HUMANISM

• HUMANISM WAS INITIATED BY SECULAR MEN OF LETTERS RATHER THAN BY THE

SCHOLAR-CLERICS WHO HAD DOMINATED MEDIEVAL INTELLECTUAL LIFE AND HAD
DEVELOPED THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY.
• IT TOOK HUMAN NATURE IN ALL OF ITS VARIOUS MANIFESTATIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
AS ITS SUBJECT.
• IT STRESSED THE UNITY AND COMPATIBILITY OF THE TRUTH FOUND IN ALL
PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS AND SYSTEMS, A DOCTRINE KNOWN
AS SYNCRETISM (COMIBINATION OF DIFRFERENT FORMS OF BELIEF OR PRACTICE).
• IT EMPHASIZED THE DIGNITY OF MAN. IN PLACE OF THE MEDIEVAL IDEAL OF A LIFE OF
PENANCE AS THE HIGHEST AND NOBLEST FORM OF HUMAN ACTIVITY, THE HUMANISTS
LOOKED TO THE STRUGGLE OF CREATION AND THE ATTEMPT TO EXERT MASTERY OVER
NATURE. 
• HUMANISM LOOKED FORWARD TO A REBIRTH OF A LOST HUMAN SPIRIT AND WISDOM.
• The effect of humanism was to help men break free
from the mental strictures imposed by religious
orthodox to inspire free inquiry and criticism, and to
inspire a new confidence in the possibilities of
human thought and creations.
• among northern humanists was Desiderius Erasmus,
whose Praise of Folly (1509) epitomized
the moral essence of humanism in its insistence on
heartfelt goodness as opposed to formalistic piety.
Heliocentrism
• Cosmological model in which the Sun is believed to be the center point of the solar system or of the universe.
• In the 5th century BC the Greek philosophers Philolaus and Hicetas speculated separately that the Earth was a
sphere revolving daily around some mystical “central fire” that regulated the universe. 
• Two centuries later, Aristarchus of Samos extended this idea by proposing that the Earth and other planets
moved around a definite central object, which he believed to be the Sun.
• In the 2nd century AD, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria suggested that this discrepancy could be resolved if it
were assumed that the Earth was fixed in position, with the Sun and other bodies revolving around it. 
• In 1444 Nicholas of Cusa again argued for the rotation of the Earth and of other heavenly bodies, but it was
not until the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI.
• n 1543 that heliocentrism began to be reestablished. Galileo Galilei’s support of this model resulted in his
famous trial before the Inquisition in 1633.