CHAP TE R
17
Toward a New Worldview
1540–1789
CHAPTER LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
After reading and studying this chapter, students
should be able to:
1. Critique the changing attitudes toward the
natural world that constituted the scientific
revolution and what made those attitudes
revolutionary.
2. Analyze how the new worldview known as the
Enlightenment affected the way people thought
about society and human relations.
3. Discuss the impact the new way of thinking
had on political developments and monarchical
absolutism.
ANNOTATED CHAPTER
OUTLINE
The following annotated chapter outline will help
you review the major topics covered in this chapter.
I.
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How did European views of nature change in
this period?
A. Scientific Thought in 1500
1. Prior to the scientific revolution, many
different scholars and practitioners were
involved in aspects of what came together
to form science.
2. One of the most important disciplines—
natural philosophy, based primarily on the
ideas of Aristotle—focused on
fundamental questions about the nature of
the universe, its purpose, and how it
functioned.
3. According to the revised Aristotelian
view, a motionless earth was fixed at the
center of the universe and was
encompassed by ten separate concentric
spheres that revolved around it.
4. Aristotle’s views also dominated thinking
about physics and motion on earth.
5. The earth was believed to be made up of
four imperfect, changeable elements: the
air, fire, water, and earth.
6. Aristotle’s ideas were accepted because
they offered an understandable,
commonsense explanation for the natural
world, and they also fit neatly with
Christian doctrines.
B. Origins of the Scientific Revolution
1. The scientific revolution drew on longterm developments in European culture, as
well as borrowings from Arabic scholars.
2. The development of universities boosted
philosophers’ inquiries as they pursued
limited but real independence from
theologians.
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3. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
leading universities established new
professorships of mathematics, astronomy,
and physics within their faculties of
philosophy, bringing the application of
critical thinking to scientific problems.
4. The Renaissance also stimulated scientific
progress through the recovery of ancient
works.
5. Renaissance patrons played a role in
funding scientific investigations, as they
did for art and literature.
6. The rise of printing provided a faster and
less expensive way to circulate knowledge
across Europe.
7. Navigational problems were critical in the
development of many new scientific
instruments, which permitted more
accurate observations and often led to
important new knowledge.
8. Centuries-old practices of astrology,
magic, and alchemy remained important
traditions for participants in the scientific
revolution.
C. The Copernican Hypothesis
1. The Polish cleric Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473–1543) felt that Ptolemy’s
cumbersome and occasionally inaccurate
rules of astronomy detracted from the
majesty of a perfect creator.
2. Copernicus theorized that the stars and
planets, including the earth, revolved
around a fixed sun, but he did not publish
his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Spheres until 1543, the year of his death.
3. Protestant leaders Martin Luther and John
Calvin attacked the idea that the earth
moved but the sun did not, and they
condemned Copernicus.
4. In 1572 a new star appeared and shone
very brightly for almost two years, which
seemed to contradict the idea that the
heavenly spheres were unchanging and
therefore perfect.
D. Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo: Proving
Copernicus Right
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1. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) gained the
support of the king of Denmark to build the
most sophisticated observatory of his day.
2. For twenty years Brahe observed the stars
and planets with the naked eye, compiling
much more complete and accurate data
than ever before, but he died in 1601
before he could make much sense out of
his mass of data.
3. Brahe’s young assistant, Johannes Kepler
(1571–1630), examined Brahe’s
observations and from them developed
new and revolutionary laws of planetary
motion.
4. Kepler demonstrated that the orbits of the
planets around the sun are elliptical rather
than circular and that the planets do not
move at a uniform speed in their orbits.
5. Whereas Copernicus had speculated,
Kepler proved mathematically the precise
relations of a sun-centered (solar) system.
6. In contrast to his scientific achievements,
Kepler also cast horoscopes as part of his
duties as court mathematician; his own
diary was based on astrological principles,
an irony that exemplifies the complex
interweaving of ideas and beliefs in the
emerging science of his day.
7. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) also
challenged the old ideas about motion,
using mathematics in examining motion
and mechanics in a new way and
formulating new laws such as the law of
inertia.
8. Galileo’s great achievement was the
elaboration and consolidation of the
experimental method, which he applied to
astronomy as well as to motion.
9. After making his own telescope, Galileo
quickly discovered the first four moons of
Jupiter, which provided new evidence to
support the Copernican theory.
10. In 1616 the Holy Office placed the works
of Copernicus and his supporters,
including Kepler, on a list of books
Catholics were forbidden to read.
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11. Galileo silenced his beliefs until the
publication in 1632 of his Dialogue on the
Two Chief Systems of the World, which
defended the views of Copernicus.
12. Galileo was tried for heresy by the papal
Inquisition.
13. Imprisoned and threatened with torture,
the aging Galileo recanted, “renouncing
and cursing” his Copernican errors.
E. Newton’s Synthesis
1. Despite the efforts of the church, by about
1640 the work of Brahe, Kepler, and
Galileo had been largely accepted by the
scientific community.
2. English scientist Isaac Newton (1642–
1727) united the experimental and
theoretical-mathematical sides of modern
science to explain the forces behind the
movement of the planets and objects on
Earth.
3. Newton arrived at some of his most basic
ideas about physics between 1664 and
1666, including his law of universal
gravitation and the concepts of centripetal
force and acceleration.
4. Not realizing the significance of his
findings, it wasn’t until 1684 that Newton
returned to physics and the preparation of
his ideas for publication.
5. In Philosophicae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, Newton, using a set of
mathematical laws that explain motion
and mechanics, laid down his three laws
of motion.
6. The key feature of the Newtonian
synthesis was the law of universal
gravitation: every body in the universe
attracts every other body in the universe in
a precise mathematical relationship based
on the objects’ matter and the distance
between them.
7. Newton’s synthesis of mathematics with
physics and astronomy prevailed until the
twentieth century and established him as
one of the most important figures in the
history of science.
F. Bacon, Descartes, and the Scientific Method
1. Scholars in many fields sought answers to
long-standing problems, sharing their
results in a community that spanned
Europe and developing better ways of
obtaining knowledge about the world.
2. The English politician and writer Francis
Bacon (1561–1626) was the greatest early
propagandist for the new experimental
method.
3. Bacon argued that new knowledge had to
be pursued through empirical research and
set about formalizing the empirical
method into the general theory of
inductive reasoning known as empiricism.
4. In an intellectual vision in 1619, René
Descartes (1596–1650) saw that there was
a perfect correspondence between
geometry and algebra and that geometrical
spatial figures could be expressed as
algebraic equations and vice versa.
5. Descartes’s discovery of analytic
geometry provided scientists with an
important new tool.
6. All occurrences in nature could be
analyzed as matter in motion and,
according to Descartes, the total “quantity
of motion” in the universe was constant.
7. Descartes’s greatest achievement was to
develop his initial vision into a whole
philosophy of knowledge and science;
his reasoning ultimately reduced all
substances to “matter” and “mind,” a
view of the world known as Cartesian
dualism.
8. Although insufficient on their own,
Bacon’s and Descartes’s extreme
approaches are combined in the modern
scientific method, which began to
crystallize in the late seventeenth century.
G. Science and Society
1. The rise of modern science had many
consequences, including the formation of
an international scientific community.
2. The new scientific community became
closely tied to the state and its agendas, as
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governments intervened to support and
sometimes to direct research.
3. At the same time, scientists developed
a critical attitude toward established
authority that would inspire thinkers
to question traditions in other
domains.
4. New “rational” methods for approaching
nature did not question traditional
inequalities between the sexes, however,
and the new academies that furnished
professional credentials did not accept
female members.
5. Noteworthy exceptions included
universities and academies in Italy that
offered posts to women, who worked as
botanical illustrators, and female
intellectuals who fully engaged in the
philosophical dialogue of the time.
6. Because science had relatively few
practical economic applications, the
scientific revolution had few
consequences for economic life and the
living standards of the masses.
7. The role of religion in the development of
science is complicated.
8. The Catholic Church was initially less
hostile to science than Protestant and
Jewish leaders, but that changed with the
trial of Galileo in 1633.
9. Protestant countries became very
supportive of science, especially those
countries lacking a strong religious
authority that could impose religious
orthodoxy on scientific questions.
H. Medicine, the Body, and Chemistry
1. The scientific revolution began with the
study of the cosmos but soon inspired
renewed study of the microcosm of the
human body.
2. Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus
(1493–1541) was an early proponent of
the experimental method and pioneered
the use of chemicals and drugs in
medicine.
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3. Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius
(1516–1564) studied anatomy by
dissecting human bodies, and the two
hundred precise drawings in his
masterpiece On the Structure of the
Human Body (1543) revolutionized the
understanding of human anatomy.
4. English royal physician William Harvey
(1578–1657) discovered the circulation of
blood through the veins and arteries and
was the first to explain that the heart
worked like a pump.
5. Following Paracelsus’s lead, Irishman
Robert Boyle (1627–1691) undertook
experiments to discover the basic elements
of nature and founded the modern science
of chemistry; in the process, he discovered
Boyle’s law (1662), which states that the
pressure of a gas varies inversely with
volume.
II. What were the core principles of the
Enlightenment?
A. The Emergence of the Enlightenment
1. The new worldview of the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment grew out of a rich
mix of diverse and often conflicting ideas.
2. Enlightenment thinkers submitted
everything to rationalism, using the
methods of natural science to examine and
understand all aspects of life.
3. The European Enlightenment (ca. 1690–
1789) gained strength gradually and did
not reach its maturity until about 1750.
4. The excitement of the scientific revolution
also generated doubt and uncertainty,
contributing to a widespread crisis in
European thought.
5. The devastation of the Thirty Years’ War
prompted questions about the need for
ideological conformity in religious matters
and about whether religious truth could
ever be known with absolute certainty.
6. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a French
Huguenot, examined the religious beliefs
and persecutions of the past in his
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Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697),
and he concluded that nothing can ever be
known beyond all doubt, a view known as
skepticism.
7. The Jewish scholar and philosopher
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), one of the
most important thinkers of the early
Enlightenment, came to believe that mind
and body are united in one substance and
that God and nature were two names for
the same thing.
8. Through the rapid growth of travel
literature, Europeans were learning that
the peoples of other lands had their own
very different beliefs and customs.
9. Educated Europeans began to look at truth
and morality in relative, rather than
absolute, terms.
10. Out of this period of intellectual turmoil
came John Locke’s Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1690), which
introduced his theory that all ideas are
derived from experience.
B. The Influence of the Philosophes
1. By 1775 a large portion of western
Europe’s educated elite had embraced
many of the new ideas, due to the work of
a group of influential intellectuals known
as the philosophes.
2. The Enlightenment reached its highest
development in France in part because
French was the international language of
the educated classes and because the
French philosophes made it their goal to
reach a larger audience of elites.
3. To appeal to the public and get around the
censors, the philosophes wrote novels and
plays, histories and philosophies,
dictionaries and encyclopedias, all filled
with satire and double meanings to spread
their message.
4. The baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)
pioneered this approach in The Persian
Letters, a social satire published in 1721
and consisting of amusing letters
supposedly written by two Persian
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
travelers, through which Montesquieu
offered up a criticism of European
customs and beliefs.
Taking inspiration from the example of
the physical sciences, Montesquieu set out
to apply the critical method to the problem
of government in The Spirit of Laws
(1748).
Montesquieu’s argument for a separation
of powers in government had a great
impact on the constitutions of the young
United States in 1789 and of France in
1791.
The most famous and in many ways most
representative philosophe was François
Marie Arouet, who was known by the pen
name Voltaire (1694–1778).
Voltaire formed a mutually beneficial
relationship with Gabrielle-Emilie Le
Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du
Châtelet (1706–1749), a gifted woman
from the high aristocracy who studied
physics and mathematics and published
scientific articles and translations.
Voltaire wrote various works praising
England and popularizing English
scientific progress; in true Enlightenment
style, he mixed the glorification of science
and reason with an appeal for better
individuals and institutions.
Like most of the philosophes, Voltaire
was a reformer, not a revolutionary, in
social and political matters; he was
pessimistic about the ability of the masses
to govern themselves and did not believe
in social and economic equality in human
affairs.
Voltaire clearly believed in God, but his
was a distant, deistic God, and like most
of the philosophes Voltaire hated all forms
of religious intolerance, which he believed
often led to fanaticism and savage,
inhuman action.
The greatest and most representative
intellectual achievement of the
philosophes was a group effort—the
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seventeen-volume Encyclopedia: The
Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the
Arts, and the Crafts, edited by Denis
Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean le Rond
d’Alembert (1717–1783).
13. The Encyclopedia, completed in 1765,
contained hundreds of thousands of
articles by leading scientists, writers,
skilled workers, and progressive priests,
and it addressed every aspect of life and
knowledge.
C. The Enlightenment Outside of France
1. Scholars have described a more
conservative Enlightenment in England
and Germany that tried to integrate the
findings of the scientific revolution with
religious faith.
2. The Scottish Enlightenment was marked
by an emphasis on pragmatic and
scientific reasoning and was stimulated by
the creation of the first public educational
system in Europe.
3. Building on Locke’s teachings on
learning, David Hume (1711–1776)
argued that the human mind is really
nothing but a bundle of impressions that
originate only in sense experiences and
our habits of joining these experiences
together.
4. Since our ideas reflect only our sense
experiences, our reason cannot tell us
anything about questions that cannot be
verified by sense experience, such as the
origin of the universe or the existence of
God.
5. Paradoxically, Hume’s rationalistic
inquiry ended up undermining the
Enlightenment’s faith in the power of
reason.
D. Urban Culture and Life in the Public Sphere
1. Significant growth in the European
production and consumption of books
encouraged the spread of Enlightenment
ideas.
2. The so-called reading revolution involved
a broader and ever-changing field of
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books and ushered in new ways of relating
to the written word, as reading became an
individual activity and texts were
questioned.
3. From about 1740 to 1789, conversation,
discussion, and debate found fertile
ground in the salons of Paris, where a
number of talented, wealthy women
presided over regular social gatherings
and mediated the public’s freewheeling
examination of Enlightenment thought.
4. Through their invitation lists, salonnières
(salon hostesses) brought together
members of the intellectual, economic,
and social elite, who intermingled and
influenced one another.
5. Elite women also exercised great
influence on artistic taste in the
development of a style known as rococo,
which was popular from 1720 to 1780 and
was characterized by soft pastels and
ornate interiors.
6. Some philosophies championed greater
rights and expanded education for women,
claiming that the position and treatment of
women were the best indicators of a
society’s level of civilization and decency.
7. The coffeehouses that first appeared in the
late seventeenth century became meccas
of philosophical discussion and created a
new public sphere that celebrated open
debate informed by critical reason.
8. Enlightenment philosophies did not direct
their message to peasants or urban laborers,
believing that the masses had no time or
talent for philosophical speculation and that
elevating them would be a long, slow, and
potentially dangerous process.
E. Race and the Enlightenment
1. As scientists developed more elaborate
taxonomies of plant and animal species,
they also began to classify humans into
hierarchically ordered “races” and to
investigate the origins of race.
2. In Of Natural Characters (1748), David
Hume argued that “all other species of
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men” were “naturally inferior to the
whites.”
3. Immanuel Kant shared and elaborated
Hume’s views about race in On the
Different Races of Man (1775), claiming
that the white inhabitants of northern
Germany were the closest descendants of
the supposedly original race of “white
brunette” people.
4. Using the word race to designate
biologically distinct groups of humans
was new.
5. Scientific racism helped legitimate and
justify the tremendous growth of slavery
that occurred during the eighteenth
century.
6. Challenging claims of white superiority,
Scottish philosopher James Beattie (1735–
1803) pointed out that Europeans had
started out as savage as nonwhites and that
many non-European peoples in the
Americas, Asia, and Africa had achieved
high levels of civilization.
7. Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803)
criticized Kant, arguing that each culture
was as intrinsically worthy as any other.
F. Late Enlightenment
1. After about 1770 a number of thinkers and
writers, including the Swiss Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712–1778), began to attack
the Enlightenment’s faith in reason,
progress, and moderation.
2. Rousseau was passionately committed to
individual freedom, but he attacked
rationalism and civilization as destroying,
rather than liberating, the individual.
3. Rousseau contributed to political theory in
The Social Contract (1762) by arguing
that the general will is sacred and absolute
and reflects the common interests of all
the people, though he cautioned that the
general will is not necessarily the will of
the majority.
4. As the reading public developed, it joined
forces with the philosophes to call for the
autonomy of the printed word.
