Social Science History: Time line for the history of science and social science

Main Chronological Headings

2073 Mary Shelley's Social Science utopia

Alphabetical index
of authors

Prehistoric imagination, art and craft

About 30,000 years ago, modern homo sapiens entirely replaced earlier man-like forms. Weapons and tools of flint and bone survive along with female carved stone figures with exaggerated sexual features, suggesting fertility symbols and magical ceremonies.

"It was in the upper Palaeolithic that for the first time man gave expression to his beliefs, his feelings and thoughts with figurines, engravings and exorcist rock-paintings". ( Schenk, G. 1961 , p.111)

The mammoth hunter of Dolni Vestonice was found in Southern Moravia. It is an ivory figurine of a face:

"finely strung, lively, sympathetic and also suffering, a being which stood facing the world devout, pure and humble. This picture...has all the characteristics of human elevation. Everything points to the Ice Age hunter having depicted himself". ( Schenk, G. 1961 , p.127)

Interpretations of Stone Age Art
Venus of Willendorf weblinks

From prehistoric to historic times:

5,000BC to 4,000BC Millennium between pre-history and (recorded) history. History is story told by human beings about human beings, and our first written records come from Babylonian (Sumerian) and Egyptian cultures in the millennium from 4,000BC to 5,000BC

4,700BC Possible beginning of Babylonian (Sumerian) calendar.
4,228BC Possible introduction of Egyptian calendar.

4,000BC
Sumerian writing on clay tablets using picture signs.

3,800BC
"Babylonian census (for taxation purposes)" - Start of Ed Stephan's demography timeline

3,500BC
The cuneiform (wedge shaped) writing of Sumeria (now Iraq) starts about 3,400BC. It is the earliest form of writing known that does not use pictures. The early stages of Egyptian hieroglyphics date from about 3,200BC

3,000BC: Five thousand years ago, the Egyptians began the invention of practical geometry. The waters of the river Nile overflowed every year and wiped out the land boundaries. Perhaps geometry was invented because it was necessary to reconstruct the fields for taxation purposes and to tell people where to plant their seeds.

One of the geometrical rules discovered was the 3,4,5 Rule for constructing right angles. It may have been discovered by people laying out fields, or perhaps by builders or architects. This way of making right angles was used as a trick of the trade. It was not known why the rule works, but it does, and it was used to make temples and pyramids.

Old Kingdom of Egypt

The first pyramid of Egypt. The Pyramid of Djzosèr built at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630-2611 BC. Said to have been designed by Imhotep, who may be the first architect whose name we know, and who was defied 2.000 years later as a god of medicine and healing. The picture is taken from the Wikipedia website. Clicking on it will take you to more information

The pyramids in the Egyptian deserts are monumental tombs for the rulers of ancient Egypt, who were believed to be gods.

The Great Pyramids at Gizah were erected about 2650BC. One of these, the grave of Cheops, is built of stone blocks averaging 2.5 tons in weight. The pyramid, 481 feet high, is of great geometrical accuracy.

The way the pyramids were built and the mathematical calculations involved are subjects of much speculation.


2,400BC Babylonian baked clay tablets with arithmetic . There is a large body of mathematical tablets dating back to the old Babylonian period (1800 to 1500BC).

ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

850 BC: Date assigned to Homer by Herodotus. Stories recited as poems transmitted culture. See Wikipedia on Odyssey.

776 BC First Olympiad: The olympic games were held every four years and became the standard measure by which Greek and Roman historians dated time.

In Greek philosophy the nature of " reason " is explored. Human thought consciously sought to define what reason is and to use it as the key to understanding the world. The Greek philosophers were drawn on by later thinkers in the Arabic and European worlds. They include Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Euclid.

PYTHAGORAS

Pythgoras's theorem

Pythagoras, who died about 500BC, founded the Pythagorean School of thinkers. They created mathematical ways of representing and analysing musical harmony, and theories explaining sight mechanically: thinking of light as an emission of particles travelling in straight lines between the eye and the object seen. Mathematics, experiment, theory, aesthetics and religious speculation were all part of the Pythagorean imagination. They established the relationship of harmonious sound between families of notes produced by striking metal bars of different lengths, and the numbers that relate the lengths to the notes. Pythagorus also believed in the harmony of nature: See Derek Antrobus, 7.2002 Philosophy of diet - or philosophy of life?

