[Back to Modern History Sourcebook]

MODERN HISTORY SOURCEBOOK

CRIB SHEET

[Note: Crib Sheets are meant as review aids for a particular period/theme. They are not complete overviews!]

Context of Cultural Change

Knowledge and literature now more widespread:

• Large reading public
• state education
• cheap newspapers eg. Daily Mail in England
  

Realism in Literature

• Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) Madame Bovary 1857
• George Eliot (1819-1880) Adam Bede 1859
  

Science

Medicine

• Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) Discovers bacteria 1868.
• Vaccination against Rabies 1885.
• Joseph Lister (1827-1912) begins sterilising wounds.
  

Biology

• Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913) - "survival of the fittest".
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882),
  The Origin of the Species 1859, The Descent of Man 1871
• Darwinian Evolution - Nature "red in tooth and claw".
• Social Darwinism [ref. Herbert Spencer, Eugenics
• Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) - Genetics
  

Physics

• Albert Einstein (1879-1955), 1905 General Theory of Relativity
  

Psychology

• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) - Psychoanalysis
• Tripartite division of the self - Ego, Id, Superego
• sublimation of sexual energy for civilization.
  

The Crisis of Humanism

• Auguste Comte (1798-1857) The Positive Philosophy 1830-1842
• Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Beyond Good and Evil 1886
• Bertrand Russell: "Humanity is just an accidental assembly of atoms at the present time, which will separate in the future".
• ISSUES:
  Do people lack all free will - are their actions predetermined by their genetic make-up, or their psychological background, or do people have a real opportunity to make an impact on the world, and to be responsible for their actions?
  

The Roman Church

• Pius IX (1846-1878)
  Immaculate Conception defined 1856
  The Syllabus of Errors 1864
  Vatican I 1870 - Papal Infallibility.
• Leo XIII (1878-1903),
  Rerum Novarum 1891.
• St. Pius X (1903-1914)
  Code of Canon Law 1911.
  

Spirituality and Marian Apparitions

• John Henry Newman.
• Lourdes - 1858 - St. Bernadette:,
• Fatima - 1911., "Devotional Catholicism" in the United States

© 1997, Paul Halsall, halsall@murray.fordham.edu