Western Civilizations Chapter 16-18 PDF

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Maria Torti Western Civilizations

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Chapter 16 (The New Science of the Seventeenth Century) Science entails  A body of knowledge  A method/system of inquiry  Community and their work.

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Body of knowledge:  The scientific revolution saw the emergence and confirmation of the earth and humans from the center of the universe.

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Method of inquiry:  For understanding the natural world. Emphasized the role of observation, experiment, and the testing of hypothesis.

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Community and their work  People referred to the study of matter, motion, optics, or the circulation of blood variously as national philosophy, experimental, philosophy, medicine, and science.

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Educated Women claimed the right to participate in scientific debate however their efforts were met with opposition and indifference. The scientific revolution marks one of the most decisive breaks between the Middle Ages and the modern world. It was rooted in earlier developments that they had seen since the 12th C. FRANCIS BACON  “ Printing, firearms, and the compass, no empire, sect or star appears to have than these three mechanical discoveries”.

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Lens Grinder  Laid the groundwork for the 17th C. inventions of the telescope and the microscope, creating reading glasses along the way.  Light: a powerful symbol of divine illumination encouraged the study of optics.

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Astrologers  Active in the later middle ages  Charting the heavens in the firm belief that the stars controlled the fates of human beings.

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Neoplatonists  Argued that nature was a book written by its creator to reveal the ways of God to humanity.  Convinced that God’s perfection must be reflected in nature.  Mathematics, particularly Geometry, was important.

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Humanists  Revered the authority of the ancients.  Recovering, translating and understanding classical texts.

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Humanist recovery by Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, had proposed that the natural world operates on the basis of mechanical forces as a great machine and that these forces could be described mathematically, profoundly impressed important late-16th and 17th C, including GALILEO.

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Leonardo Da Vinci  Renaissance artist, as an accomplished craftsman, investigated the laws of perspective and optics, and alongside the intellectuals, they worked out the geometric methods for supporting the weight of enormous architectural domes, they studied the human body

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Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E) and Ptolemy of Alexandria ( 100-178 C.E)  Ptolemy’s version of an earth-centered universe contradicted an earlier proposal by Aristarchus of Samos ( 310-230)- had deducted that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun.  Ptolemy: the heavens orbited the earth in a carefully organized hierarchy of spheres. The sun, moon, stars, and planets were formed of an unchanging quintessence or ether. The earth, by contrast, was composed of 4 elements (earth, water, fire, and air). Heaviest elements (earth and water) near the center, and the lighter ones farther out.  The heavens: first the planets, then the stars. Traced perfect circular paths around a stationary earth.  Aristotelian physics: objects could move only if acted on by an external force and it fit with a belief that each fundamental element of the universe had a natural place.

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Nicolaus Copernicus  Polish church official and astronomer  Trained in astronomy, canon law, and medicine.  He read greek and very well versed in ancient philosophy.  He was a devout Catholic.  Opposed to Ptolemy: “based on mathematical calculations, the earth was neither stationary nor at the center of the planetary system; the earth rotated on its axis and orbited with the other planets around the sun”.  Reordering the Ptolemaic system simplified the geometry of astronomy and made the orbits of the planets comprehensible.  He was a conservative thinker.  “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, De Revolutionibus” in 1543.  For years after 1543, Copernicus’s ideas were taken in just the sense that as a useful but not realistic mathematical hypothesis.  Copernicanism: represented the first “serious and systematic” challenge to the Ptolemaic conception of the universe.

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Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)  Tycho- Danish nobility and pursued Astronomy. Sought to correct the contradictions in traditional astronomy.  UNLIKE Copernicus, Tycho preferred observation and believed a careful study of the heavens would unlock the secrets of the universe.  “A nova”- came into sight by Tycho in 1572. Stayed on an island to watch the stars and chart them.