SOCRATES

Before 469BC Socrates (philosopher) born in Athens, Greece

451BC In Rome the laws were inscribed on tablets. These were the foundation of Roman jurisprudence. (The science of law). The Ten Commandments of the Jews, another source of jurisprudence, were also originally inscribed on tables of stone.

431BC Start of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta) [Thucydides Book 2]

429BC Pericles (leader of the democracy in Athens) died of fever during a long war between Athens and Sparta. Political turmoil followed his death.

427BC Plato (philosopher) born

404BC Athens surrendered to Sparta. Government of the thirty tyrants came to power in Athens.

403BC Restoration of democracy in Athens.

399BC Socrates tried for misleading the Athenian youth with his philosophy. Sentenced to death.

PLATO'S ACADEMY

386BC Plato, a pupil of Socrates, established the Academy - the first university - where he taught for the rest of his life.

Plato argued that: truth and reason are external. we must govern our personal and social lives using reason. humans can reason to external truth.

384BC Aristotle (philosopher and naturalist) born.

363BC Aristotle studied under Plato.

347BC Plato died. Following Plato's death, Aristotle left Athens.
342BC Aristotle tutor to Alexander, who became the Emperor Alexander.

ARISTOTLE'S LYCEUM

335BC Aristotle returned to Athens, where he opened a school called the Lyceum. Most of his writings were composed during the following thirteen years.

Aristotle argued that:
• truth and reason are within things
• the truth of something is its essence or nature
• the essence of something is what it could become. An acorn, for example, is a seed that could become an oak.

331BC onwards Alexander destroyed the power of Persia, and established an empire which stretched from Macedonia to Egypt, and to the Indus.

322BC Aristotle died

EUCLID'S GEOMETRY

About 300BC Euclid taught in Alexandria, Egypt. Building on the practical geometry of the Egyptians, Euclid laid the foundations of theoretical geometry
Read: Euclid's axioms

ARCHIMEDES - born about 287BC - died 212Bc
(Wikipedia)

44BC Julius Caesar, constitutional dictator of Rome, declared himself dictator for life and, shortly afterwards, was assassinated. See Neumann's dictatorship types

ROMAN EMPIRE

The Age of Augustus, from 31BC to 14AD, is taken as the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. The empire may have included a larger percentage of the world's population than any other, before or since. Its survival was dependent on trade. Roads it built survive today. Its engineers also constructed long tunnels and bridges, including aqueducts. The arithmetic of its trade and commerce was calculated using counting boards and hand abaci. See problems of arithmetic with Roman Numbers

BIRTH OF CHRIST

AD1 Alleged date of the birth of Jesus Christ. Calendar dates back from here (BC: Before Christ) and forward from here.

Centuries are also numbered backwards and forwards from here.

• from the birth of Jesus back to 99BC is the first century BC
  
• from the birth of Christ forward to 99AD is the first century AD

The system of numbering things at equal intervals (years in this case) from an arbitrary starting point (the birth of Christ in this case) with items being counted backwards and forwards from the starting point, is called an Interval Scale.

The birth of Jesus took place in Bethlehem (instead of Nazareth) because the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, ordered people throughout his empire to go to their family home to be counted for taxation. This is an example of political arithmetic, state arithmetic, or statistics.

37-41 Reign of the Roman Emperor Caligula who banished or murdered most of his relatives, executed large numbers of people, confiscated property and, for entertainment, had people tortured and killed whilst he was eating. He made himself a God. A Jewish philosopher, Philo Judaeus, went to Rome to plead with Caligula for the lives of Jews who had refused to worship him as God. Philo is remembered as a theorist who fused Greek and Jewish thought. Caligula was assassinated and is remembered by many social theorists as an example of an undesirable ruler. They read about him in the works of Philo.

90 to 168AD Claudius Ptolemaeus or Ptolemy: Astronomer and geographer who lived in Alexandria and compiled a large compendium of astronomy, with the earth as the centre of the universe. His compendium was called the Almagest when translated into Arabic.

