Shawn+T+and+Matt+L

Sir Isaac Newton By: Matt Lagier

Sir Isaac Newton was a man of science that his ideas proved many new things. Newton was an “English natural philosopher, generally regarded as the most original and influential theorist in this history of science”(Hatch, 1). During his life, he came up with the Three Laws of motion and the Universal Law of Gravitation. He came up with calculus, which was used to prove his laws of motion and Gravitation. His theory of optics and color helped start science, as we know it. His discoveries didn’t come without criticism from other scientists. Robert Hooke critized all of his work, but when he died in 1703, Newton was elected as president of the royal society in which he published his paper on optics. Science became what it is because of the groundwork Newton did. He took the ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes and other scientists at the time and came up with the “Classical Mechanics”. He was key to the Scientific Revolution that occurred during the seventeenth century.

Hatch, Rober A. "Isaac Newton Biography - Newton's Life, Career, Work - Dr Robert A. Hatch." //College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | The University of Florida//. Apr. 1998. Web. 06 Aug. 2009. <http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages/01-Courses/current-courses/08sr-newton.ht

Thomas Hobbes By Shawn Taylor Thomas Hobbes contributed to the forward progress of the Enlightenment in many ways. “He proposed that political philosophy should be based on the same methods of exposition and explanation as were being applied to the physical sciences.” This means that politics should follow the same logic as science at the time. Hobbes said” The fundamental motivation that spurs human beings on is selfishness: all human beings wish to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain.” He says this because he was seeing rulers being selfish. They would maximize their pleasure, property or anything of value, and minimize their pain, physical pain or any type of loss. He goes on to say that selfishness can only lead to tragedy. He also says that all human beings are selfish, so everyone would have to look out for him or herself and watch their neighbor. This also implies that since everyone is selfish, and selfishness leads to tragedy, that anyone can cause tragedy to occur. He also says that societies purpose was to maximize happiness. They would maximize happiness by agreeing to a “social contract” which would be a list of rules and laws the society would live by. He then says that society could not function with just word, so authority had to be made. His main contribution to Enlightenment would be people taking his work and using it to form an argument against absolute authority. (Hooker)

Hooker, Richard. “Seventeenth Century Enlightenment and Thought.” Washington State University 1996 []