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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. According to the narrator in Chapter 1, what was the key to a correct method whose model was mathematics?
(a) Nature.
(b) Nuture.
(c) Reason.
(d) Geometry.

2. Who stated in 1665 that "Analysis...seems to belong no more to Mathematics than to Physics, Ethics or any other Science"?
(a) Aristotle.
(b) Isaac Barrow.
(c) Euclid.
(d) Condillac.

3. In the hands of ________, history led not to an understanding of God's will but rather to an understanding of human nature.
(a) David Hume.
(b) Kant.
(c) Boyle.
(d) D'Alembert.

4. What was the name of the curve traced by the end of a string as it is unwrapped from another curve found in Chapter 2?
(a) Tractrix.
(b) Cycloid.
(c) Isoperimeters.
(d) Involute.

5. What was the name of the path by which an object slides from one point to another that is not on the same vertical line in the shortest possible time?
(a) Brachistachrone.
(b) Tractrix.
(c) Catenary.
(d) Involute.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who was the extraordinary philosopher whose life and career exemplified many aspects of the Enlightenment, although he was not especially prominent as a natural philosopher nor was he the main protagonist in the vis viva controversy?

2. What was the name of the philosopher who could enthusiastically claim that "the works of Nature everywhere sufficiently evidence a Diety"?

3. 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?

4. Some of the "cabinet de physique" became very large, the most famous being the collection of the ________ in Haarlem.

5. 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.

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What were the proponents of blunt rods which where used in the study of electricity? Who led the proponents of blunt rods? Explain.

4. Discuss the periodic fluctuation Bradley found in 1748.

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

6. Describe Gabrielle de Breteuil.

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

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

9. Discuss the product of the Philosophical Letters.

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

(see the answer keys)

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