The two centuries from 200AD to 400AD are a critical turning point in the Saint-Simonian system of history between the epoch with polytheist ideas and a society based on slavery, and that with "theological" ideas and a feudal organisation of society.

393-397 AD Synods of the Christian Church decided which books would form the Christian Bible. This is composed of an "Old Testament" (the Hebrew Bible) and a "New Testament" (books about Jesus and the early Christians). The whole is arranged in approximate chronological order, giving a history of the material world from its beginning (Genesis) to future end (Revelation) [See 1611]

405 AD Jerome completed his translation (commenced in 382) of the Bible from Hebrew and Arabic into Latin: the language common to educated christendom. It became known as the versio vulgata or Vulgate [external link   another ]

EUROPEAN CIVILISATION

BIRTH OF MUHAMMAD ARABIC CIVILISATION empire   weblinks 570 to 632 Muhammad. The works of the Greeks and Egyptians originally reached Christian Europe via the translations of scholars living in muslim countries

At about the time that Muhammad was born, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms were emerging in England (external link: Anglo-Saxon Origins: The Reality of the Myth by Malcolm Todd)

about 680 AD death of Caedmon, who gave birth to English poetry

673 to 735 The Venerable Bede of Jarrow. (external link: visit his world)

Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was king of the Franks from 768 to 814

809 to 877 Hunain ibn Ishaq who directed the translation of numerous texts from Greek to Arabic at Baghdad

Feudalism? Marc Bloch's Feudal Society covers the period (roughly) from the middle of the ninth century to the first decades of the 13th in western and central Europe. He divides the period into a first and second feudal age, separated by "profound and widespread changes" towards the middle of the eleventh century The two centuries from 1000 to 1200 are a critical turning point in the Saint-Simonian system of history between the epoch with "theological" ideas and a feudal organisation of society and that with positive, scientific ideas and an industrial social organisation.

About 990 to 1050 Guido d'Arezzo (Guido Aretino) lived. Guido was an Italian monk trying to find ways of improving the teaching of monks to sing the Gregorian Chants that were a large part of their religious duty. He used a system of recording music as writing by arranging symbols for notes on either side of a line (later lines) so that, if you understood the notation you could sing the music. As music became writing it became possible to compose on paper instead of having to work as a group developing and transmitting it. Writing music created a system of concepts for the analysis and manipulation of a sphere of deep sensual experience believed to be sacred. It was part of the development of rational analysis out of religious tradition in Europe.

1088 Convenience date for the foundation of the University of Bologna - the first in Europe. See L'Antico Studio di Bologna But where is it? by Mary Tolaro Noyes, January 1996 and Wikipedia article on universities
See Paris and Oxford - 13th century - 14th century - 15th century

Late 11th century on: European translations from Arabic into Latin of Greek authors, including the anatomist, Galen

1095 Pope Urban 2nd called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks. First of the Christian Crusades against the Muslims that ended in the late 13th century. See Wikipedia articles on Crusades.

About 1120 Euclid rediscovered

A Common Law for England: Henry 2nd (ruled 1154-1189) established royal courts at Westminster and divided England into circuits, over which his judges travelled and tried the more important civil and criminal cases in county courts. The judges did not impose a law from above, but brought together the traditional law they found in the different parts of the country to create one law that was common for the whole nation. To establish what the law of a district was, the traditional practice of trial by a jury of local people was revived. See law

Before 1170? The University of Paris developed out of the Cathedral schools of Notre Dame. The short history of Oxford University says it (Oxford) developed rapidly after 1167, when Henry 2nd "banned English students from attending the University of Paris".

1175 Ptolemy rediscovered

Universities founded at Cambridge (1209) - Salamanca (1218) - Padua (1222) - Naples (1224) - Toulouse (1229) - Siena (1240) - Montpellier (1289) - Lisbon (1290)

1220 Start of the building of the (new) Salisbury Cathedral - the one we now have. It took about hundred years to build. [external link]. The Norman Westminster Abbey was replaced in the middle of the 13th century. The oldest parts of the present building date from this period. [external link]

1225 to 1274 Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas created a synthesis between Christian theology and Aristotelianism. He asserted that political power is natural, as hierarchic relations already exist among the angels in heaven.

