Unit 4: Scientific, Philosophical, and Political Developments

Executive Summary

The Scientific Revolution replaced authority with observation and reason; the Enlightenment applied reason to society; the French Revolution enacted its ideas; Napoleon spread them across Europe.

The Scientific Revolution

Copernicus proposed heliocentrism; Galileo's telescope observations supported it, and the Church condemned him. Kepler, Vesalius, and Harvey advanced astronomy and anatomy. Bacon championed empirical induction; Descartes built rational deduction ("I think, therefore I am"). Newton's Principia unified motion with universal gravitation.

The Enlightenment

Philosophes applied reason to society: Locke (natural rights, consent of the governed), Montesquieu (separation of powers), Voltaire (toleration, free speech), Rousseau (social contract, general will), Adam Smith (free markets), Diderot's Encyclopedie. Salons spread ideas; enlightened despots (Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great) reformed from above. Population grew as food supplies and public health improved.

The French Revolution

Causes: inequality of the three estates, tax burdens on commoners, food crises, Enlightenment ideas. 1789: Estates-General, Tennis Court Oath, storming of the Bastille, Declaration of the Rights of Man. Radical phase: Jacobins, Robespierre, the Reign of Terror, execution of Louis XVI. Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory followed.

Napoleon

The coup of Brumaire made him First Consul, then emperor. The Napoleonic Code standardized law; the Concordat reconciled with the papacy. Victories (Austerlitz) spread French reforms; Trafalgar, the Russian disaster, and Waterloo (1815) ended the empire. The Congress of Vienna, led by Metternich, restored order and the balance of power.

Exam traps

The Revolution moved through phases — not one event. Napoleon spread revolutionary legal reforms even while ruling as a dictator. Vienna restored monarchy, not democracy.