The collaboration of ideas

Hello

I believe that a quick recap of match the author to the book is rquired (no significant order of appearance):

Hobbes: Leviathan
Smith: Wealth of Nations
Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Swift: A Modest Proposal
Rousseau: Social Conract
Machiavelli: Prince

I should like to have a brief recap on some of the philosophers as they come to mind:

John Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding writes about the tabula rasa which is the blank slate of the mind; we have no innate ideas which is an epistemological thesis.

Descartes was interested in maths, reason and idealism. He is similar to Plato's ideas on ‘forms’. Descartes thought Aristotle to be a waste of time. The middle ages was very Catholic, full of dogma and Aristotle's ideas. Descartes believed in the mind ‘I think therefore I am’. He considered that maybe the material world does not exist (much like the film Matrix).

Hobbes has a negative view of Humanity he felt that the state of nature would be a terrible place of war and rage, in some ways he is similar to Machiavelli in his sense of negativity.

'Big names' with regards to the Scottish Enlightenment are Hume and Smith, and the 'big thing' to remember is the steam Engine.

Francis Bacon attacked Aristotle’s syllogistic logic (which is deductive), it didn’t help with science (Bacon used inductive logic). Remember that Aristotle believed that we were born with innate logic.

Epistimology is the thinking about thinking and the ideas about ideas. It is difficult to climb out of your brain and consider you own thoughts in so analitical a fashion.

A priori is Copernicus’s theory, it means knowledge independent of experience (contrary to empirical view). Galileo believed this as well.

*drum roll* ........ Sir Issac Newton's Newton law of gravity lasted until the 20th century (until Einstein came along) which is a very impressive amount of time. We consider Newton to be the first modern scientist. He believed in a priori (forms). He was also an empiricist and a scientist. He believed that God created the universe and then he left; the clockmaker. He, like Descartes, disproved Aristotle.

Let us not forget the touch of significance amongst our philosophers; Galileo was born on the day that Michelangelo died and Newton was born on the day that Galileo died representing a connection. Galileo is the transition between the middle ages and modern day science.

John Locke is popular among English and American thinkers, especially the American.

Ludwig Wittgenstein believes that human intention will always override logic and that people will always believe what they find convenient to believe.

The rise of science happened over the 17th/18th century, this is a lot to do with the European enlightenment (what Rousseau rebelled against/did not agree with).

Journalism is all about the nature of truth and what can or cannot be believed.

Adam Smith is an 18th century philosopher said to be the father of economics. Russell doesn’t mention Adam Smith at all in his book i.e. he has been hugely unpopular and goes in and out of 'fashion'.