SOC100BNotes (Ch. 1 Modernity)Traditional social structure- a society composed of orders, rather than economically defined classesTheir aim was to “change the general way of thinking,” and was revolutionary insofar as it sought “the revolution which will take place in the minds of men.”The great enlightenment project of the Encyclopedie, which sought to categorize, define, and criticize all existed knowledge, was suppressed by the French court, but completed in secret.They continued to reaffirm the most ancient inherited traditions about women: that they were inferior to men in the crucial faculties of reason and ethics and so should be subordinated to men. The revolution unleashed a flood of criticism about women’s “unnatural” usurpation of the male domain of politicsJohn Locke- the founder of the philosophy of empiricism; mind of the human being at birth, is comparable to an empty sheet of paper, and that all his or her knowledge and emotions are a product of experience. The well-known story about Newton discovering gravity as a result of an apple falling onhis head was actually invented by Voltaire to help non-scientists understand the concept.The philosophes saw science as an ally in their common desire to combat religious intolerance and political injusticeConsumers of this intellectual culture were mainly nobles, clerics, and the professional bourgeoisie. Middle classes of merchants and manufacturers were seemingly not so interested in the world of ideas.Two characteristics of social sciences:1. the use of scientific methods in attempting to justify the reform of social institutions; and2. cultural relativism: the realization, by many philosophes, that the european society in which they lived did not represent the best or most developed form of social organizationDiscursive strategies:1. idealization2. the projection of fantasies of desire and degradation3. the failure to recognize and respect difference4. the tendency to impose European categories and norms, to see difference through the modes of perception and representation of the WestStereotype- a one-sided description which results from the collapsing of complex differences into a simple “cardboard cut-out.”Slavery? Bartolome de Las Casas insisted the all men possess the faculty of reason. This issue was formally debated before Emperor Charles X in 1550 which led to the outlawing of Indian slavery. Ironically, Las Casas accepted the alternating of replacing Indians with African slaves, sparking the era of New World African Slavery.- The Rest was critical for the formation of western Enlightenment. Without it, the West would not have been able to recognize and represent itself as the summit of human