2nd Homework

Scientific Revolution

1. Francis Bacon, (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scienfic revolution. Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His works established and popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian Method,, or simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. His dedication probably led to his death, bringing him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
2. Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727 was an English physicist, mathematcian, astronomer,astronomer ,alchemist, and theologan, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived." His monograph Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, lays the foundations for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies 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, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution. The Principia is generally considered to be one of the most important scientific books ever written.   

Enlightenment
Rene Descartes

•     Education made him mistrust existing knowledge and doubt everything but God.
• Three experiences: Galileo’s work; Montaigne’s Essays, and King Henri IV’s death.
• Military service.
• 1619 “Illumination.” Intellectual not spiritual.
• Leaving military service, he traveled, settled in Holland.
• Notion of “clear and distinct” ideas
• Wrote Discourse on Method(1637)
• Geometry (1637)
• Meditations(1641)
• Principles of Philosophy(1644)
• Died in Sweden in 1650 of ill health.

John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), widely known as the Father of Liberalism was an 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. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theoryare reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.