This document provides historical context on the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. It discusses key figures like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Bacon, Descartes, and Enlightenment philosophers. Some of the major developments included Copernicus' theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, Galileo's use of the telescope to confirm Kepler's observations, Newton's laws of motion and universal law of gravitation, and the philosophical movement of applying scientific rationalism to philosophy, politics, and society during the Enlightenment. Overall, it traces the transition from the geocentric medieval worldview to the rise of modern science and empiricism.

1. History 102: Ages of Science
and Reason (Chapters 16-17)

2. Witches and Reason

3. Some Historical Context
 Copernicus published Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres (1543)
 Galileo and Shakespeare born in 1564
 Reginald Scott: Discoverie of Witchcraft
(1584)
 Questioned reality of witchcraft based on empirical
observation and reason
 Threat of witchcraft charges or heresy stifled observation
and experimentation of natural phenomena
 Johannes Kepler published Mysterium
Cosmographicum in 1596
 Galileo published The Starry Messenger in
1610 and Letters on Sunspots in 1613
 30 Years War: Sovereignty and Religion
 1618-1648 war involved most of the Kingdoms in
Western and Central Europe
 Who decides religion of the Kingdom? Prince or Church?

4. Scientific Theory and Medieval
World View: Aristotle
 Aristotle: all things in nature are composed
of 4 fundamental elements:
 Air
 Fire
 Water
 Earth
 These elements were bound to follow their
ideal nature:
 Air & Fire move upward.
 Water & Earth move downward
 The elements strive against one another and
this striving is what keeps everything in place
 Air and fire combined to form Aether which is
what heavenly bodies –stars and planets– are
made of and why they remain in the sky

5. Scientific Theory and Medieval
World View: Ptolemy
 Stars on a fixed sphere and earth was its center
 Beyond the earth moving about it in a spherical
plane were the planets
 Beyond the planets were the stars
 Beyond the stars was the “Prime Mover” or “First
Cause”
 Ptolemy’s theory said planets moved in epicycles
to explain why planets appeared to stop and
change direction
 More and more complex epicycles were needed
as observation improved through telescopes and
lenses and as mathematics improved

6. Dante & Thomas
Aquinas
 Nature is kept going moment to moment by a
miracle always new and forever renewed
 God ordered the universe through this
miracle
 The miracle depended not only on God but
man’s faith in God—absolute and unwavering
 During the Renaissance and after the Black
Plague: scholars became more interested in
studying the miracle
 How did it work?
 Study was not intended to disprove but to understand
 Knowledge about the miracle can bring man closer to
God

8. Copernicus and the Heliocentric Universe
“Finally we shall place the sun himself at the center of
the universe…if only we face the facts, as they say,
with both eyes open.” – Nickolaus Copernicus

9. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-
1543)

10. Copernicus and
Christianity
 Investigate the images on the previous
slide. What evidences of Christianity do
you see?
 Copernicus was deeply religious
 He believed that his system, based on
mathematical calculations, would restore a
pure understanding of God’s design

11. Copernican Theory
 Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
(1543)
 Argued the case for a heliocentric view of the
universe
 Published the year Copernicus died
 Remained a subject of debate for 100+
years
 Magisterium Cosmographicum by
Johannes Kepler published in 1596
supported Copernican theory through
mathematics

12. Kepler’s Laws
 Everything in creation had been created
according to mathematical laws
 Understanding these laws would allow
humans to share God’s wisdom
 Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion
 Planetary orbits of the sun are elliptical
 Speed of planets varied with their distance from the
sun
 Magnetic forces between the sun and the planets kept
the planets in orbital motion around the sun

13. Galileo
 Born in 1564
 Professor of Mathematics at University of
Padua
 Galileo’s Patron: Cosimo de Medici (wealthy
banker and ruler of Florence)
 1597: Galileo read Kepler’s book
 Galileo had already adopted Copernican
theory but feared the wrath of the church if
he published his views
 Unlike Copernicus and Kepler who wrote in
Latin and whose writings were heavy on
math, Galileo wrote in Italian and explained
concepts with words.

14. Letter to Foscarini
 Cardinal Bellarmine to Paolo Antonio
Foscarini (1615)
 Argued that acceptance of Copernican theory
contradicts the holy scriptures

15. “Doubt thou the stars are
fire?”
 Shakespeare and Galileo were born in the
same year-1564
 Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love. Shakespeare, Hamlet, II.2 (c. 1600)

16. The Sun and the Earth
 Psalm 19:4-6
yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the
world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a
bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs his course
with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the
end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat.
 Psalm 93:1
The Lord reigns; he is robbed in majesty; the lord is robbed, he is girded with
strength. Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved.
 Hyperbole or fact?
 Is Cardinal Bellarmine’s position based on his not knowing the
difference between poetic license by the Psalmist or because
the Church was under increasing pressure from the spread of
Protestantism and Royal claims of sovereignty that
undermined the power of the Church?

