THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
- What was revolutionary about the Scientific Revolution? How did the study of nature in the sixteenth century differ from the study of nature in the Middle Ages?
- What role did religion play in the Scientific Revolution? How did religious belief both stimulate and hinder scientific inquiry?
|
THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM
- How did the Scientific Revolution contribute to the emergence of the Enlightenment? What new ideas about the power and potential of human reason were central to both developments?
- What connections can you make between the state-building ambitions of central and eastern European absolute monarchs and their embrace of Enlightenment reforms?
|
CONSUMERISM AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD
- How did the growth and consolidation of the Atlantic economy shape the everyday lives of eighteenth-century Europeans?
- How did Enlightenment thinkers deal with issues of gender and race? How did New World encounters shape their thinking?
|
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD
- How did medieval and Renaissance developments contribute to the Scientific Revolution? Should the Scientific Revolution be seen a sharp break with the past, or the culmination of long-term, gradual change?
- A noted historian has said that the Scientific Revolution was “the real origin both of the modern world and the modern mentality.” Do you agree or disagree with this characterization? Why?
|
