explanation:
Today we are going to introduce the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment – a time in Europe and in North America where educated people looked to science and reason, not religion, to solve the world’s problems. Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke came up with recommendations on how best to structure and design a government. These recommendations had a big impact on government in England, in America and in France. Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematical (published in 1687) may be the first great work of the Enlightenment. In that book, Newton used mathematical models to describe and predict the operation of forces in the universe, especially gravity. He did this with human reason and no reference to a God or gods. While this is standard practice in science today, in 1687 it was revolutionary. Newton himself, as he liked to say, "stood on the shoulders of giants” – geniuses like Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes who did their work in the first half of the Seventeenth Century. Rene Descartes was born in France and lived all over Europe during his lifetime in the 17th Century, He moved so frequently because his ideas faced strong opposition from the Catholic Church. Descartes believes that there are things in the world that are universally true for everyone (think about things like mathematical proofs and theorems). These universal truths can be understood through the application of the human mind, through logic and reason. Once we understand these great universal truths, we can then work down from there to understand the rest of the world (this is what I mean by saying Descartes was a “top-down” thinker). This belief that the human mind is the tool with which we can unlock the great secrets of the universe from the top down is known as “rationalism”.
Bacon lives and works at the same time as Descartes. Bacon rejects the idea of universal truths that can be understood with the mind alone. For Bacon, truth requires hard work. You have to get out there and observe and collect data, you have to use that data to accept or reject hypotheses regarding what is or isn’t true. Bacon helps found the scientific method and his bottom-up philosophy will become known as empiricism. Note that empiricism doesn’t immediately lead us to universal truth like the rationalism of Descartes. Empiricism only gives us a version of the truth –a version that we make more and more accurate over time as we collect more data and refine our theories. Also note that both rationalism and empiricism allow humans to understand the univese without any God or religion to guide them. These philosophies are completely based on humans and human abilities. n the Dark Ages, England was an absolute monarchy. As the Dark Ages became the Middle Ages, the powerful nobles, the aristocrats, tried to find ways to constrain the king’s absolute power. In 1215, the English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, giving the nobles certain rights and putting limits on the powers of the King. The story of Robin Hood represents how unhappy the nobles were with the absolute rule of an evil, selfish king. As England moves forward after Magna Carta, the King loses more and more power, with Parliament (a representative legislature) gaining power, resulting in England becoming a constitutional monarchy. By the 1600’s, Parliament contains two Houses or Chambers. One, the House of Lords, is made up only of the nobles. The other, the House of Commons, contains normal people elected by the English citizens. It should be noted: only English men of property were allowed to vote. Universal (male) suffrage won’t exist in England until the 1800’s. The English Civil War (also known as the “Great Rebellion”) occurred when supporters of the King, Charles I (known as “Cavaliers”) fought against the supporters of Parliament. At stake was practical control over the government of England. At the heart of the dispute was taxation. The King needed the cooperation of Parliament to collect his taxes – but in return, the elected representatives wanted more control in how their tax money was spent and how their government was run. For over a decade, Charles I refused to summon or consult with Parliament. When the Parliament was finally called, they refused to be disbanded by order of the King (the “Long Parliament”). Another issue was religion – Charles I was thought to be sympathetic to Catholics (his wife, the Queen, was Catholic) and this was very unpopular with the Parliamentarians. Oliver Cromwell is the leader of the Parliamentarians and he is the one that signs that order to execute Charles I.
