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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What area of study in the Middle Ages had been the domain of those truths that could be found through the use of reason alone without the revelation of the Bible?

2. In the preface to his "Histoire" of the Paris Academy of Science, who argued in 1699 that the new "geometric spirit" could also improve works on politics, morals, literary criticism, and even public speaking?

3. Who stated in 1665 that "Analysis...seems to belong no more to Mathematics than to Physics, Ethics or any other Science"?

4. Newton had not made it clear whether the forces acting between the planets and between the parts of matter acted at a distance or through some intervening medium called a(n) ________.

5. What term did Toland invent for the belief that God and nature were one and the same, according to the narrator in Chapter 1?

Short Essay Questions

1. Discuss Benjamin Franklin's single static electrical atmosphere.

2. Briefly explain the major philosopher of method in France in the eighteenth century.

3. What was the meaning of experimental physics at the end of the Enlightenment? Why is important that the meaning of experimental physics had changed?

4. Explain how the laws of nature were to be discovered by experimentation and observation.

5. Discuss the ideology of the Enlightenment on natural philosophers. Who was France's main natural philosopher? Explain.

6. Briefly discuss the origin of subtle fluid as discuss in Chapter 3 of "Science and the Enlightenment."

7. What did Leibniz argue in regards to the mechanical philosophy of the Enlightenment?

8. Describe Gabrielle de Breteuil.

9. Discuss the periodic fluctuation Bradley found in 1748.

10. What advantage did natural philosophy have over other literary pursuits? Explain.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Analyze and discuss the impact the Encyclopedie had on the moral sciences and on the Enlightenment as a whole.

Essay Topic 2

Compare and contrast positional astronomy to physical astronomy.

Essay Topic 3

Compare and contrast the mechanical and vital explanations of natural phenomena, especially motion.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 815 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample