Abbey Blog: Troubling the Waters: The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

The Scientific Revolution in Europe was a period when the people began to question the absolute rule of the monarchy. Many new ideas formed during this time in the areas of physics, astronomy, biology, human anatomy and chemistry, revolutionizing old ways of thinking and beginning to form what modern science is today. Before this, people believed in the Aristotelian theory in which the universe was a heavenly sphere that circled the Earth. Copernicus had an alternate way of thinking: he believed the sun was the center of the universe and planets revolved around it in perfect circles. In 1572 a man named Tycho Brahe studied a super nova and because of this he began to question the way he believed the universe was formed. Johannes Kelper revolutionized the medieval view of the universe as well. He was a German mathematician and astronomer who used the observations of Brahe and concluded that the earth and planets travel about the sun in elliptical orbits, and he was right! Galileo is known as the father of the scientific revolution. He studied at the University of Pisa and made many improvements to the telescope. He discovered that Earth is not the only planet that has a moon and observed patterns in the sky (such as the Milky Way). Isaac Newton was born on 1642 and is known for his mathematically qualified theories of gravitation. His Principia explains the three laws of motion: gravity, pull and inertia. All of these discoveries were very radical for the time and changed the way people viewed not only God and free will but also their government.

The advancement of technology and minds during the Scientific Revolution left the principle of absolute monarchy in a shaky state. However, it set the stage for one of the most influential and distinctive periods in civilization known as the Enlightenment. As Immanuel Kant put it, this period in history is one where people “dared to know.” Paving the way for new ideas and a new government were the men known as philosophers. They consisted of some of the great men that we still study today including Voltaire, Isaac Newton, John Locke and Denis Diderot. These philosophers were very prominent people in society (many of them were even employed by the government) who had many complaints against the absolute monarch and would write them in satires that spread through Europe like wild fire. This resulted in many restrictions being put on what they could write; for example, they could not write anything that the king considered immoral, they could not write insults against the king and were banned from criticizing the Catholic Church. However, this did not stop them from writing or stop the public from getting these new ideas into their heads.

While there was never one coherent philosophy that the Enlightenment focused on, people of this time wanted to expand their minds through reason, nature and liberty. John Locke was an adamant believer in reason; he had a theory known as “tabula rasa” which states that all people are born with a clean slate and then are corrupted by society. People in this period also believed nature had a very specific meaning and that it was rational, orderly and elegant. Rousseau used this definition of nature in his argument of education; he believed that children should not have to sit for hours in a classroom and recite vocabulary but should be out in nature in order to turn into the perfect citizen. Liberty was one of the main ideals of the Enlightenment. As Rousseau believed: “man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” He and Didero firmly believed that liberty was not a right to be given, but an innate right. They believed that in order to attain liberty people needed to exercise their reason and that no one had an inborn right to rule above others. This was an extremely radical idea at the time and it upset the upper class even further. The Enlightenment also opened doors for new ideas in economics, religion and politics that opened people’s minds toward the idea of democracy.