Introduction for Chapter 16

16 Toward a New Worldview

1540–1789

The intellectual developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries created the modern worldview that the West continues to hold — and debate — to this day. In this period, fundamentally new ways of understanding the natural world emerged. Those leading the changes saw themselves as philosophers and referred to their field of study as “natural philosophy.” Nineteenth-century scholars hailed these achievements as a “Scientific Revolution” that produced modern science as we know it. The new science entailed the search for precise knowledge of the physical world based on the union of experimental observations with sophisticated mathematics. Whereas medieval scholars looked to authoritative texts like the Bible or the classics, early modern natural philosophers performed experiments and relied on increasingly complex mathematical calculations. The resulting conception of the universe and its laws remained in force until Einstein’s discoveries at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In the eighteenth century philosophers extended the use of reason from the study of nature to human society. They sought to bring the light of reason to bear on the darkness of prejudice, outmoded traditions, and ignorance. Self-proclaimed members of an “Enlightenment” movement, they wished to bring the same progress to human affairs as their predecessors had brought to the understanding of the natural world. While the Scientific Revolution ushered in modern science, the Enlightenment created concepts of human rights, equality, progress, universalism, and tolerance that still guide Western societies today. At the same time, some people used their new understanding of nature and reason to proclaim their own superiority, thus rationalizing such attitudes as racism and male chauvinism.

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Life During the Scientific Revolution. This 1768 painting by Joseph Wright captures the popularization of science and experimentation during the Enlightenment. Here, a scientist demonstrates the creation of a vacuum by withdrawing air from a flask, with the suffocating cockatoo serving as shocking proof of the experiment. (National Gallery, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)

CHAPTER PREVIEW

Major Breakthroughs of the Scientific Revolution

What revolutionary discoveries were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

Important Changes in Scientific Thinking

What intellectual and social changes occurred as a result of the Scientific Revolution?

The Enlightenment

What new ideas about society and human relations emerged in the Enlightenment, and what new practices and institutions enabled these ideas to take hold?

Enlightened Absolutism

What impact did new ways of thinking have on political developments and monarchical absolutism?

Chronology

ca. 1540–1700 Scientific Revolution
ca. 1690–1789 Enlightenment
ca. 1700–1800 Growth of book publishing
1720–1780 Rococo style in art and decoration
1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession
1740–1780 Reign of the empress Maria Theresa of Austria
1740–1786 Reign of Frederick the Great of Prussia
ca. 1740–1789 Salons led by Parisian elites
1751–1772 Philosophes publish Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts, and the Crafts
1756–1763 Seven Years’ War
1762–1796 Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia
1780–1790 Reign of Joseph II of Austria
1791 Establishment of the Pale of Settlement