Intellectual Revolution Hand-Out
Intellectual Revolution Hand-Out
- Profound intellectual awakening which changed man’s concept of the universe and his role
in human affairs
- Began as a scientific revolution in the middle of the 16 th century and climaxed into the
enlightenment of the 18th century
- Its emergence was caused by various factors namely the discovery of speech, invention of
writing, invention of paper, invention of printing, and The Renaissance.
I. Scientific Revolution
E. Math
- Tartaglia solved the cubic equation.
- Napier invented logarithms which simplified multiplication and division of large numbers.
- Descartes assigned the symbols in algebra and also devised analytic geometry.
F. Medicine
- Paracelsus used chemicals for medicinal purposes.
- Vesalius described the human body based on the anatomy of the ape, dog, and pig. He also
studied the human cadaver. With these, he’s known as the Father of Modern Anatomy.
- Other important advances include William Harvey’s elucidation of blood circulation,
Ambroise Pare’s development of surgery as a science, Marcello Malpighi discovery of the
capillaries (allows blood flow from an artery to a vein blood flow), and Giovanni Morgagni’s
use of autopsies. Morgagni is referred to as the Father of Pathology.
G. Biological Sciences
- Carolus Linnaeus, a botanist, and George Louis de Buffon, a zoologist, made the first
classification of animals. Both of them assigned scientific names to animal species.
H. Chemistry:
- Boyle discovered Boyle’s law which states that “the volume of gas is inversely proportional
with its pressure”.
- Antoine Lavoisier, referred as the “Father of Modern Chemistry”, discovered that water is
composed of Hydrogen and Oxygen and the 23 basic elements in nature. He also formulated
the law of conservation of matter.
- Various elements and compounds were also discovered during this period. Joseph Black
discovered carbonic acid; Cavendish discovered Hydrogen; and Father Joseph Priestly
discovered oxygen
I. Geography
- Mercator represented the world on a flat map and made a terrestrial globe which is superior
to other globes.
II. Enlightenment
- Impetus for political change in the 18 th century
- Involved a movement of intellectuals, known as Philosophes or Aufklarung (in German), who
were greatly impressed with the accomplishments of the Scientific Revolution
- These intellectuals advocated reason in which the scientific method is used to facilitate the
understanding of all life. The scientific method was applied to humanities and philosophy.
Intellectuals of the Enlightenment were convinced that by following newton’s reasoning,
they could discover the natural laws that governed politics, economics, justice, and religion.
- The rational, scientific way of thinking in this period brought freedom from shackles of
religion.
A. John Locke
- Theory of Knowledge
- Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
o Denies the existence of innate ideas
o Every person was born with a tabula rasa, a blank mind
o People were molded by their senses from their surrounding world
o Changing environment and subjecting people to proper influences, they could be
changed and society can be created
o Advocated the empirical perspective but did not rule out the fact that knowledge
was limited and must be reinforced by faith
o Argument for empiricism served as the basis for the Enlightenment doctrine
Reason is the most significant and positive capacity of a human.
Reason allows humans to free themselves from primitive, superstitious, and
dogmatic beliefs that keep humans ignorant and irrational.
Reason allows humans to learn and to think correctly
Reason can lead humans to perfection and to a heavenly existence on Earth.
Human belief should not base itself on human traditions or authority.
Reason, endowed to humans by a creator, makes all equal and deserving of
liberty and justice.
Humans should seek to impart and/or gain knowledge, not feelings or
emotions.
B. Thomas Hobbes
– stated that the government provides a social contract to restrain base human nature
C. Voltaire
- Wrote Letter on the English which praises the freedom of thought that prevailed in England
- Liberal writings and satires on the Church and the State
- Believed in God but not in miracles, dogma, and clergy
- Code of morality based on reason
- Famous for the line “I do not approve all of your opinions, but I will fight to the death for
your right to express them”
- Wrote The Ignorant philosopher (straight forward treatise on fanaticism and the executions
by the church) and the novel Candide (religious intolerance)
- God or the Creator made the laws that put the universe in order, and the evil of the world
resulted from man straying from his understanding of natural law. Mankind’s job to
rediscover those laws using reason and bring order back into the world.
- Prayer and miracles violated the natural order
E. Denis Diderot
- published the Encyclopedia or Classical dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades in Paris,
consisting of 28 volumes and was completed in 21 years
o Making was assisted by jean d’ Alembert, Baron Holbach, and Claude Helvetius
o A Compendium of the scientific, historical, and cultural knowledge of the
enlightenment, epitomizing the rational, critical, and scientific spirit of the age. It
popularized the ideas of the Enlightenment
o Change the general way of thinking and reflected the Philosophes crusade against
the old French society
o Contributors attacked religious intolerance and advocated a program for social,
legal, and political improvements
- Condemned Christianity as fanatical and unreasonable (Christianity as the worst, most
absurd, and the most atrocious in its dogma”
F. Francis Bacon
- Popularized the Inductive or experimental method
o Observation, accumulation of data, experimentation, drawing conclusions, re-
experiment for verification
-
G. Rene Descartes
- Father of Modern Rationalism (equate identity with mind and reason rather than with the
whole organism)
- Starting point of his philosophical system was to doubt everything
- Discourse on Method (1637)
o What is beyond doubt is ones own existence.
