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Chapter 17 - The Scientific and Commercial Revolutions

17th Century development of modern science and physics

  • Scientific Revolution was the profound change of the 17th Century
  1. Europeans began to challenge classical thought
  2. Characteristics of the Scientific Revolution
  • Materialistic:  all matter made up of the same material
  1. subject to the same laws
  • Mathematical:  use calculation to replace common sense
  1. measurable, repeatable phenomena
  1. People began to understand the mathematical nature of the universe
  • Science boils down to the mathematical relationship
  1. Development of scientific institutions began
  • Labs, universities, journals, language, careers

Scientific Revolution = social organizations + scientific understanding

Science as a social institution:

  • Early science was restricted to the relatively small number of universities and as a “hobby” of the wealthy (leisure activity)
  1. ie.  University and Alchemy

of Padua

  • Patronage system:
  1. Early scientists relied heavily upon wealthy patrons to support their work
  • Patrons ultimately decide direction of early science
  1. Development of a strict system of social hierarchy and deference in the early   scientific community
  2. Legitimacy depended on the acceptance of the community (lack of math)
  • At first the concepts of cooperation and collaboration completely foreign
  1. Disagreements of science almost always became personal

Social Institutions:

Universities

Curriculums

  • Arts:  equivalent to high school ed
  1. Trivium:  grammar, rhetoric and dialelic (logic)
  2. Quadrivium:  arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music (all math based)
  • lightly regarded, until the introduction of algebra (precursor to psychics)
  • Algebra intro. In the 13th Century
  • Theology:  Main reason for the founding of universities
  1. heart of universities
  • Law:  Canon
  • Medicine:  purely theoretical in nature
  1. physical science was only a "sideline"
  2. Anatomy was introduced in the 16th Century
  3. Chemistry and pharmacology was rejected by most universities, debate centered on the acceptance of the scientific methodology

Summation:  Universities were poorly equipped to train scientists

  • Universities provided a space for the Scientific Revolution to begin but not grow and develop.  Scientist training turns to academies and other social institutions

Academies:

Academy:  "clubs for people who wanted to live in the ancient world"

  • began as classists who developed a curiosity about the ancient world
  • Began to collect antiquities, interests continued to grow and develop into a curiosity about their world
  • Accept the use of technology to understand their world
  1. Develop into collections of PEOPLE who share the value of ideas and a questioning of their world
  2. These people were truly bizarre and strange individuals who enjoyed being    different (Newton)

Academies solved practical problems of their world:

  • Funding
  • Reputation:  seal of approval from the group to ensure that you were a legitimate scientist
  • Review:  Quality control on experiments, data and theorization
  • Communication of data, theories and ideas
  1. proceedings (published journals) and correspondence (secretary) spread findings and ideas
  2. Provided the crucial link between scientists

Impact of Academies:

  • development of civil discourse among scientists
  • Communication / networking of scientific discovery
  • Secretary was a key leader of academies
  • Academy press

Alchemy:

  • bizarre attempt at changing base metals into gold
  • important because they were the first to emphasize experimentation and technology

 

Adepts

Philosophers

-  Worked in Laboratories

-  considered dangerous

-  not loyal to any particular state

-  generally unstable

-  seen as con men

-  Bacon and Boyal brought them more into the mainstream

-  looked for systematic thought

Basis of the Scientific Revolution:

  • Conflicting classical sources
  • Examination / focus of Renaissance artists on nature
  • Development of technical skills
  • Use of mathematics to understand nature

Forces influencing science

  • Aristotelian Philosophy:  provided a starting point
  1. Matter made of four elements (earth, wind, water and fire)
  • Neo-Platonism:  revival of Platonic philosophy
  1. emphasis on mathematics
  • Mystical / alchemy:  metaphysical (spiritual / moral) explanation of the world
  1. Hermeticism: all objects share a universal spirit that would be spontaneously revealed
  2. Paracelsus:  doctor / alchemist who believed that disease could be diagnosed and treated with ingested medicine
  • Natural Philosophy:  attempt to explain the natural world

Nicholas Copernicus:  First to challenge Geocentric theory of the universe (polish)

  • Wrote On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543)
  1. Universe is Heliocentric (sun is center)
  2. Offered the simplest explanation
  3. Challenged traditional Aristotelian philosophy
  • Avoided persecution through death
  •   

Tyhco Brahe

  • discovered a nova and comet (challenged Aristotelian paradigm)

Johannes Kepler:  Supports Heliocentric and states that revolutions are elliptical (German)

  • Develops a mathematical formula as proof

Galileo Galilei:  Asserted that planets are made of roughly same material as the Earth

  • Wrote the Starry Messenger (1610)
  • A Dialog Between the Two Great Systems of the World (1663)
  • Challenged biblical view of the heavens
  1. Tried and found guilty of Heresy, house arrest
  2. Breakdown of his patronage system?

