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Balthasar Bekker
Balthasar Bekker (20 March 1634 – 11 June 1698) was a Dutch minister and author of philosophical and theological works. Opposing superstition, he was a key figure in the end of the witchcraft persecutions in early modern Europe. His best known work is ''De Betoverde Weereld'' (1691), or ''The World Bewitched'' (1695). Life Bekker was born in Metslawier (Dongeradeel) as the son of a German pastor from Bielefeld. He was educated at Groningen, under Jacob Alting, and at Franeker. Becoming the rector of the local Latin school, he was appointed to his satisfaction in 1657 as a pastor in Oosterlittens (Littenseradiel), and started as one of the first to preach on Sunday afternoon. From 1679 he worked in Amsterdam, after being driven from Friesland. In 1683 he travelled to England and France. In two months time Bekker visited London, Cambridge, Oxford, Paris and Leuven, with a great interest in the art of fortification. Works An enthusiastic disciple of Descartes, he wrote seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes considered himself a devout Catholic. Many elements of Descartes' philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differed from the schools on two major points: first, he rejected the splitting of corporeal substance into mat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1698 Deaths
Events January–March * January 1 – The Abenaki tribe and Massachusetts colonists sign a treaty, ending the conflict in New England. * January 4 – The Palace of Whitehall in London, England is destroyed by fire. * January 23 – George Louis becomes Elector of Hanover upon the death of his father, Ernest Augustus. Because the widow of Ernest Augustus, George's mother Sophia, was heiress presumptive as the cousin of Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and Anne's closest eligible heir, George will become King of Great Britain. * January 30 – William Kidd, who initially seized foreign ships under authority as a privateer for the British Empire before becoming a pirate, becomes an outlaw and uses his ship, the ''Adventure Galley'', to capture an Indian ship, the valuable ''Quedagh Merchant'', near India. * February 17 – The Maratha Empire fort at Gingee falls after a siege of almost nine years by the Mughal Empire as King Rajaram escapes to safety. General Swarup Sing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1634 Births
Events January–March * January 12– After suspecting that he will be dismissed, Albrecht von Wallenstein, supreme commander of the Holy Roman Empire's Army, demands that his colonels sign a declaration of personal loyalty. * January 14– France's ''Compagnie normande'' obtains a one-year monopoly on trade with the African kingdoms in Guinea. * January 19– Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine abdicates in favor of his brother Nicholas II, who is only able to hold the throne for 75 days. * January 24– Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, signs a classified order dismissing Albrecht von Wallenstein, the supreme commander of the Imperial Army. * February 18– Emperor Ferdinand II's dismissal of Commander Wallenstein for high treason, and the order for his capture, dead or alive, is made public. * February 25– Rebel Scots and Irish soldiers assassinate Bohemian military leader Albrecht von Wallenstein at Cheb. * March 1 – The Russians ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fellow Of The Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science". Fellow, Fellowship of the Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to many eminent scientists throughout history, including Isaac Newton (1672), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Winston Churchill (1941), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955) and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellowship has been awarded to Stephen Hawking (1974), David Attenborough (1983), Tim Hunt (1991), Elizabeth Blackburn (1992), Tim Berners-Lee (2001), Venki R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Walten
Eric Walten (1663–1697) was a Dutch Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinker and pamphleteer, notably accused of blasphemy and of secretly following the philosophical thinking of Benedict Spinoza in the 1690s. Little information survives of Walten's life. He told the court that he was born in Hamm, Ham, Prince-Bishopric of Münster, Munsterland, now in Germany. The Dutch scholar Wiep van Bunge suggests that Walten may have been of English people, English descent. He lived in Utrecht until 1685, and from 1688 in The Hague and Rotterdam.Bunge, Wiep van (1996). "Eric Walten (1663-1697): An Early Enlightenment Radical in the Dutch Republic". In Wiep van Bunge and (Eds.), ''Disguised and Overt Spinozism Around 1700: Papers Presented at the International Colloquium, Held at Rotterdam, 5–8 October 1994'' (pp. 41-54). Leiden, New York, and Köln: BRILL. . Though influenced by Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writers such as Descartes and Spinoza in his philosophical thought, Walt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, born in Amsterdam. One of the foremost exponents of 17th-century Rationalism and one of the early and seminal thinkers of the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered "one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the early modern period." Inspired by Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of his day, Spinoza became a leading philosophical figure during the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza's given name, which means "Blessed", varies among different languages. In Hebrew, his full name is written . In most of the documents and records contemporary with Spinoza's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lodewijk Meyer
Lodewijk Meyer (also Meijer) (bapt. 18 October 1629, Amsterdam – buried 25 November 1681, Amsterdam) was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, and playwright. He was a radical intellectual and one of the more prominent members of the circle around the philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza. He is generally considered the author of an anonymous work, the ''Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres,'' although there are indications that his friend Johannes Bouwmeester may have been the co-author or even the author. It was initially attributed to Spinoza, and caused a furor among preachers and theologians, with its claims that the Bible was in many places opaque and ambiguous; and that philosophy was the only criterion for interpretation of cruxes in such passages. Just after the death of Meyer his friends revealed that he was the author of the work, which had been banned by the Court of Holland together with Spinoza's ''Tractatus Theologico-Politicus'' in 167 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adriaan Koerbagh
Adriaan Koerbagh (1633 – 1669) was a Dutch scholar and writer who was a critic of religion and conventional morality. Life Adriaan Koerbagh studied at the universities of respectively Utrecht, Franeker and Leiden, becoming a doctor in medicine in 1659 and master in jurisprudence in 1661. He was one of the most radical figures of the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting and reviling the church and state as unreliable institutions and exposing theologians' and lawyers' language as vague and opaque tools to blind the people in order to maintain their own power. Koerbagh put the authority of reason above that of dogmas and was thus seen as a true freethinker, although twentieth century notions of him as an anarchist or libertarian cannot be applied with certainty. Koerbagh described the Bible and dogmas like the Trinity and the divine nature of Christ as only the work of men. Also, like his contemporary Baruch de Spinoza, he argued that God is identical with nature and that nothing e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general. Biography Early life Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England. Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear." Hobbes had a brother, Edmund, about two years older, as well as a sister named Anne. Although Thomas Hobbes's childhood is unknown to a large extent, as is his mother's name, it is known that Hobbes's fat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Age Of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, and constitutional government. The Enlightenment was preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the work of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and others. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the publication of René Descartes' ''Discourse on the Method'' in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, ''Cogito, ergo sum'' ("I think, therefore I am"). Others cite the publication of Isaac Newto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aeon (magazine)
''Aeon'' is a digital magazine of ideas, philosophy and culture. Publishing new articles every weekday, Aeon describes itself as a publication which "asks the biggest questions and finds the freshest, most original answers, provided by world-leading authorities on science, philosophy and society." The magazine is published by Aeon Media Group, which has offices in London, New York, and Melbourne. History ''Aeon'' was founded in London in September 2012 by Paul and Brigid Hains, an Australian couple. It now has offices in London, Melbourne and New York. On 1 July 2016, ''Aeon'' became a registered charity with the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission, in the categories of advancing culture and advancing education. Aeon also registered its affiliate, Aeon America, as a 501(c)(3) charity in the US, in the education category. In April 2020 Aeon launched a sister site, ''Psyche'' magazine, named for the Psyche concept in psychology, which publishes ideas, guides a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
