2020-09-23

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

#sociology Sources/SocSci 12 - Class

Key Ideas

• The new scientific method
  • The ancient Greeks and Romans
    • Both experienced the “Dark Ages”
    • Both saw the development of science
  • Attempts to criticize, systematize, and organize natural knowledge e.g. alchemy -> chemistry
• Social, Historical, and Geographical Location of the Enlightenment
  • last quarter of 18th century; centered in France, Scotland and England
  • among the philosophes (citizens of an enlightened world who valued the interest of mankind first)
  • amorphous,hard to pin down, constantly shifting -> since it didn’t touch every society equally
  • Enlightenment = general process of society awakening from the dark slumbers of superstition + ignorance
• Defining Enlightenment
  • characteristic bundle of ideas
  • intellectual movement (mostly philosophes)
  • communicating group/network of intellectuals
  • set of institutional centers where intellectuals clustered (e.g. Paris, Edinburgh)
  • publishing industry, and audience for its output
  • intellectualfashion
  • belief-system, world-view, Zeitgeist (spirit of the age)
  • history and geography
  • the creation of a new ==framework of ideas== about man, society, and nature, which ==challenged existing conceptions rooted in a traditional world-view, dominated by Christianity==
  • no compartmentalization of knowledge into specific disciplines
• Key Ideas that Defined the Enlightenment Period
  • Reason - reason & rationality
    • Empiricism: knowledge about natural & social world world based on empirical facts
    • Science: experimental/scientific method as a basis of generating knowledge
    • Universalism: idea of applicability of GENERAL LAWS in various contexts
  • Progress - natural & social condition of human beings + society
  • Individualism - individual as the starting point of all knowledge + action. society = SUM
    • Toleration - all human beings are essentially the same, no one is inherently inferior
    • Freedom - opposition to feudal & traditional constraints
    • Uniformity of Human Nature - principal characteristics of human nature were always the same, no matter where
    • Secularism - knowledge free from religious orthodoxies
• The Enlightenment, Science, and Progress
  • Progress: applying reasoned and empirically-based knowledge (through social institutions) would make men happier (by freeig them from injustice)
  • Scientific method used for studying nature and society
    • Science = basis of future values
  • understanding how society would progress through application of knowledge -> shift in attitudes of elite
  • expansion of literacy -> applying modernity more
• Key Changes
  • Economic
    • surplus, specializaiton
    • result: creation of market then currency
    • making trade faster (more rational and efficient)
• Political
  • feudal -> nation state
  • rational legal system
  • private property
• Intellectual + Cultural
  • basis of knowledge: religious hub -> individual discoveries + experience of natural laws
  • we need free will
  • emergence of primacy of science
    • e.g. Darwinism, philosophy