Question | Answer |
The Scientific Revolution | an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science. |
Nicolas Coperniucus | Polish astronomer, best known for his astronomical theory that the sun is at rest near the center of the universe, and that the earth, spinning on its axis once daily, revolves around the sun. This is called the heliocentric, or sun-centered, system. |
William Harvey | English physician who was the first person to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the body by the heart. |
Galileo | Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. |
Johannes Kepler | German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion. |
Sir Francis Bacon | English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. |
Rene Descartes | French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. |
Sir Isaac Newton | showed that the motions of objects on Earth are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation. |
The Age of Enlightenment | an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe, that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in Church and state. |
John Locke | English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. |
Thomas Hobbes | English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory. |
Philosophes | the intellectuals of the 18th century Enlightenment. They had a critical eye and looked for weaknesses and failures that needed improvement. |
Progress | the idea that the world can become increasingly better in terms of science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, quality of life, etc. |
Deism | in the philosophy of religion is the standpoint that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is a creation and has a creator. |
Tolerance | the practice of permitting a thing of which one disapproves, such as social, ethnic, sexual, or religious practices. |
Jean Jacques Rousseau | Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy heavily influenced the French Revolution, as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. |
Mary Wollstonecraft | eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. |
The Vindication of the Rights of Women | written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children. |
The Social Contract | by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is the book in which Rousseau theorized about the best way in which to set up a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society which he had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality. |
The General Will | made famous by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is a concept in political philosophy referring to the desire or interest of a people as a whole. |