Gottfried Leibniz, a German mathematician - Enlightenment science What set off the Enlightenment? By 1650 AD, Europeans understood Islamic algebra and trigonometry better. Then they combined that with the exciting invention of the telescope and microscope (thanks to [...]
European boys at school in the 1800s More schools and more scientists In the first half of the 1800s AD, countries in northern Europe like France and Britain forced other countries to give them [...]
Jesuits after 1700 : Jesuit teachers in Brazil Jesuits become very powerful By the 1700s AD, the Jesuits owned a lot of farms and mines in countries all over the world. The governments [...]
René Descartes - Enlightenment philosopher How do we know what is true? All this fighting about religion and new ideas coming from Africa and the Americas, China and India meant that [...]
Mary Wollstonecraft - European philosophy Who was Mary Wollstonecraft? Mary Wollstonecraft was the most famous woman among the Enlightenment philosophers of the 1700s AD. Damaris Masham Mary Astell Enlightenment philosophy All our [...]
John Locke Who was John Locke? John Locke was an English philosopher in the late 1600s AD. He was just starting his career at the height of the Enlightenment, when Hobbes was an old [...]
Immanuel Kant, a European philosopher Immanuel Kant's family and childhood By the end of the 1700s AD, Germany was starting to be a more powerful country. France was busy with the Revolution, [...]
Thomas Hobbes, a European philosopher When did Hobbes live? Thomas Hobbes (yes, he's the one that Calvin named his tiger after) lived in England, about fifty years after Calvin and about the same [...]
Philippe II d'Orleans, regent for Louis XV Philippe d'Orleans rules France When Louis XIV died in 1715 AD, his great-grandson Louis was only five years old. First his uncle Philippe, then his teacher [...]
French Revolution: French women revolutionaries march on the king's palace at Versailles Why did France want a revolution? All through the 1700s, Enlightenment philosophers in France had been figuring out new ways [...]
