CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. Medieval Science and the Scientific Revolution

A. The Origins of Modern Scientific Thought:

Physics from Copernicus to Newton

B. Medicine: From Galen to Harvey

III. The Expansion of the Northern Powers: France,

England, and the Netherlands

IV. The Golden Age in the Netherlands

V. The Reorganization of War and Government:

France under Louis XIV

A. French Absolutism: A Model for Reform

B. The Emergence of England as a World Power

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CHAPTER 16

PREINDUSTRIAL EUROPE: SCIENCE,

THE ECONOMY, AND POLITICAL

REORGANIZATION

T

he political troubles of the late sixteenth and

early seventeenth centuries did not preclude

extraordinary developments in other areas.

The scientific revolution changed the way

Europeans thought about the physical universe.

England, France, and above all the Netherlands chal-

lenged the Iberian powers and created substantial em-

pires of their own. In the process they greatly expanded

Europe’s presence in world markets and accumulated

capital in unprecedented amounts. The Netherlands

emerged, however briefly, as a major power and a

center of high culture. Eventually, states that had been

nearly shattered by a century of war and revolution

began to reconstruct themselves, reforming their gov-

ernmental institutions, curbing the power of local elites,

and gaining control over the armies and navies whose

independence had threatened to engulf them. The

model for many of these changes was the France of

Louis XIV, but the rise of England as an economic and

naval power would have an even greater influence on

the age to come.

Medieval Science and the

Scientific Revolution

The scientific revolution of the late sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries has no parallel among modern

intellectual movements. Its impact was comparable to

that made by the thinkers of ancient Greece because,

like them, it changed not only ideas but also the

process by which ideas are formulated. The Renais-

sance and the Reformation, for all their importance,

were rooted in traditional patterns of thought. They

could be understood without reordering the concepts

that had permeated Western thinking for more than

two thousand years. The development of modern sci-

ence, though in some ways an outgrowth of these

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