Enlightenment

Question 0

Francis Bacon

Answer 0

• was English
• was a politician and writer
• countered Aristotle, arguing that new knowledge had to be discovered through empirical, experimental research (empiricism)
• argued that greater knowledge of the universe would improve daily life

Question 1

Aristotle

Answer 1

• was Greek
• influenced beliefs about how the universe worked for two thousand years
• believed the earth was the motionless center of the universe, surrounded by transparent spheres
• challenged by Nicholas Copernicus

Question 2

Tycho Brahe

Answer 2

• was Dutch
• established himself as Europe’s leading astronomer with his detailed observations of a new star
• built the most sophisticated observatory of his day
• contributed a lifetime’s worth of data, but could not make much sense of it due to limited understandings of mathematics

Question 3

Madame du Chatelet

Answer 3

• was French
• was an intellectually gifted woman from high aristocracy with a passion for science
• housed Voltaire in her country home
• depended on private tutors
• focused on spreading the ideas of others
• strongly supported women’s education

Question 4

Catherine the Great

Answer 4

• was a German princess, married to the Russian emperor Peter III
• was intelligent and attractive
• began a relationship with a high-ranking soldier and used his millitary power to overthrow her husband
• imported Western artists and intellectuals
• wrote letters extensively, especially to Voltaire
• began on legal and educational reforms
• after a revolt, gave complete control of serfs to nobles and increased the power of the nobility
• hoped (successfully) to expand Russia’s territory

Question 5

Nicolas Copernicus

Answer 5

• was Polish
• studied church law and astronomy
• was uninterested in astrology
• theorized that everything revolved around the sun, recieving much criticism from religious leaders, especially Protestants

Question 6

René Descartes

Answer 6

• was French
• served in the Thirty Years War
• realized geometry and algebra had perfect correspondence (analytic geometry)
• believed it was necessary to doubt everything
• split all things into mind and matter (Cartesian dualism)

Question 7

Denis Diderot

Answer 7

• was a French “philosophe”
• began his career as a hack writer with a skeptical religious pamphlet
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Question 8

David Hume

Answer 8

• was Scottish
• carefully argued skepticism
• attended D’Holbach’s dinner parties

Question 9

Bernard de Fontelle

Answer 9

• was a French philosophe
• was a versatile letter-writer
• sought to make science witty and entertaining for a broad nonscientific audience, a goal which he amazingly achieved
• wrote /Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds/

Question 10

Fredrick II “The Great”

Answer 10

• ruled Prussia
• made a deal with Catherine the Great in order to maintain a balance of power in Eastern Europe
• was involved in the Partitions of Poland

Question 11

Galileo Galilei

Answer 11

• was Italian
• marked for a religious career
• became fascinated with mathematics, of which he became a professor at the age of 25
• elaborated and consolidated and experimental method
• worked with motion and discovered the law of inertia
• discovered the first four moons of Jupiter
• believed the moon was not a perfect sphere, but as full as bumps and things as earth
• was tried for heresy after he disproved the views of Aristotle and Ptolemy

Question 12

Madame Geoffrin

Answer 12

• orphaned and married at 15
• against her husband’s will, started a biweekly salon that counted Montesquieu and Fontelle as regular guests
• with her inheritance from his death, gave generously to the encyclopedists
• corresponded with Catherine the the Great and the king of Sweden
• was a practicing Christian and would not tolerate attacks on the Church in her house
• mentored Julie de Lespinasse

Question 13

Joseph II

Answer 13

• ruled Austria
• originally painted as a tragic hero whose lofty reforms were undone by the landowning nobility
• now seen as largely continuing the state-building techniques of his mother, Marie Theresa
• maintained close control of the Catholic church
• allowed religious toleration for Jews and Protestants
• abolished serfdom
• decreed all peasant labor obligations be converted into cash payments, which was met with strong resistance

Question 14

Immanuel Kant

Answer 14

• was the greatest German philosipher of the age
• worked as a professor in East Prussia
• argued that if serious thinkers were able to print their ideas, enlightenment would follow
• suggested Prussia’s Frederick the Great was an enlightened monarch because he permitted freedom of the press

Question 15

Johannes Kepler

Answer 15

• came from a German noble family
• trained for Lutheran ministry
• long believed the universe waa built on mystical mathematic relationships
• demonstrated that planets have elliptical orbits
• showed planets do not move in a uniform speed through their orbits
• showed that the time it takes for an orbit to be completed is related to the planet’s distance from the sun

Question 16

John Locke

Answer 16

• published /Essay Concerning Human Understanding/ and /Second Treatise of Civil Government/
• theorized that the mind is like a blank tablet at birth, written on by its surroundings as a person grows (tabula rasa)

Question 17

Louis XV

Answer 17

• inherited the French throne when he was five
• was great-grandson to Louis XIV
• appointed a finance minister whi decreed a 5 percent income tax on everyone, which resulted in vigorous protests from people in all social standings, causing the tax to be dropped
• tried to maintain emergency taxes after the expensive Seven Years War, and the people once again thwarted this
• described as indolent and sensual, more interested in his mistresses than the country
• appointed René de Maupeou as chancellor, who abolished the remaining parlements and exiled vociferous members to the provinces, created a new group of royal officials, and taxed the privileged much more

Question 18

Maria Theresa

Answer 18

• inherited all the Hapsburg territories at a young age after Charles VI’s death
• described as charismatic
• ethnically diverse army fell at the hands of Frederick II’s precise Prussian one, and she was forced to cede almost all of Silesia to him
• was determined to regain Silesia, and attempted this with France’s help in the Seven Years’ War, but failed

Question 19

Baron de Montequieu

Answer 19

• was a French phiosophe
• wrote /The Persian Letters/, a clever social satire wherein two foreign travellers criticized the practices and beliefs of Europeans through their outside eyes
• studied history and politics at his family estate
• set out to apply the critical method to the problem of government in /The Spirit of Laws/
• strongly supported separation of powers
• argued for a strong, independent upper class to maintain balance
• had great influence on the US and French constitutions

Question 20

separation of powers

Answer 20

• was first used in England
• was praised by many philosophes, argued for especially by Montesquieu, who viewed it as the best preventative of despotism
• was where political power was divided and shared by a variety of classes and legal estates holding unequal rights and privileges

Question 21

Isaac Newton

Answer 21

• born into lower English gentry
• attended Cambridge
• was fascinated by alchemy, and was intensely religious
• idealized by later generations as the perfect rationalist
• deeply devoted to discovering the laws of the universe
• came up with the law of universal gravitation

Question 22

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Answer 22

• was a philosophe
• attacked the Enlightenment’s faith in reason, progress, and moderation
• described as brilliant and difficult, appealing and neurotic
• came to believe all of his salon friends were plotting against him
• believed in warm, spontaneous emotion as the purest form of intellectual freedom
• wrote /The Social Contract/, which argued that general will (though not necessarily majority rules) is sacred and absolute
• was unnoticed before the French Revolution, but later appealed greatly to democrats and nationalists

Question 23

Voltaire

Answer 23

• was a philosophe
• was part of a comfortable, middle-class family
• wrote more than seventy witty volumes
• after being arrested for being rude to a noble, he spent his life fighting against injustice and inequality
• met Madame du Châtlet, and took refuge in her country house
• praised England and popularized the scientific method
• called Newton “history’s greatest man”
• thought monarchy was best because people suck
• believed in a clockmaker God
• despised the Church but praised religion in general
• supported “simple piety and human kindness”