(^102) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
✪^ Cesare Beccaria
✪^ David Hume
✪^ Diego Velásquez
✪^ Gian Bernini
✪^. S. BachJ
✪^ Rembrandt
✪^ Vermeer
✪^ Jacques-Louis David
✪^ Jane Austen
✪^ René Descartes
✪^ William Hogarth
Introduction
Natural philosophy is a term that refers to the attempt of intellectuals to understand
the natural world. The Scientific Revolution is the term given to the rise of a particular
kind of natural philosophy that stressed empirical observation and reason. While it is
hard to know where to cite the beginning of such a development, many historians point
to a key publication by Nicolas Copernicus in 1543 and to Galileo Galilei’s challenge
to the old Aristotelian view of the cosmos and the authority of the Catholic Church in- “The Enlightenment” refers to an eighteenth-century cultural movement whose
proponents argued that society and its laws should be based on human reason, rather
than on custom, religion, or tradition. Its roots can be traced to the late seventeenth
century, when thinkers and writers began praising the method of inquiry and the
accomplishments of Sir Isaac Newton. Following Newton, political writers like John
Locke began suggesting that there were natural laws that govern human behavior and
that these laws could be discovered through reason. In the eighteenth century, intel-
lectuals known as philosophes developed a program for reforming society along the lines
of reason, which they initially hoped to implement by educating the powerful rulers,
or “enlightened despots,” of Europe. Later in the century, when enlightened despotism
seemed to have failed, Enlightenment ideals began to be applied in more revolutionary
contexts.
The Traditional View of the Cosmos
The traditional view of the cosmos in European civilization was one that it inherited from
the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. The Aristotelian cosmos was based on observation
and common sense. Because the Earth appeared, to all of one’s senses, to stand still, Aristotle
believed the Earth was the unmoving center point of the cosmos. The moon, the planets,
and the stars were understood to move in concentric circular orbits around the Earth because
that is what they appeared to do. The stars were conceived of as “fixed” into a single sphere
because they do not move relative to each other.
The Aristotelian cosmos was divided into two realms:
• The terrestrial realm, which contained the Earth and all matter inside the orbit of the moon
• The celestial realm, or the realm of the heavens, which existed beyond the orbit of the moonKEY IDEA15_Bartolini_Ch15_099-118.indd 102 27/04/18 1:54 PM