Francis Bacon:  codification of the Scientific Method (inductive empirical     experimentalism)

  • The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Robert Boyle:  supported atomic view of matter - chemistry

  • Boyle's Law:  relationship between pressure and gas
  • Promoted the use to experimental technology

Andreas Vesalius:

  • Galen (Classical source) established classical beliefs regarding anatomy and physiology.
  • More accurate anatomical sketches

William Harvey:

  • Blood circulates throughout the body in a continuous loop
  • Previously believed that there were two circulation systems
  • Heart as a pump

Descartes:  Discourse on Method (1637)

  • Jesuit education
  1. Schooled in Aristotelian philosophy
  2. Disagreed with the basis of Aristotelian philosophy
  • Embraced Skepticism (people who use doubt as the basis of knowledge)
  1. Rejected absolute construct of knowledge, knowledge based on probability
  2. Constructed knowledge based on doubt
  • Mathematician: invented coordinate geometry (combined algebra and geometry)
  • Used "proofs" to support philosophical learning
  1. Could only accept that which you could prove
  2. "I think, therefore I am"
  • Cartesian dualism:  Mind and matter are separate, so to is the physical world from intellectual constructs (basis for science)

          
Example:  Ontological proof of god:

  • One could only accept God if you could prove it exists
  • Descartes knew that he was not perfect
  • Only a perfect individual could place that concept in ones mind
  • Therefore perfection must exist
  • What is perfection, existence without limits = God
  • proof for god based upon doubt, if you doubt it then it must exist at some level
  1. Contrast it to Aristotelian proof:  Causality
  • presented deductive reasoning as the base of knowledge
  • believed that humans could more completely understand their world by using abstract principles
  • Believed in that nature operated based on a Mechanical set of laws

Newton:

  • Used experimental philosophy = physics
  • Start with the natural world and then try to explain it
  1. Natural philosophy began with an idea and applied it to nature
  • Used math to create models based on nature
  1. used formulas
  2. Expressed observations in numeric language
  • Math was a precise language that allowed for replication, collaboration and the creation of new knowledge

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)

Three laws which proved gravity

Gravity:

  • Law of motion:  every object is at rest or motion and continues until some force affects the object
  • Rate of change of motion is in proportion to the force which affects the object
  • To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction
Combine to make our first scientists
Combined Cartesian and Newtonians
Science

The expansion of knowledge led to the idea that we can best understand ourselves by understanding nature and our place in it.

  • Also seen by the Church as a direct threat
  • Descartes:  Cartesian Dualism = separation of mind and matter
  1. Believed that doubt was the key to knowledge, not unquestioning loyalty

Commercial Revolution:

  • 17th Century saw the development of new patterns of trade, colonization and commodities which increased material luxuries for all of Europe
  • Dutch were the first great commercial empire, then the English
  • Commercial revolution can be understood in three phases;  precious metal trade, spice trade and plantation system

Precious Metal Trade:  1440-1660

 

Spice Trade:  1500-19th Century
Plantation System:  1650-1800

Overview:  Story of constant economic development.  Began with the trade of precious metals for goods and eventually developed into colonization and the plantation system.

  • Trade was largely controlled on the national level by monopolies

Precious Metal Trade

  • Began in the Americas under the leadership of the Spanish
  • Eventually weakened by Dutch / English pirates and a loss of control over the  trade routes
  • Opened the Americas for colonization and trade

Spice Trade:

  • Europeans (Portuguese, then the Dutch and English) exchanged precious metals for spices (Pepper, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Ect.)
  • Began as bilateral trade

Result:  Commercial revolution brought ever increasing wealth to Europe in the form of goods and services.
The Dutch Economic Miracle:

  • How did the Dutch rise to become the greatest European Economic Empire of the 17th Century?

