Note on the Moderns

The big deal in the 1600-1700's for philosophy was to 1) show stuff could be known and how it could be known and 2) know it.

So for example you could say that Descartes showed things could be known with his system of doubt, which reveals a basic foundation of knowledge.

He then busted out all of what he found in physics, geometry, math, and biology.

For Spinoza, he was also considered a foundationalist, but it had more to do with careful assessment rather than a system of doubt. For example, Spinoza might have said, of course, we all know 2+2 = 4 because of logic. He then proceeded to write his entire system based on this. He dabbled in optics and the physics of optics. Although he only wrote one or two papers on the subject, he did work as a lens grinder (reading-glasses-maker).

John Locke thought he was just working off of Newton, and there's a pretty good quote like this by Locke. Newton can be considered a philosopher, because everyone has to defend their science, and Newton certainly did. Locke hated the idea that Leibniz, Spinoza, and Descartes thought that you could know something before you experience it. While the rest of us are like, "duh," it was a really crazy thing for all of them to say back then.

Locke's major contributions are known to most high schoolers as Political Science, but he had some all right ones in science, too.

Hobbes died happily thinking that he had squared the circle. (His last words were still philosophical, he said, "A great leap in the dark!" and kicked the bucket).

I just wrote about Leibniz's contributions. As a philosopher of science, Leibniz did something really cool by integrating the sciences.

Berkeley wrote a weird philosophical/scientific treatise on the chemical creation of tar and its uses as a medicine, while Hume was first and foremost a historian.

Writing this about Hume, and I'll explain why I feel this way in a bit, I think it's so cool that it's hard to separate the sciences and philosophies from the person. While mathematics seems about as remote from a person as anything, you can see how these philosopher's (ahem) philosophies shine through. Even without the Hume example I haven't provided, you can sort of see the mathematical rigor of both Spinoza's theory of knowledge and his ventures into optics. You can see how Berkeley wanted to help people by writing a medicine piece on tar between works on how the soul is immortal and God is the only thing that's real. Cool stuff abounds!