The Great European Crisis: Economic, Scientific, and Philosophical Shifts (17th Century)

The European Crisis and Transformation (16th-17th Centuries)

During the second half of the 16th century and the 17th century, when intellectual life was framed by Descartes, Europe was characterized by a wide crisis across different sectors: economic, social, political, religious, scientific, and philosophical.

Economic and Social Restructuring

Economically and socially, this moment saw the advance of capitalism, producing new modes of mercantilism and new economic policies, following the expansion of colonial trade. This was also the moment when Absolutism established European monarchies and saw the development of the nobility and the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, whose interests initially coincided with the absolute monarchy, stood against the clergy and the nobility (who were the privileged estates) and claimed superior consideration. This restructuring proposed the bourgeoisie as the first estate in society, where Reason was the fundamental principle ordering everything.

Political and Religious Instability

At the political and religious level, it was a period of great crisis and instability, demonstrated by a series of revolutions. It was the epoch of wars and colonial expansionism. Key events include:

• The convulsion produced on the continent by the Thirty Years' War.
• Crises driven by political and religious factors.
• The significant loss of religious unity across Europe.

Cultural and Scientific Revolution

Culturally and scientifically, we must highlight Baroque art, an expression of the serious contradictions and quietism of the era. It manifested the dynamism, restlessness, and doubt that the Renaissance had forgotten.

Major shifts included:

• Geographical discoveries, providing a new vision of the Earth and its inhabitants.
• Technical advances driven by increased trade.
• The cosmological breakdown of the Aristotelian geocentric model (seen as a closed and hierarchical reality).

This led to the search for alternative epistemological methods, abandoning reliance solely on authority and revelation. Ultimately, scientific development contributed to the elaboration of a new, mechanistic explanation of natural phenomena, taking Mathematics as its fundamental support, culminating in the work of Newton.

The Philosophical Shift: Reason and Knowledge

Similarly, in the realm of philosophy, a moment of instability and doubt was produced by the disappearance of Aristotelian Thomism, both ontological and dogmatic. As indicated, the necessity arose for the conception of a new world based on Reason.

The result was the first reflection on the correct theory of knowledge and how to acquire it. Thus, the central problem in philosophy shifted to:

1. Alternative methods of knowledge acquisition.
2. The validity of human knowledge.
3. The possible extent of human knowledge.

This focus replaced the medieval concern regarding the relationship between reason and faith. The two philosophical currents of modernity, Rationalism and Empiricism, established philosophy as reflective knowledge.

• Rationalism highlighted the role of Mathematics to prove and ensure the validity and certainty of knowledge.
• Empiricism gave the greatest importance to the empirical component of scientific knowledge.

Ultimately, Reason appeared as the founding order of the new social nature of Bourgeois society and guaranteed the validity of the new type of knowledge that modern science represented.