| Word |
Definition |
| 1. Copernican hypothesis | The stars and planets, including earth, revolved around a fixed sun |
| Cartesian absolutism | decided it was necessary to doubt everything that could reasonably be doubt, use deductive reasoning from self-evident principles to ascertain scientific laws |
| Law of inertia | an object continues in a constant state of motion forever unless stopped by some external force |
| rationalism | theory that nothing was to be accepted on faith, everything was to be submitted to the rational, critical, and scientific way of thinking |
| skepticism | nothing can ever be known beyond doubt, humanity’s best hope was open-minded toleration |
| Tabula Rasa | referring to the human mind at birth, a blank tablet |
| Enlightment | movement that emphasizes the use of reason to examine doctrines and traditions brought on from religious beliefs |
| Enlightened absolutism | when absolute rulers tried to rule in an “enlightened” manner, making many reforms |
| philosophes | – the leading philosophical and political writers that proclaimed they were the ones bringing the light on knowledge into the Age on Enlightenment |
| Kepler | Brahe’s assistant that invented the Three Laws of Planetary Motion |
| Galileo | greatest achievement was the elaboration and consolidation of the experimental method, formulated law of inertia, created sophisticated telescope |
| Bacon | rejected Aristotelian and medieval method of using speculative reasoning to build general theories and argued that new knowledge had to be pursued through experimental research |
| Descartes | discovered analytic geometry, decided it was necessary to doubt everything that could reasonably be doubt, use deductive reasoning from self-evident principles to ascertain scientific laws. |
| Newton | created the laws of gravity |
| Montesquieu | argued that despotism could be avoided if there was a separation of powers and that an independent upper class was especially important |
| Voltaire | the advocate of deism |
| Copernicus | mathematician that came up with the halo centric theory that the sun is the center of the universe |
