Unit 2 - Welcome to Modernity

Question 1

Scientific Revolution

Answer 1

• pre-Enlightenment Christian movement
• Christianity helped give birth to the Scientific Revolution
• also Muslim contributions
• Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler (Christians)
• the Scientific Revolution could not have happened without assuming 1. that the universe had a stable order 2. humans were able to comprehend that order 3. that God created freely, not according to a logically necessary pattern, so the order had to be observed and tested
• the “Merton Thesis” - one’s social setting influences how/whether you do science - religious beliefs can predict the kind of science you do and how successful you will be
• notion of religious vs. science = fiction
• Christianity acted as a midwife of science

Question 2

human rights

Answer 2

• the idea of absolute individual human rights is not derived from social (where we are only more advanced animals) or autonomous reason
• strong historical link to Genesis
• humans in God’s image (each individual has dignity/rights)
• David Bentley Hart; “invention of the human being”
• we get the idea of human rights from the idea of absolute individual human dignity
• humanism is an aesthetic form of Christianity
• weak and vulnerable ought to be protected from the strong and ruthless - mercy

Question 3

ideology of Progress

Answer 3

• technology has progressed, but has it made us better as a human race?
• human life is not a cumulative activity
• what is gained in one gen. can be lost in the next - science: knowledge is cumulative (John Grey)
• the idea of progress rests on the belief that the growth of knowledge and the advance of the species go together
• are we getting better? the narrative of modernism depends on the belief that we are (probs not)
• main idea: the human condition has improved over the course of history and will continue to improve
• certain progression to the end - linear process - the fact that we are going forward in time means we are getting better - Enlightenment idea