AP®︎ European History: Unit 4 Flashcards

Intellectual movement that revived classical Greek and Roman learning, emphasized human potential, and encouraged critical study of texts and nature

Movable-type technology pioneered in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg that greatly expanded the production and circulation of books and ideas

Sixteenth-century religious movement that challenged papal authority and divided Western Christianity into Catholic and Protestant churches

Mid-16th- to late-17th-century transformation that elevated observation, experimentation, mathematics, and tested claims over inherited authority in explaining nature

Traditional model with a stationary Earth at the center, concentric heavenly spheres, and celestial bodies moving in supposedly perfect circles

Sun-centered model in which Earth rotates on its axis and, like the other planets, travels around the Sun

Polish cleric who proposed the heliocentric system in 1543, making Earth a moving planet while retaining circular orbits and epicycles

Danish astronomer whose precise observations and evidence of celestial change aided Kepler, though Brahe favored a geoheliocentric compromise

Astronomer who used Brahe’s data to formulate mathematical laws of planetary motion and replace circular orbits with ellipses

Planets follow elliptical orbits, sweep equal areas in equal times, and have orbital periods mathematically related to their distances from the Sun

Used telescopic evidence, experiments, and mathematics to challenge Aristotelian-Ptolemaic ideas; forced to recant heliocentrism in 1633

Catholic tribunal established in 1542 to investigate and prosecute heresy, most famously compelling Galileo to recant heliocentrism

Author of the 1687 Principia who synthesized earlier work through three laws of motion and universal gravitation, uniting earthly and celestial physics

Newton’s 1687 work that presented his laws of motion and universal gravitation in a mathematical synthesis of earthly and celestial physics

Newton’s principle that every body attracts every other body, so the same force explains falling objects, lunar orbits, and planetary motion

Conception of nature as an orderly, integrated machine governed by universal laws discoverable through observation, reason, and mathematics

Anatomist whose direct human dissections exposed errors in Galen; his 1543 anatomical work made observed anatomy more authoritative than ancient texts

Ancient medical system that explained health through the balance of four bodily humors and included anatomical and physiological claims later challenged by direct observation

Physician whose 1628 work used observation, ligatures, and quantitative reasoning to show that the heart pumps blood continuously through an integrated circulatory system

Advocate of systematic observation, controlled investigation, and inductive reasoning who criticized unsupported reliance on ancient authority

Drawing a broader generalization from numerous particular observations and experiments

The position that knowledge is rooted in sensory experience, observation, and evidence

Rationalist who used methodological doubt, deduction, and mathematics to seek certainty and describe the physical universe mechanically

Deriving particular conclusions through logical steps from general principles or premises accepted as true

Confidence in reason and logical analysis as sources of reliable knowledge

Gradually developed systematic use of observation, hypotheses, experimentation, measurement, mathematical analysis, testing, and revision

English scientific academy founded in 1660 that promoted collaborative observation, experimentation, publication, and the exchange of scientific findings

Early modern pursuits that sought to transform matter and use celestial configurations to explain earthly events, often overlapping with natural philosophy

Late-17th- and 18th-century movement that applied reason, observation, and criticism to society and challenged inherited authority

Enlightenment public intellectuals who used reason and criticism to advocate social reform

Universal moral or political principles discoverable through reason rather than dependent on a ruler or church

The method of doubting claims that lack sufficient evidence rather than accepting them on authority

Belief that education, open inquiry, and rational laws could reduce ignorance, cruelty, and arbitrary government

English thinker who argued in Leviathan that individuals escape a violent state of nature by granting extensive power to a sovereign through a social contract

The theory that legitimate political authority arises from an agreement among individuals to establish government

English thinker who defended natural rights, government by consent, limited power, and the right to replace rulers who violated their trust

Rights possessed before government exists, conventionally summarized by Locke as life, liberty, and property

The principle that legitimate political authority derives from the agreement of the people subject to it

Locke’s defense of natural rights, limited government, popular consent, and the right to overthrow rulers who violate their political trust

Locke’s idea that the mind begins without innate ideas and is shaped by experience, education, and environment

French thinker who compared political systems and argued that divided governmental powers were necessary to preserve liberty

Division of legislative, executive, and judicial functions so that political power checks political power

French philosophe who used satire and history to promote civil liberties, toleration, free expression, and legal reform

French philosophe who directed the Encyclopédie and later explored materialist and atheistic explanations of nature

Diderot’s multivolume work that organized practical and intellectual knowledge while criticizing superstition, intolerance, and hierarchy

Thinker who defended popular sovereignty and collective self-rule but excluded women from direct political citizenship

Rousseau’s term for the common interest of the political community rather than the sum of private desires

Rousseau’s educational treatise advocating development according to nature while assigning sharply different social and educational roles to boys and girls

Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguing that women’s apparent inferiority resulted from denied education, not nature

Wollstonecraft’s 1792 argument that women were rational beings whose apparent inferiority resulted from unequal education and social conditions

