A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Saw that the population was rising faster than the food supply, thought Europe was heading towards starvation
Every body in the galaxy circled around the earth, including the sun. This was the Catholic Churches view and presumed model of the universe in midevil europe
William Harvey
Enlightened absolutists monarchs
Frederick the great of Prussia: tried to help the people. Increased freedoms of press and speech to weaken the nobility and strengthen his power.
Deism
Voltaire argued that there was a god, but god didn’t intervene in human affairs.
Francis Bacon
Developed inductive reasoning
Social Contract
A voluntary agreement among individuals to secure their rights and welfare by creating a government and abiding by its rules.
Charter of towns 1792
Mary Wollstonecraft
Inductive reasoning
Using specific observations to create general principles
Coffee Houses
Grew with the increased demand for leisure during the consumer revolution and helped spread enlightenment ideas
Middle and upper classes had more income, rise in demand for goods increased. People began wanting larger homes and more privacy and new venues for leisure
Galen
Deductive reasoning
Using general principles to determine specific consitions
Scientific method
During the scientific Revolution, the scientific method was invented, which emphasizes observations and experimentation
John Locke
Argued that natural rights were given by god, not a government, so a government couldn’t take them away. Therefore power originates with the people
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Attacked mercantilist economics. Promoted laissez-faire, free-market economy, and supply-and-demand economics.
Neoclassicism
This allowed police officers to arrest any woman they suspected to be a prostitute. They were then permitted to give that woman an examination to prevent the spread of STDs. This is state-sponsered sexual assault.
Enlightened Absolutism
Collaborated with other enlightened thinkers to edit and publish an encyclopedia that contained a rational explanation for everything.
French thinkers
Population increases in the 1700s
a cheap apartment building often crammed with people created in response to the influx of people moving into cities
Popes response to galieleo
Despite him being a devote catholic, the pope ruled him a heretic and placed him under house arrest. But his books were published after his death
The transition in Europe from a society where literacy consisted of patriarchal and communal reading of religious texts to a society where literacy was commonplace and reading material was broad and diverse. Books also became less religious. So religious censorship increased
Nicolaus Copernicus
Challenged the geocentric model of the universe through mathematics and put forward the heliocentric model, where everything orbits the sun.
Overall, religion was increasingly viewed as a matter of private, rather than public concern. Structures of society grew increasingly secular.
Thomas Hobbes
There is no morality in the state of nature. You need government to order the chaos of nature
