CHAPTER SIX

THE HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND THE ENLIGHTMENT

The Rooted History of Modern Science

Modern Science: Pythagorean theorem is an example of one of
the many ancient Greek contributions to modern science. It is the
equation for a right triangle: A² + B² = C². A and B are the lines
that meet at the right angle.
This theorem falls under the category of physical science.
During the beginning of the era of modern science, math was a
way to make sense of observations about nature using numerical
quantities.
Modern science is a period that started in the 15th century.
Its roots are the intellectual inspirations of Greek ideas about
nature. We can also add ancient Middle Eastern, ancient
Indian, and ancient Chinese ideas to this as well.
 Before 1500, scholars generally decided what was true
or false by referring to an ancient Greek or Roman
author or to the Bible.
 Few European scholars challenged the scientific ideas
of the ancient thinkers or the church by carefully
observing nature for themselves.
 The thinkers of the Enlightenment challenged old ideas
about power and authority. Such new ways of thinking
led to, among other things, the American Revolution.
 Between the 16th and 18th centuries, a series of
revolutions helped to lead in the modern era in Western
history. Revolutions in both thought and action forever
changed European and American society.
 The Scientific Revolution of the 16 th and 17th C changed
the way educated people looked at the world. It evolved
from the Renaissance’s stress on the importance of
individuals to understand the world around them, and was
the key factor that moved Europe from a worldview that
was primarily religious to one that was primarily secular.
 Although a more secular society was likely not their goal,
Luther’s and Calvin’s attacks against the authority of the
pope provided a powerful example of how to challenge
traditional authority.
 Their questioning attitudes produced an environment that
encouraged the inquiry necessary for science to flourish.
 Science in the middle Ages was designed to help a person
reach a better understanding of God and not the world.
 A medieval scientist would have found it inconceivable to
examine the universe outside the realm of religion.
 During the Renaissance from the 1300s until the early
1500s, science was still considered a branch of religion,
and scientific thought held that the earth was a stationary
object at the center of the universe.
 Beginning with Copernicus, however, who taught that the
earth revolved around the sun, Europeans began to reject
Aristotelian medieval scientific thought.
 Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton developed a new
concept of a universe based on natural laws, not a
mysterious God.
 The new scientific approach promoted critical thinking.
Nothing was to be accepted on faith. Belief in miracles and
superstition was replaced by reliance on reason and the
idea that rational thinking would uncover a plan governing
the universe.
 This critical analysis of everything in society from religion
to politics and the optimism that the human mind could
find the solution to everything was known as the
Enlightenment.
 The Geometrical concepts were heavily explored in ancient
Greece (the Pythagoren theorem being one example). Their
focus on geometrical patterns in nature contributed to a
better understanding of the math explaining the patterns.
 16th and 17th C intellectuals, writers, and philosophers were
optimistic that they could change society for the better.
 Writers, such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant, were
primarily interested in teaching people how to think
critically about everything, while philosophers, such as
Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith, and Diderot, were
not revolutionaries but reformers who criticized the existing
social, political, and economic structures in order to
improve them.
 They found their hope in Enlightened Despots, or
monarchs, the most important of whom were Frederick the
Great of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and Catherine the
Great of Russia, who would improve the lives of their
subjects and encourage the pursuit of knowledge.
 However, societal reform was not accomplished by these
despots, but came instead through the revolutionary forces
that were instrumental to the French Revolution at the end
of the eighteenth century.
 Ancient Greece was one of the few civilizations at the
time that practiced medicine based on analysis of the
human body and not superstitious values.
 They also explored the logical side of mathematics using
deductive reasoning, which is drawing a conclusion
based on multiple true statements or logical premises.
 This contributed to the evolution of the Scientific Method
which is a foundation of Modern Science.
 Galileo (who invented the telescope) is considered by
many to be the father of modern science due to his
contributions to the scientific method, but the precursor
to modern science is the formation of ideas about nature
and logic in ancient Greek, Middle Eastern, Indian, and
Chinese philosophies, but heavily on Greek
contributions.
 The History of Scientific Revolution

