Reason and Common sense

1. Reason and Common sense New currents of thoughts, the Royal society, the Hanover's Dynasty, a golden and enlightened age

2. The first half of the 17th century in Europe had presented a critical stage in the replacement of one world view into another. Scholasticism had produced a structure of thought based on ancient observations, on assumption and logic. It had presented the universe as ordered and geocentric. Then from the middle of the century onwards a major current of thought called natural philosophy started exploring the universe to explain its mysteries. England had a singular position in this field because science was not seen as a challenge to religion as in Europe, but a means to a better understanding of a God- created universe. The experimental method: Method means a procedure a technique or a set of rules employed in an activity or to approach the problems of truth and knowledge. You will hear part of a philosophy lecture. What did the Greek philosopher Socrates (ca. 469- 399 BC) want to do with his method? • To encourage his pupils to think about complex issues • To show that they were able to carry out the analysis of Nature. • To apply scientific knowledge to everyday conversations

3. Listen to part of an interview. How does the experimental method differ from other approaches to explain processes of phenomena in nature? • It is based on the arrangement into classes with similar features • It draws its conclusion from the premises. • It is founded on the hypothesis and its verification through experience You will hear a teacher repeating part of an explanation about scientific method. Which of the following was included in the scientific method by famous scientists? • Sensory observation • Assumptions • theology You are going to hear two students discussing their notes on the experimental method. How does the experimental method proceed? • From the universal to the particular • From the particular to the universal • From prediction to observation

4. The Royal Society • The centre of this new philosophy was London, where in 1662 the Royal society was founded under the patronage of Charles II. The motto was “nullius in verba” (nothing by words) was a direct challenge to the dependence of the old philosophy on authorities. • A new English character was to emerged: a practical and materialistic mind, tolerance, reasonableness and common sense. Optimism encouraged faith in progress and Human perfectibility and made people eager to try new ways trusting their own powers. Love is blind Women are too afraid to follow it An experiment with an air- pump

5. Augustan Age was a materialistic society, worldly, pragmatic, responsive to economic pressure, yet its political institution were hieratical, hereditary and privileged. Elections were largely controlled by the local landowners since voting was not secret. Politicians were concerned only about bribing the electorate with money or with promise of jobs. The Whigs and the Tories were the first political parties. The first prime Minister was the Whig Sir Robert Warpole at the power for over 20 years. He managed to keep England out of foreign conflicts so that trade could flourish and taxes could keep down. Trade was stimulated by the removal of customs duties on exports and on imports of raw materials. Division of labour made England made English cloth-making a national industry and coal was mined extensively. The Whigs and the Tories Which of these verbs does the speaker employ? Accounted for descended from supported sided with kept down smuggle into pressed for developed into increased emerged went into Listen to the following extract and complete the sentences: • The Tories originated in… They came from the…Their name derived from the… who killed English settlers . They believed in the … of the monarch The … supported them. They became the… in … • The Whig's name derives from…They fought for … a vigorous foreign policy and …They were supported by… They finally became the …The meetings of Whigs ministers gave origin to the…

6. William Hogarth Look at this picture and take notes about its description… A pawn shop She has lost her grip on her child Drunk for a penny Dead drunk for two pence Clean straw for nothing

7. “The Excise office” temporary tax-office The sunlit village in the distance The landlord is opening fire on the mob The innkeeper’s wife is counting the golden guineas A waiter in the cap from the Whig Crown The Tory innkeeper of the Royal Oak

8. The period of we call Georgian is very roughly equivalent to the 18th century under the reign of George III and George IV: the Georgian England is at its most strongly identifiable in the period 1730-1800. The Georgian period was highly influenced by the classical architecture of Greece and Rome, in some cases rigid - adherence to a sense of classical proportion. If Baroque is "over-the-top", Georgian classicism is understated elegance. . An entire generation of aristocratic youth travelled throughout Europe on the "Grand Tour", which was supposed to put a polish on their education. These Grand Tours exposed the most influential class in Britain to the classical traditions of style and architecture. These young men (only very occasionally did women undertake a Grand Tour), came home to Britain fired by an enthusiasm for classical architecture and design. Georgian classicism was most heavily influence by Palladianism, a philosophy of design based on the writings and work of Andreas Palladio, an Italian architect of the 16th century who tried to recreate the style and proportions of the buildings of ancient Rome.

