- The Scientific Revolution and 'Enlightenment': Knowledge and Power in Early Modern Europe

Catalog description

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Western Europe were a period when traditional ideas and new ways of thinking about the world clashed with each other in many different ways, from the trial of Galileo in the 1630's to discussions of women's rights in the late 1700's. This course examines the social, political, and intellectual contexts of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment in order to better understand how the ideas of these periods emerged, how they were received by political and religious officials as well as by the general population, and what were some of the key impacts of these movements on Europeans' worldviews and understandings of their own societies.