5. Kant argued that if serious thinkers were
granted the freedom to exercise their
reason publicly in print, enlightenment
would almost surely follow.
6. Kant also tried to reconcile absolute
monarchical authority with a critical
public sphere, a balancing act that
characterized experiments with
“enlightened absolutism” in the eighteenth
century.
III. What did enlightened absolutism mean?
A. Frederick the Great of Prussia
1. Frederick II (r. 1740–1786), commonly
known as Frederick the Great, was
determined to use the splendid army that his
father, Frederick William I, had left him.
2. When the young Maria Theresa of Austria
inherited the Habsburg dominions,
Frederick invaded her rich province of
Silesia.
3. In 1742, as other greedy powers vied for
her lands in the European War of the
Austrian Succession (1740–1748), Maria
Theresa was forced to cede almost all of
Silesia to Prussia.
4. In 1756 Maria Theresa, seeking to regain
Silesia, formed an alliance with the
leaders of France and Russia and initiated
the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), with
the aim of conquering Prussia and
dividing up its territory.
5. In the end, Frederick was miraculously
saved when Peter III came to the Russian
throne in 1762 and called off the attack
against Frederick.
6. The terrible struggle of the Seven Years’
War tempered Frederick’s interest in
territorial expansion and turned it toward
more humane policies for his subjects as a
way to strengthen the state.
7. Frederick allowed his subjects freedom in
their religious and philosophical beliefs,
and he sought to enlighten them through
the advancement of knowledge, improving
his country’s schools and permitting
scholars to publish their findings.
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8. Prussia’s laws were simplified and
stressed impartiality, and Prussian
officials became famous for their hard
work and honesty.
9. After the Seven Years’ War ended in
1763, Frederick’s government
energetically promoted the reconstruction
of agriculture and industry in his war-torn
country.
B. Catherine the Great of Russia
1. Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1762–
1796) was one of the most remarkable
rulers of her age, and the French
philosophes adored her.
2. Catherine came to the throne after her
husband Peter III angered army officers
by withdrawing from the Seven Years’
War and was murdered by Catherine’s
love and his three brothers.
3. Setting out to rule in an enlightened
manner, Catherine worked hard to
continue Peter the Great’s effort to bring
the culture of western Europe to Russia,
importing Western architects, sculptors,
musicians, and intellectuals.
4. As an intellectual ruler, Catherine wrote
plays and loved good talk, and set the tone
for the entire Russian nobility.
5. In the way of domestic reform, Catherine
restricted the practice of torture, allowed
limited religious toleration, and tried to
improve education and strengthen local
government.
6. In 1773, however, a common Cossack
soldier named Emelian Pugachev sparked
a gigantic uprising of serfs that resulted in
the slaughter of landlords and officials
over a vast area of southwestern Russia.
7. Pugachev’s rebellion was quickly put
down by Catherine’s army, but it also put
an end to any intentions Catherine might
have had about reforming the system.
8. After 1775 Catherine gave the nobles
absolute control of their serfs, extending
serfdom into new areas and formalizing
the nobility’s privileged position.
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9. Catherine succeeded well in her quest for
territorial expansion, subjugating the last
descendants of the Mongols and the
Crimean Tartars and beginning the
conquest of the Caucasus.
10. When Catherine’s armies scored
unprecedented victories against the Turks
between 1768 and 1772, thereby
threatening to disrupt the balance of
power in eastern Europe, Frederick of
Prussia proposed that Turkey be let off
easily and that Prussia, Austria, and
Russia divide up Polish territory as
compensation.
11. By 1795, after three partitions, the ancient
republic of Poland had vanished from the
map.
C. The Austrian Habsburgs
1. Another female monarch, Maria Theresa
(r. 1740–1780) of Austria, set out to
reform her nation, primarily through
traditional power politics.
2. After losing Silesia in the long War of the
Austrian Succession in 1748, Maria
Theresa was determined to make the
Austrian state stronger and more efficient.
3. Administrative reforms that strengthened
the central bureaucracy, smoothed out
provincial differences, and revamped the
tax system were some of Maria Theresa’s
measures, along with improving the lot of
the agricultural population.
4. A strong supporter of change, Maria
Theresa’s son Joseph II moved forward
rapidly when he came to the throne in
1780 and abolished serfdom in 1781.
5. A decree in 1789 that allowed peasants to
pay landlords in cash rather than through
compulsory labor on their land was
violently rejected by both the nobility and
the peasants it was intended to help.
6. When a disillusioned Joseph died
prematurely at forty-nine, his brother
Leopold II (r. 1790–1792) canceled
Joseph’s radical edicts and reestablished
order.
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7. By combining old-fashioned statebuilding with the culture and critical
thinking of the Enlightenment, the eastern
European absolutists of the later
eighteenth century succeeded in
expanding the role of the state in the life
of society.
D. Jewish Life and the Limits of Enlightened
Absolutism
1. Europe’s small Jewish populations lived
under highly discriminatory laws that
confined them to tiny, overcrowded
ghettos and excluded them by law from
most business and professional activities.
2. In the eighteenth century, an
Enlightenment movement known as the
Haskalah emerged from within the
European Jewish community, led by the
Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn,
who advocated freedom and civil rights
for European Jews.
3. Arguments for tolerance won some
ground, but a 1753 British law allowing
naturalization of Jews was later repealed
due to public outrage.
4. Likewise in Austria, Joseph II instituted
reforms intended to integrate Jews more
fully into society, including eligibility for
military service and removal of special
clothing requirements, but the reforms
raised fears among traditionalists in the
general population.
5. Although he permitted freedom of religion
to his Christian subjects, Frederick the
Great of Prussia firmly opposed any
general emancipation for the Jews.
6. In 1791 Catherine the Great established
the Pale of Settlement, a territory
including parts of modern-day Poland,
Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and
Belorussia, in which most Jews were
required to live.
7. France, in the time of the French
Revolution, was the first European state to
remove all restrictions on the Jews, and
gradually Jews won full legal and civil
rights throughout the rest of western
Europe.
8. Emancipation in eastern Europe took even
longer and aroused more conflict and
violence.
CHAPTER QUESTIONS
Following are answer guidelines for the Review
Questions that appear in the textbook chapter and
answer guidelines for the chapter’s Map Activity,
Visual Activity, Individuals in Society, and Listening
to the Past questions located in the Online Study Guide
at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestunderstanding.
Answer guidelines for Steps One, Two, and Three of
the Chapter Study Guide, found at the end of the
chapter in the text, have also been provided.
Review Questions
1. How did European views of nature change in
this period?
• Decisive breakthroughs in astronomy and
physics in the seventeenth century demolished the
medieval synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and
Christian theology. One of the most notable discoveries
was that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the
galaxy. Although the early scientists considered their
ideas to be in line with religion, their discoveries ran
counter to long-held beliefs about the design of the
universe by the Creator; therefore, Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo, and others were branded as heretics.
Meanwhile, Bacon promoted the experimental method
that drew conclusions based on empirical evidence, and
Descartes championed deductive reasoning that
speculated truths based on known principles. These two
important methods eventually combined to form the
modern scientific method that relies on both
experimentation and reason. Following these early
innovators, Newton devised the law of universal
gravitation, which for the first time synthesized the
orbiting planets of the solar system with the motion of
objects on earth. These scientific breakthroughs had
only limited practical consequences at the time, but
their impact on intellectual life was enormous,
nurturing a new critical attitude in many disciplines. In
addition, an international scientific community arose,
and state-sponsored academies, which were typically
closed to women, advanced scientific research.
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2. What were the core principles of the
Enlightenment?
• Interpreting scientific findings and Newtonian
laws in a manner that was both anti-tradition and
anti-religion, Enlightenment philosophes extolled the
superiority of rational, critical thinking. This new
method, they believed, promised not just increased
knowledge but even the discovery of the
fundamental laws of human society. Believing that
all aspects of life were open to question and
skepticism, Enlightenment thinkers opened the doors
to religious tolerance, representative government,
and general intellectual debate. One important
downside of the new scientific method was that it led
to the classification of human races, with white
Europeans placing themselves at the top of a new
racial hierarchy.
