Browse Items (85 total)

For 1,000 years, European views of the body were based on the work of Galen and Hippocrates. This view of the body centered around four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) that reached equilibrium in every person. Patients were healed…

Galileo Galilei is known for taking advantage of the newly developed telescope to look at the stars. He discovered the mountains on the moon, that planets are different than stars, the four moons of Jupiter, and sunspots. Dialogue Containing the Two…

Descartes was a rationalist and a proponent of deductive reasoning. He was focused on trying to derive universal laws, exemplified by his statement, “I think, therefore I am.” Discourse on Method explains Descartes’ views on deductive reasoning and…

Miguel Cervantes and his contemporary Félix Lope de Vega represent the Golden Age of Spanish culture. Cervantes wrote his magnum opus, Don Quixote, in Castilian. This dialect developed into literary Spanish. Lope de Vega’s plays and sonnets inspired…

John Calvin escaped from France to Switzerland at the height of conflicts between Protestants and Catholics and became incredibly radicalized. He believed in predestination, the idea that when a person is born, God has already decided if he or she…

Isaac Newton is considered the preeminent figure of science of his time period. He developed the universal law of gravity and had a mechanistic worldview. Mechanists believed that the world operated on a clock and that nature adhered to mathematical…

Francis Bacon was a prominent courtier during the reign of James I of England and a foundational figure in the scientific revolution. He believed that scientists needed a new approach to gaining knowledge and understanding nature. Bacon disliked…

Desiderius Erasmus is often considered a pinnacle of Renaissance humanism and represents the spread of humanism to Northern Europe. He self-identified as a citizen of an international republic of letters, and he definitely existed as a citizen of…

Niccoló Machiavelli’s The Prince served as a major inspiration for Early Modern leaders. He believed that the job of a ruler (a prince) was to preserve order by any means necessary. He believed that coercion and strong-arming the population were par…

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses are known as the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s writings consisted mostly of pamphlets, which were the primary method of debate during the Reformation. Luther translated the Bible into German and…