1271 Last of the Christian Crusades against the Muslims. By 1291 muslims had re-captured all the territory in Syria held by the Crusaders

The Renaissance (cultural rebirth) is generally regarded as beginning in Florence, Italy, in the early 14th century. However, some historians speak of an earlier renaissance in 9th century France.

"The civilisation of Greece and Rome, which ever since the fourteenth century obtained so powerful a hold on Italian life, as the source and basis of culture, as the object and ideal of existence, partly also as an avowed reaction against preceding tendencies - this civilisation had long been exerting a partial influence on medieval Europe, even beyond the boundaries of Italy. The culture of which Charles the Great was a representative, in the face of the barbarism of the seventh and eighth centuries, essentially a Renaissance, and could appear under no other form. Just as in the Romanesque architecture of the North, beside the general outlines inherited from antiquity, remarkable direct imitations of the antique also occur, so to monastic scholarship had not only gradually absorbed an immense mass of materials from Roman writers, but the style of it, from the days of Eginhard onward, shows traces of conscious imitations." (Burckhardt, J. 1960 pp 176 and 178. See also p.5.)

Universities founded at Rome in 1303 - Prague in 1348 (external link) - Krakow in 1364 (external link) - Vienna in 1365 (external link) - Heidelberg in 1386 (external link) - Erfurt in 1379 - Cologne in 1388 (external link)

1347-1350 Black Death (Bubonic Plague) in Europe. Further outbreaks (England) in 1361-1362, 1369, 1379-1383, 1389-1393, and during first half of the 15th century.

Mental Health 1377 Bethlem

1387 Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400) started writing The Canterbury Tales. The East Midland dialect he wrote in became the basis from which standard English evolved.

Although she was the daughter of a town Mayor, Margery Kempe (about 1373-1438) was unable to read and write, but heard many sermons, and books read. When she came to write her book, she dictated it.

From Robin Rowles: "I am puzzled as to why you think that from AD1 (alleged year of birth of Jesus called the Christ) to AD99 is a century. At best it is 99 years and were Jesus to have been born in December AD1 as we celebrate it (unlikely), it is nearer 98 years. Why is the (eg) seventeenth century so called? Because it ends with 1700 so that is what it is! Mind you, this is a common mistake, after all the entire world celebrated the millennium a year early so you are not alone!"

Schools.

A schoolman is a teacher in any of the universities of medieval Europe - a medieval scholastic - someone versed in the traditional philosophy and theology of medieval scholasticism. The terms were developed in the 16th and 17th centuries to distinguish old knowledge from new knowledge.

Scholasticism by Joseph Rickaby, Oxford, 1908

Wikipedia article on scholasticism

John Stuart Mill on importance of

Universities founded at Leipzig in 1409 (external link) - St Andrews (1413) - Rostock (1419) - Leuven (1425) - Barcelona (1450) - Glasgow (1451) - Greifswald (1456) - Bratislava (1465) - Uppsala (1477) - Copenhagen (1479) - Aberdeen (1495)

1447 Pope Nicholas 5th authorised the Portuguese to make war on muslims and pagans, and to make them slaves. He applauded the trade in negroes, and hoped that it would end in their conversion.

About 1450 Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press - Which is probably why the middle of the 15th century is the most popular date for starting "modern history" (see above) - Although the Penguin Dictionary of Modern History starts in 1789 (and finishes in 1945!)

The first printed edition of Euclid was a translation
from arabic into latin in 1482

1492 Columbus's first voyage to America. Visited Haiti.

1493 Pope Alexander 6th apportioned the non-European world west of the Azores to Spain, that east of the Azores to Portugal. The grant was conditional on their converting the natives to Christianity.

1494	ship of fools

The transport of Africans to the West Indies, as slaves, began early in the 16th century. Slave ships made a triangular run. They took a cargo of manufactured goods (see Bristol 1746) from their European home port to the west African coast, where this was bartered for slaves and other produce. With slaves packed in the cargo holds, the ships than went across the Atlantic (the Middle Passage - where some cargo died) to colonies in the Caribbean and on mainland America. Slave were there auctioned and mainly became plantation workers. The ships returned to their European home with goods like cotton, sugar, coffee and tobacco.

