioned his science to the Learning Channel. Try the episode “Infinitely the demands of the court and its systems of wealth, Reasonable: Science Revises the Heavens.” The power, and patronage. Sources: Mario Biagioli, Renaissance, a 1993 production by South Carolina’s Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the ETV has two engaging episodes about the scientific Culture of Absolutism (1993). revolution with commentary from Theodore Rabb. One of several films about Galileo is Galileo: On the 2. Why did the scientific revolution take place Shoulders of Giants (1998; 60 mins.), which follows in Europe, when many texts and technological his relationship with Cosimo de Medici. innovations came from Asia and the Middle For the Enlightenment, John Locke (2004; 21 East? mins.) is a quick and comprehensive introduction to his life and writings (available from Films for the There is no reason to think of “science” as uniquely Humanities and Social Sciences). The Discovery European and western. Scientific ideas flowed across Channel’s History through Literature: Industry and the Eurasian continent, especially between China and Enlightenment (1998; 26 mins.) explores the Persia, and Arab technologies and Greek texts importance of the press to the spread of discovered in Muslim libraries propelled new Enlightenment ideas. scientific inquiry in Europe. Nevertheless, it is in Feature films on Enlightenment themes include Europe that a constellation of scientific ideas Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule (1996; 102 mins.), which developed into a “revolution.” A thorough answer, of is well worth the struggle to get students to read course, requires knowledge of the non-western CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 315 world, but students should be able to articulate the 5. What practical differences did the political, economic and cultural factors that created philosophes make? fertile ground and supported scientific inquiry in Europe. Students themselves are likely to ask what reforms actually resulted from all the philosophical 3. Did the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason discussion. Well, quite a lot. Streamlined legal codes, help or hinder women’s entrance into the educational reforms, the end of witchcraft public sphere? persecutions, and increasing religious tolerance are a few examples. For a focus on shifting views of Reason and natural law—two hallmarks of torture in the 1760s and 1770s, see chapter two in Enlightenment thought—could work both to advance Lynn Hunt’s highly readable Inventing Human women’s interests and to keep them subordinate to Rights (2007). men. As David Hume condescendingly put it in his essay “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences”: “As nature has given man the superiority above woman, by endowing him with greater Historical Debates strength both of mind and body, it is his part to Protestants were the first to condemn the innovations alleviate that superiority, as much as possible, by the of Copernicus, but the Roman Catholic Church generosity of his behavior.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau gained an anti-science reputation at the trial of argued that natural law determined separate Galileo in 1633. Following the publication of his functions for men and women; others, like Catherine Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Macaulay, argued that woman is no more determined (1632), a book whose core purpose was to explain by nature than man, and that both sons and daughters ocean tides, Pope Urban VIII ordered an should be educated in rationality and social graces. investigation that sent Galileo before the Inquisition This is a long, involved debate, but students should for “vehement suspicion of heresy.” The star role, of recognize immediately the contemporary signifi- course, is Galileo, who by this time is old, sick, and cance of “nature versus nurture.” Sources: Carla nearly blind. Other parts might include the young Hesse, The Other Enlightenment (2001); Joan Grand Duke Ferdinand (Galileo’s protector), Urban Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of VIII, Christopher Schreiner (his Jesuit rival), the French Revolution (1998); K. Rogers, Feminism Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini of Siena (who in Eighteenth-Century England (1982); E. Fox- helped secure a lighter sentence) and perhaps the Genovese, “Women in the Enlightenment,” in R. ghost of Cardinal Bellarmine (who had issued an Bridenthal and C. Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible: affidavit to Galileo in 1616 permitting him to Women in European History (1987). consider Copernicus’s works hypothetically). In preparation, students must understand Galileo’s 4. How did the philosophes’ emphasis on reason Dialogue, as well as his past work and reputation, affect their views of religion? and they must be able to articulate the fears and There is no pat answer to how Enlightenment convictions of Roman Catholic representatives. The thinkers approached the issue of God, faith, the challenge will be to make historically sensitive afterlife, or organized religion. Not all philosophes arguments and resist anachronistic calls for, say, were Deists, nor were they atheists and agnostics. “freedom of speech!” The outcome, as students will Too often the views of David Hume or Thomas find, was disheartening. Scientific inquiry slowed in Paine are conflated with the whole. Impress upon Italy, Spain, and Habsburg lands, and it took two students that the dominant figures in the early hundred years for Galileo’s Dialogue to be taken off Enlightenment, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and the Vatican’s list of banned books. Only in 1992 did Christian Wolff, were both devout Christians. Later, the Catholic Curia declare Galileo’s views of Immanuel Kant found Christianity inadequate, but he astronomy correct. Sources: A short introduction can did not openly attack it. Perhaps the majority fell in be found in Stillman Drake, Galileo (2001); more in- the same category as Voltaire, who believed in a god, depth information can be found Dan Hofstadter, The but reviled organized Christianity. In addition to Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition diversity among individuals, pay attention to regional (2010); primary sources and many other helpful patterns: Hegel observed that the German version of materials are available at http://www.law.umkc Enlightenment was “on the side of theology.” .edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileo.html. An 316 CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW
alternate to this format would be to have students figure out why it was such a hot potato. Help read Bertolt Brecht’s classic play Life of Galileo. them reflect on the knowledge contained in the Of course, for the Enlightenment, many topics Encyclopédie: Who decided what was lend themselves well to debate: see other ideas under included? Are the definitions accurate and “Cooperative Learning Activities.” Two interesting complete? What purpose is served by such a trials to study side by side are that of Thomas collection? Sources: http://encyclopedie Aikenhead in 1697 and David Hume in 1757, both of .uchicago.edu/; University of Michigan which took place in Edinburgh and involved translation project (http://quod.lib.umich accusations of atheism. But the very different .edu/d/did/); Philip Blom, Enlightening the outcomes illustrate the impact of Enlightenment World: The Book that Changed the Course of ideas during the sixty intervening years: whereas History (2005). Aikenhead was hung, Hume was acquitted. 3. David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” (1772): While students can benefit from reading any number of philosophical treatises from this period, Using Primary Sources David Hume’s essay is lucid and thought- provoking, and the section “On Miracles” 1. Voltaire’s Candide: “We are heirs of Voltaire,” supplements well a discussion of eighteenth- observes Daniel Gordon in the Introduction to the century views of religion. Walk students Bedford edition of Candide. Who does not want through the implications of his argument that to see the world made into a better place? “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” Voltaire’s rollicking novel is a must-read for One might also assign portions of Thomas students. Chock full of allusions to the eighteenth- Paine, “Of the Religion of Deism Compare with century world, with sly insults and wry humor, the Christian Religion,” or Voltaire, “A Treatise Candide opens up conversations about human on Toleration” (1763). These primary sources suffering, the pursuit of happiness, and the limits are widely available in both complete and of human understanding. For guidance, find a excerpted form on the Web. good edited edition, and supplement with documents like Pope’s Essay on Man, excerpts from Leibniz, and Voltaire’s own “Poem on the Cooperative Learning Activities Lisbon Disaster,” so students can understand what Voltaire is satirizing. Sources: Daniel Gordon, 1. Reactions to the Lisbon Earthquake: The transl. and ed., Candide (1999), Colin C. Irvine, earthquake and tsunami that destroyed Lisbon on ed., Teaching the Novel across the Curriculum 1 November 1755 and killed more than a third of (2008). the city’s population sparked tremendous debate 2. Encyclopédie (1751–1772): With 17 volumes about why such disasters happen. Reactions to the of text and 11 volumes of plates, the disaster illustrate the range of eighteenth-century Encyclopédie is overwhelming, but a focused beliefs about the natural world and why “bad online search, or better yet, a perusal of a things happen.” Since the earthquake occurred on printed facsimile, can help students gain insight All Saints’ Day, reactionary priests fell back on into the Enlightenment ambition to “dare to religious explanations and blamed a sinful public. know.” While they might yawn at the prospect Empirically minded individuals like the Comte de of an early version of “Wikipedia,” students Buffon speculated on the natural causes and should understand how controversial its employed rudimentary scientific methods to find publication was: “the Encyclopédie was much an explanation. Poets and philosophers chimed in more than a book. It was a faction,” Jules as well. Voltaire penned his famous “Poem on the Michelet observed. Within a year of the first Disaster in Lisbon” (1756) in which he mocked two volumes’ publication, the Roman Catholic blind faith and philosophical optimism. Students Church had placed it on the Index of Prohibited can learn a great deal about the intellectual Books. Have students do some background upheavals of the time period by comparing the research on the editors/authors, Denis Diderot various responses and explanations, many of and Jean le Rond D’Alembert, and the which are available on the Web or in document Encyclopédie’s reception, so that they can collections. Have them think carefully about the CHAPTER 17 • TOWARD A NEW WORLDVIEW 317