o “I think therefore I am” or “Cogito ergo sum”
o Asserted that he would accept only things that his reason said were true
- Cartesian Dualism (absolute dualism between mind and matter)
o The mind cannot be doubted but the body and material world can be doubted
o Allowed scientists to view matter as dead or inert, as something that was totally
separate from themselves and could be investigated independently by reason
o Confirm things by observation
o Material world – inductive reasoning
i. Enlightened despotism
- An enlightened monarch would advance the society of his state by fostering education,
economic freedom, and social justice. In general the ruler used his power to promote
the good of the people because he/she knew best
o Frederick the Great
Prussia a major European power (merged into Germany)
Influenced by Voltaire’s ideologies on domestic reforms, improved
education, codified laws, industry and immigration, religious tolerance
o Catherine the Great
Russian ruler
instituted enlightened policies in Russia
o Maria Theresa and Joseph II
Austria
Theresa promoted free trade and limited the power of the nobility
Joseph II provided freedom of the press and dismantled the remnants of
serfdom
- The problem with enlightened despotism is that it was, in general, all wrong. An
absolute ruler who controlled people’s freedom wasn’t what many thinkers envisioned
the Enlightenment to be about. The people wanted more control over their freedoms
and they were not going to take no for an answer; no matter how enlightened the ruler
claimed to be.
“The French revolution was a key factor in the emergence of a new world event. The violent upheaval and
reordering of society associated with the French revolution changed the old Europe which was largely
agrarian, dominated by kings and grounded in privileges for nobles, clergy, towns, and provinces, and
content with the pattern during medieval times. As the 18th century drew to a close, a new intellectual
ethos based on rationalism and secularism emerged. The French Revolution established a new order based
on individual rights, representative institutions, and a concept of loyalty to the nation rather than to the
It must be taken note of that the Intellectual Revolution in this century somewhat happened
simultaneously with the Industrial Revolution.
5. Ausgust Comte
o “Father of Sociology”
o -positivism: stages of intellectual activity
6. Charles Darwin
o Theory of Evolution
Survival of the fittest
Religious impact: Darwin’s Theory refuted literal interpretation of the
Bible; crisis in some churches
Darwin was supported by Thomas Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog”)
7. Herbert Spencer
o “Social Darwinism”: application of Darwin’s laws to human society
o “Survival of the fittest” here tells why certain people were successful and others
were not
o His ideas were popular in the upper middle class
8. Sigmund Freud
o Believed that humans were highly irrational creatures
o Emphasized that sexuality was a key driving force in a person’s psychological
make-up
B. New Physics
1. Marie Curie and Pierre Cure
o discovered radium: a radioactive element
2. Ernest Rutherford
o structure of the atom
3. Max Planck
o Quantum Theory: subatomic energy is emitted in uneven little spurts called
“quanta”, not in a steady stream, as previously thought
o Implication: Laws governing the universe now seemed unpredictable
4. Albert Einstein
o Theory of Relativity: time and space are relative to the viewpoint of the
observer and only the speed of light is constant for all frames of reference in the
universe
o Implication: challenged Newtonian physics
D. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831)
o German Christian, influenced Karl Marx
o He saw the history of as the unfolding of God’s purpose in the World and the state
as God’s instrument for moving the world
a. The state is: “the Divine idea as it exists on Earth.”... “the way of God in the
World.”
b. “All the worth which the human being possesses... all spiritual reality.. he
possesses only through the state.” The individual only has moral value
because he is part of the state.
c. He believed that human moral purpose only can be discovered in and
through a community, and that individual progress without collective
progress is illusory.
d. Thus, his view of society is not atomistic. “Freedom... inner spiritual
realization is achieved trough individual conformity w/in an ethical society,
and an ethical society is an outward manifestation of a free and rational,
moral human being.
e. He rejects social revolution: there is no revolution in nature
f. Opposes the idea of the constitution as an instrument of the government
-constitution “should not be regarded as something made, even though it
has come to being in time. It must be treated rather as something simply
existent in and by itself, as divine therefore, and constant, and so exalted
above the sphere of things that are made.”
g. “Philosophy of History”: He defined the state here as the “realization of
freedom.”
III. Realism: depiction of life in a factual manner in literature and the arts
A. Literature
1. Honore de Balzac:
-“The Human Comedy”: urban society as amoral and brutal, struggle for wealth and
power
2. Gustave Flaubert
-“Madame Bovary”: portrays the provincial middle class as petty, smug and
hypocritical
3. Emile Zola: “The giant of realist literature”
-portrayed the animalistic view of working class life
-“Germinal”: his work about the hard life f the young miners in France
4. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
-studied how people are shaped by their social class and their inner strivings,
conflicts and moral choices
5. Thomas Hardy
-“Tess of the d’Urbervilles”: about a woman who was ostracized for having pre-
marital sex
6. Leo Tolstoy: “Greatest Russian Realist”
-“War and Peace”: his masterpiece, about the Russian society during the Napoleonic
Wars
-Fatalistic view of human society
B. Arts
“Art for Art’s Sake”
-Artists didn’t rely on patrons to fund their works
-They had artistic freedom and made money by selling their paintings
-Includes the Romantic Period
-France was the center of art in the world
-Ordinary people became the subject of many paintings.
8. Gustave Courbet
-coined the term “realism:
-“The Stone Breakers”
9. Francois Millet
-“The Gleaners”
10. Honore Daumire
-“Third Class Carriage”
11. Edgar Degas
-“Laundry Girls Ironing”
12. Edouard Manet
-bridged realist and impressionist methods
-considered the first “modernist” painter
-“Luncheon on the Grass”
-“Olympia”
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