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people in the 18th and early 19th century had to consider what they wanted to do with all this new information, artifacts, discoveries, and inventions

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new information came in from far-flung corners of the world

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a challenge of this age was to repackage this information and derive new laws which made sense of it all

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new kinds of institutions to organize knowledge

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1838: Royal Agricultural Society of England

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motto "Practice with Science"

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promote the scientific development of agriculture

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created greenhouses for new plants coming back from the discovery voyages

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physician associations

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economic societies

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attach the new methods of science to commerce and derive laws for what makes economies flourish and fail

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Adam Smith

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1776, book: "The Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"

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four volumes in all

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he's referring to the wealth of all nations

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explored the laws of human behavior

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an epic struggle within the soul of every man trying to channel his passions

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men's passions had to give way to self-interest

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the goal was to set up conditions so that the operations of the "invisible hand" could take place

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this was seen as a new faith, a faith in reason, a break with faiths of earlier ages

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new governments

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a sense that we can take the scientific method and apply it to finding better ways to organize humans into political entities

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Enlightenment thinkers generally believed that humans were perfectible

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had political ramifications

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not only men

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Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women were able to reason as well

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if women are left out of this movement, how universal can the laws of the Enlightenment be

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1792 "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"

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reminding people that this new universalism was leaving people out

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that these universal claims were disguises for creating new patterns of social stratification which did not include everybody as equals

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beyond the boundaries of Europe

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"man" turned out to be a very varied creature which put strains on the "universal" claims of the Enlightenment

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people become increasingly associated with skin color

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an effort was increasingly made to catalog people, to organize people in the Americas and people from parents with different colored skin and from different continents, inventing a category for every sort of mix of people:

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the Casta Paintings

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create new demographic categories

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Indios (Amerindians)

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Mestizos (mixed Amerindian and White)

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Castizos (White with some Mestizo)

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Cholos (Amerindian with some Mestizo)

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Pardos (mixed White, African, and Amerindian)

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Mulatos (mixed African and White)

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Zambos (mixed Amerindian and African mix)