Italian reformer who opposed torture and arbitrary punishment and advocated prompt, lawful, proportionate penalties designed to deter crime

German thinker who defined enlightenment as humanity’s emergence from intellectual dependence through the courageous use of reason

Belief in a creator known through reason and nature while questioning revelation, miracles, and clerical authority

The principle that civil rights and public order should not depend on enforced religious conformity

Elite gatherings in private homes where guests discussed philosophy, literature, science, and politics

Women who hosted and directed salons, selected guests, and connected writers with patrons

Influential Parisian salonnière who hosted leading Enlightenment writers, artists, nobles, and foreign visitors and helped connect philosophes with patrons

Commercial meeting places where mostly male patrons read news and debated politics, trade, and ideas

International network of thinkers connected through correspondence, travel, translation, and print

Social space in which private individuals discussed public affairs and formed judgments outside formal government institutions

Expanding circulation of books, newspapers, pamphlets, and periodicals that enabled a growing reading public to form and express judgments about public affairs

Scottish economist who argued in The Wealth of Nations that labor, specialization, competition, and freer exchange created national wealth

Adam Smith’s 1776 work arguing that specialization, competition, and freer exchange produced national wealth more effectively than mercantilist regulation

The principle that government should let economic activity operate with fewer detailed controls

Smith’s metaphor for how individual choices within competitive markets can unintentionally promote broader economic benefits

French economists who sought natural economic laws, treated agriculture as the source of surplus, and opposed mercantilist restrictions

Economic system in which governments regulated trade, protected domestic production, accumulated bullion, and exploited colonies to increase state power

The long, uneven transformation that increased agricultural productivity and commercialization through improved rotations, crops, breeding, tools, landholding, and transportation

Consolidation of scattered strips and common lands into private farms, enabling agricultural innovation while weakening customary rights and displacing some rural people

Planting different crops in sequence, including fodder and soil-restoring crops, to reduce fallow land and maintain fertility

A Columbian Exchange crop that produced substantial nutrition on small or marginal plots and helped support European population growth

Deliberately introducing material from a smallpox sore to cause a usually milder infection and subsequent immunity

English physician who demonstrated in 1796 that inoculation with cowpox could provide safer immunity against smallpox

Northwestern European pattern of relatively late marriage, independent household formation, and a significant minority who never married, limiting fertility

Eighteenth-century fall in the proportion of children dying young that contributed to population growth and greater parental investment in childhood

Growing treatment of childhood as a distinct stage requiring specialized nurture and education as child mortality fell and family resources increased

Movement from the countryside to cities as agricultural change and land pressure displaced workers while urban employment attracted them

Urban concentration of poverty and disorder prompted increased policing, registration, institutional confinement, and regulation of beggars, vagrants, prostitutes, and other marginal groups

The eighteenth-century expansion in everyday purchasing of household goods and imported commodities, especially among prosperous and middling households

Prosperous and middling families increasingly devoted specialized rooms, goods, and resources to private family life and household comfort

Grand, dramatic, emotional, and richly ornamented art and music used into about 1750 to inspire religious devotion and display monarchical power

A light, intimate, ornate style featuring delicate colors, curved forms, romantic play, and aristocratic leisure in private settings

A late-eighteenth-century revival of Greek and Roman forms emphasizing clarity, order, restraint, civic virtue, citizenship, and public duty

Neoclassical painter whose Oath of the Horatii elevated discipline, sacrifice, and civic duty above private emotion and luxury

Centralized monarchy that imposed selected Enlightenment reforms from above while preserving the ruler’s sovereignty and autocratic power

Prussian enlightened absolutist who promoted toleration, education, legal reform, and economic development while preserving autocracy, Junker privilege, and serfdom

Habsburg ruler who, after losing Silesia, strengthened central administration, reformed taxation and the army, and expanded state involvement in education despite limited commitment to Enlightenment toleration

Habsburg enlightened absolutist who pursued toleration, reduced serfdom, rationalized law, and centralized administration but provoked resistance and revoked many reforms

Joseph II’s 1781 decree permitting limited private worship and wider civil opportunities for Lutherans, Calvinists, and Orthodox Christians

Russian ruler who embraced Enlightenment rhetoric and limited reforms while preserving autocracy, expanding serfdom, confirming noble privilege, and enlarging Russia

1648 settlement ending the Thirty Years’ War that confirmed imperial estates’ autonomy and recognized Calvinism, limiting centralization of the Holy Roman Empire

Scattered Hohenzollern territories unified through centralized administration and a powerful standing army into a major European state

Multinational collection of Austrian, Bohemian, Hungarian, and southeastern European hereditary lands that became the main basis of Habsburg power

The 1756 reversal of European alliances in which Austria joined France against Prussia while Britain allied with Prussia

Global war from 1756 to 1763 in which Britain and Prussia defeated France, Austria, and their allies, expanding British imperial power and confirming Prussia’s great-power status

Divisions of Polish territory by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1772, 1793, and 1795 that erased the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the map