World Civilizations 112
Lecture Outlines
Lecture #7

The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason

The Emergence of the Philosophes

The scientific revolution in thought occurred in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth century and flowered in the eighteenth century during a period called "The Age of European Enlightenment." In fact, the eighteenth century was dubbed the "Age of Reason" for very good reason. However, the process in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was very slow and involved only a few hundred people.

Some great thinkings of the enlightenment.

Copernicus

Copernicus was the man who discovered that the earth moved around the Sun. This was contrary to the ideas of the great Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century AD. and also contradicted the position of the Catholic Church. Copernicus, however, was very conservative in his assertions and did not go beyond the pronouncement that the theory that the earth revolved about the Sun seemed to fit the data much better than the reverse.

Tycho Brache & Johannes Kepler

Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer with a passion for collecting huge masses of accurate observations of the planetary system. Oddly, he opposed Copernicus' central idea. Brahe's data came into the possession of Kepler who was a convinced Copernican. He was an excellent mathematician and soon proved that Copernicus was correct using Brahe's data.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo was two generations younger than Brahe. He had the immense advantage of being able to use a telescope which had been invented in the intervening 50 years. His most important achievement was that he articulated the concept of a universe totally subject to mathematical laws. This regularity of the heavenly bodies provided the first confirmed evidence for a scientific approach to the study of nature.

Francis Bacon

It was Bacon who attacked the medieval idea that most truth had already been discovered. He wanted Europeans to have the self-confidence to create their own truths. In philosophy, Bacon was an empiricist and insisted on appeals to experience. His major achievement was that he persuaded many people that scientific thought must conform to empirical experience.

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was, arguably, the greatest scientist of his era. In 1687, he published the Principia Mathematica in which he laid out the basic mathematical laws of physics. These were to dominate science for more than 250 years (until Einstein's ideas of relativity clearly superceded Newtonian Physics in the 1930's). While clearly a mathematical genius, Newton insisted on the importance of empirical evidence and therefore on observation. After Newton, the natural universe became a realm of law and regularity. This strongly influenced political thinkers in the eighteenth century to conceive of natural law as applied to political theory and political economy. In short, the beginnings of social science lay in the theses and arguments of Newtonian Physics.

John Locke

Locke wrote "Two Treatises of Government" during the reign of Charles II of England. He argued that rulers are not absolute in their power but are bound by the law of nature. Locke contended that a monarch who violated that law could (and should) be overthrown by a revolution of the people. Finally, Locke contended that each person was responsible for his/her own salvation. This provided the theoretical underpinnings for a public policy of toleration.

Montesquieu

Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Law" (1748) exemplified the Age of Enlightenment. Examining the political history known to eighteenth century scholars, he concluded that the good political life depended upon many political variables and that, therefore, there was no one perfect form of government. Instead, Montesquieu argued that different peoples living in different circumstances could choose different forms of government each of which was most suitable to them.

Montesquieu's most original idea was that of a division of power between the legislature, judiciary and executive branches of the government. Misunderstanding what was going on in Europe, Montesquieu ascribed that division of power to the mid-eighteenth century English (he was wrong). However, his ideas live on in the USA constitution and, from there, to its many copies elsewhere in the world.

Rousseau

He disagreed with Montesquieu. Rousseau argued that civilization and the enlightenment had corrupted human nature. In a "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality", Rousseau argued that much of the evil in the world was due to the maldistribution of wealth (property). Most of the enlightenment scholars regarded society as a collection of individuals pursuing personal, selfish goals. It is no accident that classical economics begins with that proposition. Rousseau vehemently denied this and argued for central management of society. It could be argued that it was Rousseau's ideas that eventually led to socialism and to many so-called progressive ideas about the redistribution of wealth in society.

Women in Thought and Practice in the Enlightenment

Many of the French philosophes met in salons (or living rooms) provided by important women. Many women participated in the debates of the age and, beyond question, many of their ideas made their way into print via the men in the salons. However, very few women published under their own names even though they often intervened with the royal government when the ideas of the philosophes appeared to be subversive of royal authority.

Nonetheless, most philosophes were not strong feminists. Most of the men subscribed to the view that women belonged in marriages dominated by men. Their views were represented in the Encyclopedia Frances in rather strong male chauvinist terms. Oddly, the illustrations in the Encyclopedia often show women at work making many if not most of the goods of society. Despite the arguments of people like Rousseau for a traditional view of women, the philosophes enjoyed widespread support among the educated women of the era.

Political Strategies in the Eighteenth Century

Enlightened Absolutism

What this referred to were a set of 'enlightened policies' pursued by Frederick II, Joseph II and Catherine II of Prussia, Austria and Russia respectively. All three were absolute monarchs with no effective, legal check on their power. All sought the rational economic and social integration of their societies. Their objective in doing so was to create the conditions under which they could obtain new revenues. They desired these in order to increase their military strength and contend for increased power in Europe.

Joseph II of Austria

Son of one of the most effective monarchs in eighteenth century Europe, Maria Teresa (reigned from 1740-1780), he was co-ruler with his mother from 1765 to 1780. He was an ascetic, sleeping on straw and eating an eccentric diet (all beef). Since the Austro-Hungarian Empire was extremely diverse in its constituent ethnic groups (Austrians were a minority in the Empire), first Maria Teresa and then her son attempted to go over the heads of the local, powerful lords and appeal directly to the people. Their attempts led to repeated rebellions by local lords. Maria Teresa and Joseph substantially expanded primary education and generously support higher education. Joseph promoted religious toleration although the monarchy remained staunchly Catholic. Regarding most order of monks and nuns as unproductive, Joseph dissolved over 600 monasteries and confiscated their lands. He abolished the legal status of serfdom in the Empire and reformed the procedures of the manorial courts. In general, Maria Teresa and her son brought central Europe out of the medieval period and greatly modernized the economy.

They failed in securing the loyalty of non-Austrians, the forces of nationalism ultimately prevailing throughout the Empire.

Catherine the Great of Russia

While Joseph II never really grasped how to cultivate political support for his policies, Catherine the Great understood only too well the political weakness of the Romanov Dynasty. After Peter the Great died in 1725, the court nobles and the army determined the Russian Succession. There followed a succession of very weak rulers. Finally, a daughter of Peter the Great came to the throne. She died in 1762 and left an insane son, Peter III, who had been married to a German princess, Catherine. Catherine was complicit in having Peter III murdered a few months after he ascended to the throne in 1762. She was immediately named Empress.

Familiar with the enlightenment, Catherine summoned a Legislative Committee to revise the law and government of Russia. A year later, she abolished the committee when it began to make recommendations that would limit her power. Nonetheless, the committee documented the deplorable conditions in which most Russians lived and its recommendations were adopted a half a century later.

Catherine led the Russian drive for a warm water port and finally succeeded in getting one from the Ottoman Turks after they had been defeated in battle. The port was on the Black Sea and Russia was guaranteed free access to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorous.

She also annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 1783.

Prussia Between 1772 and 1795, Russia, and Austria partitioned bits and pieces of Poland until the Polish state disappeared. Poland was to remain partitioned until 1918 at the close of World War I.

The Heritage of the Enlightenment

1. A rational attack on Christianity as the basis for intellectual life. Later the attack was extended to other religions as well, e.g. orthodox Judaism.
2. A belief in constitutionalism and principles of limited government.
3. Another strand of the enlightenment was a belief in strong central governments. Eventually this led to fascism.
4. Another strand of thought from this era was a strong concern with inequality of wealth. This led in the twentieth century to socialism.
5. So, all of the political ideologies of the twentieth century have their roots in the eighteenth.

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