Early in the 16th century, Paracelsus (1493-1541) studied alchemy and chemistry at Basel University and learned the properties of metals and minerals in mines. His unorthodox mystical theories lost him the position of town physician of Basel (1526-1528), but through empirical experiment in pursuit of his dreams he made new chemical compounds and changed medicine and pharmacy. (See mental health history)

1517 The publication of Luther's ninety-five theses became the official launch of protestant christianity. The Bible was given priority over the church as the source of authority. The scope for religious disagreements multiplied as more and more people were able to read it for themselves. The movement for the reform of the Catholic (universal) church and the breakaway of protestant and reformed churches is called The Reformation.

1518: Royal College of Physicians founded

1525 William Tyndale's The New Testament in English printed in Germany and shipped into England against official hostility

1528 Copernicus finished a book arguing that the earth goes round the sun, not the sun round the earth. The first printed copy was in 1543 (see Galileo)

1544

Sebastian Cabot's map of the world

1577 Jean Bodin published Six Livres de la Republique, the first major systematic treatment of politics since Aristotle. He argued that property and the family form the basis of society. His arguments from the material world (in contrast to Aquinas who argues from theology) make him a founder of the philosophical approach to social theory known as state of nature theory.

Marx and Engels argued that one of the qualifications required by science is that its theories should start from material premises rather than theological ones. In this sense, Bodin is one of the earliest founders of social science.

1588
Robert Filmer (author of Patriarcha) and Thomas Hobbes (author of Leviathan) born

1593 to 1597 Richard Hooker published the first five volumes of his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. These argued that the Bible is not the only guide to truth that God has provided, because God has established the universe according to laws and provided human beings with reason by which they can discover those laws. Three other volumes were published after Hooker's death. Locke's arguments in his Two Treatises of Government, and elsewhere, have strong similarities with Hooker's.

1596
31.3.1596 Rene Descartes born

1597 William Shakespeare, in Merchant of Venice describes the music that the heavenly spheres create as they circle the earth. See Copernicus

1598 James 6 of Scotland (James 1 of England) published The True Law of Free Monarchies. Theories from this and other writings of the king were used by Filmer.

1599
In his play, As You Like It, William Shakespeare said that the whole social world is a stage on which the same people play different parts at different times. This is the basic idea of role theory, later developed by social scientists.

1601 Elizabethan Poor Law under which each parish was responsible for looking after its own poor.

Mental Health and the Poor Law

1603 Death of Elizabeth 1. James 6 of Scotland became James 1 of England

1611 Official (King James or Authorised) version of the Bible in English published. [See 393] The Bible story is largely chronological - beginning with the genesis of the world and ending with divine revelation of its end. It provided the framework for many historical explanations of nature and society. Usher gave it precise dates. For generations this book, more then any other, provided the English speaking peoples with poetry, history, religion, politics, ethics, names, imagery and visions, as well as a framework for natural and social science. Its downfall as the basis of science in the 19th century was a cultural cataclysm. However, the Bible, critically read, continued to be a major source of material for emerging social sciences such as anthropology.

1613 Francisco de Suarez, a Spanish Catholic theologian, published Defensio Fidei Catholicae, criticising James 1st's theory of the divine right of kings. Saurez's book was burned in London.

1614 In France, the Queen Regent called the States General (a representative body like the English parliament) together in an effort to counter the power of the nobility. It was dismissed in 1615, and did not meet again until 1789

1620 Francis Bacon published Novum Organum, one of the works in which he publicised his new method of gaining knowledge (science) by a process of induction. 1623 Probably after this date that Hobbes translated several of Bacon's essays into Latin and took down his thoughts as Bacon dictated them. See Social Science History, chapter one: John Stuart Mill and his problems with Francis Bacon 1625 De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) published. 1632 In Italy Galileo published his A Dialogue on the Two Principle Systems of the World-Ptolemaic and Copernican.   See Ptolemy and Copernicus. Notes on Hobbes and Galileo and Hobbes on Deductions from simple axioms John Locke (author of Two Treatises of Government) born 1637 In France, René Descartes published Discourse de la méthod, a slim book in which he argued reason as the foundation of knowledge and the source of certainty. He also reviewed his previous argument that the body is a machine which, in humans, but not animals, is directed by the soul. 1640 November 1640 Hobbes left England to live in Paris because he thought parliament might arrest him as a supporter of the king's powers against parliament. 1642 Isaac Newton born

ENGLISH CIVIL WAR

November 1642 English civil war began between Charles 1st and parliament over the power of each.