epistemological frameworks involved. For each the students’ enthusiasm, you might encourage primary source, have them consider: What is the them to come in costume, bring hors d’oeuvres, or basis of knowledge? What is the nature of that stock their iPods with Joseph Haydn’s concertos knowledge? What methods were used to obtain and sonatas. (One teacher who uses this activity that knowledge? Source: Charles Brooks, recalled a student comment: “While the textbook Disaster at Lisbon: The Great Earthquake of talked about the people of the Enlightenment and 1755 (1994); Theodor Braun and John Radner, the French Revolution, I remember them much eds., The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755: more vividly because I partied with them.”) Representations and Reactions (2005); and the Sources: Dena Goodman, A Republic of Letters: Web site
end with the question: How does it compare it • Spot Map 17.2: The Pale of Settlement, 1791 to what they see today? The answers are often a The PowerPoint chapter outlines with embedded bit depressing. Source: Brian Cowan, The images and maps are also available in the online Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the instructor’s resource section of the book companion site British Coffeehouse (2005); Markman Ellis, at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestunderstanding. The Coffee-house: A Cultural History (2004). These maps and selected images are also available in JPEG format from the Make History section of the book companion site. Web Resources The Bedford Series in History and Culture 1. Copernicus (www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/ Volumes from the Bedford Series in History and ~history/Mathematicians/Copernicus.html) Culture can be packaged at a discount with 2. The Galileo Project (http://galileo.rice.edu/ Understanding Western Society: A Brief History. galileo.html) Relevant titles for this chapter include: 3. Galileo’s Trial (http://www.law.umkc.edu/ faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileo.html) • CANDIDE by Voltaire, Translated, Edited, and 4. Isaac Newton Resources (www.newton.cam with an Introduction by Daniel Gordon, .ac.uk/newton.html) University of Massachusetts, Amherst 5. John Locke (plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke) • The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with 6. The Enlightenment (www.wsu.edu:8080/ Documents, Margaret C. Jacob, University of ~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html) California, Los Angeles 7. The Scientific Revolution (web.clas.ufl.edu/ • ON LIBERTY by John Stuart Mill with Related users/rhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/ Documents, Edited with an Introduction by SCI-REV-Home) Alan S. Kahan. 8. ARTFL Encyclopédie (www.lib.uchicago.edu/ • NATHAN THE WISE by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing efts/ARTFL/projects/encyc) with Related Documents, Translated, Edited, 9. Louvre Museum: Virtual Tour (http://www and with an Introduction by Ronald Schechter, .louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en) College of William and Mary 10. Eighteenth-century Resources • Religious Transformations in the Early Modern (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/) World: A Brief History with Documents, Merry 11. Historians and Philosophers (http://www E. Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin– .scholiast.org/history/histphil.html) – extensive Milwaukee primary sources To view an updated list of series titles, visit bedfordstmartins.com/history/series. Additional Bedford/St. Martin’s Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/ Resources for Chapter 17 mckaywestunderstanding Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM The Online Study Guide helps students review The chapter-specific resources on this disc are useful material from the textbook as well as practice for presentation, handouts, and quizzing from within historical skills. Each chapter contains assessment lecture presentations. The disc includes a chapter quizzes, short answer and essay questions, and outline in PowerPoint format, multiple-choice interactive activities accompanied by page number questions in Word and PowerPoint format for use references to encourage further study. The following with the i>clicker classroom response system, as map, visual, and document activities, based on well as the following maps and images from the textbook activities and special features, are available textbook, in both PowerPoint and jpeg formats: in the Online Study Guide for this chapter as assignable quizzes: • Enlightenment Culture • Map 17.1: The Partition of Poland, • Visual Activity: Enlightenment Culture 1772–1795 • Map Activity: Map 17.1: The Partition of • Spot Map 17.1: The War of Austrian Poland, 1772–1795 Succession, 1740–1748