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Tycho was NOT a Copernican: he (Tycho) suggested that the planets orbited the sun and the whole system then orbited a stationary early. Tycho became a court astronomer in Prague in the 1590s. Worked with Johannes Kepler, who was more interested in Copernicus’s work

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Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)  Believed that everything in creation, from human souls to the orbits of the planets had been created according to Mathematical laws.  Understand those laws would this allow humans to share God’s wisdom and penetrate the inner secrets of the universe.  Mathematics was God’s language.  After Tycho’s death, Kepler inherited his position in Prague.  Calculated that planets travel in elliptical orbits around the sun.  His First Law.  Second Law: The speed of the planets varied with their distance from the sun. He also argued that magnetic forces between the sun and the planets kept the planets in orbital motion, an insight that paved the way for NEWTON’s law of universal gravitation formulated nearly 80 years later.  He broke down the distinction between the heavens and the earth that had been at the heart of Aristotelian physics.

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Galileo’s View on Kepler  “I adopted the teachings of Copernicus many years ago, and his point of view enables me to explain many phenomena of nature which certainly remain inexplicable according to the more current hypothesis.”  At Padua, Galileo couldn’t teach what he believed; Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian cosmology were the established curriculum.  Kepler’s work was abstruse and bafflingly mathematical.  When he invented his own Telescope, taking the idea from the reports in Holland in 1609, he studied the moon and his observations suggested that celestial bodies resembled the earth, a view at odds with the conception of the heavens as an unchanging sphere of heavenly perfection, inherently and necessarily different from the earth.  “The Starry Messenger” (1610)- and then “The Letters on Sunspots (1613). A work that declared his Copernicanism openly.  Worked with Medici Family. Chief Mathematician to Cosimo de Medici- the grand duke of Tuscany.  He was able to demonstrate the Copernicus heliocentric (sun-centered) model of the planetary system.  An ambitious and outspoken Dominican monk denounced Galileo's ideas as dangerous deviations from biblical teachings.  Disturbed by the murmurings against Copernicanism, Galileo penned a series of letters to defend himself, arguing that one could be a sincere Copernican and sincere Catholid.  Cardinal Barnius “ the purpose of the bible was to teach us how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes.”  1616, the Church moved against Galileo and the Inquisition ruled that Copernicanism was “foolish and absurd in philosophy and formally heretical”. And told Galileo to not teach Copernicanism.  Galileo felt the door to Copernicanism open again when his Florentine friend and admirer Maffeo Barberini was elected pope as Urban VIII in 1623

Galileo drafted “A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632- a hypothetical debate between supporters of the old Ptolemaic system represented by a character he named “Simplicio” (Simpleton) on the one hand, and proponents of the new astronomy on the other.  Pope Urban refused to help Galileo when he stood for trail 1633.  Placed under house arrest… story: “ he left the court for house arrest he stamped his foot and muttered definitely, looking down at the earth: “still it moves”.  He proposed an early version of the theory of inertia which held that an object’s motion stays the same until an outside force changes it. He calculated that objects of different weights fall at almost the same speed and with a uniform acceleration.  He argued that the motion of objects follows regular mathematical laws. *** a direct contradiction of Aristotelian principles and an important step toward a coherent physics-based on a sun-centered model of the universe. “The Two Sciences” (1638) was smuggled out of Italy and published in Protestant Holland. Galileo believed that Copernicanism and natural philosophy in general need not subvert theological truths, religious beliefs, or the authority of the Church. Galileo’s trial, silenced Copernican voices in southern Europe and the Church’s leadership retreated into conservative reaction. Galileo’s teachings were only in Northwest Europe 

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Sir Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes  Setting out the methods or rules that should govern modern science  “Knowledge is power”  Bacon trained as a lawyer, served in Parliament and briefly as lord chancellor to James 1 of English.  Believed that the authority of the ancients should not constrain the ambition of modern thinkers.  To pursue knowledge did not mean to think abstractly and leap to conclusions. It meant observing, experimenting, confirming ideas, or demonstrating points.  We associate Bacon with the gradual separation of scientific investigation from the philosophical argument.  Bacon advocated an “INDUCTIVE” approach to knowledge: amassing evidence from specific observation to draw general conclusions.  Just like Tycho had done, the inductive reasoning method required accumulating data and then after careful review and experiment drawing appropriate conclusions.