9. During the 18th century wealth was accumulating in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Basically, the rich were getting richer, and they put money into their homes. Wealthy landowners enclosed vast tracts of land to create huge landscaped parks, and those parks acted as a setting for grand houses we call "country houses". These country house estates were dotted with copies of classical temples and other allegorical architectural elements such as grottoes, bridges, and that group of oddments we call "follies". These elements were aligned and joined by sinuous avenues or subtle openings in carefully planted trees and shrubs. The houses which dominated these parks carried on the classical philosophy. Life in the country side was deeply affected by the enclosure system, which on one hand caused the misery of labourer who disposed of the communal open fields on the other hand it led to the improvement of farming methods

10. English society in the 18th century The expansion of the middle classes continued the wealthy merchants controlled the most productive trades owned the mines and manufacturing factories. The artisans and the craftsmen worked long hours usually as apprentices for a very low wages, below them was the mass of the urban population who had no political rights and lived in a terrible conditions diseases like smallpox, scurvy and typhus affected the poorest areas. Many of the children became chimney-sweepers. . Palladian Villa A contract Marriage The family tree A new illness: The gout

11. John Milton (1608-1674) He was born in a well-to-do Protestant family in London. He studied in Cambridge and was appointed secretary of Cromwell’s Council. He had an intense political life, but when he retired from public life he wrote the great epic poem: Paradise Lost in 1667. It deals with the biblical story of the temptation of Adam and Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Even and man’s subsequent loss of Paradise, following the tradition of Christian epic poetry (Torquato Tasso) The protagonist is Satan a great leader who has lost everything except his self confidence and on that he builds a greatness through in hell. The quality of Milton’s Satan was later admired by the Romantics who saw him as the highest example of the dark solitary hero, broken not annihilated by the power of a universe so much stronger than him. The original Sin (Adam’s fall) has a precedent in the fall of the angels who rebelled against God. For both angels and men the sin is the same: pride, the ambition to become equal to God.

12. Like a king to his own people, Satan rhetorically insists on the change.. He proudly proclaims his indifference to the devil’s new state, he still wants to be equal to God, he reaffirms the superiority of the mind power external circumstances: hell and heaven are interchangeable for Satan, he is only interested in having power and freedom. “Infernal world! And thou, profoundest hell, Receive thy new possessor; one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind its own place, and in itself Can make an heaven of hell, a hell of heaven… …Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, throgh in hell Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” ……Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds, Into this wild abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while, Pondering his voyage... -John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II

13. Then she reached the summit, and saw what was happening. Fifty yards away in the starlight Lord Asriel was twisting together two wires that led to his upturned sledge, on which stood a row of batteries and jars and pieces of apparatus, already frosted with crystals of cold. He was dressed in heavy furs, his face illuminated by the flame of a naphtha lamp. Crouching like the Sphinx beside him was his daemon, her beautiful spotted coat glossy with power, her tail moving lazily in the snow. In her mouth she held Roger's daemon. The little creature was struggling, flapping, fighting, one moment a bird, the next a dog, then a cat, a rat, a bird again, and calling every moment to Roger himself, who was a few yards off, straining, trying to pull away against the heart-deep tug, and crying out with the pain and the cold. He was calling his daemon's name, and calling Lyra; he ran to Lord Asriel and plucked his arm, and Lord Asriel brushed him aside. He tried again, crying and pleading, begging, sobbing, and Lord Asriel took no notice except to knock him to the ground. They were on the edge of a cliff. Beyond them was nothing but a huge illimitable dark. They were a thousand feet or more above the frozen sea. All this Lyra saw by starlight alone; but then, as Lord Asriel connected his wires, the Aurora blazed all of a sudden into brilliant life. Like the long finger of blinding power that plays between two terminals, except that this was a thousand miles high and ten thousand miles long: dipping, soaring, undulating, glowing, a cataract of glory.

