The Enlightenment (my favorite topic)

I never heard the phrase, "the enlightenment", while attending primary and secondary schools (K-13) in Canada. Was this due to the efforts of well-meaning (but misguided) protestant teachers and/or protestant school boards? Perhaps.

Introductory Video Lectures

• The Enlightenment: Crash Course European History #18
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnoFj2cMRLY
• What Was the Enlightenment? AP Euro Bit by Bit #25
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nly9r_xYyPA
• Age of Enlightenment: The Age of Reason Explained
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ef0erm_KQI
• Enlightenment Thinkers
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8k_f3PFq8
• The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment | World History | Khan Academy
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vL4-Ophj5s

key people and dates (notice the year 1632)

The Scientific Revolution begins

• Renaissance polymath and scientist, Nicolaus Copernicus, is born in Thorn, Royal Prussia, Poland on 19 February 1473. He publishes De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) in 1543.
  • Some historians mark 1543 as the beginning of the Scientific Revolution
  • Ex Catholic priest and Christianity reformer, Martin Luther, publishes a paper critical of the scientific view because it conflicted with a literal reading of Old Testament scripture: Joshua 10:13
    comment: I present this to some modern Protestants who continue to cling to the false narrative that Protestants are more enlightened than Catholics. In fact, all humanity has a problem whenever religious dogma attempts to supplant scientific pragma. All religious dogma, no matter the source, is just another form of magical thinking. The Bible is "the inspired word of religion" rather than "the literal word of God". It may be a bronze-age book of wisdom, but it fails as a book of facts (including history)
• Scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon is born in London, England on 22 January 1561.
• Scientist and philosopher Galileo Galilei is born in Pisa, Florence on 15 February 1564.
• Scientist and philosopher Johannes Kepler is born in Weil der Stadt on 27 December 1571.
• Philosopher Tomas Hobbes is born Westport, Wiltshire, England on 5 April 1588
  • He publishes Leviathan in April 1651
• Enlightenment writer and scientist, René Descartes was born in Touraine, Kingdom of France, on 31 March 1596.
  • All math students today can thank this guy for the Cartesian Coordinate system (x-y graphs)

The Age of Enlightenment (in parallel with science)

• The Age of Enlightenment begins in Europe (circa 1600) as a continuation of the Scientific Revolution
• Galileo Galilei publishes a book defending heliocentrism titled Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in Italy on February 22, 1632.
  • Galileo was summoned to Rome to defend his science writings to the religious authority in September 1632.
  • Galileo was arrested by the Catholic Church in 1633, charged with heresy, tried then found guilty. He lived under house arrest until his death in 1642.
• Enlightenment writer and Doctor, John Locke , was born in Somerset, England, 29 August 1632.
• Enlightenment writer and Lens Grinder, Baruch Spinoza , was born in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic, 24 November 1632.
• Enlightenment writer, Pierre Bayle , was born in Rotterdam, Dutch Republic, 18 November 1647.
• 
  
• Enlightenment writer, Matthew Tindal , was born in Devon, England, 12 May 1657.
• The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge (now simply known as the Royal Society) was created by Royal charter under King Charles II on 28 November 1660.
• Enlightenment writer and political philosopher, Montesquieu was born in Aquitaine, France on 18 January 1689.
• Enlightenment writer, philosopher and historian, François-Marie Arouet (a.k.a. Voltaire) is born in Paris, Kingdom of France on 21 November 1694.
• The Scottish Enlightenment (begins, circa 1707)
• Enlightenment writer and scientist David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 26 April 1711.
  comment: In a biography of Michael Faraday I learned that he was raised in the Sandemanian faith which I had never heard about. This is an off-shoot of the Glasite faith which began in 1730 in Scotland. Both faiths belied that:
  1. "Jesus lived, then was put to death for our sins"
  2. "that everything after the death of Jesus , including the resurrection up to the ascension, were fabrications".
  [[[ BTW, the original Gospel of Mark begins with "the Baptism of Jesus" then ends with "the Tomb" ]]]
• Enlightenment writer and political philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is born in  Geneva, Republic of Geneva, on 28 June 1712.
• Enlightenment writer and philosopher, Denis Diderot is born in Langres, Champagne, Kingdom of France on 5 October 1713.
• Enlightenment writer Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, February 9, 1737.
  • 1776 Common Sense (helped to spark the American Revolution)
  • 1791 Rights of Man (helped to spark the French Revolution)
  • 1794 The Age of Reason (Enlightenment)
    • Part-1 was written in France while under arrest and awaiting the guillotine (how he escaped is a story unto itself)
    • Part-2 was written in 1796.
  • https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/91
  • quote: The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

The Galileo Affair

Galileo is tried by the Catholic Inquisition then found guilty (in 1632) of publishing books stating "the Earth moves around the Sun". He is sentenced to permanent house arrest then dies 10 years later.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/discovery-of-galileos-long-lost-letter-shows-he-edited-his-heretical-ideas-to-fool-the-inquisition/
• https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/did-galileo-truly-say-and-yet-it-moves-a-modern-detective-story/

Lisbon in 1755

In 1755, an earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal, on November 1 (a.k.a. all saints day). Most of the Christian community were inside cathedrals at the time, so many were killed. To make matters worse, the resulting tsunami killed even more. It is thought that the total death toll exceeded 30,000 people. European philosophers of the time, including Voltaire, wondered why the Christian god didn't delay the quake until the day after.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake
• https://theconversation.com/is-god-good-in-the-shadow-of-mass-disaster-great-minds-have-argued-the-toss-137078
• https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/november-1-1755-the-earthquake-of-lisbon-wraith-of-god-or-natural-disaster/
• The Enlightenment: Crash Course European History #18
• an hour with Neil deGrasse Tyson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANZTjzcaoVc

Other

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written is the title of a book just published by author Walter Isaacson about the opening text of the American Declaration of Independence.
excerpt: "We hold these truths to be sacred..." Sacred? No. That doesn't sound right. But that is how Thomas Jefferson wrote it in his first draft. Benjamin Franklin, who was on the five-person drafting committee with Jefferson, crossed out "sacred," using the heavy backlash marks he had used as as printer, and wrote "self-evident". The declaration they were writing was intended to herald a new type of nation, one in which our rights are based on reason, not the dictates or dogma of religion.
comment: This 80-page book is real treat and would make a nice Christmas addition to any family library. Probably due to the Pilgrims landing in 1620, many American citizens today think the USA was created as a Christian nation. This book corrects that error by demonstrating that the Declaration of Independence was a creation of the Enlightenment and associated with Deism (see page 19)

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Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.