The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment

"I think, therefore I am," a quote by Descartes, an enlightenment mathematician and developer of analytic geometry. Other mathematicians include Galileo Galilei, and Newton, the founder of gravity. Galileo was a grand mathematician I believe with his theories on the solar system that proved Copernicus's theories igniting a revolution in astronomy. Galileo also came up with his wonderful Inertia theory. Newton was the man who came to the concept of gravity. Isaac Newton also came to know of universal gravitation. This theory is a good one and I agree with it to every last end. Newton was also the man who conceived calculus- a form of mathematics. Newton was the best physicist of the period.

Politics are something that seem to be very interesting to me. Locke and Hobbes interest me in their political philosophies of a social contract between the people and the government. This interests me because I believe that the people should have a big role in the governing authority. Locke interested me not only in his social contract but also his Ideas of natural law and natural rights. These rights are different from Hobbes' in that they deal with an actual person's rights to life, liberty and property. Other political views such as a separation of powers, as Montesquieu proposed, seem corrupt in that they separate the government, which subsequently and inadvertently leads to the break down of government unity leading to utter chaos in my mind. The sciences in they enlightenment took bounding steps. Anatomy was improved ten fold by Vesalius and Harvey which was a consequence of a Catholic breakdown that allowed the human body to be dissected. Hooke discovered the cell in plants and Boyle and Priestly made giant leaps in chemistry, which was formerly just alchemy. Along with chemistry came air and the discovery of the elements in it. This was a particularly great discovery by Lavoiser and others because it is what we breathe....

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