The Enlightened Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

An Integrated, Interdisciplinary, Thematic Unit Examining How The Enlightened Mind and Free Thinking Changed Human History This unit is designed for middle school and high school students to connect the Scientific Revolution to the radical ideas of freedom from both political and religious authority leading up to the Enlightenment. The question "why?" has been a universal puzzle since the dawning of time. For centuries the answer to this, and many other questions, came from faith and church doctrine. But in the 15th through 17th centuries, some men began to link for logical, rational, measurable solutions to questions in nature. This unit examines the questions by men such as Copernicus, Luther, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton that challenged traditional religious beliefs and fostered the growth of democratic ideas as seen in Locke. These pioneers opened the realm of possibilities for all future scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers, as well as helped create the democratic ideas in Europe and America. This integrated, interdisciplinary unit will demonstrate the critical connections between the birth of the Scientific Revolution and the growth of democratic/individualistic thoughts which eventually connects us to our current technological revolution of the 21st century.