What's up in the 17th Century?

  1. Politics and the World
    1. The early 17th Cent had been marked by terribly disruptive religious wars (esp the 30 Years War in Germany and in the Netherlands], but also intense religious confrontation between Catholics and Protestants. Exhausted, the better-minded people sought to put aside religion and theology as a "feudal" relics. They looked adopted instead to the guidance of "reason". This intellectual world transcended national borders and religions, it was truly international and and common language was Latin.
    2. Absolutist rulers were often at War with one another. France of Louis XIV with the Hapsburg / Holy Roman Empire. Spain and Sweden. Concurrently, during the 17th Century, we also see:
      1. the rise of parliamentary systems in Britain and in the Low Countries.
      2. The rise of the landed gentry [educated, commercially oriented], the Glorious Revolutions, and its implications in Britain and the Low Countries.
      3. The political "center" of Europe shifts now to the countries bordering on the Atlantic.
    3. Formation of national states in England, France, Spain, but continued divisions in the Low Countries, in Germany, and Italy.
    4. Influx of wealth and the products of the new world. ==>Rise in standard of living: between 1600 and 1700 was marked by the 34% increase in population of Britain and the "low countries". Universities begin to become more accessible to the lower classes (e.g., Newton), tho they are still dominated by the study of theology and philosophy, and students were expected to becdome clerics. A clear sign that the standard of living was rising.
    5. The end of feudalism in most places[tho not in France] in the western part Europe [anglo-germanic areas] was liberating.
  2. Science and Culture: Bear in mind the context of the discoveries of the New World. Not just new wealth, but new ideas about the nature and the products of nature. The venue for the discussion of the new products and ideas was not the university, but rather in societies devoted to scholarship of all varieties.
    1. Science: Most remarkable is the spread of scientific societies (Royal Society...) [soireel] at every court in Europe. British [Royal Academy, Academie Francaise, Prussian Academy of Science, Swedish Academy, etc.].
    2. What the Royal Society says about itself:
      1. Our origins lie in a 1660 ‘invisible college’ of natural philosophers and physicians. Today we are the UK’s national science academy and a Fellowship of some 1,600 of the world’s most eminent scientists.
      2. The very first ‘learned society’ meeting on 28 November 1660 followed a lecture at Gresham College by Christopher Wren. Joined by other leading polymaths including Robert Boyle and John Wilkins, the group soon received royal approval, and from 1663 it would be known as 'The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge'.
      3. The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.
    3. Kings and heads of state found that their prestige was connected to the patronage of culture and of science. Newton, for example, found protection as a member of the Royal Academy and Master of the Mint just as Vesalius had with the Holy Roman Emperor.
    4. Such groups sponsored meetings and circulated (first journal appears in 1665) the presentations of their member and invited guests.
      1. Members included geographers, engineers, astronomers, anatomists, physicists and were concerned with "the real world" but were for the most part learned amateurs (dilettantes) .
      2. Not just scholars, but the educated and commercial classes participated and supported.
      3. Interest in science was a sign of modernity; the rise of the dilettante class of independently wealthy who built arboreta, collected butterflies, fossils, etc. Explosion of books and publications of all sorts that will continue into the 18th Cent.
    5. Popular Science. Interest in science at all levels of society. a broad interest in the important scientific discoveries of astronomy, physics, chemistry (demonstrations of Hooke's Law, of Boyle's law, anatomical demonstrations, etc.
    6. Much of the 'science' was not experimental in manner of Vesalius or Hooke, but rather sought to organize knowledge and to place everything into the proper category.
    7. Nothing new here: Through it all a perception of nature as harmonious and symmetrical --reflected in the construction of popular public and private gardens that stressed such symmetry. Some examples: one, two

      8.