Topic: The Age of Reason

Friday, September
th
18
2015
Aim: Why
did the Scientific Revolution occur in Europe, and
how can we place these discoveries in a more international
context?

Do Now: Place your GeoHistoGram homework on your

desk I will collect [some of] it in a few minutes.

What does it mean to be

Cosmopolitan? Is it a good thing?
What are the advantages or
disadvantages of being cosmopolitan?
Explain.

HOMEWORK READ THE PACKET ON URBAN COFFEEHOUSESCOMPLETE THE

ACTIVITY OUTLINED ON PP. 6-8 USING THE BLANK MAP [I WILL DISTRIBUTE]. PAGE
18 LISTS THE ROLES. I WILL GIVE OUT ROLES NEXT WEEK, BUT PLEASE BE SEMIPREPARED TO TAKE ON ANY ROLE AND LET ME KNOW YOUR PREFERRED ROLE(S)
BY MONDAY.

I. Scientific Revolution: candidates besides Europe?

a. The Islamic world generated most advanced
science in the world during the centuries between
800 and 1400
b. Chinas elite culture of Confucianism was
sophisticated and secular, less burdened by
religious dogma than the Christian and Islamic
worlds
c. Chinas technological accomplishments and
economic growth were unmatched in the several
centuries after 1000
d. Yet in neither civilization did these achievements
lead to the kind of intellectual breakthrough that
occurred in Europe

II. Why Europe?

1. Europes historical development as a
reinvigorated and fragmented civilization gave
rise to conditions uniquely favorable to science.
By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
Europeans had evolved a legal system that
guaranteed a measure of independence for a
variety of institutions the Church, towns and
cities, guilds, professional associations, and
universities.

Europes legal revolution was based on the idea

of a corporation, a collective group of people
that was treated as a unit, a legal person, with
certain rights to regulate and control its own
members
The Roman Catholic Church achieved some
measure of autonomy from secular authorities
2. Some separation of religious and secular law was
achieved
3. More important was the autonomy of emerging
universities
By 1215, the University of Paris was recognized
as a corporation of masters and scholars, which
could admit and expel students, establish course
instruction, and grant a license to teach to its
faculty

Universities in Paris, Bologna, Oxford,

Cambridge, and Salamanca became neutral
zones of intellectual autonomy in which scholars
could pursue their studies in relative freedom
from the dictates of church or state authorities.
Within them, the study of the natural order
began to slowly separate itself from philosophy
and theology and to gain a distinct identity.

III. By Contrast
A. In the Islamic world, science was patronized by a variety
of local authorities, but it occurred largely outside the
formal system of higher education
1. Within colleges known as madrassas, Quranic studies
and religious law held the central place whereas
philosophy and natural science were viewed with
suspicion
To religious scholars, the Quran held all wisdom and
scientific thinking might challenge it
2. An earlier openness to free inquiry and religious
toleration was increasingly replaced by a disdain for
scientific and philosophical inquiry
C. Chinese also did not permit independent institutions of
higher learning in which scholars could conduct their
studies in relative freedom

1. Instead Chinese education focused on preparing

for a rigidly defined set of civil service
examinations and emphasized the humanistic
and moral texts of classical Confucianism.

IV. Nothing happens in a vacuum

Western Europe also drew extensively upon the
knowledge of other cultures [when or how??]
(esp. that of the Islamic world due to cultural
diffusion during the Crusades)
[e.g., Copernicus in the sixteenth century almost
certainly drew upon astronomical work and
mathematical formulations undertaken 200 to
300 years earlier in the Islamic world]
2. During the Columbian Exchange, Europeans
found themselves at the center of a massive new
exchange of information
.Shook up older ways of thinking! Opened the way
to new conceptions of the world!
1.

V. New Cosmopolitanism
A. While the Enlightenment was a European
movement, it was influenced by the growing
global awareness of its thinkers
1. Voltaire idealized China as an empire governed
by an elite of secular scholars selected for their
talent as opposed to aristocratic birth
2. In fact, through much of the eighteenth century,
a fad for things Chinese shaped the tastes of
European elites
B. Enlightenment thought inspired revolutions
world-wide (America, France, Haiti, Latin
America, etc.)