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Rene Decartes  French.  “Discourse on Method” (1637), for which he is best known for. It starts with a preface of three essays on optics, geometry, and meteorology.  First response: “ never to receive anything as a truth which he did not clearly know to be such”. “Je pense, donc je suis” (French)-- “Cogito ergo sum” (Latin)-“ I think therefore I am”( English)  Doubt was used to defeat skepticism. Certainty was the centerpiece of the philosophy he bequeathed to his followers.  Unlike Bacon, Descartes used DEDUCTIVE reasoning- proceeding logically from one certainty to another “so long as we avoid accepting as true what is not so”

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Mechanical philosophy proposed to consider nature as a machine. It rejected the traditional Aristotelian distinction between the works of humans and those of nature and the view of nature as God’s creation.

Most of England’s natural philosophers were Baconian and most of their colleagues in France, Holland and elsewhere in northern Europe were Cartesians. Baconian: concentrated on performing experiments in many different fields producing results that could then be debated and discussed. Cartesians: turned towards Mathematics and logic. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) worked on probability theory and invented the calculating machine before applying his intellectual skills to theology. Christian Huygens ( 1629-1695)  Cartesian thinking from holland, combined mathematics with experiments to understand problems of impact and orbital motion

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Baruch Spinoza ( 1632-1677)  Applied geometry to ethics and believed he had gone beyond Descartes by providing that the universe was composed of a single substance that was both God and nature.

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Robert Boyle (1627-1691), William Harvey ( 1578-1657), Robert Hooke (1635-1703) Physician Willaim Harvey  Observed that blood circulated through the arteries, heart, and veins. He dissected living animals (vivisection) and experiment on himself.

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Chemist Robert Boyle  Boyle’s law- At a constant temperature, the volume of a gas decreases in proportion to the pressure placed on it.

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Inventor and Experimenter Robert Hooke  Introduced the microscope to the experimenter's tool kit. Used it to study the cellular structure of plants. Revealed an unexpected dimension of material phenomena.

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The Royal Society of London was created by King Charles II in 1662 for the “Improvement of natural knowledge”.  By separating systematic scientific research from the dangerous language of politics and religion that had marked the civil war, the Royal Society could also help restore a sense of order and consensus to English intellectual life.  Scientific societies reached a rough agreement about what constituted legitimate research. They established the modern scientific custom of crediting discoveries to those who were first to publish results.

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François Poullain de la Barre  Used anatomy to declare in 1673 that “ the mind has no sex”.  Women possess the same physical senses as men and the same nervous systems and brains, Poullain asks “why should they not equally occupy the same roles in society?

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Elena Cornaro Piscopia

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Received her doctorate of philosophy in Padua in 1678, the first woman to do so. Became a professor at the University of Bologna after receiving her doctorate there in 1733. “On the compression of air” (1746) “ on the bubbles observed in freely flowing fluid (1747) - gained her a stipend from the academy.

Chapter 17 (Europe during the Enlightenment) 

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1762: Parliament of Toulouse in France, convicted Jean Calas, a Protestant of murdering his son. His son had wanted to convert to Catholicism and his father had killed him to prevent conversion. Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) was appalled by the torture. Voltaire was the most famous personality in the European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. The Calas’s case represented everything backwards in the European culture. Voltaire- “ Any criminal, however wretched, “is a man and you are accountable for his blood. Voltaire’s writings on the Calas’s case illustrate the classic concerns of the Enlightenment.  The dangers of arbitrary and unchecked authority.  The value of religious toleration  The overriding importance of law, reason and human dignity in all affairs.