1.  Innovative techniques

  • Flyboats
  • Bank of Amsterdam, financial changes
  1. giro banking, bill of transfer and bills of exchange

2.  Rational Management

  • Creation of entrepots as central areas of trade and distribution
  • Became more efficient traders
  • Triangle trade replaced bilateral trade when possible

3.  Supportive social / cultural environment

  • Protestant immigration (manufacturing skills and capital resources)
  • Trade embrace by all classes
  • Relatively free society

Rise of the “Dutch Masters”

  • Rise to power began in 30 Years War against Spain
  1. Robbed Spanish treasure ships
  2. immigration of protestants (skilled workers with capital resources)
  • Good manufactures and farmers, but excellent traders
  • Amsterdam built to be an entrepot for goods
  1. Center of distribution and financial resources

Typical pattern of Mercantile organization:

  • Usually under the kings control
  • Easy to tax.  Little opposition from the nobles, merchants passed on the tax to end user
  • Competition was managed by states, not individuals

Mercantilist Theory:

  • Wealth of a nation resided in the stock of precious metal
  • All economic activity was based on a zero-sum model (understood wealth to be fixed)
  • Result:  Development of protectionist policies and state-sponsored monopolies

            ex.  English Navigation Acts of the 1660’s and the French policies of Colbert
Financing:
Joint-Stock companies:  sell portion of cost to diminish individual risk, eventually stocks became considered negotiable

  • English and Dutch East India Companies highly profitable, no one else repeated the success
  1. Dutch (VOIC) traded sliver and silk between Japan and China
  2. English traded opium for tea with the Chinese

New Commodities:
Spices:

  • Euro Asian trade began as a bilateral trade to satisfy European consumer demands
  1. Driven by Precious metals from Americas for spices, silks, coffee, jewels, ect.
  • 1650 Dutch dominated the spice trade

Calicoes:

  • Soft, lightweight and brightly colored cotton from India
  • Dutch began trade, English expanded
  • Good commodity (storage)

Coffee:

  • Coffeehouses became popular among the wealthy by the mid 17th Century

Tea:

  • Popular at all levels of European society, within one generation it became a dietary staple
  • Importation rose from 100,000 lbs to 15 million lbs annually
  • Chinese tea and West Indian sugar = revolution in nutrition
  • Began as bilateral trade, introduction of opium led to a triangular trade

Sugar:

  • Seemingly unlimited demand = high prices
  • European production began in Brazil under the Portuguese, process refined and made profitable by the Dutch (then copied by everyone else)
  • Problems of sugar production, labor intensive … could be worst job in the 17th Century

African Slave:

  • Originally imported for gold / sliver mines
  • Other slave crops:  tobacco, sugar, rice, indigo

Tobacco:

  • Introduced and became widely popular under the guidance of Dutch marketing and distribution

Plantation System:

  • Developed in response to the incredibly demand for the new commodities
  • Set a pattern of empire development based upon trade, not national conquest
  1. Goal was profit first
  • Dutch enter Brazil as an extension of the 30 Years War
  • Displaced Iberian power of Portuguese and made the sugar trade more profitable
  • Labor intensive trade created a demand for slaves
  • European dominance over African slaves depended upon a process of deculturation
  1. Few to no 2nd generation slaves at first (4-5 year life expectancy)
  • Economic payoff:
  • most plantation owners barely made enough to survive
  • once 2nd generation slavery appeared, profitability of the slave trade declined
  • only people making money were those selling sugar in Europe

Government in the Colonies
America’s = direct government

  • Europeans set up models of government to facilitate the plantation systems production
  • North America, exclusivity developed in response to Bacon’s Rebellion
  • South / Central America, creolization developed into a social hierarchy
  • Spanish claimed a missionary grace, used Church as a key instrument of government

Wars of Commerce
Zero-Sum paradigm led the Europeans into direct competition and conflict over commerce

  • 17th Century = scramble for colonies (support the plantation system)
  • 18th Century = warfare as the English replaced the Dutch as the leaders of trade and the French became the new rival to the leader

Mercantile Wars

  • English and Dutch fought a series of three wars over leadership in commerce
  1. War was precipitated by the English Navigation Acts of the 1660’s
  2.            -  Conflict ended with the ascendance of William of Orange to the throne of England as William III (1688)
  • Dutch v. France
  1. Wars began as a result of Colbert’s attempt to create a self-sufficient France
  2. Imposed high tariffs and protectionists practices
  3. Louis XIV tried to press his claim to the Spanish Netherlands
  • Driven back by the flooding of the fields
  • As the war widened Fr. was forced to withdraw

Wars of Louis XIV

  • Louis XIV sought to expand territorial claims to the east and south
  • As Fr. tried to seize Cologne Grand Alliance formed against him
  1. GA = Leopold I of Austria and William III of England
  2. 9 Years War was fought to a draw
  • Europe began to develop the concept of balance of power (collective security)

