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LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading and studying this chapter you should be able to:
1. define and describe the scientific revolution.
2. explain how the Newtonian world-view differed from the medieval world-view.
3. define and describe the Enlightenment and its ideas about society, religion, the economy, and politics.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the educated classes of Europe changed from a world-view that
was basically religious to one that was primarily secular. The development of scientific knowledge was the key
cause of this intellectual change. Until about 1500, scientific thought reflected the Aristotelian-medieval
world-view, which taught that a motionless earth was at the center of a universe made up of planets and stars in
ten crystal spheres. These and many other beliefs showed that science was primarily a branch of religion.
Beginning with Copernicus, who taught that the earth revolved around the sun, Europeans slowly began to
reject Aristotelian-medieval scientific thought. They developed a new conception of a universe based on natural
laws, not on a personal God. Isaac Newton formulated the great scientific synthesis: the law of universal
gravitation. This was the high point of the scientific revolution.
The scientific revolution was more important for intellectual development than for economic activity or
everyday life, for above all it promoted critical thinking. Nothing was to be accepted on faith; everything was to
be submitted to the rational, scientific way of thinking. This critical examination of everything, from religion
and education to war and politics, was the key to the Enlightenment and the work of the philosophes, a group of
thinkers who propagandized the new world-view across Europe and the North American colonies. These
writers and thinkers, among them Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot, produced books and articles that
influenced all classes and whose primary intent was teaching people how to think critically and objectively
about all matters.
The philosophes were reformers, not revolutionaries. Their “enlightened” ideas were adopted by a number of
monarchs who sought to promote the advancement of knowledge and improve the lives of their subjects. Most
important in this group were Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia and the Habsburgs, Maria
Theresa and Joseph II. Despite some reforms, particularly in the area of law, Frederick and Catherine’s role in
the Enlightenment was in the abstract rather than the practical. The Habsburgs were more successful in legal
and tax reform, control of the church, and improvement of the lot of the serfs, although much of Joseph’s
spectacular peasant reform was later undone. Yet reform of society from the top down, that is, by the absolute
monarchs through “enlightened absolutism,” proved to be impossible because the enlightened monarchs could
not ignore the demands of their conservative nobilities. In the end, it was revolution, not enlightened
absolutism, that changed and reformed society.
STUDY OUTLINE
Use this outline to preview the chapter before you read a particular section in your textbook and then as a
self-check to test your reading comprehension after you have read the chapter section.