View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, Mathematics and the Exact Sciences.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Leibniz, in his differential calculus, broke up the curve into many little straight lines, creating a ________, in Chapter 2 of "Science and the Enlightenment."
(a) Polygon curve.
(b) Pentagon curve.
(c) Diagonal curve.
(d) Centripetal curve.

2. In the early years of the Enlightenment, the strongest support on the Continent for Newton's philosophy came from ________.
(a) Germany.
(b) Holland.
(c) America.
(d) Italy.

3. What term did Toland invent for the belief that God and nature were one and the same, according to the narrator in Chapter 1?
(a) Mechanism.
(b) Pantheism.
(c) Academism.
(d) Deism.

4. According to the narrator in Chapter 2, the only machine employed by rational mechanics was ________.
(a) The body.
(b) The car.
(c) The mind.
(d) The soul.

5. According to the narrator in Chapter 1, who was one of the originators of the mechanical philosophy who believed there were no forces or powers in matter?
(a) Carnot.
(b) Bernoulli.
(c) Leibniz.
(d) Descartes.

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. What was the name of the problem of finding the shape of a surface of maximum area for a perimeter of given length as found in Chapter 2?

4. In a letter of September 21, 1781, who wrote to his mentor Jean d'Alembert that he feared mathematics had reached its limit?

5. Who stated in the introduction to their book that, "There are no figures in this book. The methods that I demonstrate here require neither constructions, nor geometrical or mechanical reasoning, but only algebraic operations, subject to a regular and uniform development"?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 309 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample