Blog Entry #1: 1810-1820

 Date: June 24, 1821

 Age: 16 years old

Academic Focus: I want to study for a bachelor of philosophy, to learn more about what does it mean to live, and also to give and contribute with my own theories about existence and mind. I want to have more knowledge and help with the history of the period we are living in.

Context: I was born and raised in a little village in Grenoble, France, but because of my father's work, we needed to move to Paris, which was 4 years ago. Things are a little different, in our village the news arrived late or they sometimes never arrived, in Paris, we were living the news. I really like living in Paris, I have many more opportunities, and more available education, because of what is happening in the kingdom right now, the people are more united than before, and I think that´s great. But what I don´t like is how the monarchy is being handled right now, they are very strong repercussions on the people, and in the French monarchy, in the streets, you can only hear rumors about battles that have been carried out, there are a lot of people who don´t have what to eat and they are begging for money or for a slice of bread. And my dad probably will lose his job, and that means I have to return to Grenoble, and I don´t want that.  I always wonder when will this end 😞.

Change/Continuity: Before the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, God and the Catholic Church was the center of every knowledge, they were the only option to learn about life and about the world, and if someone tried to say something new or correct what they think, even if they have evidence and reasons to believe on it, they were called lunatics and traitors of the church, what they teach us in school, is how some people started to challenge the ideas of the Catholic Church, like Galileo Galilei, he was found guilty for disobedience for having a different point of view and different ideas from the church, and you know what, his theories were correct! I think that people at that time, did not have a lot of freedom of expression, they were not able to talk or discuss their ideas or theories. Now, we use the scientific method to learn and to corroborate the data, we can discuss whatever we want, we can discover something new each day, there is still hard and difficult to make people believe in the right answer, but hey! it is some progress.

Cause and effect:  I think that the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment happened because of the people that started to challenge the ideas of the Catholic Church, they started to realize that there was no behind the coherent explanation of what they were affirming it was true. People started to realize, that somethings that the church said, where nonsense. This was the beginning of a new era of discoveries, and I found it absolutely awesome!,  they began to understand more about the world and life, learning new things, what an incredible era!, of course, I believe that this movement confused a lot of people, founding out that what you think was true, was a mistake, it mustn't be so easy to assimilate. THE KNOWLEDGE IS GROWING! YESSSSS

Time/Place:  I don´t know a lot of other countries or continent, we focus more in our own country, but I do know about, but I have heard about an insurgence in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, they were tired of how the people were treated, so they decided to make things change, that´s cool, I think is awesome that people stay strong in what they believe, it kind of remind me of the storming of the Bastille, I don´t really know why. I think that every country and city in the world is dealing with different things and situations, so they need to handle it differently, how the history unfolds is different, they have different types of government, different ways to approach advances in society, and different beliefs.

Perspective: The enlightenment philosopher I admire the most is Denis Diderot, he was an art critic, and as I said before, I enjoy art, and I love painting, He co-wrote the first encyclopedia, that includes contributions from many named contributors and he was the first to describe the mechanical arts it included articles skeptical about Biblical Miracles, and angered both religious and government authorities; it was banned by the catholic chur ch. I like him much because I agree with his ideas. And he wrote more than 7,000 articles after this! I love how he tried to unmask the secrets of the catholic church.