ILLUMINISM
•WHAT PROVOKED IT
•FIRST ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT
•LEGACY
POSTIVISM
CONCLUSION
Illuminism or The Enlightenment
•Intellectual movement
•"Glorious Revolution" in England (1688) until
French Revolution (1789)
•Illuminati -- the exponents of the Enlightenment
• Against the philosophy of the Dark Ages.
•new philosophy - age of enlightenment - use
and the celebration of reason
•Scientific Revolution of the 1500s and 1600
•flawed set of “scientific” beliefs established by the
ancients and maintained by the Church
•discover and convey the true laws governing the
phenomena they observed in nature.
Key People
Galileo Galilei - Italian astronomer who supported the
sun-centered Copernican model of the solar system,
angering the Catholic Church
Johannes Kepler - German astronomer who discovered
laws of planetary motion
Francis Bacon - English scholar who developed
inductive method of reasoning
René Descartes - French mathematician and philosopher
who revolutionized algebra and geometry, developed
deductive method
Isaac Newton - English mathematician and physicist who
formulated fundamental laws of gravity and motion
Not limited to
innovations in
philosophy, literature,
mathematics, and
science
Also developments in
economics, law,
industrial technology,
women’s rights,
humanitarianism, and
music.
During the Scientific Revolution……….
•new innovation - physics, philosophy, earth
science, astronomy, and mathematics
•significant, the methods of scientific
exploration
•inductive and deductive reasoning
•observe-hypothesize-experiment
methodology -scientific method.
•work of Newton - showed that scientific
thought and methods could be applied to
nonscientific
• Positivism -French Enlightenment, with
French philosopher Auguste Comte
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•Apply principles of the natural sciences
(such as Physics, Chemistry and
Biology) to daily life.
•Dependence of theory and observation in
science
Wittgenstein
Bertrand Russell
Alfred Whitehead (Principia Mathematica)
Rudolph Carnap
• Deductive research gave us penicillin &
computer networks
• Analytical induction gave us acupuncture &
social networks
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Conclusion
Scientific advances - foundation for modern thought, while political
centuries-old traditions in Europe
greater freedom, greater opportunity, and generally more humane
treatment for all individuals
Enlightenment arguably marked the first time that Western civilization truly
started to become civilized.
Galileo - observation was a necessary element of the scientific method—a
point that Francis Bacon (1561–1626) solidified with his inductive method.
Sometimes known as the Baconian method, inductive science stresses
observation and reasoning as the means for coming to general conclusions.
Descartes’ deductive approach to philosophy, using math and logic, stressed
a “clear and distinct foundation for thought” that still remains a standard for
problem solving.
Englishman Isaac Newton (1642–1727), calculus.
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
gravity and three laws of motion
Enlightenment stood for:
Individualism
Relativism
Rationalism