17. Belief, Reason
 “I do not feel obliged to believe that that
same God who has endowed us with
senses, reason, and intellect has intended
to forgo their use and by some other
means to give us knowledge which we can
obtain by them.”
 ---Galileo, Letter to Grand Duchess
Christina (1615)

18. Galileo & Heresy
 Charged with heresy in 1616
 Published A Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems in 1632
 A debate between supporters of geocentric and
heliocentric view of universe
 Inquisition banned Dialogue and ordered
Galileo to stand trial in 1633
 Galileo convicted & ordered to repent heresy of
heliocentric universe
 Banned from working on or discussion Copernican ideas
 House arrest for life
 The Roman Catholic church dropped
opposition to the heliocentric universe in
1835

19. Aristotle
Copernicus
Kepler
French Academy of Science
& Louis XIV

20. Structural Foundations of
Scientific Advances
 Body of Knowledge
 Heliocentric universe
 Mathematical physics
 Method of inquiry
 Scientific method
 Observation
 Experimentation
 Testing
 New societies and Institutions
 Royal patrons
 Wealthy patrons
 University Systems

21. Galileo Galilei (1564-
1642)
 Invented a telescope that enabled him to confirm many of Kepler’s
observations
 The Starry Messenger (1610) confirmed heliocentric view of the
universe
 Church indicted Galileo in 1616 for heresy
 Galileo published A Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
in 1632
 A debate between supporters of geocentric and heliocentric view of
universe
 Inquisition banned Dialogue and ordered Galileo to stand trial in 1633
 Galileo convicted
 Repent heresy of heliocentric universe
 Banned from working on or discussion Copernican ideas
 House arrest for life
 Two New Sciences published in 1638 in Holland
 Early version of theory of inertia
 Same laws which govern the motion of objects on earth could also be
observed in the heavens
 The church dropped opposition to the heliocentric universe in 1835

22. Sir Francis
Bacon

23. Methods for a New
Philosophy I
 Frances Bacon (1561-1626)
 “Knowledge is power”
 Authority of the ancients should not constrain
modern thinkers
 “If thinkers will be content to begin with doubts they
will end with certainties”
 Scientific method
 Observation
 Experimentation
 Confirmation
 Inductive reasoning: amassing evidence from specific
observations to draw general conclusions

24. Rene Descartes

25. Methods for a New
Philosophy II
 Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
 Discourse on the Method (1637)
 Doubt everything
 “Never to receive anything as a truth which [he] did not
clearly know to be such.”
 Cogito Ergo Sum “I think, therefore I am”
 The thinking individual existed, reason existed, God
existed
 Deductive Reasoning: proceeding logically from one
certainty to another, “so long as we avoid accepting as
true what we do not know.”

26. Isaac Newton

27. Isaac Newton (1642-
1727)
 Cambridge 1664-1666
 Optics: white light composed of different colored rays
 Mathematics: integral calculus and differential calculus
 Gravity: Apple falls to earth because the earth draws it
 Principia Mathematica 1687 & 1713
 Gravitation is a universal force and can be expressed
mathematically
 Law of Gravitation “All bodies whatsoever are endowed with
a principle of mutual gravitation.”
 Science need not always uncover causes, science could and
did describe natural phenomena and accurately predict the
behavior of objects as confirmed by experimentation
 Role of Print Capitalism
 Publication across Europe in vernacular
 John Locke published Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690).
 Read Newton twice.

28. Observations about the
Scientific Revolution
 Elite knowledge
 Formed by core of ancient and medieval
scholarship—did not spin out of empty space
 Did not undo the authority of the ancients in one
fell swoop
 Change occurred gradually
 Did not usurp Christian religious belief
 natural philosophers did not attempt to refute the idea of
a divinely ordered universe
 Intricate universe was evidence of God’s guiding presence.
Newton: a firm advocate of this view.
 Challenged authority of the Church in matters
related to studying the physical world
 Question to consider:
 Is religious opposition to man made climate change similar
to religious opposition to heliocentric universe?

