Term | Definition |
Age of Enlightenment | Applied the advances of the Scientific Revolution to areas of law, government, human rights, etc. |
John Locke | Enlightenment philosopher who believed that all people are born with natural rights, that the government should protect those rights, that the people had the right to overthrow their government, and that government should come from the people |
Rousseau | Wrote about the social contract. He believed people entered into government and wrote laws to protect their property. This meant people have become enslaved by the government. Thought the government should act for the general will of all. |
Enlightened Despots | Absolute rulers who attempted to govern according to Enlightenment principles |
Montesquieu | Enlightenment philosopher who believed that a separation of powers was necessary in government so that no one person or branch of government became too powerful |
Catherine the Great | Enlightened despot who made reforms for Russia, but stopped short of freeing the serfs. |
Mary Wollstonecraft | Enlightenment ideas impacted her writings on women's rights and society's relationship to women |
William Wilberforce | Enlightenment ideas impacted his abolitionist views |
Word Association: Age of Enlightenment | Reason, democracy, Locke, natural rights, social contract |
Word Association: John Locke | democracy, natural rights, right to overthrow government |
Word Association: Rousseau | social contract |
Word Association: Montesquieu | separation of powers |
Scientific Revolution | Time period where people attempted to discover the natural laws of the universe using reason. People were taught to discover the truth using experimentation and discovery, not relying on tradition. |
Galileo | Invented a more effective telescope. Believed universe was heliocentric. Discovered mountains on earth's moon, found 4 moons revolving around Jupiter, etc. Was forced to recant under pressure from the Church |
Isaac Newton | Believed that the universal law of gravitation explained all motion in the universe |
Francis Bacon | credited with developing the scientific method |
Scientific Method | a way to solve problems. Observation, hypothesis, experiment, analysis, conclusion |
Adam Smith | Promoted laissez-faire capitalism in his book The Wealth of Nations. Believed the invisible hand of supply and demand should dictate prices, etc |
Laissez-faire | Economic system where the government did not interfere with the economy. First proposed by Adam Smithwages, etc. |
heliocentric | sun-centered. A view of the universe held by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler during this time period. |
geocentric | earth centered. Aristotle and the Catholic Church during this time period believed in this model of the universe. |