3. What did enlightened absolutism mean?
• The ideas of the Enlightenment were an
inspiration for monarchs, particularly absolutist
rulers in central and eastern Europe who saw in them
important tools for reforming and rationalizing their
governments. Their primary goal was to strengthen
their states and increase the efficiency of their
bureaucracies and armies. Enlightened absolutists
believed that these reforms would ultimately
improve the lot of ordinary people, but this was not
their chief concern. With few exceptions, they did
not question the institution of serfdom. The fact that
leading philosophes supported rather than criticized
Eastern rulers’ policies suggests some of the
limitations of the era.
Map Activity
Map 17.1: The Partition of Poland, 1772–1795
Analyzing the Map: Of the three powers that
divided the kingdom of Poland, who benefited the
most? How did the partition affect the geographical
boundaries of each state, and what was the
significance? What border with the former Poland
remained unchanged? Why do you think this was the
case?
• Benefit: The Russian Empire gained the most
territory from the former kingdom of Poland.
• Boundaries: The three powers in Eastern
Europe, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, lost the buffer
state between them with the partition of Poland.
These powers now shared common borders. This
would increase the chances of conflict among them.
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• Unchanged Border: Eastern Prussia, which
had been separated from the rest of Prussia by the
region around Danzig, did not change hands. Prussia,
unlike Poland, was a major European power at this
time, and was not vulnerable to having its territory
taken away by another power.
Connections: Why was Poland vulnerable to
partition in the latter half of the eighteenth century?
What does it say about European politics at the time
that a country could simply cease to exist on the
map? Could that happen today?
• Vulnerable: Poland had a constitutionalist
monarchy, unlike its absolutist neighbors. This
meant that the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian
monarchs could raise taxes and field large armies
much more easily than the Polish king.
• Politics and Disappearing States: European
kings clearly put their own interests above those of
another country. Respect for a weaker state’s
sovereignty was not a concern for these rulers.
Students will have varying answers for whether this
could happen today. Some will point out that
international organizations like the United Nations
serve to protect smaller states from larger powers.
They may bring up the example of the Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait as an example. Others may note that states
have disappeared for other reasons, as with the
collapse of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union
into many smaller states.
Visual Activity
Enlightenment Culture
Analyzing the Image: Which of these people do you
think is the hostess, Madame Geoffrin, and why?
Using details from the painting to support your
answer, how would you describe the status of the
people shown?
• Madame Geoffrin: Madame Geoffrin is
probably the woman in the yellow dress, standing
behind the seated man reading from the play. It
would make sense for her to be placed at the focal
point of the painting, since she is hosting the
gathering.
• Upper Class Status: The people shown in the
painting are probably members of the upper class.
The men wear brightly colored clothing, some with
sashes, others with gold thread, and most wearing
elaborate wigs; the women wear brightly colored
dresses, and some wear unique hats. All of the
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clothing appears expensive, and very clean,
suggesting that those in attendance have wealth and
free time to spend.
Connections: What does this image suggest about
the reach of Enlightenment ideas to common people?
To women?
• Common People and Women: The image
suggests that common people were not greatly
involved in Enlightenment ideas, as all the guests in
the painting appear to be members of the wealthy
upper class. Women were somewhat involved with
Enlightenment ideas, since there are a few depicted
in the painting. However, even though Madame
Geoffrin was the hostess of the gathering, some
unidentified man is reading Voltaire’s play,
suggesting that men were the ones actively
distributing Enlightenment ideas.
Individuals in Society
Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish
Enlightenment
1. How did Mendelssohn seek to influence
Jewish religious thought in his time?
• Acceptance of Reason and Religion:
Mendelssohn was convinced that both reason and
religion could compliment and strengthen each other,
though they would remain as distinctly separate
spheres. He attempted to harmonize Enlightenment
thought with Jewish belief.
2. How do Mendelssohn’s ideas compare with
those of the French Enlightenment?
• Supported Established Religion: Mendelssohn,
and other German Enlightenment philosophers,
sought to make reason and religion separate yet
compatible influences. In contrast, the French
Enlightenment used reason to attack established
religion rather than support it.
Listening to the Past
Denis Diderot’s “Supplement to Bougainville’s
Voyage”
1. On what grounds does the speaker argue for
the Tahitians’ basic equality with the Europeans?
• The Human Family: The speaker states that
both Europeans and Tahitians are “children of
nature,” and therefore both are brothers and equals.
• Comparison: The speaker compares his people
to the Europeans by claiming both would react in the
same way to particular situations. He says the
Europeans would rather die than be enslaved, and
suggests that Tahitians feel the same. Likewise, he
states that the Tahitians treated Europeans with
respect and therefore the Tahitians deserve to be
treated with respect in turn.
2. What is the good life according to the
speaker, and how does it contrast with the European
way of life? Which do you think is the better path?
• The Good Life: The Tahitians live the good
life, according to the speaker. This appears to mean a
communal environment, in which food, clothing, and
other possessions are shared among all members of
the community. The Tahitians also only work to the
“bounds of strict necessity,” and then cease toiling in
order to enjoy life.
• European Way of Life: According to the text,
the European way of life is full of painful toil, with
not much time for leisure or enjoyment. The speaker
suggests Europeans create unnecessary wants and
desires that they never achieve, because they are
constantly trying to work harder and harder to attain
these impossible desires.
• The Better Path: The Tahitian way of life is
almost certainly an idealized picture of native life.
However, the concept of working to meet only your
needs, and then saving the rest of your time for
leisure, is certainly an appealing one when contrasted
with a life full of painful work and few rewards.
3. In what ways could Diderot’s thoughts here
be seen as representative of Enlightenment ideas?
Are there ways in which they are not?
• Enlightenment Ideals: The speaker in the text
makes an argument for the Enlightenment ideal of
tolerance, suggesting that it would be just to leave
the Tahitians to their own lifestyle. However, the
speaker’s position seems to contradict the
Enlightenment ideal of technical innovation and
progress; instead, he argues that progress is a bad
thing, and that Tahitian culture should remain as it is.
4. How realistic do you think this account is?
Does it matter? How might defenders of colonial
expansion respond to Diderot’s criticism?
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• Unrealistic: The account is probably
unrealistic. The Tahitians probably did not think that
they lived in such a perfect society. In all likelihood,
their society contained flaws and difficulties that
they resented and tried to fix. An idealized version of
Tahitian society, however, is necessary in order for
Diderot to point out the hypocrisy inherent in the
colonizers arguments.
• Colonial Defenders: Colonial defenders would
have responded to this criticism by saying that the
natives were barbarians, and therefore were unaware
of all of the benefits of European civilization. They
may have also responded with a religious argument,
by stating it was their duty to bring salvation to the
natives by spreading Christianity.
END OF CHAPTER STUDY
GUIDE
Step 1
Getting Started
Below are basic terms about this period in the history
of Western civilization. Can you identify each term
below and explain why it matters?
Terms
natural philosophy: An early modern term for the
study of the nature of the universe, its purpose,
and how it functioned; it encompassed what we
would call “science” today.
Copernican hypothesis: The idea that the sun, not
the earth, is the center of the universe.
experimental method: The approach, pioneered by
Galileo, that the proper way to explore the
workings of the universe was through repeatable
experiments rather than speculation.
law of inertia: A law formulated by Galileo that
states that motion, not rest, is the natural state of
an object, that an object continues in motion
forever unless stopped by some external force.
law of universal gravitation: Newton’s law that all
objects are attracted to one another and that the
force of attraction is proportional to the object’s
quantity of matter and inversely proportional to
the square of the distance between them.
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empiricism: A theory of inductive reasoning that
calls for acquiring evidence through observation
and experimentation rather than reason and
speculation.
Cartesian dualism: Descartes’s view that all of
reality could ultimately be reduced to mind and
matter.
Enlightenment: The influential intellectual and cultural movement of the late seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries that introduced a new
worldview based on the use of reason, the
scientific method, and progress.
rationalism: A secular, critical way of thinking in
which nothing was to be accepted on faith, and
everything was to be submitted to reason.
philosophes: A group of French intellectuals who
proclaimed that they were bringing the light of
knowledge to their fellow creatures in the Age of
Enlightenment.
reading revolution: The transition in Europe from a
society where literacy consisted of patriarchal
and communal reading of religious texts to a
society where literacy was commonplace and
reading material was broad and diverse.
salons: Regular social gatherings held by talented
and rich Parisian women in their homes, where
philosophes and their followers met to discuss
literature, science, and philosophy.
rococo: A popular style in Europe in the eighteenth
century, known for its soft pastels, ornate
interiors, sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed
lovers protected by hovering cupids.
public sphere: An idealized intellectual space that
emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment,
where the public came together to discuss
important issues relating to society, economy,
and politics.
enlightened absolutism: Term coined by historians
to describe the rule of eighteenth-century
monarchs who, without renouncing their own
absolute authority, adopted Enlightenment ideals
of rationalism, progress, and tolerance.
Haskalah: The Jewish Enlightenment of the second
half of the eighteenth century, led by the
Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
cameralism: View that monarchy was the best form
of government, that all elements of society
should serve the monarch, and that, in turn, the
state should use its resources and authority to
increase the public good.
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Step 2
descriptions of the major contributions of key
people. Be sure to include both concrete discoveries
and contributions to the development of the scientific
method. When you are finished, consider the
following questions: How did these thinkers build off
of each other’s discoveries and insights? What
common goals did they share?
Moving Beyond the Basics
The exercise below requires a more advanced
understanding of the chapter material. Examine
the contributions of key figures of the scientific
revolution by filling in the chart below with
Nicolaus Copernicus
Tycho Brahe
Johannes Kepler
Francis Bacon
René Descartes
Galileo Galilei
Isaac Newton
Discoveries and Contributions
Heliocentric model of the universe.
Compiled data on planetary
motion.
Theorized mathematical
relationship among planets.
Planetary orbits are ellipses.
Argued that research must be based
on empirical research. Used
inductive reasoning.
Analytic geometry. Dualism of
mind and matter. Rational
speculation. Deductive reasoning.
Used experiments to formulate law
of inertia. Used a telescope to see
rings of Saturn, moons of Jupiter,
sun spots.
Universal laws of motion, gravity.
Step 3
Putting It All Together
Now that you’ve reviewed key elements of the
chapter, take a step back and try to see the big
picture. Remember to use specific examples from the
chapter in your answers.
The Scientific Revolution
1. What was revolutionary about the scientific
revolution? How did the study of nature in the
sixteenth century differ from the study of nature in
the Middle Ages?
• Model Answer: Science did not start with the
Scientific Revolution, but changed the way natural
philosophers studied the world instead. In the Middle
Ages, Aristotelian thought, which offered
commonsense explanations for what people observed
and fit with Christian theology, dominated the way
people understood the world. In the scientific
revolution, Aristotelian ideas were replaced with
mathematics and experimentation as the source of
knowledge.
2. How did Newton’s ideas build on the
contributions of his predecessors? Is it fair to
describe his work as the culmination of the scientific
revolution? Why or why not?
• Model Answer: Natural philosophers had been
trying to understand the motion of the planets for
some time. Newton built on the work of Copernicus,
Galileo, Kepler, and Brahe, but synthesized them
with his study of mathematics. In one sense he was
the culmination of the scientific revolution, as his
ideas dominated astronomy until the twentieth
century. On the other hand, Newton was not
involved in all forms of science. Others were making
similar advances in medicine and biology.
3. How did religious belief both stimulate and
hinder scientific inquiry?
• Model Answer: Contrary to popular
understanding, not all religious men were opposed to
C HAPTER 17 • T OWARD
the new science. Many of the new scientists were
churchmen or sponsored by the church. Men like
Kepler and Newton sought to discover the musical
harmony of the universe or the laws of alchemy
through their research. After the trial of Galileo,
however, science was in decline in Italy, but not in
all Catholic countries.
The Enlightenment
1. How did the scientific revolution contribute
to the emergence of the Enlightenment? What new
ideas about the power and potential of human reason
were central to both developments?
• Model Answer: The Enlightenment was a
movement to popularize the new science and reason.
Enlightenment philosophers believed that they could
improve society by promoting rationalism, a way of
thinking in which nothing was accepted on faith.
They believed that the potential of human reason was
unlimited if all things were submitted to rational
inquiry.
2. In what ways did the Enlightenment
influence eighteenth-century European society and
politics? In what ways was its influence limited?
• Model Answer: By 1750, most of the
European elite had accepted the values of the
Enlightenment. Enlightened views on government,
science, society, and politics were discussed openly
in the salons, and books by enlightened philosophers
circulated widely across Europe. The
Enlightenment’s influence was limited by the lack of
literacy in European countries. Common people were
not unaware of the new ideas, but they were not
allowed into the salons or academies.
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Enlightened Absolutism
1. Why did many Enlightenment thinkers see
absolute monarchy as a potential force for good? What
light do the political views of the philosophes shed on
the nature and limits of Enlightenment thinking?
• Model Answer: Many Enlightenment thinkers
lived in absolutist states, and they generally accepted
that their monarchs were best suited to rule. They
could point to the examples of Frederick the Great
and Maria Theresa as examples of monarchs who
ruled by reason. These Enlightened monarchs kept
order through absolutist policies, which may seem
unenlightened now. This shows that Enlightenment
thinkers were products of their time and their
understandings of equality and social justice were
limited to what was acceptable in the eighteenth
century.
2. How did Enlightenment ideas contribute to
the expansion of the role of the state in central and
eastern European society? What existing social and
economic structures were least susceptible to
enlightened reform? Why?
• Model Answer: Enlightened monarchs in
central and eastern Europe sought to expand the role
of the state in daily life. Some, like Maria Therese,
limited the power of the church in their kingdoms.
Others, like Catherine the Great, tried to reform their
law codes based on rationalism. Not all economic
and social structures were easily reformed. Noble
privileges over serfs, for example, were not easy to
change and attempts to improve the lives of peasants
in both Russia and Austria failed.
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
3. How did Enlightenment thinkers deal with
issues of gender and race? What does this tell us
about the nature of the Enlightenment?
Imagine that you must explain Chapter 17 to
someone who hasn’t read it. What would be the most
important points to include and why?
• Model Answer: Women were active
participants in the Enlightenment as authors and
patrons of salons. Even so, Enlightenment thinkers
were divided on women’s ability to understand
Enlightenment ideas. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for
example, thought that women were naturally inferior
to men. This same division can be seen on the
subject of race. Some thought of Europeans as a
naturally superior race, but others argued that this
position was not based on reason.
• Model Answer: The new science of the
seventeenth century was popularized in the
Enlightenment. The Enlightened philosophers
believed that humanity could progress if society was
reformed to be based on rationalism. Philosophes
argued for reforms in government, education,
society, and politics. They did not always agree on
reforms, but they held in common the belief that all
human thought and activity should be based on
human reason.
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LECTURE STRATEGIES
See also the maps and images for presentation in
“Additional Bedford/St. Martin’s Resources for
Chapter 17.”
Lecture 1: “The (Unexpected) Origins of
Modern Science”
The heroic interpretation of the rise of modern
science is one with which students are often overly
familiar: they have come to expect a narrative
animated by elite, white men making dramatic
discoveries through sheer genius. (Indeed, the text
uses the term “genius” several times.) To provide a
counterbalance, this lecture focuses on the lesserknown origins of modern science and brings some
unexpected players (namely non-westerners and
women) into view.
Emphasize that “Science” was not created in the
sixteenth century. What we now call modern science
had its roots in medieval traditions of alchemy,
astrology, and natural philosophy, and many of the
“great” scientists mingled old forms of science with
the new. Johannes Kepler, for example, pursued
numerological relationships among music,
mathematics, and the physical world, alongside his
work in optics and astronomy. Nor was science a
western creation. As the text emphasizes, Arabic
translations of original Greek, Latin, and Chinese
texts were key to early western scientific
breakthroughs, and in the Arab-Muslim world
medicine and mathematics were more advanced in
the fourteenth century.
Next, explore the varieties of scientific enquiry
underway. Astronomy usually takes center stage, so
draw students’ attention to early-modern research in
such areas as chemistry, botany, and entomology.
Emphasize how a broad definition of “science,” one
that includes craft and household traditions of
midwifery, nursing, and home economics (e.g., soap
and candle making), allows us to recognize the
contributions made by artisans and women (as
daughters and wives of artisans, artisans’ assistants,
and widows who inherited family business, etc.).
Following the lead of Lisa Jardine, give some
examples of the people who contributed the
technological innovations that made possible the
grand syntheses and enduring axioms.
You might end with further exploration of
women’s contributions to the rise of modern science.