29. What was Different about the
Scientific Revolution?
1. Produced new answers to fundamental
questions about the physical world
2. Developed new approach to amassing and
integrating information in a systematic way
3. Science moved out of the church and into
universities and lay organizations
4. New beliefs about the purpose and methods
of science
 No longer sought to confirm old truths
 New methods designed to explore the unknown and
discover new truths
 Old model of learning: read, reason logically, compare classical
texts.
 New model of learning: discovery (hypothesize, experiment,
observe, reason)
5. Replaced the medieval view of physical world

31. The Enlightenment (1700-1800)

32. The Enlightenment (1700-
1800)
 Shared characteristics of Enlightenment
Writings
 Confidence in the power of human reason
 Stemmed from accomplishments of the scientific
revolution especially Locke, Bacon and Newton.
 Nature operated according to laws that could be grasped
by study, observation, and reason.
 Societies are a product of nature (man) and can be
observed to discern natural laws that govern society.
 “Dare to know”: confront the power of established
institutions including the monarch and the church
 Belief in the perfectibility and goodness of humanity
 Locke’s tabula rasa (blank slate)
 Education might level social hierarchies
 Scientific method: observe particular phenomena to
arrive at general laws as applicable to study of human
affairs

33. General Observations
 Not all Enlightenment thinkers agreed
 Elite pursuit like Scientific Revolution
 Educated middle class artisans and
merchants read Enlightenment thinkers as
a result of
 print capitalism
 Expansion of education by enlightened absolutists
 growing markets of people with new wealth.
 Literacy extended to growing numbers of women.
 Enlightenment thought varied from
country to country

34. Philosophes
 Enlightenment thought was a European
phenomenon
 British thinkers played a key role
 France was the stage and the language of the
Enlightenment
 Philosophe Fr., free thinker; a person
whose reflections were unhampered by
the constraints of religion or dogma in any
form

35. Important Enlightenment
Themes
 Humanitarianism: stressed the dignity and worth
of all human beings
 Caesare Beccaria On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
 Punishments should not represent vengeance
 Purpose of Punishment: maintain social order & deterrence
 Opposed torture and the death penalty
 Opposed principle of slavery
 Few opposed the practice of slavery
 Applied to women as long as they maintained their proper
roles as wives and mothers, subordinate to men.
 Religious toleration
 Toleration of religious minorities
 Applied mostly to Christians not Jews or Muslims
 Personal Liberty
 Capitalism
 Social contract
 Representative government or Enlightened monarchs

36. Voltaire (1694-1778)
 Francois Marie Arouet
 Religious and political liberty
 Compared British open-mindedness and empiricism
with French society, aristocracy and church
 Praised British tax system for fairness compared with
French tax system (too many exemptions to church
and nobility)
 Compared British constitutional monarchy with French
absolutism
 Condemned religious bigotry
 “The less superstition, the less fanaticism; and the less
fanaticism the less misery.”

37. Adam Smith
 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations (1776)
 Central Issues
 Productivity of labor
 How labor was used in different sectors of the economy
 Mercantile restrictions did not encourage the productive
deployment of labor and did not create real economic
health
 General prosperity could best be obtained by allowing
individuals to pursue their own interests without
interference from state chartered monopolies or legal
restraints that privileged some interests over others
 “Invisible hand” of the free market
 “Obvious and simple system of natural liberty” champion
of justice against state sponsored economic privilege and
monopoly

38. Observations and Questions
about Smith
 Smith would oppose ALL subsidies and monopolies
including:
 Oil company subsidies
 Farm subsidies
 Insurance company subsidies
 Commodity subsidies
 Smith wrote when Europeans were in a position to
dominate global markets. How would he react to the global
markets today?
 Smith did not address natural disasters; effects of war
 Smith believed in the right of governments to tax citizens
and colonies for benefits provided
 Smith did not answer questions about how to manage boom and bust cycle
of capitalism. Boom and bust was a natural law.
 Did Smith’s belief represent a naïve faith that the rich
would share the wealth?
 Did Smith consider the danger of unrestricted capitalism on
natural resources?
 Late 18th and early 19th century Whaling is good example of dangers to
natural resources by unrestricted capitalism

39. Enlightenment Thinkers had
Complex Ideas about Slavery
 Most Enlightenment thinkers opposed slavery in
principle
 Few Enlightenment thinkers opposed the practice
 Theory
 Smith: uneconomical
 Voltaire: would Europeans look away if Africans enslaved
Europeans
 Montesquieu: Slavery debased both Europeans and Africans
 Beliefs
 Africans and African cultures were less “civilized” than Europeans
 Hard work raises the moral and cultural development of less
civilized peoples
 Each society free to balance their systems of labor in accordance
with their special needs
 Individual rights to property should be protected and slaves were
property
 Slaves were not ready for freedom because they had never known
freedom and slavery had destroyed their natural virtue

40. Pacific Exploration
 Systematically mapping new sections of the
Pacific presented new opportunities for
knowledge
 Scientific missions
 Luis Anne de Bougainville (1729-1811)
 Sought new trade route to China
 Discovered Tahiti
 James Cook (1728-1779)
 Charted coasts of New Zealand
 New Hebrides, Hawaii, explored coasts of Antarctica, the
Bering Sea & Arctic Ocean
 Expanded knowledge of Botany, Zoology and Geology
 Portraits of Maoris and Tahitians
 Travel literature widely popular with non-
academic public

