Thought paper
junyuguo1
humch16.pptThe Baroque Age II:
Revolutions in Scientific and Political Thought, 1600–1715
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Baroque Revolutions in Scientific and Political Thought
- The Baroque Age challenged many of the established ways thinking. Discoveries in astronomy and physics created a new way of looking at the universe.
- Breakthroughs in human medicine and chemistry laid the foundations for these modern disciplines and we gained more precise ways of understanding the physical world and the human body.
- Philosophy was further separating itself from theology and began to ask questions like “How does the human mind work” and “What is the best form of government.”
- The thinkers of the age countered faith with reason, dogma with skepticism, and divine intervention with natural law and laid the foundation for the Age of Reason.
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Theories of the Universe
Before the Scientific Revolution
- Geocentrism was the belief, handed down from Aristotle, that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything (the sun, planets, etc.) revolved around the earth.
- This was supported by Christian theology, since it seem to be consistent with the Bible.
- This and other such theories were challenged by the newer scientific methods of collecting data from observation (empiricism) and framing hypotheses from observable facts (inductive reason).
- This challenged the followers of deductive reasoning, that only explored the ramifications of already accepted truths (deductive reasoning).
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Revolutions in Scientific and Political Thought
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The Scientific Revolution in Astronomy & Physics
- The microscope and the telescope, both invented around 1600, were instrumental in the achievements of the Scientific Revolution.
Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) a Polish thinker reasoned that the sun was the center of the universe. This was condemned by both Catholics and Protestants denounced this theory because it removed man as the center of the universe.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) set forth scientific laws of planetary motion that explained the movement of planets and expressed that the universe operated with clock-like regularity.
Galileo (1564-1642) made his own telescope which allowed him to see celestial bodies not visible to the naked eye. He discovered the moons of Jupiter and was the first to express the modern scientific law of inertia.
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Digges,
The Sun-Centered Universe of Copernicus
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Peter Apian,
Geocentric Diagram
of the Universe
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Isaac Newton
The English mathematician Isaac Newton (1642-1727) building on the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, presented a satisfactory explanation for what held the planets in their orbits; the force of gravity, the force that forms the heart of his theory of the universe.
Using precise mathematical formulas, Newton computed the law of universal gravitation. For him, the universe behaved precisely as a machine and he used mathematics to describe its operation.
Newton’s authoritative work was the “Principa” (“Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”). In addition to inventing calculus, a mathematical method of analysis that uses symbolic notation, Newton ushered us into the scientific age that lasts to this very day.
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Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton
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Medicine, Chemistry, and Technology
- Prior to 1600 anatomical knowledge was very limited, largely because of the Christian ban on the dissection of corpses. Medical schools relied on the dissection of animals (which are different from human bodies). Because of this the outdated and erroneous beliefs of the ancient Greek thinkers Aristotle and Galen were accepted as true.
- William Harvey (1578-1657) an English scientist who studied at the University of Padua, was able to correctly identify the correct view of the circulation of blood in the human body.
- The Italian scientist, Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), with the aid of a microscope was able to identify capillaries and their role in blood circulation.
- The study of motion and gravity also allowed for the invention of accurate pendulum clocks and shortly thereafter, the coil spring clock, which gave humans accurate timepieces for the first time in history.
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Rembrandt, “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp” (1632)
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A Reconstruction of
Huygens’s 1656 Clock
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The Impact of Science on Philosophy
- Francis Bacon (1571-1626) was and English scholar and statesman. Bacon has often been called the father of empiricism, His works established and popularized the inductive method for scientific inquiry, now simply referred to as the “scientific method.” He coined the term, “Knowledge is power.”
- René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician who spent most of his life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the “father of modern philosophy.”
- Descartes founded analytic geometry and relied on deductive reasoning. He outlined four steps in his approach to knowledge; 1) Accept nothing as true, unless it is self evident; 2) Split problems into manageable parts; 3) To solve problems start with the simplest and move to the most complex; and 4) Review and reexamine the solutions.
- His most famous axiom is "Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am).
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Francis Bacon & René Descartes
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The Impact of Science on Philosophy
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, and Christian philosopher. His early work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids.
He clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe.
Pascal went beyond Descartes’ skepticism and concluded that human beings can know neither the natural world or themselves. One of his most famous quotes is that “The heart has reasons that reason does not know.”
- The ironies and contradictions of the early Scientific Revolution is that despite the advances made in science and thinking, most people of the time still lived in the mystical world of superstition and religious magic that had existed in the medieval world.
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SLICE OF LIFE:
Innocent or Guilty?
A Seventeenth-Century Witch Trial
- Suzanne Gaudry, Trial Court Records, June 1652
Suzanne Gaudry, an illiterate old woman, was accused of witchcraft. Questioned by the local court at Rieux, France, she confessed to some charges but later recanted. Because confession was necessary for conviction, she was subjected to torture, and once again confessed. She was then condemned and sentenced to be tied to a gallows, strangled, and to have her body burned. (cont. p.428 of text)
This illustrates that even though we were entering the scientific age, we still lived with the specter of superstition, religious bigotry, and belief in demonic forces.
It would not be until many years after the advent of the “Age of Reason” that we would begin to put down the belief in superstition and magic.