 The history of Scientific Revolution began when astronomers

questioned how the universe operates. By shattering long held
views, these astronomers opened a new world of discovery.
 To understand how the Scientific Revolution dramatically
altered the way society viewed the world and the role of man
in society; you must realize that the medieval worldview was
ruled by the ideas of the 3rd C B.C.E (Before Christian Era)
Greek philosopher, Aristotle, the 2nd C B.C.E. Egyptian
philosopher, Ptolemy, and theologians.
 Their ideas had been recovered during the Middle Ages as
Western Europe began to trade with the East. Medieval
theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, brought these
writings into harmony with Christian doctrines. The
philosophy of Aquinas was known as scholasticism
(traditional teaching and methods).
 The views of Aristotle and Ptolemy were shattered by
Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543). In his book On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres Copernicus
suggested that the sun was the center of the universe
and that the earth and planets revolved in circular
orbits.
 This Heliocentric Theory that the sun and not the
earth was the center of the universe contradicted
contemporary scientific thought and challenged the
traditional teachings of hundreds of years.
 Copernicus’ book had enormous scientific and
religious consequences. By characterizing the earth as
just another planet, he destroyed the impression that
the earthly world was different from the heavenly
world.
 Based on this Heliocentric theory (the sun centered
model) challenges geocentric theory (earth centered
model), Mathematics and observation support
heliocentric theory, Scientific method develops,
Scientists make discoveries in many fields.
 A new way of thinking about the world develops,
based on observation and a willingness to question
assumptions.
 Religious leaders understood the significance of
Copernicus’ findings all too well; of him, Luther is
reported to have said, The fool wants to turn the
world of astronomy upside down. Calvin, like
Luther, also condemned Copernicus.
 Copernicus’ ideas influenced others in the field
of science. A Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe
(1546–1601), set the stage for the study of
modern astronomy by building an observatory
and collecting data for over twenty years on
the location of the stars and planets.
 His greatest contribution was this collection of
data, yet his limited knowledge of
mathematics prevented Brahe from making
much sense out of the data.
 Distinguishing b/n Science and Superstition
 The idea that the human mind is capable of operating on
different levels in its effort to comprehend reality is as
old as philosophy itself.
 Twenty-four centuries ago Plato drew a distinction
between what he called opinion and knowledge.
 Opinion, he said, is a kind of awareness that is uncertain,
confined to the particular, inexact, and subject to change.
 Knowledge is certain, universal, exact, and eternally true.
 Every human being starts out in life by operating on the
level of opinion, and only through great struggle and
effort can he or she escape it and rise to the level of
knowledge.
 This struggle is called education, and it opens the eye of
the mind to realities that cannot even be imagined from
the standpoint of opinion.
 Today’s distinction between Science and
Superstition is a modern equivalent of Plato’s
distinction between knowledge and opinion.
Everyone recognizes that science has revealed
wonderful truths about the world of nature.
 It has put men on the moon, wiped out life
threatening diseases, and ushered in the computer
age. Also, almost everyone recognizes that
superstition is little better than foolishness. It leads
people to fear walking under ladders, breaking
mirrors, and spilling salt. Practically everyone agrees
that if some claim is grounded in science, then it is
probably worthy of belief, while if it is grounded in
superstition, then it should probably be ignored.
 Both Science and Superstition involve hypotheses, so the four criteria
for evaluating hypotheses are relevant to the distinction between
science and superstition:
 Adequacy
 Internal coherence
 External consistency and
 Fruitfulness.
 But the distinction between science and superstition also involves
psychological and volitional elements. It involves such factors as how
the observer’s subjective states influence how he sees the world, and
how his needs and desires play a role in the formation of his beliefs.
 Accordingly, to explore the distinction between science and
superstition, we must introduce criteria that include these
psychological and volitional elements.
 The criteria suggested here are evidentiary support, objectivity, and
integrity. The following account of evidentiary support encompasses
adequacy and fruitfulness, and the account of integrity encompasses
 The work of Isaac Newton

