Belief in progress, along with improved social and economic conditions, spurred significant gains in literacy and education as well as the creation of a new culture of the printed word — including novels, newspapers, periodicals, and such reference works as Diderot’s Encyclopédie — for a growing educated audience. |
A gathering in the salon of Madame Geoffrin, 1755
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The Age of Reason, c. 1648-c. 1815
During the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans developed new approaches to and methods for looking at the natural world in what historians have called the Scientific Revolution. Aristotle’s classical cosmology and Ptolemy’s astronomical system came under increasing scrutiny from natural philosophers (later called scientists) such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. The philosophers Francis Bacon and René Descartes articulated comprehensive theories of inductive and deductive reasoning to give the emerging scientific method a sound foundation. Bacon urged the collection and analysis of data about the world and spurred the development of an international community of natural philosophers dedicated to the vast enterprise of what came to be called natural science. In medicine, the new approach to knowledge led physicians such as William Harvey to undertake observations that produced new explanations of anatomy and physiology and to challenge the traditional theory of health and disease (the four humors) espoused by Galen in the second century.
The articulation of natural laws, often expressed mathematically, became the goal of science, especially after the Europeans’ encounters with the Western Hemisphere. The explorations produced new knowledge of geography and the world’s peoples through direct observation, and this seemed to give credence to new approaches to knowledge more generally. Yet while they developed inquiry-based epistemologies, Europeans also continued to draw upon longstanding explanations of the natural world.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans applied the methods of the new science—such as empiricism, mathematics, and skepticism—to human affairs. During the Enlightenment, intellectuals such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot aimed to replace faith in divine revelation with faith in human reason and classical values. In economics and politics, liberal theorists such as John Locke and Adam Smith questioned absolutism and mercantilism by arguing for the authority of natural law and the market. Belief in progress, along with improved social and economic conditions, spurred significant gains in literacy and education as well as the creation of a new culture of the printed word—including novels, newspapers, periodicals, and such reference works as Diderot’s Encyclopédie—for a growing educated audience.
Alongside several movements of religious revival that occurred during the 18th century, European elite culture embraced skepticism, secularism, and atheism for the first time in European history. From the beginning of this period, Protestants and Catholics grudgingly tolerated each other following the religious warfare of the previous two centuries. By 1800, most governments had extended toleration to Christian minorities and in some states even to Jews. Religion was viewed increasingly as a matter of private rather than public concern.
The new rationalism did not sweep all before it; in fact, it coexisted with a revival of sentimentalism and emotionalism. Until about 1750, Baroque art and music glorified religious feeling and drama as well as the grandiose pretensions of absolute monarchs. During the French Revolution, romanticism and nationalism implicitly challenged what some saw as the Enlightenment’s overemphasis on reason. These Counter-Enlightenment views laid the foundations for new cultural and political values in the 19th century. Overall, intellectual and cultural developments reflected a new worldview in which rationalism, skepticism, scientific investigation, and a belief in progress generally dominated. At the same time, other worldviews stemming from religion, nationalism, and romanticism remained influential.
Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf
The articulation of natural laws, often expressed mathematically, became the goal of science, especially after the Europeans’ encounters with the Western Hemisphere. The explorations produced new knowledge of geography and the world’s peoples through direct observation, and this seemed to give credence to new approaches to knowledge more generally. Yet while they developed inquiry-based epistemologies, Europeans also continued to draw upon longstanding explanations of the natural world.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans applied the methods of the new science—such as empiricism, mathematics, and skepticism—to human affairs. During the Enlightenment, intellectuals such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot aimed to replace faith in divine revelation with faith in human reason and classical values. In economics and politics, liberal theorists such as John Locke and Adam Smith questioned absolutism and mercantilism by arguing for the authority of natural law and the market. Belief in progress, along with improved social and economic conditions, spurred significant gains in literacy and education as well as the creation of a new culture of the printed word—including novels, newspapers, periodicals, and such reference works as Diderot’s Encyclopédie—for a growing educated audience.
Alongside several movements of religious revival that occurred during the 18th century, European elite culture embraced skepticism, secularism, and atheism for the first time in European history. From the beginning of this period, Protestants and Catholics grudgingly tolerated each other following the religious warfare of the previous two centuries. By 1800, most governments had extended toleration to Christian minorities and in some states even to Jews. Religion was viewed increasingly as a matter of private rather than public concern.
The new rationalism did not sweep all before it; in fact, it coexisted with a revival of sentimentalism and emotionalism. Until about 1750, Baroque art and music glorified religious feeling and drama as well as the grandiose pretensions of absolute monarchs. During the French Revolution, romanticism and nationalism implicitly challenged what some saw as the Enlightenment’s overemphasis on reason. These Counter-Enlightenment views laid the foundations for new cultural and political values in the 19th century. Overall, intellectual and cultural developments reflected a new worldview in which rationalism, skepticism, scientific investigation, and a belief in progress generally dominated. At the same time, other worldviews stemming from religion, nationalism, and romanticism remained influential.
Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf
The Scientific Revolution
Tycho Brahe's body has been exhumed twice for study, in 1901 and 2010. He likely died of burst bladder and his artificial nose was probably made of brass rather gold, as some believed in his time.
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The Social Contract
Enlightenment Philosophes
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The satire Candide (1759) epitomizes Enlightenment criticism of humanity's most callous institutions. Voltaire mocks the cruelty of war, the extremism of the brutal Catholic Inquisition, the harsh violence of slavery, the hypocrisy of religious and political leaders, and general indifference to others' suffering. In this illustration, the main character Candide flees from a war-ravaged village.
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- philosophes
- Baruch Spinoza - Ethics (1677)
- Bernard de Fontenelle - Plurality of Worlds (1686)
- John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and Two Treatises of Government (1689)
- tabula rasa
- Pierre Bayle - Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697)
- skepticism
- Baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters (1721) and Spirit of the Laws (1748)
- separation of powers
- due process of law
- David Hume - Human Nature (1738–1740)
- Encyclopédie (1751–1772) - Denis Diderot, Jean-Baptiste le Rond D’Alembert, and Louis de Jaucort
- Voltaire - Candide (1759)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Inequality (1755), Emile, or On Education (1762), and The Social Contract (1762)
- noble savages
- popular sovereignty
- general will of the people
- Cesare Beccaria - On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
- Baron Paul d’Holbach - System of Nature (1770)
- Edward Gibbon - Decline and Fall of Roman Empire (1776–1789)
- Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason (1781), “What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), and Perpetual Peace (1795)
- Moses Mendelssohn - Jerusalem (1783)
- Jewish emancipation
- Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
- Marquis de Condorcet - For the Admission of the Rights of Citizenship for Women (1790) and Progress of the Human Mind (1793)
- Olympe de Gouges - Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791)
- Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
Enlightenment Institutions
Freemasons, whose members included Voltaire, John Locke, Haydn, Mozart, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, espoused Enlightenment ideals. This secret society was often misunderstood and persecuted, especially by the Catholic Church.
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