Use the example of Maria Sibylla Merian, a leading
eighteenth-century entomologist and botanical
illustrator, or Emilie du Chatelet. Of course, one
must also address the issue of why so many of
women’s contributions have slipped from historical
memory. The suppression of Maria Winkelmann’s
astronomical discoveries can illustrate that point
well.
The overall point of the lecture is to challenge
some of the “myths of scientific revolution”—
namely, that science is always objective and value
neutral, is highly technical and detached from the
social realm, and is done only in universities and
laboratories. Sources: Londa Schiebinger, The Mind
Has No Sex: Women in the Origins of Modern
Science (1989); Judith P. Zinsser, ed., Men, Women,
and the Birthing of Modern Science (2005); Lisa
Jardine, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific
Revolution (1999).
Lecture 2: “The Enlightenment and the
Creation of the Public Sphere”
Was the Enlightenment a “crisis of elites,” as
Jonathan Israel has observed, or did it trickle down
into a broader public? What impact did the
intellectual crisis make on the attitudes of ordinary
individuals? To answer these questions, share with
students the theories of Jürgen Habermas, who
posited that the bourgeois public sphere arose during
the Enlightenment as a discursive space where public
opinion could form. This “public sphere” provided
an intermediary zone between the “private sphere”
and the “public sphere of authority,” and it formed
the basis of democracy as well as a potential fulcrum
of resistance and rebellion. France’s salons, Britain’s
coffee houses, and Germany’s Tischgesellschaften
provided the “institutional criteria” for discussion
and exchange to flourish. By organizing a lecture
around the concept of the “public sphere,” students
are able to see the implications of Enlightenment
ideas and make comparisons to their own world.
The challenge in teaching the Enlightenment is to
convey some of the intellectual passion and excitement
that surrounded the publication of new books and
spread of new ideas. As you present the various strands
of intellectual exploration—on human psychology,
theories of government, ideas about race and gender—
stress the practical implications. If implemented, what
revolutions would transpire from these ideas? Who
would benefit?
It’s also important to stress the many
Enlightenments occurring around Europe. France
usually takes center stage, but Britain, Germany, and
the United States were also centers of intellectual
ferment, each with a slightly different emphasis. In
C HAPTER 17 • T OWARD
Britain, for example, the Toleration Act of 1689
insured freedom of worship and education to most
British and Irish Protestants, and the lapsing of the
Licensing Act in 1695 created the world’s freest
press, so British intellectuals did not feel compelled
to challenge church and state in the same way as
Voltaire and others. Instead, the British tended to
focus on virtue, public spirit, and compassion for
one’s neighbor. Adam Smith’s Theory of Modern
Sentiments (1759) was once as well-known as The
Wealth of Nations (1776). Within countries, as well,
plural manifestations of the Enlightenment could
occur. The towering figures we now remember—
Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau—were joined by
hundreds of other aspiring writers and hacks. And
these self-styled intellectuals gathered in coffee
shops and salons, read newspapers, wrote books and
pamphlets, and argued vehemently with each other
(unless they were Scottish, in which case they
nodded gruffly and cooperated). With luck, a few
glimpses of Enlightenment discussion from both the
upper and under-side can excite and motivate your
students. (See the Coffeehouse exercise under
Cooperative Activities.) Sources: Dena Goodman,
The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the
French Enlightenment (1996); Roy Porter,
Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the
Modern World (2001); Gertrude Himmelfarb, The
Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and
American Enlightenments (2004).
Lecture 3: “Enlightened Despotism?”
This lecture shifts the gaze to eastern and southern
Europe and helps students understand Europe’s
entrenched conservatism and the problems of
implementing Enlightenment ideas. Remind students
of the potential for change: with Europe’s
burgeoning book culture, ideas freely flowed across
the continent, and figures like Voltaire and Diderot
were guests in the courts of Potsdam and St.
Petersburg. But emphasize that the philosophes’
vision of change was ultimately a conservative one:
they did not necessarily promote democracy or
revolution. Reforms would come from above.
In addition to the “Greats”—Frederick of Prussia
and Catherine of Russia—the club of royal despots
might include Marquis Pombal in Portugal, Count
Aranda in Spain, and Joseph II of Austria. You might
focus the lecture around Catherine the Great, who
perhaps deserves the greatest rehabilitation in the
popular mind, or Joseph II of Austria, who historians
have labeled the “star pupil” of the philosophes. The
irony of this situation is too great to ignore: a monarch
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from the Habsburg dynasty—formerly the great
champions of Rome—implementing religious freedom,
dissolving monasteries, and abolishing serfdom. But
you might also decide to build the lecture around a
lesser-known despot, such as Sebastião José de
Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal. Kenneth
Maxwell argues that Pombal’s “enlightenment,” while
far-reaching, was primarily a mechanism for enhancing
autocracy at the expense of individual liberty. His
reforms became an apparatus for crushing opposition,
suppressing criticism, and furthering colonial economic
exploitation.
Leave students with some questions to ponder and
point to what was coming in 1789: How does one
create a free society? Could one force men to be free?
When Turgot entered the ministry of Louis XVI in
1774, he prayed “Give me five years of despotism and
France shall be free.” In retrospect, his words are
chilling. Sources: Isabel de Madariaga, Catherine the
Great: A Short History (1990); G. MacDonagh,
Frederick the Great (2001); J. Gagliardo, Enlightened
Despotism (1967); Kenneth Maxwell, Pombal:
Paradox of the Enlightenment (1995).
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
AND DIFFICULT TOPICS
1. Science and Technology: Make sure students
understand the differences between these
concepts: science is the intellectual enterprise
of understanding the natural universe;
technology is the means by which humans gain
mastery over the natural processes for their own
productive or reproductive ends. The two are
distinct, yet as Lisa Jardine has emphasized, the
scientific revolution would not have happened
without the technological instruments (clocks,
telescopes, and microscopes) that helped
scientists collect and interpret data. Artisans
and engineers (i.e., technicians) were as much
the architects of the scientific revolution as
astronomers and chemists. Robert Boyle needed
Robert Hooke’s microscope; Newton’s
Principia was based on astronomical data
compiled at the Royal Observatory in
Greenwich. Source: Lisa Jardine, Ingenious
Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution
(1999)
2. The Limits of Reason: When assessing the
role of reason in Enlightenment thought, Tim
Blanning points out, “one has to tread
carefully—as indeed the ‘philosophes’ did
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themselves.” Well-aware of the limitations of
reason, seventeenth-century philosophes liked
to poke fun of the great rationalist systems of
seventeenth-century philosophers like Descartes
and Leibniz. “The Enlightenment was not an
Age of Reason, but a Revolt against
Rationalism,” Peter Gay wryly observes.
Furthermore, in light of all the new religious
developments of the age (Methodism, German
Pietism, and the spread of Quakerism), the
eighteenth-century might be dubbed an “Age of
Religion” just as easily as an “Age of Reason.”
Sources: Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory:
The Five Revolutions that Made Modern
Europe, 1648–1815 (2007); Peter Gay, The
Enlightenment: The Science of Freedom (1996).
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
Using Film and Television in the
Classroom
The Scientific Revolution is a difficult topic to teach
without moving visuals. What exactly were
Ptolemy’s crystalline spheres? How did Kepler’s
laws of planetary motion describe the universe?
Fortunately, a number of good documentaries exist
to provide students with the animation they have
come to expect. The Day the Universe Changed (or
A Personal View by James Burke) is old but good.
First broadcast in ten one-hour segments on the BBC
in 1985, it was subsequently picked up by PBS and
the Learning Channel. Try the episode “Infinitely
Reasonable: Science Revises the Heavens.” The
Renaissance, a 1993 production by South Carolina’s
ETV has two engaging episodes about the scientific
revolution with commentary from Theodore Rabb.
One of several films about Galileo is Galileo: On the
Shoulders of Giants (1998; 60 mins.), which follows
his relationship with Cosimo de Medici.
For the Enlightenment, John Locke (2004; 21
mins.) is a quick and comprehensive introduction to
his life and writings (available from Films for the
Humanities and Social Sciences). The Discovery
Channel’s History through Literature: Industry and
Enlightenment (1998; 26 mins.) explores the
importance of the press to the spread of
Enlightenment ideas.
Feature films on Enlightenment themes include
Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule (1996; 102 mins.), which
is well worth the struggle to get students to read
subtitles. Set in the eighteenth-century court of
Versailles on the eve of the Revolution, it portrays
the vicious wit and verbal warfare of nobility about
to fall from power. Dangerous Liaisons (1998; 119
mins) follows a similar vein, without the subtitles.