 The greatest figure of the Scientific Revolution was Sir Isaac

Newton (1642–1727), an Englishman. In his book Principia
Mathematical (1687), he integrated the ideas of Copernicus, Kepler,
and Galileo into one system of mathematical laws to explain the
orderly manner in which the planets revolved around the sun.
 The key feature of his thesis was the law of universal gravitation.
According to this law, everybody in the universe attracts every
other body in precise mathematical relationships.
 Newton’s law mathematically proved that the sun, moon, earth,
planets, and all other bodies moved in accordance with the same
basic force of gravitation.
 Such proof showed that the universe operated by rules that could be
explained through mathematics and that a religious interpretation
was not the sole means of comprehending the forces of nature.
 The Scientific Revolution also led to a better way of obtaining
knowledge. Two important philosophers were
I. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and
II. René Descartes (1596–1650).
 Both were responsible for key aspects in the improvement of
scientific methodology.
I. Francis Bacon
 was an English politician and writer, who advocated that
new knowledge had to be acquired through an inductive,
or experimental, reasoning process (using specific
examples to prove or draw a conclusion from a general
point) called Empiricism.
 F. Bacon rejected the medieval view of knowledge based
on tradition, and believed instead that it was necessary to
collect data, observe, and draw conclusions. This approach
is the foundation of the scientific method.
 II. René Descartes
 He was a French mathematician and philosopher.
Like Bacon, he scorned (undermined) the
traditional science and broke with the past by
writing the Discourse on the Method (1637) in
French rather than Latin, which had been the
intellectual language of the Middle Ages.
 Unlike Bacon, Descartes stressed deductive
reasoning. He believed that it was necessary to
doubt everything that could be doubted. His
famous quote “Cogito ergo sum” (I think
therefore I am) proved his belief in his own
existence and nothing else.
 He believed that, as in geometry, it is
necessary to use deductive reasoning and logic
to determine scientific laws governing things.
 Descartes’ view of the world (now called
Cartesian Dualism) reduced natural law to
matter and the mind, or the physical and the
spiritual.
 Bacon’s inductive experimentalism and
Descartes’ deductive, mathematical, and
logical thinking combined into the scientific
method, which began taking hold of society in
the late seventeenth century.
 Consequences of scientific revolution

 A scientific community emerged whose primary goal

was the expansion of knowledge.
 Learned societies like the French Academy of Sciences and
the Royal Society of London were founded to promote the
growth of scientific ideas among different countries.
 A modern scientific method arose that was both
theoretical and experimental, and its practitioners
refused to base their conclusions on traditional and
established sources or ancient texts.
 The belief that human reason was the vehicle that would
unlock the secrets of the universe ended the dominance of
religion on society.
 The Age of Reason in the 18 thC, with its faith in the rational
and sKeptical mind, would provide the background for the
Enlightenment.
 Modern scientific methods are based on the ideas
of Bacon and Descartes. Scientists have shown
that observation and experimentation, together
with general laws that can be expressed
mathematically, can lead people to a better
understanding of the natural world.
 There was little connection, however, between
science and technology. The Scientific Revolution
had little effect on daily life before the nineteenth
century. The revolution in science in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries was primarily an
intellectual one.
 Generally the revolutionary history in scientific
thinking that Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo began
eventually developed into a new approach to science
called the scientific method.
 The scientific method is a logical procedure for
gathering and testing ideas. It begins with a problem
or question arising from an observation. Scientists
next form a hypothesis, or unproved assumption.
 The hypothesis is then tested in an experiment or on
the basis of data. In the final step, scientists analyze
and interpret their data to reach a new conclusion.
 That conclusion either confirms or disproves the
hypothesis.
 The History of Enlightenment

 In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, and the new

ways of thinking it prompted (encouraged), scholars
and philosophers began to re-evaluate old notions
about other aspects of society.
 They sought new insight into the underlying beliefs
regarding government, religion, economics, and
education.
 Their efforts spurred the Enlightenment, a new
intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought
and the power of individuals to solve problems.
 Known also as the Age of Reason, the movement
reached its height in the mid 1700s and brought great
change to many aspects of Western civilization.
 The history of Scientific Revolution was the
single most important event that fostered the
creation of a new intellectual movement in the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
called the Enlightenment.
 It is the Age of Reason a time period defining
the generation that came of age between the
publication of Newton’s ideas in 1687 and the
death of Louis XIV in 1715.
 The Enlightenment’s core tenet was that natural
law could be used to examine and understand all
aspects of society.
 The Enlightenment’s leaders believed that by using
scientific methods, they could explain the laws of
society and human nature.
 It was an optimistic creed armed with the proper
methods of discovering the laws of human nature,
enlightened thinkers were convinced they could
solve all problems.
 They believed it was possible to create a better
society and people and that progress was inevitable.
 They were free from the restraints of religion and
focused instead on improving economic and social
conditions. Consequently, the movement was
profoundly secular.
 Some important enlightened thinkers

