Chapter 18 - People
Terms
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- Howard
- English prison reformer and county sheriff
- Hobbes
- English philosopher; wrote Leviathan; beliefs: "Life in the state of nature was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," human nature forever quarrelsome, humans have no capacity for self-government, kings must rule to stop the civil wars and uprisings
- Swift
- wrote Gulliver's Travels: satirized human vices
- Guericke
- built air pump
- Montaigne
- French essayist; regarded as originator of the essay; Discourse on Method: an essay written to examine earthly elements of fire, water, air, and stars in the Heavens
- Descartes
- French philosopher and mathematician; "meditations" (I think, therefore I am); doubt everything that is systematically doubtable; Cartesian dualism: mind vs. matter, subjective vs. objective; developed analytic geometry
- Newton
- English mathematician and physicist; wrote Principia Mathematica: contained law of universal gravitation; co-developed calculus
- Lavoisier
- renamed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen); called "father of modern chemistry"
- Kant
- wrote Critique of Pure Reason: countered Hume's skeptical empiricism; wrote Critique of Practical Reason: affirms the existence of an absolute moral law
- Janssen
- invented compound microscope
- Leeuwenhoek
- first to see bacteria; improved microscope; called "father of microbiology"
- Ptolemy
- Greek astronomer and geographer; set forth the geocentric theory
- Copernicus
- Polish astronomer; set forth the heliocentric theory
- Paracelsus
- joined chemistry with medicine; called "father of toxicology"
- Vesalius
- founder of modern anatomy; studied the human body despite opposition
- Fielding
- English novelist and satirist; wrote Tom Jones
- Defoe
- English novelist and journalist; wrote book that romanticized a shipwrecked sailor's experiences (Robinson Crusoe); wrote A Journal of the Plague Year
- Franklin
- American statesman, inventor, scientist; discovered electricity; invented Franklin stove and bifocals; wrote Poor Richard's Almanac
- Smith
- Wrote Wealth of Nations, a Scottish Economist
- Locke
- English philosopher; founder of empiricism and political liberalism; Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Second Treatise on Civil Government; tabula rasa (blank slate); life, liberty, and property were what man wanted
- Kepler
- discovered three laws that govern orbital motion
- Priestly
- identified carbon monoxide; discovered "dephlogisticated air"
- Fahrenheit
- made the first mercury thermometer; standard temperature measurement
- Richardson
- English novelist; wrote Pamela
- Machiavelli
- Italian statesman and political philosopher; wrote The Prince; believed man has no potential, is terrible, and is locked in struggles
- D'Hollbach
- French author, philosopher, and encyclopedist; born in Germany; one of the first outspoken atheists in Europe; wrote The System of Nature
- Bacon
- English statesman, philosopher, and empiricist; developed inductive (scientific) method
- Racine
- French playwright; wrote tragedies
- Harvey
- explained circulation of blood in the body
- Bayle
- French-Protestant philosopher and skeptic; wrote Dictionnaire historique et critique; heavily promoted religious toleration
- Huygens
- invented pendulum clock
- Torricelli
- invented mercury barometer: measures atmospheric pressure, making weather prediction possible
- Napier
- invented the logarithm
- Brahe
- Danish astronomer; built observatory equipped with precision instruments; gathered a lot of data
- Rousseau
- French philosopher and writer; wrote The Social Contract: thought "General Will" kept order among the people, theory of consent of the governed; Emile: book on the education of children
- Jefferson
- American statesman; third President of the United States; wrote the Declaration of Independence: America is a huge experiment to see if the Enlightenment ideas really work; beliefs were: try to change government, overthrow and create one for a better community
- Cavendish
- identified hydrogen and studied carbon dioxide; proved that water is not an element
- Fontenelle
- French author; wrote Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds; characteristic ideas of the Enlightenment are found in his works
- Hume
- rejected the possibility of certainty in knowledge; wrote A Treatise of Human Nature and History of England
- Gibbon
- wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Voltaire
- French writer, playwright, and poet; deist who bitterly attacked religious intolerance; wrote Candide; empirical knowledge, mechanical universe, perfectibility of man, goodness and preservation of nature
- Boyle
- wrote The Sceptical Chymist; developed Boyle's law; described what an element is
- Volta
- known for volts and the battery
- D'Alembert
- co-edited Encyclopedia with Diderot
- Celsius
- invented the centigrade thermometer; standard temperature measurement
- Galileo
- astronomer and physicist; observed sunspots, Jupiter's moons, craters on the moon, phases of Venus; formulated law of uniform acceleration and discovered the constancy of a pendulum's swing
- Diderot
- wrote the Encyclopedia
- Montesquieu
- French political philosopher; best known for The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois): comparative study of political systems in which he championed separation of powers; wrote The Persian Letters
- Moliere
- French playwright; wrote over twenty comic plays about contemporary France