14. The industrial revolution implied new technology and inventions, new source of power with the steam-power, the development of the factory system with the invention of the “spinning jenny” ( the machine for cloth- making) and transport with new waterways and fast road travel. The agrarian revolution with the enclosure of open fields improvement in the breeding of cattle and in farming techniques. The American and French revolutions: in 1783 with the treaty of Versailles, Britain recognised the independence of the American colonies. The new republic of the united states adopted a federal constitution, George Washington was the first president and New York temporary capital. The changing face of Britain and America The system of federal government Congress President Supreme Court House of representatives cabinet Senate

15. Complete the following sentences: • The declaration of American Independence was signed by the… • At that time the US was made up of… • The colonist’s discontent with England was • due to.. • The head of the committee …wrote the … • and presented it to the Congress on … • The Declaration was first printed in the… • It was then read in… • Independence Day is traditionally celebrated through.. • June 14 is American… • The original American states are remembered by… • Nowadays fifty states are represented by the… • The red of the flag stands for … the white for… and the blue for… • The American constitution consists of • The American system of Government is… and includes…

16. From the Luddites to 1837 • Britain’s internal situation was far from being happy; the country was on the verge of starvation, bankruptcy and revolution. The inhuman working condition in factories and the severe unemployment led to outbursts of machine-breaking culminating in the Luddites Riots of 1811. the combination Acts reaffirmed that the associations or trade unions of workers against their employers were illegal. In 1819 during a peaceful public meeting in Manchester soldiers fired into a crowd and eleven people were killed. • The period at the end of the Napoleonic wars was called “the Regency” since the Prince Regent later to become George IV acted as monarch during the illness of his father George III • In 1830 William IV came to the throne. In this period a new political awareness began to be felt and the new age of reforms started. This was the background when Queen Victoria came to the throne. • Listen to the dictation and take notes.

17. The Golden Compass • Philip Pullman has written picture books, plays, and novels for readers of all ages, including The Subtle Knife, the second book of the His Dark Materials trilogy. He is also the author of Count Karlstein and a trilogy of Victorian thrillers featuring Sally Lockhart: The Ruby in the Smoke, Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well. • A graduate of Oxford University with a degree in English, Philip Pullman taught literature for many years at Westminster College. He now writes full-time in Oxford, England, where he lives with his family. • The Golden Compass forms the first part of a story in three volumes. The first volume is set in a universe like ours, but different in many ways. The second volume is set partly in the universe we know. The third volume will move between the universes.

18. Blake the man Listen to an extract from Blake’s autobiography and complete the text William Blake was born in ….. And he …in 1827. his origins were humble and he remained… all his life. … as an engraver, he practiced this craft until he died. He was deeply aware of the great… A political free thinker, he supported the… and he remained a … He witnessed the …and it was probably this that convinced him that the artist should have… and that he should become the guardian of…the most important literary influence in his life was the… because… He had many acquaintances but very few… One was…Catherine Boucher, the illiterate daughter of a market gardener, who shared his interest in … and assisted him in the production… the other was his…Robert who died at the age of… Blake began to have… and claimed that he showed him the unique… he employed for his original work.

19. Blake is the first to write poetry of the child which takes up so much Romantic poetry. He not only describes children in his songs he is also interested in their peculiar world, their states of mind, representing them in a language that often reflects their simplicity and imagination. He describes the original state of the soul and he takes the childhood as the image of that perfect state of happiness and self-enjoyment. In his songs of Experience the soul has eaten of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and left Eden forever. Its original unity and integrity are destroyed. The relationship of Innocence and Experience is that of the contrary states of the soul. He was against the Church responsible for the fragmentation of the consciousness and the dualism characterising human mind. His conception is of “complementary opposites”: the possibility of knowledge lies in the tension between opposites states of mind, which coexist in the figure of God. He is also the first to denounce the exploitation of children by cruel and oppressive families but he didn't explicit social criticism.

20. The little black boy My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black. But o! my soul is white: White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree, And sitting down before the heat of the day, she took me on her lap and kissed me, And pointing to the east, began to say: “look on the rising sun; there God does live And gives his light, and gives his heat away; And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noon day. “and we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and sun-burn face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. “For when our soul have learned the heat to bear, the cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice, saying:” come out from the grove, my love and care, And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice”. Thus did my mother say and kissed me; And thus I say to little English boy: When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like Lambs we joy, I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our father’s knee. And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, and be like him and he will then love me. by William Blake