Baruch (de) Spinoza, also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a Dutch-Jewish philosopher. As a forerunner of the Age of Reason, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century Rationalism, and contemporary conceptions of the self and the universe, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. He was influenced by Stoicism, Maimonides, Niccolò Machiavelli, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and a variety of heterodox Christian thinkers of his day.
Fra. Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as the father of accounting and bookkeeping and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy.
Diogenes Laërtius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. His reputation is controversial among scholars because he often repeats information from his sources without critically evaluating it. He also frequently focuses on trivial or insignificant details of his subjects' lives while ignoring important details of their philosophical teachings and he sometimes fails to distinguish between earlier and later teachings of specific philosophical schools. However, unlike many other ancient secondary sources, Diogenes Laërtius generally reports philosophical teachings without attempting to reinterpret or expand on them, which means his accounts are often closer to the primary sources. Due to the loss of so many of the primary sources on which Diogenes relied, his work has become the foremost surviving source on the history of Greek philosophy.
Theophrastus was a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos. His given name was Τύρταμος (Túrtamos); his nickname Θεόφραστος (Theóphrastos) was given by Aristotle, his teacher, for his "divine style of expression".
The philosophes were the intellectuals of the 18th-century European Enlightenment. Few were primarily philosophers; rather, philosophes were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues. They had a critical eye and looked for weaknesses and failures that needed improvement. They promoted a "republic of letters" that crossed national boundaries and allowed intellectuals to freely exchange books and ideas. Most philosophes were men, but some were women.
The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) or Theologico-Political Treatise, is a 1670 work of philosophy written in Latin by the Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632–1677). The book was one of the most important and controversial texts of the early modern period. Its aim was "to liberate the individual from bondage to superstition and ecclesiastical authority." In it, Spinoza expounds his views on contemporary Jewish and Christian religion and critically analyses the Bible, especially the Old Testament, which underlies both. He argues what the best roles for state and religion should be and concludes that a degree of democracy and freedom of speech and religion works best, such as in Amsterdam, while the state remains paramount within reason. The goal of the state is to guarantee the freedom of citizens. Religious leaders should not interfere in politics. Spinoza interrupted his writing of his magnum opus, the Ethics, to respond to the increasing intolerance in the Dutch Republic, directly challenging religious authorities and their power over freedom of thought. He published the work anonymously, in Latin, rightly anticipating harsh criticism and vigorous attempts by religious leaders and conservative secular authorities to suppress his work entirely. He halted the publication of a Dutch translation. One described it as being "Forged in hell by the apostate Jew working together with the devil". The work has been characterized as "one of the most significant events in European intellectual history", laying the groundwork for ideas about liberalism, secularism, and democracy.
Dominicus Gundissalinus, also known as Domingo Gundisalvi or Gundisalvo, was a philosopher and translator of Arabic to Medieval Latin active in Toledo. Among his translations, Gundissalinus worked on Avicenna's Liber de philosophia prima and De anima, Ibn Gabirol's Fons vitae, and al-Ghazali's Summa theoricae philosophiae, in collaboration with the Jewish philosopher Abraham Ibn Daud and Johannes Hispanus. As a philosopher, Gundissalinus crucially contributed to the Latin assimilation of Arabic philosophy, being the first Latin thinker in receiving and developing doctrines, such as Avicenna's modal ontology or Ibn Gabirol's universal hylomorphism, that would soon be integrated into the thirteenth-century philosophical debate.
Jean Meslier was a French Catholic priest (abbé) who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism and materialism. Described by the author as his "testament" to his parishioners, the text criticizes and denounces all religions.
Atheism is the rejection of an assertion that a deity exists. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities and any statements to the contrary are false ones. The English term 'atheist' was used at least as early as the sixteenth century and atheistic ideas and their influence have a longer history.
Cesare Cremonini, sometimes Cesare Cremonino, was an Italian professor of natural philosophy, working rationalism and Aristotelian materialism inside scholasticism. His Latinized name was Cæsar Cremoninus or Cæsar Cremonius.
Kazimierz Łyszczyński, also known in English as Casimir Liszinski, was a Polish nobleman, philosopher, and soldier in the ranks of the Sapieha family, who was accused, tried, and executed for atheism in 1689.
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.
Honoré Fabri was a French Jesuit theologian, also known as Coningius. He was a mathematician, physicist and controversialist.
Theatrum Chemicum is a compendium of early alchemical writings published in six volumes over the course of six decades. The first three volumes were published in 1602, while the final sixth volume was published in its entirety in 1661. Theatrum Chemicum remains the most comprehensive collective work on the subject of alchemy ever published in the Western world.
Robert Hues was an English mathematician and geographer. He attended St. Mary Hall at Oxford, and graduated in 1578. Hues became interested in geography and mathematics, and studied navigation at a school set up by Walter Raleigh. During a trip to Newfoundland, he made observations which caused him to doubt the accepted published values for variations of the compass. Between 1586 and 1588, Hues travelled with Thomas Cavendish on a circumnavigation of the globe, performing astronomical observations and taking the latitudes of places they visited. Beginning in August 1591, Hues and Cavendish again set out on another circumnavigation of the globe. During the voyage, Hues made astronomical observations in the South Atlantic, and continued his observations of the variation of the compass at various latitudes and at the Equator. Cavendish died on the journey in 1592, and Hues returned to England the following year.
Edward Brerewood was an English scholar and antiquary. He was a mathematician and logician, and wrote an influential book on the origin of languages.
Atheism, as defined by the entry in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, is "the opinion of those who deny the existence of a God in the world. The simple ignorance of God doesn't constitute atheism. To be charged with the odious title of atheism one must have the notion of God and reject it." In the period of the Enlightenment, avowed and open atheism was made possible by the advance of religious toleration, but was also far from encouraged.
Joseph Demarco (1718–1793) was a Maltese medical practitioner, a scientist, and a major philosopher. His areas of specialisation in philosophy were mostly philosophical psychology and physiology.
Solomon or Salomon Trismosin was a legendary Renaissance alchemist, claimed possessor of the philosopher's stone and teacher of Paracelsus. He is best known as the author of the alchemical works Splendor Solis and Aureum Vellus.
