1. a) During the Renaissance, science and the scientific method offered an alternative perspective on how the world worked.
b) During the Renaissance, people sought to find out more about the world, and wanted to take in alternate customs, beliefs, and ideas.
c) During the Renaissance, an increase in resource availability allowed population and life span to increase.
2. I feel that the fact that people started learning from the past, and their past mistakes, was the biggest leap forward and allowed the Renaissance to occur. Beforehand, people were pessimistic. They were all in a tight spot, with little to eat, little entertainment, and overall very little excitement in life. There wasn't really a reason to get up in the morning. The let the church tell them what to do; the church took the general public's money, all so they would supposedly "go to heaven". The people learned from this; other reasons and explanations for the happenings in the world and how it was created appeared, allowing everyone to have an beliefs in things besides the Church. The scientific method was founded, and with it many great things were discovered; the Earth was not the center of the universe, the sun is, for example.
This more open view of the world showed the people that there were other things in life besides themselves, and the things that they did. During the Renaissance, Europeans started accepting new languages and new cultures into their everyday lives. This brought about more and new foods, which led to healthier lifestyle. All of the new foods, people, etc led to a growth in population, and an overall surplus in food. The surplus led to less people needing to farm, and more job specialization. Job specialization led to commercialism, city-states, castles, and other things that can only be had in a wealthy nation. This all occurred because of the mistakes people learned from the past, and the optimism and brilliant ideas that came with it.
3. During the enlightenment, many people began to criticize their current way of living and the order of things around them. The public started questioning their morals, how things were getting done. During the enlightenment, new forms of order, government, and even religion were founded, allowing people's minds and physical beings to push out beyond the boundaries set by the Church and the other restrictions set by their previous lifestyle. This period of "Enlightenment" occurred over a span of about 500 years. It overall led to more freewill, choice, and education throughout Europe and the Western World.
4. Galileo was one of the main contributors to the successes of the Age of Enlightenment. He was the first to create his own telescope, and make regular, repeated observations of the heavens, aka "space". He figured out that the moon, and other planets, were bumpy, circular, non-uniform, etc. His observations were probably a huge contribution to what we know about planets and the outer-space today, and what NASA and astronauts needed to prepare for life outside of our atmosphere.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/111821119.html
The connection, for one, is that the article mentions Galileo and his early observations of Saturn's Rings. The connection is also that we use telescopes, Galileo's revolutionary tool, to make the same observations today, but at a deeper level. We are using telescope mounted on satellites to make closer, more detailed observations of Saturn's Rings.
5. I think there have been many life-changing/altering/forming experiences throughout my life, but one of the most life changing was the beginning of my school career. I never thought about it until this blog, but school has really shaped the person that I've become. The teachers, the friends, the people-who-aren't-so-friends, everyone and everything in the educational environment impacts who you will become as a person. Sometimes you get the lucky "fun" teacher, who really makes certain things like math or science seem awesome or fun. They make you want to do well in the class; they're the type of people that make you want to succeed in life. Then you get that crazy/insane/straight-up-bad teacher, who makes you want to doze off in the middle of class. More importantly, there are the kids you meet; your friends, your colleagues. These are the people that truly shape your life. They tell you jokes when your down, give you the thumbs up when you do something great, and you can't help but return the favor. It's these people, these places, that truly shape who you become in your life.