War of Spanish Succession

  • Philip IV (Spanish King), married daughters off to Louis XIV and Leopold I, son (Charles II) and future king was unable to produce a male heir
  • Fr. and Austria began discussions of how to carve up the Spanish empire
  • Spain offers entire empire to Philip Anjou (Louis XIV’s grandson) conditionally, 1.  Accept entire Spanish empire, 2.  Reject the French crown
  1. If he rejected offer they would offer Leopold’s son (Charles)
  • Charles II died before details could be worked out
  • Upon death Philip Anjou was proclaimed king, Leopold I and Austria contest
  • Louis XIV lent army to Philip to attack Netherlands
  • 2nd Grand Alliance formed to oppose the growth of Bourbon power
  1. England, Austria, Netherlands and Prussia
  • During peace negotiations Leopold died Charles VI became Austrian king and claimed Spain
  • Resolution:  Spanish empire was carved up between England, Austria and France and Spain itself was left in tact
  1. Treaty of Utrecht 1713-1714

Colonial Wars

  • Growth of consumer goods coming out of the Americas
  • Seven Years War b/w the English and French over the Ohio River

Valley

  • Conflict established Great Britain as the undisputed leader of commerce

Adam Smith Notes
Eighteenth century intellectual background

  • Enlightenment (new way of thinking in Europe) challenged the traditional philosophical authorities (Church)
  • Witnessed changes in American society which eventually led to revolution
  • Saw development of worldwide trade (colonialism) and the beginning of the industrial revolution
  • Sought to understand and explain the world around him

Personal background:

  • Born and raised in Scotland
  • Began as a theology student, then moved to studying Rhetoric and Law
  • Began teaching Logic at Glasgow, fired for being to radical (challenged traditional theology)
  • Traveled throughout France as a tutor, influenced by Mercantilist (economic system based on favorable balance of trade) thought

Mercantilist:

  • Economic wealth arose from production
  • Only agricultural enterprise produced wealth

Saw the world in terms of zero sum game
Wealth of Nations, 1776 (outlined Smiths ideas about economic activity)
Basis of Classical Economics

  • All people’s actions are based on their own self-interest (we all do what is best for our selves)
  1. Desire for self-improvement
  • Trade is a natural instinct for all people; seek to improve their condition
  • To experience growth society should encourage natural instinct of people
  • If all seek to improve their own self-interest then the interest of society are advanced
  • Invisible hand will guide individuals to make the best decisions for society
  • Prices guide consumers to buy, profits guide producers to produce

Market at work
Scarcity:

  • Use scarce resources to produce products desired and valued higher than they were as a raw material.
  • Price is determined by the cost of raw material, cost of labor and a reasonable profit
  1. If a reasonable profit can’t be obtained then production will cease
  • If a higher profit can be achieved in production of a different good, then production will shift to the more profitable good

Division of Labor:
Results in:

  • Increase productivity
  • Increased expertise
  • Creativity leading to innovation and technology advancements

Why do some people get paid more than others?

  •             1.  Conditions of labor (dangerous jobs pay more)
  •             2.  Specialized training (Doctors)
  •             3.  Regularity and security of job
  •             4.  Level of trust required (name-brands cost more)
  •             5.  Level of risk (Lawyers in civil suits)

Division of Labor between countries and regions:

  • -  Comparative Advantage: some areas hold an inherent advantage
  1.                         - Grapefruit / wheat paradox
  • -  Results in a need for trade to promote the overall interests of society

Free markets impact on the common man

  • - Free market should allow people to achieve according to their abilities
  • -  Provides opportunity for all, challenges the concept of classed society
  • - Will this solve racism and discrimination? (Smith would say yes)

Summary of Adam Smith’s ideas:
Economic growth occurred as a result of:

  • 1.  Increased labor supply
  • 2.  Subdivision of labor
  • 3.  Increase in production of labor through mechanization

Result:  ever increasing standard of living for humans
Policies and Practice:

Government should stay out of the way, instead allow the “invisible hand” guide the production and consumption of goods

  • - Don’t manage or protect trade, allow competition to occur

Exception:  Provide infrastructure (roads, canals, railways), administration of justice (court system) and military protection

  •             -  Why the exception?
  • -  Infrastructure helps promote trade and economic growth

Smith saw trade as a win-win scenario, challenged the zero sum paradigm…

Subject: 
Subject X2: 

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