Blog #11

In Western Europe, China, and Japan wood and charcoal was the major industrial fuels. During the Industrial Revolution fossil fuels such as coil, oil, and natural gas replaced energy sources such as wind, water, wood, and the muscle power of people and animals. Because of the massive extraction of nonrenewable raw materials to fuel industrial machinery it altered the landscape. Industrial waste was emptied into rivers turning the rivers poisonous. Smoke from the coal-fired industries polluted the air in urban areas and increased respiratory illness. Industrial Revolution marked a new era in both human history and the history of the planet.

Blog #9

Julie and Francoise went through a lot of stuff during their lives. There story just goes to show how much they would do for others even if they were confined to a bed and hiding for awhile.
Julie found herself disabled, but even though she was disabled, poor and neglected children still went to visit her to learn their lessons. Meanwhile, Francoise carried on her grandmother's tradition after she passed away and started to pay attention to villagers'medical health and nutritional needs. It was during this time that she developed to take medicinal plants seriously and to be exposed to the realities of peasant life and compare them to her own reality. This period offered her to develop her relationship with others, profound sense, and deep respect for individual person.
Julie on the other hand, focused on the teachings of the Church and preparing children for their first communion. She became known as the Saint of Cuvilly, but she also came to be known as the enemy of the revolution. Julie went into hiding due to the fact of her being an active supporter of several non-juring priest  who could not in good conscience take the required Oath of loyalty to the state.
Julie Billiart and Francoise Blin de Bourdon were courageous women who fought against the French government during the Revolutions. They both went through with their missions no matter what problems they had to face. These two women proved that women are just as capable to contribute to their country like men instead of being stuck at home like all the other women. There acts showed other women to stand up for what is right and to make changes to create a better society.

Blog #6

Islam had generated the most advanced science in the world between 800 and 1400. China's technological accomplishments and economic growth were unmatched anywhere after 1000.
Europe's historical development of a fragment civilization gave rise to conditions uniquely favorable to the scientific enterprise. Europeans had evolved a legal system that guaranteed a measure of independence for a variety of institutions. The development of science in the West was the autonomy of its emerging universities. Such universities became "neutral zones of intellectual autonomy" for scholars that could pursue their studies in relative freedom from the dictates of church or state authorities.
Science was patronized by a variety of local authorities in the Islamic world, but it occurred largely outside the formal system of higher education. Quranic studies and religious law held the central place while philosophy and natural science were viewed with great suspicion. The Quran held all wisdom according to the religious scholars and scientific thinking may challenge it.
Chinese education focused on preparing for a defined set of civil service examination and emphasized the humanistic and moral texts of classical Confucianism.
Western Europe was in a position to draw on the knowledge of other cultures especially the Islamic world. Arab medical texts, astronomical research, and translated Greek classics played a major role in the birth of European philosophy. Then Europeans found themselves at the center of massive new exchange of information as they became aware of lands, peoples, plants, animals, societies and religions from around the world. This new knowledge shook up older ways of thinking and opened the way to new conceptions of the world.

Blog #5

In the early modern era two intersecting cultural trends continued to play out in the twenty first century. The first one was the spread of Christianity to Asians, Africans, and Native Americans. The second one lays in the emergence of a modern scientific outlook which challenged Western Christianity. The early modern era also witnessed novel cultural transformations that connected distant people. Christianity was established solidly in the Americas and the Philippines. A new understanding of the universe and a new approach to knowledge were taking shape among European thinkers of the Scientific Revolution which gave rise to another kind of cultural encounter-science and religion. Science became the new competing worldview and for some it became a new religion. Europeans were central players in globalization of Christianity and the emergence of modern science. Science emerged meeting various receptions in different parts of the world and Islam continued a long pattern of religious expansion and renewal even though Christianity began to compete with its as a world religion. 

Christianity was limited to Europe at the beginning of the early modern era. Christendom stretched from Spain and England in the west to Russia in the east with small communities of various kinds in Egypt, Ethiopia, southern India, and Central Asia. Christianity was divided between the Roman Catholic and Central Europe and Eastern Orthodox. 

Protestant Reformation shattered the unity of Roman Catholic Christianity which provided the cultural and organizational foundation of Western European civilization. Reformation began in 1517 when Martin Luther a German priest publicly invited debate about various abuses within the Roman Catholic Church by issuing a document known as the Ninety-five Theses and nailing it to the door of a church in Whittenberg. Luther's protest was potentially revolutionary because of its theological basis. Luther had come to a new understanding of salvation which held that it came through faith alone.The good works of the sinner nor the sacraments of the Church had any bearing on the eternal destiny of the soul for faith was a free gift of God and it was granted to his needy and undeserving people. Luther took this as a source of beliefs and religious authority as it was not teaching of the Church, but the Bible alone. This was the stuff of revolution in the sixteenth-century.