41. Impact of Scientific
Exploration
 Spawned theories of man in his “natural
environment” based on information and
observation about Tahitian, Maori, and Hawaiian
peoples
 Diderot, Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville,
(1772)
 Simplicity of “natives” exposed the hypocrisy, and rigidity of
over-civilized European society
 Represented break with earlier European views which
understood the world as divided between Christendom and
heathen “others”
 Gave rise to paternalistic views of European colonialism
 Duty to protect simplistic societies in their natural state
 Unintended Consequence?
 Enabled advance of colonialism in name of “science”
 Resulted in deaths of hundreds of thousands of Pacific
Islanders

42. Radical Enlightenment

43. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-
1778)
 The Social Contract
 “Man was born free but everywhere he is in chains.”
 In the state of nature all men are free
 Inequality is anchored in private property which profoundly corrupted the
social contract
 Under these conditions of property and inequality, governments protected only
the rich and the privileged.
 “The problem is to find a form of association…in which each, while uniting
himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.”
 Freedom does not mean the absence of restraint but that all obey the laws
that they had made themselves
 Equality= no man is rich enough to buy another, nor poor enough to have to
sell himself
 The Body Politic
 Sovereignty belongs to the people alone
 No separation of powers
 Exercising sovereignty transformed the nation
 Creating a regenerated and powerful nation in which citizens are bound by
mutual obligation rather than coercive laws
 United in equality rather than divided by privilege
 National community is guided by the General Will
 Common interest of the nation arose above individual demands
 Was not particularly concerned with balancing individual interest against the
General Will

44. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-
1797)
 A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
 Opposed to monarchy and favored Republicanism
 Opposed artificial distinctions or rank, birth or wealth
 Argued that equality laid the basis for virtue
 Women had same innate capacity for reason and self-
government as men
 Virtue should mean the same thing for men and women
 Relations between the sexes should be based on equality
 Legal inequalities of marriage laws deprived women of
property rights and gave husbands despotic power over their
wives
 “Civilized women are …so weakened by false refinement that,
respecting morals, their condition is much below what it would
be were they left in a state nearer to nature”
 A culture that encouraged feminine weakness produced
women who are childish, cunning, cruel and vulnerable
 Education for women had to promote liberty and self-reliance
 Believed women and men had different duties
 Women’s foremost responsibility was mothering

45. The mixed Legacy of the
Enlightenment
 Developed & popularized arguments about
natural rights
 Elevated differences to a higher plane by
suggesting that nature dictated different
and possibly unequal social roles
 Complex ideas about nature and its dictates about
social roles
 Slavery and “civilized” vs. “uncivilized”
 Meaning of Paternalism
 Natural and unequal social roles

46. Print Capitalism and the Book
Trade
 Enlightenment bound up in the expansion of
printing and print culture
 Readers bought books from stores, subscription,
special mail order from book distributers abroad
 Daily Newspapers appeared in London in 1702,
called “Dailies”
 Freedom of the Press varied from place to place
 Publishing licenses
 England had few restrictions
 France and Russia had many restrictions
 Restrictions had little impact on pamphlets; minimal impact
even on books: censorship only made banned books
expensive
 Literary underground

47. What is the Public
Sphere?
 Informal deliberations, debates about how to
regenerate the nation, discussions of civic
virtue and efforts to forge a consensus of the
population moved politics beyond the
confines of the court into a “public” space
 Expanding networks of social contact
 Flourishing book trade
 Circulation of Enlightenment ideas about humanity,
society, government, and reason
 By the late 18th century, European
governments recognized the existence of a
civic minded group that cut across traditional
divisions of society and to which they needed
to respond

48. The Public Sphere
 Elites had “learned societies” who published
books
 New Frontiers of interaction between elites and
middle class
 Salons
 Informal gatherings of social and commercial elites in which
impoverished artists and scholars were welcome
 Informal and formal patronages were created
 Included both genders—aristocratic French women ruled French
salons
 Madame Marie-Therese Geoffrin patron of Encyclopedia and influenced
placing scholars in Academies
 Enabled elite women to exercise influence informally when they had
little formal power
 Masonic Lodges
 Members pledged themselves to regeneration of society
 Attracted men across divisions of birth and wealth (egalitarian
behind closed doors)

49. The Public Sphere II
 Middle Class—artisans and bureaucrats and
housewives
 High literacy
 Targeted by publishers
 Circulation of books about science, history, geography,
travel and fiction
 Means of control for middle class women
 Etiquette
 Running a household
 Nutrition and meals
 Raising children, especially daughters
 Novels were most popular form of literature in Britain
 Discussions of feeling and emotion linked middle class
with concern about personhood and humanity and natural
law