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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who made the first extensive series of investigations of electricity in his book "De Magnete," according to Chapter 3?
(a) John Cuthbertson.
(b) William Gilbert.
(c) Abbe Nollet.
(d) Robert Symmer.

2. The eighteenth century was called by the French the ________ because of its emphasis on reason as a path to knowledge.
(a) Century of light.
(b) Century of reason.
(c) Century of life.
(d) Century of science.

3. Who carried rational mechanics to the highest point of generality and abstraction that it was to reach during the Enlightenment?
(a) Hermann.
(b) Daniel.
(c) Diderot.
(d) Lagrange.

4. Of all the subtle fluids conceived of during the Enlightenment, the ________ was the one that caused the most excitement and attracted the most researchers.
(a) Electrical fire.
(b) Air.
(c) Natural fire.
(d) Water.

5. Chapter 1 states that the "geometric spirit" noted by ________ ensured that the same progress would occur in our knowledge about nature.
(a) Locke.
(b) Newton.
(c) Fontenelle.
(d) Boyle.

Short Answer Questions

1. Throughout the Enlightenment, reason was usually extolled in the same breath with ________, the other key word of the Enlightenment.

2. In 1769, ________, a student of Joseph Black's at Glasgow, measured the repulsion between charges with an apparatus that balanced the electrical repulsion against gravitational attraction.

3. In Chapter 2, what was the name of the path of a body that is dragged over a resisting horizontal surface by a cord of which one end moves along a straight line found?

4. 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?

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. Describe Gabrielle de Breteuil.

2. Why was income important to scientists during the Enlightenment period?

3. What were the two necessary ingredients for the improvement of astronomical tables? Explain.

4. Explain how mathematics and mechanics advanced through the study of curves.

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

6. How did the eighteenth century define analysis? Explain.

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

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

9. Explain why Newton's laws were not adequate to deal with all of the mechanical phenomena studied during the Enlightenment.

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

(see the answer keys)

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