The Renaissance (1400-1600)

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The Renaissance (1400-1600)

• Humanism, the New Learning and the Birth of
  Science

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Social Conditions in the Renaissance
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The World - 1456
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The World - 1502
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The World - 1507
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The World 1630
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Renaissance Mansions
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Palace of Versailles
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Renaissance House
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Evolving Social Conditions

• 12th century Italy saw a rise in trade, which
  resulted in increased wealth and the growth and
  development of large city-states. This allowed
  for the establishment of a middle elite, which
  did not rule but had leisure time to develop
  intellectual skills and to begin to question
  received dogma.
• This increased trade also brought new ideas and
  technology as cultures began to connect across
  continents and oceans.
• As cities began to grow and populations were
  increasingly on the move, the character of city
  life became increasingly eclectic. The insular,
  rigid, and homogenous world of feudal Europe was
  replaced with an expansive, dynamic,
  heterogeneity as cultures, religions, and
  ethnicities blended in a manner not seen since
  Rome.

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Significance to Critical Thinking

• All of these factors combined to produce an
  environment in which the world view of the
  average citizen was greatly expanded. As people
  found themselves confronted by others who lived
  differently and who held alternative beliefs,
  some inevitably questioned whether their belief
  system was correct, as they had always
  believed.
• Of course, some also became more defensive and
  insular when confronted by the other. Evidence
  for this can be seen in the Inquisition and the
  religious wars between Protestants and Catholics
  in which hundreds of thousands were killed. Far
  from being a panacea for provincial thought, the
  city was simply one force among many. Religious
  and nationalistic dogma were still the dominant
  forces and the common citizen was still largely
  ruled by them.

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Re-Emergence of Greek and Roman Ideas

• In the 12th century and continuing through the
  15th, texts from ancient Greece and Rome which
  had long been lost to Europe were re-discovered,
  along with works by Arab scholars who had
  continued to build on the works of the ancients.
• This tremendous influx of ideas sparked intense
  intellectual interest and helped propel the
  universities which were beginning to develop in
  Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge.

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The Printing Press

• The invention of the printing press (Johannes
  Guttenberg circa 1439), coupled with the
  increasing use of local vernacular languages in
  scholarship (German, French, Italian, etc.)
  rather than Greek or Latin, made great ideas,
  formerly exclusive to the elite, accessible to
  the masses.
• Though many people were still illiterate, the
  presence of printed material might have spurred
  some to want to become literate.
• As the literate audience continued to increase
  and book prices continued to decrease more and
  more ideas were spread amongst the populace.

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The Printing Press (contd.)

• Thus, for perhaps the first time in history, the
  ideas developed by those who had leisure time
  available were available to a large audience.
  Ideas could be disseminated covertly and
  anonymously if need be to avoid censorship or
  persecution. The printing press, like the
  internet, is especially significant to the
  history of critical thinking in that it promotes
  opportunities for dissent.

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Education

• Education during the Renaissance was still very
  much tied to religious organizations. Luther and
  the Protestants continued to gain power during
  the Reformation and one of the ways they
  exercised it was in the realm of education. They
  believed that training people to read the bible
  would make truer believers and so they
  established schools with this goal in mind.
• The methods employed primarily involved
  memorization and passive mimicry of received
  wisdom and truth, and so were highly unlikely
  to promote critical thinking.
• Universities continued to evolve and grow and,
  with the influence of humanism, began to focus on
  worldly rather than otherworldly knowledge.
  Attention was placed on the ancient Greeks and
  Romans, particularly with regards to the
  questions they asked about human nature and the
  natural world.

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Inquisition

• We cannot forget that the Inquisition was still
  alive and well throughout the Renaissance.
• In fact, it would not end until almost the middle
  of the 19th century.
• The church, therefore, continued to stifle the
  development of critical thought.

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Influential Thinkers in the Renaissance
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Petrarch (1304 1374)

• The father of humanism
• Petrarch argued that humans were given their
  incredible intellectual and creative potential by
  god and that their abilities should be developed
  to the fullest. He believed that secular
  achievements and learning did not conflict with
  devotion to god. Rather, great feats demonstrated
  a higher love of god through enjoying the gifts
  which he had bestowed.
• This belief spread among intellectuals during the
  Renaissance and encouraged many to question human
  nature and the world around them.

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Significance of Petrarch to Critical Thinking

• Petrarch is, in a sense, the pre-Socratic of
  the Renaissance in that he established a new
  paradigm based on reason and logic which others
  would follow.
• Petrarch exemplified the following threads of
  critical thinking questioning established
  beliefs, believing in the human power to figure
  things out through reason, developing
  intellectual humility, and to applying
  intellectual skills internally in order to take
  charge of ones life.

