HIST415 - 17TH CENTURY INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: ORIGINS OF MODERNITY

A survey based soley on primary sources of the main currents of seventeenth-century European thought: the criticism of inherited systems and of the authority of the past; skepticism, rationalism; empiricism; and the rise of the new natural philosophy. We will study deep conceptual change as an historical phenomenon, examining works that were both profoundly influential in the seventeehtn-century and that are of enduring historical significance. There are no prerequisites, and one of the goals of the course is to make seventeenth-century thought accessible in its context to the twenty-first century student.