HIST1083 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Immanuel Kant, Enlightened Absolutism, Deism
Sources of World Societies Chapter 18:
18.1: Galileo, A Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, 1615, and To the Discerning Reader,
1632
• Talks about his discovery of heliocentrism
• Talks about people disputing that through Biblical rhetoric and passages
18.3: Peter the Great, On the Improvement of Arts & Sciences in Russia, 1712
18.4: Voltaire, Theist, 1764
• Rejected Catholicism or deism
• Deism is the belief in a distant, noninterventionist deity, shared by many Enlightenment
thinkers
• Deism is belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not
intervene in the universe. The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the
17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but
rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind.
18.5: Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?, 1784
• “Dare to know”
• “Have the courage to use your own understanding” is the motto of the Enlightenment
• Don’t let religion think for you, think for yourself and come to conclusions by yourself
and understand if religion is true or not
Textbook Chapter 19:
The Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, pp. 557-577
• Copernicus Hypothesis – the idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the
universe
• Empiricism – a theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through
observation and experimentation rather than reason and speculation
• Enlightened absolutism – term coined by historians to describe the rule of the 18th
century monarchs who, without renouncing their own absolute authority, adopted
Enlightenment ideal of rationalism, progress, and tolerance
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Document Summary
18. 1: galileo, a letter to the grand duchess christina, 1615, and to the discerning reader, 1632: talks about his discovery of heliocentrism, talks about people disputing that through biblical rhetoric and passages. 18. 3: peter the great, on the improvement of arts & sciences in russia, 1712. Increase in scientific activity in europe and around the world: world"s first universities in modern day middle east, ptolemy, copernicus, newton, etc. great european thinkers helped spur this movement. 2- what are galileo"s complaints to the grand duchess christina: they are spreading that all opinions contrary to the bible are damageable and heretical, people are misunderstanding/misinterpreting the bible to make him sound like a heretic. 3- how is he walking a political tightrope: what he knows to be true can go against church teaching at a time when the church and the state were the two strongest political powers. Who might have a problem with his views: the church.
