Chapter 14
Revolutions in
Thought and Culture
in Early Modern
Europe
Frontispiece of the Rudolphine Tables:
Tabulae Rudolphinae: quibus astronomicae
... by Johannes Kepler (1571–1630).
Which best describes Empiricism?
It explains planetary motion
Admires antiquity and humanism
Advocated scholastic theology
 Knowledge comes from observation
Seeing God in rational terms
In his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke advocated
religious tolerance for what three reasons?
One: human beings cannot accurately evaluate
the truth-claims of competing religions
Two: even if they could, enforcing a single "true
religion" would not have the desired effect,
because force cannot make others believe
something they don’t want to believe;
Three: forcing religious conformity would lead to
more social and political disorder rather than
allowing diversity.
Who worked closely with her husband, Gottfried
Kirch and served as his partner in his position as
the official astronomer of the German Academy of
Science? She discovered a comet in 1707 but it was
not until 1930 that her discovery was recognized as
hers and not her husband’s.
Elisabeth Koopman Hevelius
 Maria Winckelmann
Margaret Cavendish
Maria Cunitz
What philosophy/theology concluded that
religious reality (i.e., God’s existence) came
from both reason and ordinary experience?
Physico-Theology
Who wrote The Blazing World (a fanciful depiction
of a satirical, utopian kingdom in another world and with different stars in the sky -that can be
reached via the North Pole), which is one of the
earliest examples of science fiction?
Margaret Cavendish
He compared himself to Christopher Columbus
because Columbus, he asserted, boldly set a
course for geographical discovery; he himself set a
course for intellectual discovery
John Locke
 Sir Francis Bacon
Thomas Hobbes
Nicolas Copernicus
Isaac Newton
In order to avoid a "war of all against all,“ this
seventeenth century English philosopher argued
that people must be subject to a sovereign’s
authority for their own protection.
Thomas Hobbes
He was arguably the most influential political
philosopher of the seventeenth century and is
still regarded as the Father of Classical
Liberalism.
John Locke
Who denied the Christian doctrine of Original
Sin but believed that psychological principles
were able to preserve religious knowledge –
and that human reason and God’s revelation
were mutually compatible?
 John Locke
Sir Francis Bacon
Thomas Hobbes
Isaac Newton
Who said: Cogito, Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I
am) by which he meant he could be sure of his
own existence by his own act of thinking.
René Descartes
Royal Society of London
The members of the ______________________
[founded under a charter granted by Charles II]
saw themselves as the intellectual descendants
of Sir Francis Bacon and his vision that the
scientific community should have confidence in
its own abilities to discover and learn.
Her most important works were Observations
upon Experimental Philosophy (1666) and
Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668) and she
was the only woman to be allowed to visit a
meeting of the Royal Society.
Elisabeth Koopman Hevelius
Maria Winckelmann

Margaret Cavendish
Maria Cunitz
The Scientific Revolution traced its origins to the
late Renaissance and continued into the late
eighteenth century when it was called
The Enlightenment
__________________
The Scientific Revolution was a slow, hit-andmiss process that involved relatively few
people and was scattered in crude laboratories
in Poland, Prussia, Italy, Denmark, Bohemia,
France and Great Britain – and it began with
_____________.
Astronomy
True or False
T 1. Many natural philosophers were Christians
who had no intention of undermining the
Christian religion.
T2. Pascal’s Wager was an apology or defense of
the Christian Religion
F 3. In 1637, John Locke published his Discourse on
Method It was Descartes
T 4. Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan
F 5. The first Academy of the New Science was the
Royal Academy in London
It was the Academy of Experiments in Florence
F 6. Dogmatism is open mindedness
What does heliocentric mean?
The planets revolve around the sun
What does elliptical mean?
Oval or egg shaped
What does mechanistic mean?
Like a machine – runs automatically
This Italian mathematician was the first to show
that the heavens were not the perfect,
unblemished Aristotelian cosmos and he
popularized Copernicus heliocentric vision of the
universe
Tycho Brahe
Johannes Kepler
 Galileo Galilei
Nicolas Copernicus
Isaac Newton
Almagest Ptolemy taught a motionless
In his _________,
earth surrounded by nine spheres (the sun,
moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and
God
Saturn, the stars – with _______beyond
these);
thus Ptolemy taught that the earth was the
center
of the universe - which remained the
____________________
scientific standard in Medieval Europe and the
Islamic world.
Pascal believed that only two things could prevail
in religious matters. What were they?