Older options include Dinner at Baron d’Holbach’s
(1981; 24 min.), an educational video made by
Britain’s Open University dramatizing a dinner party
in 1770 Paris with Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and
Frederick the Great (available from the British Film
Institute). If you’re lucky and have a theater nearby,
perhaps Candide: The Musical might come to town.
For Russia’s Catherine the Great, The Scarlet
Empress (1934; 110 min.) is a luminous and
memorable classic that draws on Catherine’s
memoirs but, alas, is a gross distortion of historical
reality. As Carolly Erickson has observed, the film
“reduces Catherine’s life—and an important era in
Russian history—to a dark fairy tale.”
Class Discussion Starters
1. In what ways did political, religious and
social factors shape the work of scientists in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
Students should be able to analyze how historical
contexts shaped the development of scientific
inquiry. To help them answer this question, you
might suggest a case study, like Copernicus or
Galileo, and have students gather information on
their critics and supporters. Historians have argued
that Galileo, for example, fashioned his science to
the demands of the court and its systems of wealth,
power, and patronage. Sources: Mario Biagioli,
Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the
Culture of Absolutism (1993).
2. Why did the scientific revolution take place
in Europe, when many texts and technological
innovations came from Asia and the Middle
East?
There is no reason to think of “science” as uniquely
European and western. Scientific ideas flowed across
the Eurasian continent, especially between China and
Persia, and Arab technologies and Greek texts
discovered in Muslim libraries propelled new
scientific inquiry in Europe. Nevertheless, it is in
Europe that a constellation of scientific ideas
developed into a “revolution.” A thorough answer, of
course, requires knowledge of the non-western
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world, but students should be able to articulate the
political, economic and cultural factors that created
fertile ground and supported scientific inquiry in
Europe.
3. Did the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason
help or hinder women’s entrance into the
public sphere?
Reason and natural law—two hallmarks of
Enlightenment thought—could work both to advance
women’s interests and to keep them subordinate to
men. As David Hume condescendingly put it in his
essay “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and
Sciences”: “As nature has given man the superiority
above woman, by endowing him with greater
strength both of mind and body, it is his part to
alleviate that superiority, as much as possible, by the
generosity of his behavior.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau
argued that natural law determined separate
functions for men and women; others, like Catherine
Macaulay, argued that woman is no more determined
by nature than man, and that both sons and daughters
should be educated in rationality and social graces.
This is a long, involved debate, but students should
recognize immediately the contemporary significance of “nature versus nurture.” Sources: Carla
Hesse, The Other Enlightenment (2001); Joan
Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of
the French Revolution (1998); K. Rogers, Feminism
in Eighteenth-Century England (1982); E. FoxGenovese, “Women in the Enlightenment,” in R.
Bridenthal and C. Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible:
Women in European History (1987).
4. How did the philosophes’ emphasis on reason
affect their views of religion?
There is no pat answer to how Enlightenment
thinkers approached the issue of God, faith, the
afterlife, or organized religion. Not all philosophes
were Deists, nor were they atheists and agnostics.
Too often the views of David Hume or Thomas
Paine are conflated with the whole. Impress upon
students that the dominant figures in the early
Enlightenment, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and
Christian Wolff, were both devout Christians. Later,
Immanuel Kant found Christianity inadequate, but he
did not openly attack it. Perhaps the majority fell in
the same category as Voltaire, who believed in a god,
but reviled organized Christianity. In addition to
diversity among individuals, pay attention to regional
patterns: Hegel observed that the German version of
Enlightenment was “on the side of theology.”
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5. What practical differences did the
philosophes make?
Students themselves are likely to ask what reforms
actually resulted from all the philosophical
discussion. Well, quite a lot. Streamlined legal codes,
educational reforms, the end of witchcraft
persecutions, and increasing religious tolerance are a
few examples. For a focus on shifting views of
torture in the 1760s and 1770s, see chapter two in
Lynn Hunt’s highly readable Inventing Human
Rights (2007).
Historical Debates
Protestants were the first to condemn the innovations
of Copernicus, but the Roman Catholic Church
gained an anti-science reputation at the trial of
Galileo in 1633. Following the publication of his
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
(1632), a book whose core purpose was to explain
ocean tides, Pope Urban VIII ordered an
investigation that sent Galileo before the Inquisition
for “vehement suspicion of heresy.” The star role, of
course, is Galileo, who by this time is old, sick, and
nearly blind. Other parts might include the young
Grand Duke Ferdinand (Galileo’s protector), Urban
VIII, Christopher Schreiner (his Jesuit rival),
Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini of Siena (who
helped secure a lighter sentence) and perhaps the
ghost of Cardinal Bellarmine (who had issued an
affidavit to Galileo in 1616 permitting him to
consider Copernicus’s works hypothetically). In
preparation, students must understand Galileo’s
Dialogue, as well as his past work and reputation,
and they must be able to articulate the fears and
convictions of Roman Catholic representatives. The
challenge will be to make historically sensitive
arguments and resist anachronistic calls for, say,
“freedom of speech!” The outcome, as students will
find, was disheartening. Scientific inquiry slowed in
Italy, Spain, and Habsburg lands, and it took two
hundred years for Galileo’s Dialogue to be taken off
the Vatican’s list of banned books. Only in 1992 did
the Catholic Curia declare Galileo’s views of
astronomy correct. Sources: A short introduction can
be found in Stillman Drake, Galileo (2001); more indepth information can be found Dan Hofstadter, The
Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition
(2010); primary sources and many other helpful
materials are available at http://www.law.umkc
.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileo.html. An
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alternate to this format would be to have students
read Bertolt Brecht’s classic play Life of Galileo.
Of course, for the Enlightenment, many topics
lend themselves well to debate: see other ideas under
“Cooperative Learning Activities.” Two interesting
trials to study side by side are that of Thomas
Aikenhead in 1697 and David Hume in 1757, both of
which took place in Edinburgh and involved
accusations of atheism. But the very different
outcomes illustrate the impact of Enlightenment
ideas during the sixty intervening years: whereas
Aikenhead was hung, Hume was acquitted.
Using Primary Sources
1. Voltaire’s Candide: “We are heirs of Voltaire,”
observes Daniel Gordon in the Introduction to the
Bedford edition of Candide. Who does not want
to see the world made into a better place?
Voltaire’s rollicking novel is a must-read for
students. Chock full of allusions to the eighteenthcentury world, with sly insults and wry humor,
Candide opens up conversations about human
suffering, the pursuit of happiness, and the limits
of human understanding. For guidance, find a
good edited edition, and supplement with
documents like Pope’s Essay on Man, excerpts
from Leibniz, and Voltaire’s own “Poem on the
Lisbon Disaster,” so students can understand what
Voltaire is satirizing. Sources: Daniel Gordon,
transl. and ed., Candide (1999), Colin C. Irvine,
ed., Teaching the Novel across the Curriculum
(2008).
2. Encyclopédie (1751–1772): With 17 volumes
of text and 11 volumes of plates, the
Encyclopédie is overwhelming, but a focused
online search, or better yet, a perusal of a
printed facsimile, can help students gain insight
into the Enlightenment ambition to “dare to
know.” While they might yawn at the prospect
of an early version of “Wikipedia,” students
should understand how controversial its
publication was: “the Encyclopédie was much
more than a book. It was a faction,” Jules
Michelet observed. Within a year of the first
two volumes’ publication, the Roman Catholic
Church had placed it on the Index of Prohibited
Books. Have students do some background
research on the editors/authors, Denis Diderot
and Jean le Rond D’Alembert, and the
Encyclopédie’s reception, so that they can
figure out why it was such a hot potato. Help
them reflect on the knowledge contained in the
Encyclopédie: Who decided what was
included? Are the definitions accurate and
complete? What purpose is served by such a
collection? Sources: http://encyclopedie
.uchicago.edu/; University of Michigan
translation project (http://quod.lib.umich
.edu/d/did/); Philip Blom, Enlightening the
World: The Book that Changed the Course of
History (2005).
3. David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding” (1772): While
students can benefit from reading any number
of philosophical treatises from this period,
David Hume’s essay is lucid and thoughtprovoking, and the section “On Miracles”
supplements well a discussion of eighteenthcentury views of religion. Walk students
through the implications of his argument that
“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.”
