The scientific revolution.

From the age of faith to the age of reason * Thinkers of the seventeenth century vigorously rejected religious dogma and su perstition and applied a new emphasis on empiricism and rationality to their tho ught; the emergence of modern science ( the scientific method) created the found ation for a new approach to human experience and understanding -> science and re ligion conflicted but they were not mutually exclusive * They abandoned the medieval assumption that human nature was inherently imperf ect and therefore in need of divine direction. Instead, the emphasis was laid on the observation of nature and deducing from it certain precepts which would mak e possible a new advance towards knowledge and perfection in human beings. This progression was achieved not through divine revelation but through human Reasoni ng. Rene descartes ( cogito ergo sum - i think therefore i exist ) Discourse on the method - attempted to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he adopts skeptic ism = doubt. Cogito ergo sum = if i doubt, then something or someone must be doing the doubti ng, theefore the very fact that i doubt proves my existence ( in other words, De scartes arrives at only a single principle: thought exists, Thought cannot be se parated from me, therefore i exist) - Reason reaveals that man is unique beneath the heavens : he alone, under god, has a conscious mind, he alone can know himself and so understanding the meaning of things. Everything else, the animal kingdom included is nothing but inert ma tter in motion governed by the laws of mathematics. The Royal Society ( nullius in verba - take nobody's word for it ) 1660 - the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II ; the Royal Society was founded in the same year by royal charter; its preursor was the "invisible colle ge" whose main objective was to aquire knowledge through experimental investigat ion; illustrious members: Robert boyle ( gas law - the inversely proportion rela tionship between pressure and volume ), Robert Hooke (law of elasticity), Christ opher Wren ( architect of st. Paul's Cathedral in London ) - Officialy constituted at Gresham college in november 1660; emphasis on the app lication of science for the benefit of mankind, and crucially on the use of obse rvation, measurement and experimentation. St. Paul Cathedral - Built after its predecessor was destroyed in the great fire (1666) - The facade was designed by Inigo Jones ( the first to bring elements of Italia n Renaissance to english architecture)