The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

Who is this?

Introduction

The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment marked a departure in thinking about God, man, and the physical and biological world.What was so different about this new way of thinking and who were the people who were making these discoveries and writing about them? Was this new way of thinking about the world really revolutionary? This intellectual revolution established the rule of law over the previously emphasized rule of God. This evolution emphasized science and led to the growth of secularism and rationalism. Through this evolutionary process men were able to develop laws of science to determine what "truth" is and were consequently able to develop political realism adapted into political philosophies practiced by enlightened despots ruling with "the people" in mind. Your task will be to work in small groups to explore the work and ideas of some of these "new" thinkers and make a presentation.You will be assigned to a three person group.

The Task

Your group will make an oral presentation to the class and will prepare a "bullet" presentation (see separate handout on requirements for Bullet Presentations) for distribution to class members.

The thinkers to be studied include:

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION	ENLIGHTENMENT
Copernicus	Rousseau
Galileo	Montesquieu
Kepler	Adam Smith
Harvey	Goethe
Descartes	Diderot
Linnaeus	Kant
Newton
Sir Francis Bacon

We have intentionally left Voltaire off this list since we will be using a video (tent.) in class to evaluate his contributions to the Enlightenment.

Resources

There are the obvious hardcopy sources:

Concise Columbia Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia Britannica

The general electronic resources:

Encarta
Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia

The following websites are useful sources to start your group projects:

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/ This takes you to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy which has entries on most of the people listed. Since each thinker has a separate URL (3000 of them) you will have to do a little work to find the correct entry.

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/index.html is an excellent source with links to many websites in both philosophy and science.

The Process

First you will be assigned to a team of three students.
Your group will draw by lottery the individual to be researched.
Your group will have to assign tasks and responsibilities for team members.
We'll assign 10 minutes of class time for organization and assignment of tasks.
All remaining research work will be done out of class.You will need to arrange time to get together to go over your work and to prepare for your presentation.

On the assigned presentation date your group will make a "bullet" presentation of 3-5 minutes.
At the begining of the presentation you must to distribute each class member a copy of a "bullet" presentation.If you provide me with a copy in advance I will arrange to have it photocopied.

Evaluation

The Presentations and the "Bullet" report will be worth 100 points, calculated as follows:

Group work:
Presentation: 70 points
Bullet report: 30 points

Individual work:
100 points to be assigned between group members by the group based upon relative
contributions.

Your individual grade for this project will be calculated as follows:
The score from the Presentation and Bullet PLUS
Your individual share of the 100 points

Conclusion

By the conclusion of the presentations along with our class study of Voltaire, you should have a good grounding on the major figures and contributions of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Your IDS should also be very thorough. Obviously the Intellectual Trends and the Science and Technology Worksheets will be exemplary!

You might want to consider how these changes in thinking heralded the great changes to be brought about in society on both sides of the Atlanticin the last quarter of the 18th century.

Created Aug 23rd 1999 .Based on a template from The Webquest Page