THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

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CHAPTER 18

• THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

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The Age of Reason

• The Age of Reason is a commonly accepted term for
  the period of Western culture encompassing most
  of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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Shift of Emphasis

• The term aptly expresses a shift of emphasis away
  from the Reformation's hotly debated theological
  issues of salvation and sacraments.
• People moved on to new questions concerning the
  physical universe and the human community.

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Shift in Approach

• It also appropriately indicates a significant
  change in the educated person's approach to
  investigating or discussing intellectual matters.

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Truth Without Religion

• Scholars of the Age of Reason perfected methods
  of thinking by which they believed human reason
  could attain truth without any help from
  religion.

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Turn Away from Religion

• They turned away from
• Holy Scripture
• the fathers of the church
• other authoritative expressions of Christian
  faith.

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Scientific Advances

• Galileo and other scientists
• were enthused by that belief
• threw a brilliant light on previously unknown
  areas of physical and human nature
• overturned a great many traditional assumptions.

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Erosion of Religious Basis

• By the middle of the eighteenth century it was
  clear that the intellectual basis had eroded for
• established state churches
• divine-right monarchies
• other fundamental institutions of the Old Regime.

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Human Reason is Prime

• The new focus on nature and man and the new
  scientific methods of reasoning characteristic of
  the Age of Reason rested upon unproven
  assumptions
• that existence is intelligible
• that human reason is perfectly adequate to the
  task of understanding existence.

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Rationalism

• To imply or to assert that these assumptions were
  self-evident meant to profess a new faith.
• The new faith is customarily called rationalism.

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Secular Faith

• This new, secular faith dominated thinking in the
  Age of Reason.
• Toward the end of the eighteenth century, its
  assumptions were put in doubt by the rigorous
  application of its own methods.

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Revival of Christian Perspectives

• Rationalism was brought down by
• David Hume
• Immanuel Kant
• other philosophers
• the revival of traditional Christian perspectives.

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YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• The giant steps forward in science during the Age
  of Reason.
• How the scientific revolution affected philosophy
  and religion.
• Specific advances made in chemistry, medicine,
  and electricity.

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YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND

• The impact of reason upon political thought,
  especially its critique of absolutism.
• The reaction against scientific reasoning.