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

 An English writer, Hobbes was influenced by the
experimental attitude toward nature and decided to apply
it to politics.
 Writing at the time of the English Civil War, he was
forced to flee London to Paris in 1648 because he feared
for his life.
 In 1651 he wrote Leviathan, a title he chose after the sea
monster from the Book of Job.
 He believed that humans in their original state of nature
were unhappy.
 In the state of nature, Hobbes asserted that man was
quarrelsome, turbulent, and forever locked in a war
against all.
 Hobbes’s ideas never won great popularity. In England,
Royal Absolutism, a cause he supported, never gained
acceptance.
 He was overshadowed by his contemporary John Locke.
John Locke (1632–1704)
 Like Hobbes, Locke was interested in the world of science.
 His book, Two Treatises of Government (1690), was
written as a philosophical justification for the Glorious
Revolution, which refers to the bloodless overthrow of
James II in 1689 and the end of absolutism in England
 This work translated his belief in natural law into a theory
of government that became known as The Social
Contract.
 He argued that man is born basically good and has certain
natural rights of life, liberty, and property.
 To protect these natural rights, people enter into
a social contract to create a government with
limited powers.
 He believed that if a government did not protect
these rights or exceeded its authority, the people
have a right to revolt, if necessary.
 Locke’s ideas of consent of the governed, a
social contract, and the right of revolution
influenced the writing of the United States’
Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution of the United States.
 Locke’s ideas also laid the foundation for the
criticisms of absolute government in France.
How the French Enlightenment reached highest development

Because:
1. French was the international language of the educated
class and French was still Europeans wealthiest, most
populous country and was the cultural center of Europe.
2. Although critical books were often banned by the
French censors and their authors jailed or exiled, the
writers were not tortured or executed for their
statements.
3. French philosophers made it their goal to reach a large
audience of elites.
 Thus, the French intellectuals battled powerful forces but
did not face the overwhelming difficulties of writers in
Eastern or Central Europe.
 Some important French Philosophers

1. Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)

 He was a French aristocrat who wanted to limit royal
absolutism.
 In his book, The Spirit of Laws (1748), he urged that
power be separated among three branches of
government:
 executive,
 legislative, and
 judicial.
 Each branch would check the other branches, thus
preventing despotism and preserving freedom.
 His theory of the separation of powers greatly
influenced the framers of the United States
 2. Voltaire (1694–1778)
 Voltaire Combats Intolerance Probably the most brilliant and
influential of the philosophes was François Marie Arouet. Using
the pen name Voltaire, he published more than 70 books of
political essays, philosophy, and drama.
 He is considered to be the greatest of all the enlightened
philosophes.
 Educated by Jesuits, he challenged the authority of the Catholic
Church.
 Although he believed in God, his God was a distant deistic God a
clockmaker who built an orderly universe and then let it operate
under the laws of science.
 Voltaire hated religious intolerance, urged religious freedom, and
thought that religion crushed the human spirit.
 The philosophes believed that people could apply reason to all
aspects of life, just as Isaac Newton had applied reason to science.
Five concepts formed the core of their beliefs:
1. Reason Enlightened thinkers believed truth could
be discovered through reason or logical thinking.
2. Nature The philosophes believed that what was
natural was also good and reasonable.
3. Happiness The philosophes rejected the medieval
notion that people should find joy in the hereafter
and urged people to seek well-being on earth.
4. Progress The philosophes stressed that society and
humankind could improve.
5. Liberty The philosophes called for the liberties that
the English people had won in their Glorious
Revolution and Bill of Rights.
 Voltaire denounced organized religion because
it exploited people’s ignorance and
superstitions.
 Deism was intended to construct a more
natural religion based on reason and natural
law.
Deism: belief in the existence of God on the
evidence of reason and nature only. With rejection
of supernatural revelation (theism)
 His most famous anti-religious statement was
“crush the horrible thing”.
 3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
 Like other Enlightened writers, Rousseau was
committed to individual freedom. However, he attacked
rationalism and civilization, considering them to be
destroying rather than liberating man.
 Instead, spontaneous feeling was to replace and
complement the coldness of intellectualism.
 According to Rousseau, man was basically born good
and needed protecting from the corrupting influences of
civilization.
 These ideas would later greatly influence the Romantic
Movement of the nineteenth century, which rebelled
against the culture of the Enlightenment.
 4. Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
 Denis Diderot was a French author and philosopher of the
Enlightenment era.
 He is best known for his writing and publishing of the
Encyclopedia, the world's first book (installed in 28 total
volumes) to compile all general human knowledge into one easily
accessible and understandable location.
His contribution to the Enlightenment
 Diderot's largest contribution to the Enlightenment era was by far
his publication of "Encyclopaedia or a Systematic Dictionary of
the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts."
 In this largely successful work, Diderot explored all human
knowledge and provided readers with a deep analysis of nearly
all aspects of human existence.
 Although controversial at first because it detailed specific
Enlightenment ideas (that challenged common beliefs such as
religion), Diderot's Encyclopedia would serve as a precursor to
 The importance of Diderot's encyclopaedia
 Diderot's Encyclopedia is important because it was the first
successful publication to include an analysis of all knowledge
in one place.
 The Encyclopedia contained many charts, diagrams, and
images, as well as a plethora of research to fully analyze
information in a way that could be understood by literate
people of the time.
 The publication also offered new Enlightenment perspectives
on accepted facts.
 Physiocrats
 The other Enlightened are the physiocrats
 Are economic thinkers in 18thC France who developed the
first complete system of economics.
 Like the philosophes, the physiocrats looked for natural
laws to define a rational economic system.
 However, the physiocrats, unlike the philosophes, were
close to the government as advisors. Some famous
physiocrats include the following:
 François Quesnay (1694–1774) He supported a hands-off,
or laissez-faire, approach to the government’s involvement
in the economy
 Adam Smith (1727–1790) He outlined the nucleus of the
economic system that came to be known as capitalism. The
father of economics because of his theories of capitalism,
 Women and the Enlightenment History

 During 17th & 18thC Enlightenment in America, Great

Britain, and across Europe prompted discourse about
gender equality, as women saw themselves as equally
bestowed by God with certain natural, inalienable
rights.
 During the era, women themselves became influential
thinkers and contributors, voicing their own opinions
on women’s intellect, emotion, and roles in history and
future societies during and after the Revolutionary era,
when new governments failed to extend full rights and
civic participation to women.
 They could also participate publicly in philosophical
conversations in a variety of venues, including social
clubs, salons and coffeehouses.
 Women in Great Britain could gain membership in women-only debate
societies such as La Belle Assemblee, and were free to speak their mind on
women’s issues of the day including gender equality, marriage, and even
politics.
 Men did not always speak favourably about these debate societies nor the
discourse they perpetuated.
 An important way that women could participate in the Enlightenment was
through print culture. At the turn of the 18 thC, more women had access to
books and pamphlets, and more women themselves committed their ideas
to print.
 Born in Great Britain in 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft is perhaps the best
known of these Enlightenment era female authors. Her 1792 work A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman; with Strictures on Political and Moral
Subjects has earned her the moniker of the “first feminist,” though she
did not explicitly argue the equality of genders.
 In her work, Wollstonecraft primarily argued for the equal education of
girls and women, which was an unpopular opinion at the time where the
majority advocated for women to receive a limited, domestic-based
education only.
 French women helped spread the Enlightenment through
their salons where the philosophers mixed with the most
brilliant thinkers of Europe.
 Women helped to promote the careers of the philosophers.
 Thus, many wealthy aristocratic ladies began to host
small gatherings in their Paris townhouses. Women like
 Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777) and
 Claudine Tencin (1682–1749) gave the philosophers access to
useful social and political contacts.
 Madame Geoffrin, who hosted two dinners each week, became
so well known that she regularly corresponded with the king of
Sweden and
 Catherine the Great of Russia.
 The women of the Enlightenment were also able to help
the philosophers avoid trouble with authorities and even
secured pensions for some of them.
 During the American Revolution, Judith Sargent Murray wrote
On the Equality of the Sexes. Not published until 1790, Murray
penned now familiar arguments that women’s capacity for reason
and intellect was the same as men’s, but that traditional gender
roles and societal norms disguised this fact.
 Though the Enlightenment began in the 17th century, the women
who carried its ideals forward into the late 18th and early 19th
centuries helped the era finally move forward one of its principles
equality.
 In her book Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in
Revolutionary America, Linda Kerber notes that in its earliest
years Enlightenment philosophers “only occasionally contemplated
the role of women in civic culture...that the world of women is
separate from the empire of men.” By harnessing both
Enlightenment and Revolutionary principles of inalienable rights,
civics, reason, and equality, women in the Enlightenment moved
the dial ever forward towards education, suffrage, and equal rights.
 In Great Britain in 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft
asserted that if children are to be educated to
understand the true principle of patriotism, their
mother must be a patriot…but the education and
situation of a woman at present shuts her out.
 Her arguments for a revolution in female education
found supporters in the United States, where young
women’s education became ideologically linked to
the success of the American republic.
 If young women championed national origin stories
and revered the values of republicanism and
democracy, she would pass those values onto her
own children who would, in turn, become model
citizens of the republic.
 Thank you
THANK YOU
The End

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