Dogamatism
 Leap of faith
“the wager”
Irresistible Grace
 Reasons of the heart
Who postulated that the human mind at birth
was like a blank slate or Tabula Rasa; and that
knowledge is determined only by experience
derived from sense perception?
John Locke
Who wanted Stockholm to become the
Athens of the North and brought René
Descartes to Sweden to organize a scientific
academy?
Queen Christina of Sweden
In 1543, this Prussian priest and astronomer
published On he Revolution of the Heavenly
Spheres which FIRST set forth the Heliocentric
Theory
Tycho Brahe
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei

Nicolas Copernicus
Isaac Newton
The idea that knowledge comes only or
primarily from sensory experience, usually in
the form of observation is called:
Empiricism
In 1687, this English mathematician published
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
in which he united the heavens and the earth in
a vast, cosmic system.
Sir Isaac Newton
He painted the Night Watch.

Rembrandt van Rijn
Blaise Pascal
John Ray
Isaac Newton
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Francis Bacon argued that there were two
books of divine revelation. What were they?
The Bible and nature
When John Ray asserted that seeing God in
rational terms allowed people to see themselves
in rational terms, what did he mean?
He meant that people would be able to
improve their lives by freeing themselves from
the irrational and superstitious traditions of
the past.
This German mathematician and astronomer
hypothesized that the planets moved in elliptical
orbits and that the speed of a planet varied
inversely depending upon its distance from the Sun.
Tycho Brahe
 Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Nicolas Copernicus
Isaac Newton
Who wrote, “My aim is to show that the
machine of the universe is not similar to a divine
animated being but similar to a clock.”
Johannes Kepler
Building on Kepler’s idea above, how did some
early scientists begin to view God?
As a kind of divine watchmaker who created
a universe that would run on its own.
Who said that it is better to believe that there is
more to be gained by believing in God than by not
believing in God.
John Ray
Thomas Hobbes
 Blaise Pascal
Nicolas Copernicus
Isaac Newton
90% of humans are right-handed. Joe is a
human. Therefore, the probability that Joe is
right-handed is 90%. What kind of reasoning
or logic is this?
Inductive
All men are mortal. Henry VIII is a man.
Therefore, Henry VIII is mortal. What kind of
reasoning or logic is this?
Deductive
He explained that planets and all other physical
bodies in the universe moved through mutual
attraction, or gravity. Thus he explained why
planets moved in an orderly manner
Tycho Brahe
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Nicolas Copernicus
 Isaac Newton
He was an English naturalist who, in The Wisdom
of God Manifested in His Works of Creation
argued that that God had placed human beings in
the world to understand it and then to put that
understanding to good use.
John Wray or John Ray
What was the 17th century artistic style that used
exaggerated motion, hidden light source and
clear detail to produce drama, exuberance, and
grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture,
literature, and music.
Baroque
In his 1573 treatise, De Nova Stella (On the new
star), he refuted the Aristotelian belief in an
unchanging celestial realm.
 Tycho Brahe
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Nicolas Copernicus
Isaac Newton
Scientific Societies
_________________met
regularly to hear
dissertations and observe experiments. They
were taken seriously in society because
higher social standing (i.e., the
individuals of __________________
nobility) often
took part. Scientific Societies usually
published their findings, established libraries and
tried to create intellectual arenas for the
_____________________________.
exchange
of ideas and civic debate
Who founded the German Academy of Science
(actually the Prussian/Brandenburg Academy of
Sciences)?
Sir Francis Bacon
 Frederick I
Remember he was the least
Prussian of the Prussian kings
Queen Christina of Sweden
Johannes Hevelius
Jan Vermeer
Bacon was critical of the scholastic idea that most
_____
truth was already discovered and only required
explanation and so he criticized the scholastics for
being too focused on tradition and knowledge of the
ancient world. He became an advocate of
innovation he wanted what was already known to
__________;
serve as a basis for an improved understanding of
nature; and he wanted people to have confidence in
their own abilities to __________________.
discover and learn
His quintessential work was his Second Treatise of
Government, in which he argued that the people
formed governments to protect their natural rights
and that the best form of government was the one
that had limited power and was accepted by all its
citizens.
Sir Francis Bacon
John Wray
René Descartes
 John Locke
Basically, what would we call Sir Francis
Bacon’s concept of Inductive Logic?
The Scientific Method
Who echoed a Calvinistic viewpoint from his
education and believed that human beings were
“nasty, greedy and selfish” and therefore
needed a strong and strict governmental
contract.