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Cotton Mather’s Treatise on Witchcraft
Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692)
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The Revolution in Political Philosophy: Natural Law and Divine Right
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) argued that natural law was founded on human reason and that human beings are motivated by more than selfish drives. He concluded that people were rational and wanted to improve themselves and create a just and fair society. He agued for just international laws.
- Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704), the French church leader argued that kings ruled by divine right and were God’s chosen vessels on earth and had complete power over their subjects.
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The Revolution in Political Philosophy: Absolutism and Liberalism
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English social philosopher who first developed the “social contract” theory. Hobbes held the pessimistic view that people are driven by two basic forces: the fear of death and the quest for power.
- He argued that humans had created civil governments to escape the misery that these circumstances provided and that they had created a social contract with their rulers in which they had surrendered all claims of sovereignty and bestowed absolute power on their rulers, whether they were ruled by a king or a commonwealth.
- He set forth set forth his beliefs in his masterwork “The Leviathan,” (1651) in which he outlined government’s need to hold in check the destructive impulses of the people.
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Thomas Hobbes
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Frontispiece of Hobbes
“The Leviathan”
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The Revolution in Political Philosophy: Absolutism and Liberalism
- John Locke (1632-1704) had the most outstanding impact on political though and his concept of government forms the philosophical basis of most democracies today.
- In his “Two Treatises on Government,” (1689) Locke presents an “apology” explaining the philosophical basis for the Glorious Revolution of 1688.In his “First Treatise”, Locke refutes, in detail, the concept of the divine right of kings theory.
- In the “Second Treatise,” Locke he laid out the model for rule by the people and restates the “social contract theory.” The Second Treatise has become the classic expression of early liberalism and the accepted view of limited government and human rights.
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John Locke
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The Revolution in Political Philosophy: Absolutism and Liberalism
- According to Locke, in a state of nature each man was a government to himself, with maximum freedom, but a great deal of chaos. For that reason, people instituted government, and all of government’s power derived from the people.
- However, Locke argued, that the people retained certain “unalienable rights,” among these were “life, liberty, and property” and government was obligated to protect those rights or otherwise the people had the right to revolt and overthrow the government, reclaim their natural rights and create new governments.
- Locke’s writing influenced American and French political thinkers and became the basis for the American and French revolutions.
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The Revolution in Political Philosophy: Absolutism and Liberalism
- Locke was not only a political theorist but also the preeminent English philosopher of his day.
- In his other great work, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690) he rejected Descartes idea that the germs of ideas were inborn and that people were born knowing certain things, like mathematical principles and logical relationships.
- Locke argued that we are born “tabula rasa” (a blank slate) on which all human experiences are recorded. He submitted that all human knowledge comes from experience and learning and must be received through the senses.
- Locke’s explanation of the origin of ideas is the basis for modern “empiricism.” Locke’s influence has been so great that many of his ideas seem to the modern reader to be merely “common sense.”
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John Locke’s Two Great Works:
“An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” & “Two Treatises on Government”
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Global Exploration and Expansion
- The European powers continued to explore and dominate around the globe. The fortunes of Spain and Portugal receded somewhat, while England, France and the Netherlands gained more power.
- The English established colonies along the North American coastline which supplied raw materials and provided a market for English goods. Eventually they also colonies in the West Indies (Bahamas and Jamaica).
- French explorers, missionaries, and fur traders founded Quebec in Canada and spread along the S. Lawrence seaway into the Great Lakes region. Additionally, they occupied many islands in the West Indies.
- The Dutch also set up colonies in South America and North America (New Amsterdam, later New York).
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Settlements in the New World the Baroque Age
Wenceslaus Holar,
Indian of Virginia (1645)
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Global Exploration and Expansion
The Europeans founded the African slave trade and millions of people were taken from Africa and sold into slavery around the world.
In 1600 the English East India Company was formed by investors for the exploitation of trade with East and Southeast Asia and India. Starting as a monopolistic trading body, the company became involved in politics and acted as an agent of British imperialism in India until the mid-19th century.
In 1602 the Dutch government granted a monopoly to the Dutch East India Company for Asian trade. The company prospered through most of the 17th century as the instrument of the powerful Dutch commercial empire in the East Indies until it was dissolved in 1799.
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Flag of the British East India (early 1600’s)
Insignia of the Dutch East India Company
(CompanyVereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC)
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Expansion of Europe, 1715
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Responses to the Revolutions in Thought
- By the middle of the 1600’s scientific societies began to form and spread the new knowledge and ideas through their corresponding members and by publishing journals.
- The first scientific society was in England where Charles II granted a charter to the “Royal Society” in 1662.
- In 1666 Louis XIV supported the creation of the “Royal Academy of Science” and in 1700 German scientists instituted the “Berlin Academy of Science.”
- The new scientific discoveries were explained to non-experts in popular language by such popular literature as “Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds” published by Bernard de Fontenelle, the secretary of France’s Royal Academy of Science.
- Another French publicist, Pierre Bayle published the “Historical and Critical Dictionary” which set forth controversial and rival opinions on various subjects.
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Louis XIV at
the Royal Academy
of Science
(1671)
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The Legacy of the Revolutions in Scientific and Political Thought
- Ushered in new methodology for modern science and the beginning of the scientific method that is used to this day.
- Saw the invention of scientific instruments such as the telescope and the microscope.
- Political theories were reshaped and the Authoritarian tradition began to lose to the Liberal tradition in political thought and government.
- The stage was set for the “Age of Reason.”
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