1643 Filmer arrested by Parliamentary forces and kept for several months in Leeds Castle, Kent. It is not clear how much of 1643-1647 he was imprisoned, but he was at liberty in 1647

1646 In Paris Hobbes became mathematical tutor to the exiled Prince of Wales (later Charles 2nd) May 1646 King Charles 1st surrenders himself to the Scottish Covenanters, who ally with the English Parliament in the summer. He is still King - But from now on he is a king under duress. From June 1646 he was held by the army. He is still free enough (in prison on the Isle of Wight) to initiate a new civil war by a concluding a military alliance with the Scottish Covenanters that threatened the English Parliament - 1647/1648. (See Open University Civil War Timeline) 1647/1648 The Westminster Confession: An official document (no longer official in England after 1660) specifying the Bible as a foundation of belief superior to (though not, presumably, contradicted by) nature. [External link to Michael Marlow's introduction] 1648 Filmer published political pamphlets in support of absolute monarchy and the divine right of king's

30.1.1649 Execution of Charles 1st.

Abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords in England. Commonwealth established. Under the Commonwealth Filmer lost some of his property as a result of his loyalty to the king

1650 Rene Descartes died

Between 1650 and 1654, James Usher's Annales Veteris at Novi Testamenti (years of the old and new testaments) dated the events in the Bible. The creation was fixed as taking place in 4,004 BC. Usher's dates were not only printed in the margins of many Bibles, but were accepted as scientific for a long time.

April 1651 Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan published in London (Hobbes still in France). It distressed some of his previous supporters because it defended absolute rule, but not necessarily monarchical rule. Lecture notes on Hobbes Social Science History, chapter two: Hobbes, Filmer and Locke Extracts from Leviathan Hobbes weblinks

Louise 14th and absolutism
7.9.1651 Procession to mark the formal ending of the minority of Louis 14 of France. Hobbes watched the procession from his window. From 1661, when he threw his chief minister into prison, until his death in 1715, Louis 14 ruled personally. "L'etat c'est moi" (I am the state), he said. See his system of power and Wollstonecraft's comments

End of 1651 Hobbes returned to England

1653

20.4.1653 Oliver Cromwell, Commander in Chief of the Parliamentary Army, dissolved Parliament.

30.5.1653 Sir Robert Filmer died

16.12.1653 Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector under a constitution that combined his rule with a Parliament.

1654 Community care under the Old Poor Law

RESTORATION and ROYAL SOCIETY

1660 Restoration of English monarchy under Charles 2nd, who attempted to unify the country around a common religion. Charles landed at Dover on 25.5.1660 (Pepys). From then to 1662 there was a period attempting to include moderate puritans (not baptists, ranters and quakers) in the established church.

28.11.1660 Meeting that decided to start a "College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning" which led to the "The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge" (the Royal Society). John Locke became a member 26.11.1668. Isaac Newton became a member 11.1.1672. Thomas Hobbes did not become a member. External link to Royal Society web:. This includes a history of the Society and (via library and archives) information on its members.

1662

Act of Uniformity

Act of Settlement said one acquired a right to relief in a parish by being born there, married there or serving an apprenticeship there. Adam Smith later (1776) criticized this Act for interfering with the mobility of labour.

External link: Origins of probability and statistics See also probabiliy and statistics Ed Stephan's A Sociology Timeline begins with the birth of John Graunt on 20.4.1620. In 1662 Graunt published his Observations on the Bills of Mortality which drew social conclusions from the tables of London deaths (See words). The time line concludes with Ed Stephan's own The Division of Territory in Society in 1995.

