Shifting the Cosmos
This ancient Greek/Ptolemaic model placed a stationary Earth at the absolute center of the universe.
What is the Geocentric theory?
According to John Locke, all humans are born with these three fundamental, unalienable rights.
What are Life, Liberty, and Property?
To prevent government tyranny and absolute corruption, Montesquieu proposed dividing power into three distinct branches in this book.
This philosophical approach advocated by Francis Bacon relies on direct sensory experience, experimentation, and measurable physical data.
What is Empiricism?
René Descartes' ultimate starting point of existence, summarized in the Latin phrase "Cogito, ergo sum."
What is "I think, therefore I am"?
Published in 1543, his work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, sits at the center of the solar system.
Who is Nicolaus Copernicus?
Thomas Hobbes described life in the State of Nature without government as "solitary, poor, nasty, ________, and short."
What is brutish?
This French thinker used satire to attack religious intolerance, political censorship, and state corruption.
Who is Voltaire?
René Descartes argued that human senses could be easily deceived, placing his trust instead in this purely mental and mathematical approach to truth.
What is Rationalism (or Deductive Reasoning)?
Opening line of Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762): "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in __________."
What are chains?
Using mathematical proof, this astronomer ended the circular orbit debate by discovering that planetary orbits are elliptical.
Who is Johannes Kepler?
In Leviathan, Hobbes argued that to escape the violence of human nature, citizens must surrender all rights to this type of ruler.
What is an Absolute Monarch?
Rousseau argued that legitimate government must be guided by the collective interest of all citizens, a concept he called this.
What is the General Will?
This logical direction moves "bottom-up"—starting with specific physical data points, identifying patterns, and building a general theory.
What is Inductive Reasoning?
This thinker famously wrote: "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person... there can be no liberty."
Who is Baron de Montesquieu?
He improved the telescope and discovered moons orbiting Jupiter and mountains on the Moon, providing empirical evidence for heliocentrism.
Who is Galileo Galilei?
Locke argued that human minds at birth are a Tabula Rasa, which translates to this English phrase.
What is a "blank slate"?
In Montesquieu's model, these are the three specific branches of government.
What are the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches?
This logical direction moves "top-down"—starting with an indisputable premise or axiom, applying pure logic, and arriving at a specific, undeniable conclusion.
What is Deductive Reasoning?
Famous quote attributed to Voltaire defending freedom of expression even when in disagreement: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to __________."
What is "say it"?
In 1633, the Roman Inquisition judged Galileo to be "vehemently suspect of heresy" and forced him to perform this formal act of publicly recanting his beliefs.
What is an abjuration (or to abjure)?
According to John Locke's Second Treatise, if a government breaches trust and fails to protect natural rights, citizens have this fundamental obligation.
What is the right (or duty) to rebel / overthrow the government?
Rousseau believed that true liberty is best preserved under this specific form of government, where citizens make laws directly without representatives.
What is a Direct Democracy?
The modern Scientific Method was created by synthesizing these two distinct philosophies together: one for forming hypotheses and one for empirical testing.
What are Cartesian Rationalism (Descartes) and Baconian Empiricism (Bacon)?
In 1633, the Inquisition theologians formally declared this Copernican idea to be "philosophically absurd and false, and formally heretical."
What is that the Sun is motionless at the center of the world (heliocentrism)?