question_answer

How did the ideas of science and reason become popular among the masses due to the print revolution? OR Explain briefly how the terrible effects of industrialization on people's lives and characters was depicted by Charles Dickens in his novel, 'Hard Times'.                                 (3)  

Answer:

The ideas of scientists and philosophers became accessible to the common people. Ancient and medieval scientific texts were published, along with maps and scientific diagrams. Scientists like Isaac Newton  published  their  discoveries,  thus influencing a larger number of scientifically minded readers. Thinkers such as Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau printed their ideas, which were widely read. Thus their ideas about science, reason and rationality found their way into popular literature. OR Charles Dickens wrote about the terrible effects of industrialization on people's lives and characters in the novel 'Hard Times'. This describes Coketown, a fictitious industrial town, as full of machinery, smoking chimneys, polluted rivers and buildings that all looked the same. Here, workers are known as 'hands', as if they had no identity other than as operators of machines. Dickens criticised not just the greed for profits but also the ideas that reduced human beings into simple instruments of production.