1662: Simon Patrick in Brief account of the new sect of Latitude Men, together with some reflections on the New Philosophy argues that the mechanical idea of the world will mend a clock, but the scholastic will not. A fashionable version of the mechanical philosophy is that everything is the result of the inter-action of atoms. There was a hope (soon to be disappointed) that microscopes would reveal this. - See external link Atomism in the 17th century

1662 Anonymous publication of The Port Royal Logic: La logique, ou l'art de penser (logic or the art of thinking), by Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) and Pierre Nicole (1623-1695) of the Jansenist convent of Port Royal just outside Paris. Written in everyday French, and translated into everyday English and other modern languages, it popularised "the art of using reason well in the acquisition of the knowledge of things". (See Mill A System of Logic)

1666 Fire of London. Bethlem rebuilt.
1670 onwards: Private madhouses

1673 The first of the letters from Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632- 1723) to the Royal Society, in which he described what he saw through his single lens magnifier (microscope). Amongst the small living things he looked at were sperm, blood cells, bacteria, algae (spirogyra) and protozoa (vorticella). See external link

1679 Thomas Hobbes died. 1680 Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer (died 1653) published. This supported absolute divine right of kings. 22.1.1680 Locke bought a copy of Patriarcha. It was probably at this period that Locke wrote the first treatise on Government (published 1689/1680), criticising Filmer. If so he would have kept it secret for fear of the king's police. Summer 1683 For his safety, Locke left England to live in Holland. 7.12.1683 Algernon Sidney beheaded for High Treason, partly as a consequence of a book he had written (not published) criticising Filmer's Patriarcha Filmer: Lecture notes   biographical note   extracts   weblinks See Social Science History, chapter two: Hobbes, Filmer and Locke: 17th Century Models for a Science of Society See also   1598   1643   1648   1688

1685 James 2nd English king. He tried to enforce Catholic toleration.

1686 First edition, in Latin, of Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (English translation 1729). See also 1713, 1723, 1740.

November/December 1688 Glorious Revolution: William and Mary (protestants) were invited to become king and queen by the English parliament. James 2nd fled to France.   -   Constitutional monarchy - The monarch having been selected by parliament, under conditions laid down by parliament, Divine Right ceased to be the legitimating argument for monarchy. Legitimacy could be built on the consensual grounds of theorists such as John Locke. This secular (non-religious) base reduced the need for all loyal subjects to be members of the established church.

1689 Bill of Rights and Act of Toleration

1689/90 John Locke's Two Treatises of Government published. They were probably first drafted in 1679/1680. The Two Treatises has 1690 on its cover, but it and his Letter on Toleration were both in print by the autumn of 1689. Both were published anonymously. 1690 Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding published. This work he signed. 1693 Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education published Lecture notes on Locke - weblinks See Social Science History, chapter two: Hobbes, Filmer and Locke: 17th Century Models for a Science of Society And chapter three: What is science?: The Ideas of Locke, Hume and Wollstonecraft

1697 Britain began to keep records of the gap between its imports and its exports (the "balance of trade"). When nations kept figures from year to year (time series) in economics, weather or whatever, it made possible the production of graphs like the following which shows the British balance of trade from 1697 to 1925. Click on the picture to read the article by James Galbraith from which the graph comes.

1710

John Arbuthnot's "An Argument for Divine Providence, taken from the Constant Regularity observed in the Births of both Sexes" (external text) published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society for 1710. "... perhaps the first application of probability to social statistics and includes the first formal test of significance. In this paper Arbuthnot claims to demonstrate that divine providence, not chance, governs the sex ratio at birth." (J J O'Connor and E F Robertson)

1711
David Hume born

1712 Jean Jacques Rousseau (author of The Social Contract) born

1713 Second edition of Newton's Principles contained Roger Cotes' Preface trying to show how Newton's practice was consistent with the new ( Baconian) inductive science.

1723

27.2.1723 David Hume, aged 12, started at Edinburgh University. He did not take a degree, but for two or three years was exposed to the new philosophy particularly that of Sir Isaac Newton.

1724
Immanuel Kant, author of the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason, born.

1727 Isaac Newton died

1729 English translation of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World (Published, in Latin, in 1686)

1734: The Koran: Commonly called the Alkoran of Mohammed An english translation, directly from arabic, by George Sales, a London lawyer, who included a long Preliminary Discourse explaining the history and context of Mohammed. Served for centuries its declared purpose of making the Koran available to christians. My copy (Frederick Warne 1889), first bought for the Seafarers' Education Service, then joined the small library of Herbert Henry Moss, a primitive methodist, from whom I would borrow it in the late 1950s.

