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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 was France's greatest hero of the Enlightenment partly because he was from England, the source of free thought and liberty and partly because he had solved the riddle of the planets, showing that their motions obeyed the same laws as motions on earth?
(a) Newton.
(b) Fontenelle.
(c) Boyle.
(d) Swift.

2. Who came out in support of vis viva in 1722 and concluded that "what was before only a dispute of words now becomes a dispute about real things"?
(a) 'sGravesande.
(b) Voltaire.
(c) Musschenbroek.
(d) Galileo Galilei.

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?
(a) Brachistachrone.
(b) Tractrix.
(c) Cycloid.
(d) Isoperimeters.

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) ________.
(a) Ether.
(b) Osmosis.
(c) Witness.
(d) Fluid.

5. The conversion of 'sGravesande confused the ideological debate because he was one of the leading supporters of ________ philosophy on the Continent.
(a) Newtonian.
(b) Aristotlian.
(c) Platoian.
(d) Voltairian.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Chapter 1, who made Newton into a supreme rationalist whose laws of motion were a priori deductions of pure thought?

2. According to Chapter 3, ________ was the most volatile and least substantial of all the elements; therefore, it was the chief agent of change, as witnessed by its role in combustion, fermentation, decomposition, and evaporation.

3. The "Philosophical Letters" was a product of Voltaire's visit to ________ according to Chapter 2.

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. The discipline of physics had originally been created by ________, and it had nothing to do with experiment or quantitative measure nor was it limited to the inorganic world.

Short Essay Questions

1. Discuss the two concepts that were studied in rational mechanics during the Enlightenment.

2. What did the French call the eighteenth century? Explain.

3. Who was William Herschel and what planet did he discover?

4. Discuss the periodic fluctuation Bradley found in 1748.

5. Discuss Christian Wolff's book "Generally useful researches for attaining to a more exact knowledge of nature and the arts."

6. Discuss the study of physics in the beginning of the Enlightenment.

7. Discuss Fontenelle's tie to science and literature as discussed in Chapter 1.

8. Discuss Charles Francois de Cisternai Dufay and his impact in electrical science.

9. What prompted the versions of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century? Give an example.

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

(see the answer keys)

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