Random Renaissance Revolution Ramblings

Ten points for alliteration.

Okay, so recently in my social studies class we have been studying the Renaissance, which is a fascinating period in time.

I don't particularly care for the whole religious aspect of it (mostly because of the many hours of notes I had to write on it) but what I really like are the artists, the writers and the scientists.

Learning about the people who let go of everything that they had been taught, everything that was considered to be true and to doubt it, to rethink it, to question the limits of knowledge just makes me really proud, in a strange way.

It makes me proud that at a time of impossible dreams (think Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel), there were humans who transcended the limits of their world and discovered amazing things.

Just think about it: today, when we drop something, we know that it's because of gravity. Even children know that. But hundreds of years ago, Newton established that law, and consequently deduced how planets orbited the sun. It took him twenty years to fine tune it. Imagine what his amazement would be at the word "gravity" coming out of a child's mouth today!

Then there are people like Descartes who thought about thinking (which is a really cool yet confusing thing to do) and thought about how thinking cannot start with an answer, but with a question. Only at the end fo your thinking do you have an answer.

My friend Addie (whose blog you should definitely read by clicking here) has been learning a lot about Vincent Van Gogh for a while now, reading biographies and the letters he wrote, etc. It seems like a really good idea, to just pick someone whom you admire and learn all that you can about them (please don't stalk people that are still alive, I'm talking dead geniuses). As much as I like Van Gogh, I think I'd rather focus on the writers and thinkers of the Renaissance. Here are a few of my possible choices of study:

- Sir Thomas More: he wrote the book Utopia about a perfect society during a time where the Catholic Church was trying to establish their idea of a perfect society. He was later killed, then posthumously recognized as a saint (Canonized, by the way, is the proper term. New vocab word of the day.) I find him to be a very interesting person, from what I've read so far, which is to say, my textbook.

- Galileo: discovered that the four moons of Jupiter orbited Jupiter in the same was that the Earth orbited the sun. His discoveries rocked the entire human perception of the physical world. He was threatened by death if he did not publicly admit that the Earth was motionless. As he left the trial, he muttered: "Nevertheless, it does move." (Again, this is from my textbook, so don't quote me on it.)

- René Descartes: a french thinker who discarded all traditional ways of thinking on his quest to seek "probable knowledge". He believed that human reasoning was the best road to understanding. Eventually, he was left only with doubt, and deduced that the doubter must then exist. He's the guy who said "I think, therefore I am." Although, I imagine he said it in french, considering that's where he was from. "Je pense, donc je suis", I suppose.

Leonardo Da Vinci: of course. He was an amazing man, I find it mind-blowing to see everything that he had imagined, created, drawn, and to discover that today we use some of the things that he invented. He was one of the first to dissect a human body to see how it worked (as gross as that is, it is pretty incredible and let's ask ourselves, where would we be if he hadn't?). He was a genius, there's no other word for it. I think he's an incredibly important and interesting person. (That's another ten points for alliteration.)

There are probably others, but those are the ones that really stuck with me. Feel free to suggests others in the comments below!

I'm thinking I'll maybe research them and write an essay or something about them. It's mostly for my personal knowledge and curiosity, but I'm a very goal oriented person, so the goal here is going to be to write an essay eventually.