One might also assign portions of Thomas
Paine, “Of the Religion of Deism Compare with
the Christian Religion,” or Voltaire, “A Treatise
on Toleration” (1763). These primary sources
are widely available in both complete and
excerpted form on the Web.
Cooperative Learning Activities
1. Reactions to the Lisbon Earthquake: The
earthquake and tsunami that destroyed Lisbon on
1 November 1755 and killed more than a third of
the city’s population sparked tremendous debate
about why such disasters happen. Reactions to the
disaster illustrate the range of eighteenth-century
beliefs about the natural world and why “bad
things happen.” Since the earthquake occurred on
All Saints’ Day, reactionary priests fell back on
religious explanations and blamed a sinful public.
Empirically minded individuals like the Comte de
Buffon speculated on the natural causes and
employed rudimentary scientific methods to find
an explanation. Poets and philosophers chimed in
as well. Voltaire penned his famous “Poem on the
Disaster in Lisbon” (1756) in which he mocked
blind faith and philosophical optimism. Students
can learn a great deal about the intellectual
upheavals of the time period by comparing the
various responses and explanations, many of
which are available on the Web or in document
collections. Have them think carefully about the
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epistemological frameworks involved. For each
primary source, have them consider: What is the
basis of knowledge? What is the nature of that
knowledge? What methods were used to obtain
that knowledge? Source: Charles Brooks,
Disaster at Lisbon: The Great Earthquake of
1755 (1994); Theodor Braun and John Radner,
eds., The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755:
Representations and Reactions (2005); and the
Web site <http://nisee.berkeley.edu/lisbon/>
(Note: A similar exercise might be done for the
appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1682 and 1758.)
2. An Electric Party: Students love a party, so
why not a historical one? Social gatherings
organized around intellectual discussion and
scientific experimentation were a key feature of
this time period. To prepare, have students read
about the networks of agencies that fostered
scientific exchange, such as the Royal Society
in London and the French Royal Academy, as
well as the informal gatherings people held in
their own homes, like electric parties. Then
enlist student help in planning simple scientific
experiments that eighteenth-century laypeople
were likely to have done at such a party.
Investigations of the source and properties of
static electricity were popular.
3. An Enlightenment Salon: A salon provides the
opportunity to bring together vivid Enlightenment
personalities and discuss topics of significance.
The first step is to decide where to set the salon.
Paris is the obvious choice, but salons were also
held in London, Berlin, Warsaw, and Sweden.
Then decide on characters: must they be strictly
contemporaries or just interesting
conversationalists? For example, you might bring
Hobbes back from the dead for a conversation
with Locke, and then put both in a room with
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Or let David Hume
engage Charles Wesley in a debate about religious
feeling. Try letting students choose their own
characters—they might discover Mary
Wollstonecraft through their interest in women’s
issues, or Baruch Spinoza through their
skepticism of organized religion. Assign a student
with good moderating skills the role of Madame
Geoffrin or Madame de Lespinasse. Then decide
on a topic of discussion and/or debate: it might be
a philosophical question, like the relationship of
the individual to government (and vice versa) or
the limits of human freedom, or a practical issue
with philosophical implications, like what to do
about human torture or infanticide. Depending on
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the students’ enthusiasm, you might encourage
them to come in costume, bring hors d’oeuvres, or
stock their iPods with Joseph Haydn’s concertos
and sonatas. (One teacher who uses this activity
recalled a student comment: “While the textbook
talked about the people of the Enlightenment and
the French Revolution, I remember them much
more vividly because I partied with them.”)
Sources: Dena Goodman, A Republic of Letters:
A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment
(1994); Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society
and French Sociability (2004); Charles Hart,
“Teaching the European Enlightenment with a
Student Salon” Perspectives (May–June 1989).
4. The Archeology of a Coffee House: If you ask
students where their coffee comes from and
how it gets in their cup, they will probably be
stumped. This activity helps them see an
everyday experience through the lens of history
and consider the importance of a single
commodity (the coffee bean) to many other late
seventeenth and eighteenth-century social,
cultural, and political developments. They
might learn something about the rise and
significance of the “public sphere.” Assign the
satirical primary document, “The First English
Coffeehouses, ca. 1670–1675” (available
online), as well as some chapters in Brian
Cowan’s excellent The Social Life of Coffee:
The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse
(2005)—Chapter 3 works well. Then take
students to a local coffee shop—the livelier, the
better—and discuss the following topics. First,
focus on the process of getting the goods: In the
seventeenth century, where did coffee come
from? Which countries dominated the coffee,
tea, chocolate, and sugar trades, and why? What
financial and technological innovations made
possible a regular caffeine fix for Europeans?
Then, move on to the social, cultural, and
political impact of coffee and coffeehouses.
According to the document “The First English
Coffee-Houses,” what might one have seen and
heard in a seventeenth-century London coffee
house? What seemed to be the most popular
topics of conversation there? (Politics? War?
Religion? Sports?) What type of people could
be found mixing in a coffee house and what
was the significance of that mélange? How did
people behave in a coffee house? Conclude the
discussion with some analysis of how coffee
houses were important to the creation of the
public sphere in eighteenth-century Britain, and
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end with the question: How does it compare it
to what they see today? The answers are often a
bit depressing. Source: Brian Cowan, The
Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the
British Coffeehouse (2005); Markman Ellis,
The Coffee-house: A Cultural History (2004).
Web Resources
• Spot Map 17.2: The Pale of Settlement, 1791
The PowerPoint chapter outlines with embedded
images and maps are also available in the online
instructor’s resource section of the book companion site
at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestunderstanding.
These maps and selected images are also available in
JPEG format from the Make History section of the
book companion site.
The Bedford Series in History and Culture
1. Copernicus (www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/
~history/Mathematicians/Copernicus.html)
2. The Galileo Project (http://galileo.rice.edu/
galileo.html)
3. Galileo’s Trial (http://www.law.umkc.edu/
faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileo.html)
4. Isaac Newton Resources (www.newton.cam
.ac.uk/newton.html)
5. John Locke (plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke)
6. The Enlightenment (www.wsu.edu:8080/
~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html)
7. The Scientific Revolution (web.clas.ufl.edu/
users/rhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/
SCI-REV-Home)
8. ARTFL Encyclopédie (www.lib.uchicago.edu/
efts/ARTFL/projects/encyc)
9. Louvre Museum: Virtual Tour (http://www
.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en)
10. Eighteenth-century Resources
(http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/)
11. Historians and Philosophers (http://www
.scholiast.org/history/histphil.html) – extensive
primary sources
Additional Bedford/St. Martin’s
Resources for Chapter 17
Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM
The chapter-specific resources on this disc are useful
for presentation, handouts, and quizzing from within
lecture presentations. The disc includes a chapter
outline in PowerPoint format, multiple-choice
questions in Word and PowerPoint format for use
with the i>clicker classroom response system, as
well as the following maps and images from the
textbook, in both PowerPoint and jpeg formats:
• Enlightenment Culture
• Map 17.1: The Partition of Poland,
1772–1795
• Spot Map 17.1: The War of Austrian
Succession, 1740–1748
Volumes from the Bedford Series in History and
Culture can be packaged at a discount with
Understanding Western Society: A Brief History.
Relevant titles for this chapter include:
• CANDIDE by Voltaire, Translated, Edited, and
with an Introduction by Daniel Gordon,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with
Documents, Margaret C. Jacob, University of
California, Los Angeles
• ON LIBERTY by John Stuart Mill with Related
Documents, Edited with an Introduction by
Alan S. Kahan.
• NATHAN THE WISE by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
with Related Documents, Translated, Edited,
and with an Introduction by Ronald Schechter,
College of William and Mary
• Religious Transformations in the Early Modern
World: A Brief History with Documents, Merry
E. Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin–
Milwaukee
To view an updated list of series titles, visit
bedfordstmartins.com/history/series.
Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/
mckaywestunderstanding
The Online Study Guide helps students review
material from the textbook as well as practice
historical skills. Each chapter contains assessment
quizzes, short answer and essay questions, and
interactive activities accompanied by page number
references to encourage further study. The following
map, visual, and document activities, based on
textbook activities and special features, are available
in the Online Study Guide for this chapter as
assignable quizzes:
• Visual Activity: Enlightenment Culture
• Map Activity: Map 17.1: The Partition of
Poland, 1772–1795