Thomas Hobbes
Which of the following best describes John
Locke’s theory of Tabula Rasa?
a mechanistic understanding of human beings
and their passions
a defense of religion
reconciliation of faith and science
people formed governments to protect their
natural rights
 experiences form character
Before the Scientific Revolution, the explanation
of how the universe came into being and operated
was based on the teachings of two men:
 Claudius Ptolemy
Thomas Aquinas
Plato
Tycho Braho
 Aristotle
What does apolitical mean?
having nothing to do with politics and/or the
government
Who were Projectors?
People who bought and sold new ideas
(good and bad) but still advanced technology
Who was called the Silesian Pallas and wrote
Urania Propitia?
Maria Cunitz
Who was "the founder of lunar topography" and
described ten new constellations? She came to be
known as the “mother of moon charts” and both
a minor planet and a crater on Venus are named
in her honor.
 Elisabeth Koopman Hevelius
Maria Winckelmann
Margaret Cavendish
Maria Cunitz
What three challenges did the Scientific
Revolution present to religion?
One: that certain theories and discoveries did
not agree with the Bible.
Two: these differences produced the problem as
to who would decide which theories or
discoveries were right or wrong – church
authorities or natural philosophers.
Three: to many Christians the New Science
seemed to replace a universe of spiritual meaning
with a universe that was purely materialistic.
He was a friend and admirer of Galileo who gave
Galileo permission to continue the Copernican
system which he did in his Dialogue on the Two
Chief World Systems in 1632.
Charles II of England
Maria Theresa of Austria
 Pope Urban VIII
Louis XIV of France
Grand Duchess Christina
Because Descartes could be sure of his own
existence by his own act of thinking, he was
able to deduce:
The existence of God
Descartes divided all things into two categories.
What were they?
1. Thinking things (or the mind)
2. things occupying space (or the body).
He was offended by the Jesuits’ use of Casuistry
(or the resolving of cases of conscience, duty, or conduct
through interpretation of ethical principles or religious
doctrine), which he thought was hypocritical.
John Ray
 Blaise Pascal
Rene Descartes
Isaac Newton
Pope Urban VIII
She inspired the Salon Movement?
Madame Geoffrin
They are people who deny the existence of
God and all religion.
Atheists
What does Pensées mean? Who wrote them?
Thoughts
Blaise Pascal
Trained in rhetoric, he used these skills to argue in
favor of the Copernican model of the universe.
Unfortunately for him, his arguments – as well
thought out as they were – would cause him to be
hauled before the Inquisition.
Johannes Kepler
 Galileo Galilei
Nicolas Copernicus
Isaac Newton
He saw two essential truths in the Christian
religion: (1) that a loving God exists and (2)
that human beings, because they are corrupt
by nature, are utterly unworthy of God.
Blaise Pascal
This kind of logic Logic uses true premises to
reach a conclusion that is also true.
Deductive
This was a method used by the Jesuits by
which they investigated cases of conscience
and/or conduct and determined a degree of
right or wrong in any given act. Pascal believed
it was hypocritical.
Casuistry
When Newton argued for the idea of a first
Cause of all things; that is a Creator, who could
not have been mechanical, he meant…
…that science and religion were not only
compatible but mutually inclusive.
He created both the sculpture of Saint Teresa of
Avila in religious ecstasy in the Church of Santa
Maria de la Vittoria and the great Baldacchino in
Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Rembrandt van Rijn
Claude Le Nain
Carravagio
Velasquez
 Bernini
This was founded in 1657 in Florence and was
one of the first of new institutions of the
Scientific Revolution that began to collaborate
and share information that went beyond what
the typical universities did.
The Academy of Experiments
What was the background for John Locke
writing his Letter on Toleration?
It was written in 1689 when many English
were afraid that Roman Catholics might try
to restore James II.
The mindset (attitude) of the Baroque was
grounded in:
Jansenism
 The Counter Reformation
The Reformation
Scholasticism
Classical (Greek and Roman) Art
T 1.
T 2.
F 3.
T 4.
F 5.
F 6.
True or False
An apology is a defense.
Witch hunts were sporadic and quickly
disappeared after 1700
Francis Bacon denied that the natural
philosopher achieve a deeper knowledge of
things divine in than could a theologian.
Thomas Hobbes wrote A History of the
Peloponnesian War.
The French Academy of Sciences was linked
to Scholasticism .
Margaret Cavendish praised the Royal Society
for solving practical problems
Why did Scientific Societies grow and flourish?
Because of the failure of the universities to
shed Scholasticism which did not generally
accept the New Science.
Who was the most famous Baroque artist –
according to the book, at least?
Michelangelo Caravaggio