Revolutions (midterm) Flashcards
What was the Scientific Revolution?
At the beginning of the 1500s in Europe, scientist, mathematicians, and philosophers introduced ideas and made discoveries that changed the way people thought about the world.
What was Copernicus’s contribution to the scientific revolution?
He contributed the idea that the sun is the center of the universe and everything, including us on Earth, revolve around it.
What was Kepler’s contribution to the scientific revolution?
He used science and the physics of the planets to show that the sun was the center.
What did both Sir Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes contribute to the scientific revolution?
They used and proposed the scientific method in order to have objective discoveries. The advocated for methods of observation and testing and the experience of the five senses.
What was Issac Newton’s contribution to the scientific revolution?
He proposed laws governing gravity as well as motion.
What were the advances made in scientific instruments?
The telescope (Galileo) and the mercury thermometer.
What was another impact of the Scientific Revolution?
It impacted the philosophy during the Enlightenment
What was Galileo’s contribution to the Scientific Revolution?
Galileo studied the sun and the planets with a homemade telescope. He was a natural philosopher, an astronomer, and a mathematician. He used these three fields of study to make significant discoveries about motion, astronomy, and the strength of materials.
Who was Thomas Hobbes?
Wrote the Leviathan. Hobbes believed that the only true and correct form of government was the absolute monarchy because he believed that humans are naturally selfish creatures. He believed that people are naturally evil and wicked, so you need a government to control them. He did not believe that whoever ruled was selected by God.
Who was John Locke?
In 1690, Locke wrote Two Treatises of Government, which said that people are born with natural rights that are given to them by God and cannot be taken away. These include the rights to life, liberty, and property. He also believed that humans were innately good and had the ability to learn and make better decisions, an idea that opposed Hobbes’s. He also came up with the idea of the social contract theory, that people have to give up some of their rights for the government/country and to protect others. He believed that if you have a good environment for people with peace, they will govern themselves. Finally, he believed that if a government was failing to protect those rights then the people have a right to overthrow the government and replace it.
Who was Montesquieu?
Proposed a government with separation of powers.
3 branches (He only proposed the judicial and executive branches): Executive, Legislative, Judicial
The writers of the American constitution were inspired by this when they drafted the US constitution.
He wrote down his ideas in The Spirit of the Laws.
He believed that no one single person should have all of the power.
Who was Jean Jacques Rousseau?
Believed that governments were necessary, but their only purpose were to protect people’s natural rights (Non-intrusive Government). Anything beyond that would be infringing upon those natural rights.
For the government to be able to do this, Rousseau said that citizens have to give up some of their natural rights (in order to gain this protection).
People should be able to vote for laws → Rousseau was a supporter of democracy
He was critical of royalty and believed that they should be made equal to everyone else.
People are born free and then the government slowly binds them.
He wrote about his political views in The Social Contract
Who was Voltaire?
He opposed the Catholic Church (he believed they were corrupt)
Was exiled for this
Was a Deist
Advocated for freedom of speech as being a natural right
His Novel Candide made fun of other philosophers
Who was Diderot?
Diderot combined all of the new philosophical ideas (as well as general facts and articles) and published them in the Encyclopédie.
Through this, these enlightenment philosophies were able to spread all around Europe and the world.
The church did not like the the Encyclopédie, because it was too radical. They thought that it would start a revolution.
They attempted to ban it.
Who was Kant?
Kant provided a synthesis between naturalism and rationalism. He said that people’s understanding had to come partly from their experience but also from their reason. Kant also wrote that people’s moral decisions also needed to be based on rational thought.
What was Individualism?
Individualism is the idea that individuals and their rights are important. This ideal became very important to the philosophes of the Enlightenment, and it guided their belief that a government should serve to protect the rights of its people. Specifically, individualism was one of the major components of the “social contract” proposed by many philosophers.
Who was Wollstonecraft?
During the Enlightenment, women did not have much of a role. They hosted the salons, and therefore controlled the discussion topics, but besides this, not many philosophers during this time were female. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first advocate for women’s rights. She stated that women had equal intuition as men. She also had an education.
What was the Enlightenment?
Europe: Belief in power of knowledge to transform society it was a movement of intellectual, philosophy , and social. Come forth with new ideas and attacks on traditional beliefs.
The belief that human reason could discover the laws that governed social behavior and were just as scientific as the laws that governed physics energized a movement known as the Enlightenment.