1740 David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. Hume attempted to be the Newton of Social Science.

1746

Abury [Avebury], a Temple of the British Druids: and some others described; wherein is a more particular account of the first and patriarchal religion; and of the peopling the British Islands ... By William Stukeley. His Stonehenge, a temple restored to the British Druids was published in 1740 - External link to Earth Mysteries website

1746 Champion's Brass Works established at Warmley, near Bristol, by the Quaker industrialist, William Champion (1709-1789). It closed in 1768, and in 1769 an inventory of what was in the factory was made. This shows that everything produced was for the African trade - probably to be exchanged for slaves. (external link)

1748

In The Spirit of the Laws, Charles Secondat "Baron de Montesquieu" (l689-l755) explored natural and human laws in a way that enabled people to analyse society as a whole, in relation to its parts, in relation to its history and in relation to its environment.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751) published L'homme machine. Translated into English as Man a Machine (external link) in 1749 - See Foucault

Jeremy Bentham, (author of A Fragment on Government ) born
Olympe de Gouges (author of Declaration of the Rights of Woman) born Marie Gouze


1750 Rousseau's Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.

1751 Experiments and observations on electricity: made at Philadelphia in America, by Mr. Benjamin Franklin, and communicated in several letters to Mr. P. [Peter] Collinson of London, F.R.S.. Peter Collinson was a merchant, born a Quaker, who traded with Philadelphia.

1755 Rousseau's A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.

1756
William Godwin born. He was to develop a political philosophy to formalise and show the foundations of radical ones like Rousseau's preceding his.

29.1.1756 Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as the one "who first suggested the experiments to prove the analogy between lightning and electricity". Peter Collinson was one of those who proposed him

1759

15.1.1759 The, new, "British Museum" opened to the public, complete with reading room, manuscripts, natural history specimens, old coins and medals, prints and drawings, and exhibits of strange objects from other cultures. (External link to official history)

1762 Rousseau's The Social Contract and Emile. The controversial content of Emile made life in France uncomfortable for him. In 1766 and 1767 he lived in England as the guest of David Hume. He died in France in 1778. In 1794 the remains of Rousseau and Voltaire were moved to the Pantheon in Paris.

Economic cycles Jevons calculated that, between 1763 and 1878, commerical crises went in cycles with about 10.4. years between each. The crises were 1763 - 1772-1773 - 1783 - 1793 - 1804-1805 - 1815 - 1825 - 1836-1839 - 1847 - 1857 - 1866 - 1878

Steam Steam came to power the machines that were developing fast (particularly in textile industries of England and Scotland), creating factories where people worked to the rhythm of the machine. Piston steam engines had been used to pump water since the end of the 17th century. In the 1760s, James Watt created more powerful engines by condensing the steam in a vessel separate from the cylinder. These made steam engines an alternative to water wheels, and moved industry from the side of highland streams to lowland coal-fields. In 1780s America and Britain, steam was first used to power paddle boats. The first rail- running steam carriages appeared in the first years of the 19th century. The revolutionary impact of steam became clear to everyone in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s as a network of railways was constructed, affecting every aspect of people's lives. Tennyson explained it to masses of English speaking readers six years before Marx and Engels explained it to small groups of revolutionaries in Europe.

1764

Beccaria's Essay on Crimes and Punishment

1768

Joseph Priestley's Essay on the First Principles of Government

"The good and happiness of the members, that is, the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which everything relating to that state must finally be determined".

1770 Georg Friedrich Hegel born

The phrase sciences morales et politiques was introduced into France about 1770. It is a term representing what we might now call the social sciences. See 1795 (Porter and Ross 9.2003)

1772 Robert Owen born

1772 David Ricardo born

1773 James Mill born

1774 Louis 16th king of France.

Medical inspection of London madhouses introduced

1776 Britain's American colonies declared themselves independent.

David Hume died

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Bentham's A Fragment on Government were both published in 1776

Lecture notes on Smith
Extracts from Wealth of Nations
Smith weblinks
Adam Smith revival (late 20th century)