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His reputation did not rest on his originality as a philosopher, rather it came from his effectiveness as a writer and advocate, his desire and ability to reach a wide audience in print. The enlightenment was not only an intellectual movement, it was a cultural phenomenon which exposed an increasingly broad part of the population to new forms of consumption, of goods as well as ideas. Enlightenment audience consisted of urban readers and consumers who were receptive to new cultural forms, the essay, the political tract, the satirical engraving, the novel Economic growth in 18thC. Europe  Northwestern Europe: cheaper food and declines in mortality from Infectious diseases.  Britain and Holland: better farming methods produced more food per acre, resulting in fewer famines and better nourished population.  Maize and Potatoes from the America’s  Infectious diseases continued to kill half of all Europeans before the age of 20, but plague was ceasing to be a major killer  Better diet and improved sanitation also reduced infection rates. Developments in Trade and Manufacturing  Improvements in transportation led entrepreneurs to produce textiles in the countryside.  The distributed or “put out” wool and flax to rural workers who spun it na dwove it into cloth on a piece-rate basis.

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For country dwellers, this system provided welcome employment during slack seasons of the agricultural year and the system also allowed merchants to avoid expensive guild restrictions in the towns and reduced their production costs. Urban cloth workers suffered but the system led to increased employment and higher level of industrial production.

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New Inventions  Knitting Frames- simple devices to speed the manufacture of textile goods, made their appearance in Britain and Holland.  Wire- drawing machines and slitting mills- allowed nail makers to convert iron bars into rods , spread from Germany into Britain.  Calico Cloths- techniques for printing colored designs that were imported from Asia.  Labor saving machines put people out of work.

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Houses of middling ranks were now stocked with uncommon luxuries [ sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee, chocolate, newspaper, books, pictures, clocks, toys, china, glassware, pewter, silver plate, soap, razors furniture, shoes, cotton cloths and spare clothing] The 18th C was the golden age of the small shopkeeper Political allegiances could be expressed through consumption when people purchased plates and glasses commemorating favorite rulers or causes. People in the Enlightenment shared a sense of living in a time marked by changed. Enlightenment authors believed themselves to be the defenders of a new ideal “ the party of humanity” Confidence that enlightenment thinkers placed in the powers of human reason stemmed from the accomplishments of the scientific revolution. David Hume ( A Treatise of Human Nature) and An Enquiry Concerning human understanding: provided the most direct bridge from science to the Enlightenment. Embracing human reason also required confronting the power of Europe’s traditional monarchies and the religious institutions that supported them. Immanuel kant  “Dare to Know”  Enlightenment to Kant represented a declaration of intellectual independence.  He compared the intellectual history of humanity to the growth of a child.  Enlightenment was an escape from humanity’s “self-imposed immaturity” and a long overdue break with humanity’s self imposed parental figure, The Catholic Church.

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John Locke  Theories of how humans acquire knowledge gave education and environment a critical role in shaping the human character.  Argued that all knowledge originates from sense perception.  His starting point was the goodness and perfectibility of humanity.  If all humans were capable of reason, education might also level hierarchies of status, sex, or race.

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The scientific method by which they meant the empirical observation of particular phenomena in order to arrive at general laws, offered a way to pursue research in all areas. The culture of the philosophes or enlightenment thinkers was international.

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“Philosophe”- freethinker: a person whose reflections were unhampered by the constraints of religion or dogma in any form.

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Voltaire:  Educated by the Jesuits, he became a gifted and sharp-tongued writer.  He was in the Bastille.  Wrote that the French tax systems was rational, free of the complicated exemptions for the privileged that were ruining french finances.  “Letters on the English Nation”- Voltaire argued that violent revolution had actually produced political moderation and stability in britain.  Britain brought together citizens of different religions in a harmonious and productive culture.  He opposed religious bigotry most and with real passion he denounced  His most famous battle cry was “ crush this infamous thing”- he meant all forms of repression, fanaticism and less fanaticism the less misery.

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Montesquieu  The Baron de Montesquieu was a very different kind of enlightenment figure.  “The Persian Letters” (1721)- composed of letters from two persian visitors to France. The visitors detailed th...