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Machiavelli (1469 1527)

• Machiavelli was an Italian thinker whose ideas
  are difficult to sort out and categorize.
• On the one hand, Il Principe (The Prince) is a
  treatise on how a ruler should conduct himself in
  order to create the best possible state. This
  necessitates occasional acts of harshness, but do
  not extend to cruelty. In The Prince, Machiavelli
  repeatedly states that a ruler should not seem
  cruel lest his people become uneasy and rebel.
  However, Machiavelli also points out that rulers
  should not shy from being feared, for he who is
  feared will be followed.
• On the other hand, Discourses on Livy is a
  profoundly democratic work in which Machiavelli
  analyzes the various forms of government which
  existed in the ancient world. His purpose was to
  devise a system for the perfect state which would
  avoid the problems of despotic rulers (often a
  problem in monarchies) as well as an ignorant
  populace (often a problem in democracies).

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Machiavellis Significance to Critical Thinking

• Machiavelli, like other humanists in the
  Renaissance, is important because he had many
  insights into human nature. He was keenly
  perceptive of both the faults of rulers and the
  faults of the ruled, and desired a life in which
  both were limited. His writings on 16th century
  Florence could be applied in many ways to 21st
  century Europe or America.
• The threads Machiavelli exemplified are openness
  to freedom of thought, thinking systematically
  and in a disciplined manner and belief in reason
  as the primary means to figure things out.

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Mores Utopia and Bacons New Atlantis

• Thomas Mores contribution to critical thinking
  lies in his Utopia (1518). In it, he attempts to
  design the perfect society to the smallest
  detail. Francis Bacon had his own idea of a
  perfect state which he explicated in his New
  Atlantis (1627). His ideal was based on
  state-sponsored scientific inquiry where
  generosity and enlightenment, dignity and
  splendor, piety and public spirit" were traits
  common to the populace.

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Significance of Utopia and New Atlantis to
Critical Thinking

• While both societies seem to be far from perfect
  to the modern mind (In Utopia, for example,
  everyone dresses alike, all houses are the same,
  the father is the undisputed master of the house,
  etc.), they are nevertheless significant in that
  they represent minds which are critical of the
  many problems they see in contemporary societies.
• In seeking to work out a better system which
  would promote the betterment of all, they are
  some of the few people to have attempted to think
  seriously about the idea of a critical society.

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Erasmus Follies and Bacons Idols

• Erasmus wrote In Praise of Follies in 1509. It is
  a satire of common behavior of esteemed sections
  of society which Erasmus believed to be highly
  amusing. He depicts professors as being
  tremendously deluded and who make themselves
  happy through their deceit. He pokes fun at monks
  as being more in love with themselves and their
  manner of dress than with devotion to god. He
  criticizes the political power which the Pope
  wields as being selfish and not at all in keeping
  with religious piety.
• In his Idols of the Mind, Francis Bacon devised
  a framework of human error to be avoided. They
  were Idols of the Tribe Idols of the Cave
  Idols of the Market Place Idols of the Theater.
  Each of these described a category of faults
  which humans routinely fall prey to, and which
  should be avoided.

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Significance of Follies and the Idols

• Both In Praise of Follies by Erasmus and the
  Idols of the Mind developed by Francis Bacon
  were focused on explicating the various ways in
  which human thinking can be problematic.
• The significance of these two works for critical
  thinking is that they represented studies of the
  human mind its problematics. Both Bacon and
  Erasmus saw that human beings routinely form
  selfish and self-destructive belief systems. Both
  contributed to critical thinking by shedding
  light on this aspect of the human mind.

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Bacons other Contributions

• In addition to his explication of the Idols,
  Bacon also contributed to critical thinking in
  two ways his Advancement of Learning in which he
  critiqued established systems of education in
  many directions and proposed a new system based
  on, among other things, a separation of theology
  from other fields of thought.
• Bacon is also credited with developing a
  forerunner to the Scientific Method. Bacon
  proposed a system whereby one could come to
  general principles which could be tested in the
  world. His experiments with heat, for example,
  involved creating lists of hot bodies, cold
  bodies, and bodies with varying degrees of heat.
  He sought to determine what properties the hot
  bodies had which the cold did not, and thereby to
  figure out what constituted heat. Once this was
  found, he could then apply this principle to
  other bodies not on his list as a way of proving
  or disproving his hypothesis. He used this system
  as a tool for scientific research.

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Bacons Significance to Critical Thinking

• Bacon rates very highly in terms of critical
  thought.
• While certainly not without flaws, his wide scope
  of interest and ability to think through ideas
  deeply and thoroughly resulted in many
  significant contributions to critical thinking.
• In addition to those traits listed previously, he
  also demonstrated a belief in reason, openness to
  freedom of thought, and disciplined and
  systematic thinking.

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What can we learn from the Renaissance?

• That social conditions have a huge impact on
  thinking.
• That a heterogeneous mix of peoples, cultures and
  ideas is much more likely to spur critical
  thinking than a homogenous environment.
• That progressive critical thinkers are often
  light-years ahead of their contemporaries or
  predecessors.
• That critical thinking can be applied in
  countless ways by countless people.