Scientific revolution Flashcards
Montesquieu
Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws, critique of absolutism and support for the separation among executive, judicial and legislative branches to provide checks and balances ‘
Tabula Rasa, Locke/Locke’s opinion on religion
empty slate, all humans have equal ability to reason to learn and isn’t built on wealth and bloodlines (NURTURE NOT NATURE)
Also suggested that all religion should be tolerated if it is moral
Voltaire
Voltaire: wrote anonymously because his writings were so upsetting to the social order, wrote 20,000 letters and 2,000 books, MOST PROLIFIC WRITER OF ALL ENLIGHTENMENT WRITERS
Candide: emphasizes Tabula Rasa, person can be born in poverty and still rise up in society
Letters on the English: emphasized that English system of government and society in general was superior because England had thrown off absolutism
Deism:
based on Newton’s notion of the watchmaker god, miracles and providence were violations of natural laws; PRAYER, WORSHIP, SERVICES are worthless because everything is held together by mathematical laws
watchmaker god
Using Baconian method
World governed by fixed laws of gravity and motion
Got set world in motion and it worked in perfect Newtonian orderliness (Watchmaker God, challenging notion that GOd was a providential being in society)
Founder of modern physics and calculus
why were all rationalists from England
ALL RATIONALISTS WERE FROM ENGLAND: NOT ADHERENT TO STRICT CATHOLIC IDEOLOGIES, PROTESTANT
Francis Bacon: politician, Lord Chancellor of England, polymathic
Wrote Novum Organum, New Science:
all things are explainable through observation, experiment, and inductive reason
New Atlantis, Bacon
prescription for a university founded on principles of rationality and experimentation (UTOPIAN WORK), written very similar to Thomas Moore’s Utopia (idea that Atlantis would be a university, whose sole purpose was to rationally experiment)
Prime mover idea
At outside, there is the “Prime Mover”, interpreted by Christians to be God
Conforms to Christian teachings ^^:
used geocentrism and ptolemaic theories
