Unit 5 - The Enlightenment and Nationalism Flashcards
How did the Scientific Revolution challenge the old way of thinking?
- Scientists no longer relied on the external authority of the Bible, the Church, the speculations of ancient philosophers, or the received wisdom of cultural tradition
- Departed radically from older ways of thinking
Explain the long-term significance of the Scientific Revolution.
- Within European elite circles, it altered ideas about the place of humankind and sharply challenged both the teachings and authority of the church
- Scientific ways of thinking challenged ancient social hierarchies and political systems
- Scientific ways of thinking played a role in the revolutionary upheavals of the modern era
- By the 20th century, science became so widespread that it largely lost its association with European culture and became the primary marker of global modernity
- Similar to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, modern science became a universal worldview that is open to all who could accept its premises and techniques
- substantially eroded religious belief and practice, especially among the well educated in the West
What factors help explain the birth of modern science in Europe?
Europe had the ability to draw on technological and scientific advances made elsewhere in Afro-Eurasia
Explain how previous cross-cultural exchanges contributed to the Scientific Revolution (Consider Asian and Islamic countries)
- Many of China’s technological accomplishments flowed into Europe in the centuries before the Scientific Revolution which further inspired practical discoveries
- Islamic world: Europeans took up Indian mathematics, breakthroughs in optics, astronomy, medicine, and pharmacology
- Europeans accessed both ancient Greek learning and remarkable achievements of Muslim scholars. This learning then entered Christian Europe in an explosion of translations from Greek and Arabic into Latin
How did European maritime empires and the Scientific Revolution go hand-in-hand (explain the global context)
- Europeans focused considerable resources on improving navigation, cartography, and shipbuilding to facilitate their long-distance voyages (as well as ballistics and mining techniques)
What role did universities play in the Scientific Revolution?
- allowed scholars to pursue their studies in relative freedom from the dictates of Church or state authorities
- The study of the natural world began to slowly separate itself from philosophy and theology and gained a distinct identity
What was revolutionary about the Scientific Revolution through the lens of religion?
- Breakthroughs in the study of heavens most directly challenged traditional Christian understandings of the universe (ex: Before the Scientific Revolution, educated Europeans believed the earth was stationary and at the center of the universe and around it revolved the sun, moon, and stars. This coincided well with the religious outlook of the Catholic Church because the attention of the entire universe was centered on the earth and its human inhabitants)
How did the scientific contributions of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton impact the thoughts of educated Europeans?
- Copernicus argued that the sun was in the middle and the earth revolved around this. This led to the changing of beliefs that the earth was no longer unique or at the center of God’s attention
- Galileo developed an improved telescope where he made many observations that undermined established understandings of celestial bodies. Some thinkers began to discuss the notion of an unlimited universe.
- Newton formulated the modern laws of motion and mechanics.There was a revolutionary new understanding of the physical universe among the educated Europeans after Newton died. They understood that the universe was no longer propelled by supernatural forces but functioned on its own according to scientific principles
How did the Catholic church react to the Scientific Revolution and scientific thinking in general?
- opposed these ideas as its teachings and authority were under attack
- compelled Galileo to publicly renounce his belief that the earth orbited around the sun and rotated on its axis
How did science and religion coexist?
Scientists and Church leaders learned to coexist through a kind of compartmentalization. Science might prevail in its limited sphere of describing the physical universe, but religion was still the arbiter of truth about those ultimate questions concerning human salvation, righteous behavior, and the larger purposes of life
How was the Scientific Revolution able to reach a widespread audience during the 18th Century?
Through the help of novel techniques of printing and bookmaking by a popular press, growing literacy, and a host of scientific societies
How did the Enlightenment challenge old patterns of European thinking?
- Took aim at arbitrary governments, the “divine right of kings”, and the aristocratic privileges of European society
- Directed against the superstition, ignorance, and corruption of established religion
How did the Enlightenment impact women’s roles in European society?
- Women did not have a prominent place in society as they were constantly overshadowed by men. Men believed themselves to be superior
- Rousseau described women as fundamentally different from and inferior to men and urged that the whole education of women should be relative to men
Explain how Enlightened thought was influenced by global awareness.
