Download Age of Uncertainty Student Handout

Name: ___________________________________________________________________Period: __________ Date: __________
Age of Uncertainty (Inter War Period)
Standard: Be able to identify the major political and economic factors that shaped world societies between
World War I and World War II.
Essential Question: What were the major political and economic factors that shaped world societies
between World War I and World War II?
Examine the influence of Albert Einstein on science, Sigmund Freud on social thinking and Pablo
Picasso on art.
Physics
Old Belief:
Albert Einstein:
Influence on Science:
Uncertainty Principle:
Psychology
Sigmund Freud:
Psychoanoalysis:
Influence on Social Thinking:
Art
Photography:
Pablo Picasso:
Influence on Art:
Social Revolution
Standard: Be able to identify the major political and economic factors that shaped world societies between World War I and
World War II.
Essential Question: What were the major political and economic factors that shaped world societies between World War I and
World War II?
Examine the influence of Albert Einstein on science, Sigmund Freud on social thinking and Pablo Picasso on art.
Physics
Old Belief:
 before 1914
 Enlightenment ideals of reason, science, and progress
remained important to Europeans
 based on Newton’s belief = everything ran like a machine,
orderly fashion through known laws
Influence on Science:
 matter believed to be energy
 an idea that led to understanding the energies within atoms
and to the Atomic Age
 took the certainty out of the mechanical, Newtonian
universe, showed that all phenomena could not be
completely defined and predicted
Albert Einstein:
 German-born physicist
 in 1905
 theory of relativity = stated that space and time are not
absolute but are relative to the observer
 matter and energy reflect the relativity of space and time
Uncertainty Principle:
 In 1927 by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg
 the behavior of subatomic particles was not predictable
 suggests that all physical laws are based on uncertainty, or
randomness
Psychology
Sigmund Freud:
 turn of the century
 a doctor from Vienna
 proposed groundbreaking theories about the human mind and human nature
 argued that human behavior is strongly influenced by past experiences and internal forces that people for the most part are not
aware of
 Painful experiences were repressed and then they influenced people’s actions without their knowledge. Repression began in
childhood
Psychoanoalysis:
Influence on Social Thinking:
 a method to help rid people of these repressed unconscious
 gave us such concepts as the unconscious and repression
forces
 led to a major new profession—psychological therapy
 Patient and therapist probe deep into the patient’s psyche
 added to the uncertainty of the era
through free association, talking, and dream analysis to go
back to childhood and confront the painful experiences to
unlock the repression
 the patient’s gaining control of the painful experience and
being released from the unconscious control of the
repression led to healing
Art
Impressionism:
 a movement begun in France in the 1870s
 Claude Monet
 Impressionists painted outdoors, hoping to capture the light
that illuminated objects, rather than the objects themselves
Photography:
 George Eastman created his first Kodak camera in 1888
 accurately depicted the world
 anyone could capture reality
Pablo Picasso:

Spaniard

began his career by 1905

created a new style, called cubism

used geometric designs to recreate reality
Postimpressionism:
 arose in France and Europe in the 1880s
 Vincent van Gogh
 believed color was its own kind of language
Influence on Art:
 Artists came to see their strength was in creating reality, not
mirroring it as the camera did
 found meaning in individual consciousness

painted objects from many different views at once
Individual
Albert
Einstein
Factor
science
Sigmund
Freud
social
thinking
Pablo Picasso
art

created modern art
Cultural Significance
 A German born physicist
 Studied the structure and energy of atoms (766)
 developed ideas on space, time, energy and matter
 “Theory of relativity”
 the speed of light is constant, other things like space and time are not. Space
and time can change when measured relative to an object moving near the
speed of light
 Replaced Isaac Newton’s belief of a world operating according to absolute
laws of motion and gravity
 Changed people’s world view which believed uncertainty and relativity
replaced absolute laws.
 An Austrian doctor to study and be a pioneer in psychology.
 “the unconscious forces such as suppressed memories, desires and impulses
shape behavior”
 human behavior is irrational, or beyond reason
 developed new therapy called psychoanalysis
 designed to deal with psychological conflicts created by these forces
 His theories that the mind was beyond conscious control challenged the
fundamental idea of the Enlightenment, reason was supreme.
 Influence the concept of Surrealism in art
 A Spanish artist
 developed cubism in 1907
 inspired by traditional African art
 Cubism transformed natural shapes into geo-edges