Questionnaire about The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
Discussion Questions:
1. Why was the Scientific Revolution significant in the evolution of the west?
2."Why was science backward in the Middle Ages"
3. What were its causes and results? What forces worked against its development?
Why did it
occur in the seventeenth rather than the sixteenth century?
4. Where was its immediate impact most felt?
5. How did the new scientific theories alter concepts of God and of religion?
6. Why was there "no scientific revolution for women ? What was the role of
elite women in the Enlightenment?
7. What were some of the central concepts of the Enlightenment? Who were the
philosophers and what did they believe?
Key Concepts & Terms:
Geocentricism; heliocentrism/Copernican hypothesis; deduction; induction;
secular; rationalism;
empiricism; tabula rasa; skepticism; cogito ergo sum; Cartesian
Dualism; Gresham College;
Parliament of Paris; philosophers; Enlightenment; irony; satire; deism; salons.
Authors & Key People:
Ptolemy; Copernicus; Brahe; Kepler; Galileo; Newton; Bacon; Descartes; Locke;
Bayle; Fontenelle;
Montesquieu; Voltaire; Mme. de Chatelet; Diderot; d'Alembert; d'Holbach;
Condorcet;
Rousseau;Mme. Geoffrin.
Key Works:
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres; Two New Sciences & Dialogue on
the two Chief Systems of
the World; Mathematical principles of Natural Philosophy" (The Principia), 1687;
Historical & Critical
Dictionary; Discourse on the Method; Essay Concerning Human Understanding The
Persian Letters &
The Spirit of the Laws; the Encyclopedia: the Rational Dictionary of the
Sciences, the Arts, & the Crafts;
The English Letters & The Philosophical Dictionary; The Social Contract.
Homework Questions: Take brief notes!
1. What is the textual thesis?
2. Describe the Aristotelian world-view and explain how it suited Christianity.
3. Describe the Copernican hypothesis and explain how it departed from
traditional teachings.
What were its frightening implications? Who were some of its prominent critics?
4. How did Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo set the stage for Newton? Why is the year
1633 significant?
5. Describe the Newtonian synthesis.
6. What were the major causes of the Scientific Revolution? What was the major
role of Bacon and Descartes?
7. What is the textual thesis about the divergent roles of the Catholic
leadership and the
Protestant one after 1630?
8. What were some of the results of the Scientific Revolution?
Homework Questions: Write out#1.3-6,9
1. How might the Enlightenment be defined? What were its key ideas? What was its
link to the
Scientific Revolution?
2. Describe the precursors to the Enlightenment, Fontenelle, Bayle, and Locke.
3. Describe the Enlightenment public; its language; and the problem of
censorship and its impact
on the style of the philosophers.
4. Assess the importance of Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws.
5. How did Voltaire challenge traditional Catholic theology? What iniquities did
he attack?
6. How is the Encyclopedie representative of the Enlightenment movement as a
whole?
7. Describe the more "rigid and dogmatic" systems of the later philosophers,
d'Holbach &
Rousseau.
8. Describe the new urban culture and public opinion of the era.
9. What was the role of the French salons, for the movement and for women?
10.. According to Lester Crocker, what unified the philosophers?
11. What does Carl Becker mean by "The Heavenly City of the 18th Century
Philosophers"? In what ways were the philosophers "more medieval than modern"?
Do you agree?
12. According to Anderson & Zinsser, why was there "no Enlightenment for women"?
How was "the traditional ideal upheld"?