- Confucianism encouraged Enlightenment thinkers to imagine a future for European civilization without the kind of supernatural religion that they found so offensive in the Christian West
- Voltaire idealized China as an empire governed by an elite of secular scholars selected for their talent (civil service examination), which sharply contrasted to Europe, where aristocratic birth and military prowess was more important.
What major political and social reforms came from the Enlightenment?
- Human society was no longer fixed by tradition of divine command but could be changed, and improved, by human action guided by reason
- Montesquieu advocated for the separation of powers or checks and balances in a central government as a means of preventing the tyranny of a single ruler.
- Many forms of enlightened religion arose in the early modern centuries, reflecting the influence of Enlightenment thinking
- Inspired the French and American Revolutions
Explain the influence of European scientific thinking in China, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire.
China:
- Modern Chinese thinkers selectively assimilated Western science into their own studies of history and the natural world on their own terms
- Imperial officials were impressed by European techniques for predicting eclipses, reforming the calendar, and making accurate maps of the empire
Japan:
- Impressed with Western anatomical studies (translated and studied European texts after lifting ban on imported Western books)
- Learned more about human body (autopsy conducted by Dutch physicians)
Ottoman Empire:
- The notion of a sun-centered solar system did not cause the kind of upset in the Ottoman Empire than it did in Europe
- chose not to translate the works of major European scientists even though they were aware of their achievements
How did nineteenth and twentieth century developments in science challenge Enlightenment ideas?
- Charles Darwin laid out the argument that all life was in constant change (famous books were threatening to many Christian believers)
- Sigmund Freud, a Viennese doctor, applied scientific techniques to the operation of the human mind and emotions which cast further doubt on Enlightenment conceptions of human rationality
- In the 20th century, developments in physics, such as relativity and quantum theory, called into question some of the established verities of the Newtonian view of the world, particularly at the subatomic level and at speeds approaching that of light
Explain the various global political and social upheavals of the “Converging revolutions” in the early eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries.
- By the 1730s, the Safavid dynasty that had ruled Persia for several centuries had completely collapsed
- The Mughal Empire fragmented
- The Wahhabi movement in Arabia threated the Ottoman Empire, and its religious ideals informed major political upheavals in Central Asia and elsewhere
- China hosted a number of popular though unsuccessful rebellions
- A new wave of Islamic revolutions shook West Africa
What made the Atlantic Revolutions distinct from the converging revolutions across the world?
- New ideas of liberty, equality, free trade, religious tolerance, republicanism, and human rationality were in the air
- They had an immense global impact, extending beyond the Atlantic world
- The ideals that animated these Atlantic revolutions inspired efforts in many countries to abolish slavery, extend the right to vote, to develop constitutions, and to secure greater equality for women
- The divine right of kings, state control of trade, aristocratic privilege, and the authority of a single church were no longer sacrosanct and came under repeated attack
How was the American Revolution both a revolution and not a revolution at the same time?
- It was a conservative movement because it originated in an effort to preserve the existing liberties of the colonies rather than to create new ones
- Local elected assemblies in North America achieved something close to self-government
How was the social structure in Britain and North American colonies similar? How was it different?
Similar:
- There were class distinctions and a small class of wealthy gentlemen were prominent in political life
Differences:
- Compared to Europe, there was a ready availability of land, a scarcity of people, and an absence of both a titled nobility and a single established church, meaning that social life was far more open
- All free men enjoyed the same status excluding enslaved people and white women
Why did the American Revolution happen? How is this linked to global politics?
- The American Revolution grew from a rather sudden and unexpected effort by the British government to tighten its control over the colonies and to extract more revenue from them.
- Britain began to act like a genuine imperial power by imposing a variety of new taxes and tariffs on the colonies without their consent.
Describe the long-term impacts the American Revolution had on revolutionaries for years to come.
- The “right to revolution” in the Declaration of Independence inspired revolutionaries
- Initiated the political dismantling of Europe’s New World empires
- The revolution accelerated the established democratic tendencies of the colonial societies
Explain how the French Revolution is connected to the American Revolution.
The French government, which had generously aided the Americans in an effort to undermine its British rival, was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and had long sought reforms that would modernize the tax system and make it more equitable