Meditations on First Philosophy

Author René Descartes Year Published 1641 Overview René Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy partly to expand upon the substance of some arguments presented in his earlier Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking for Truth in the Sciences (1637). That work, written for a general readership, sought to explain...

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes Leviathan rigorously argues that civil peace and social unity are best achieved by the establishment of a commonwealth through social contract. Hobbes's ideal commonwealth is ruled by a sovereign power responsible for protecting the security of the commonwealth and granted absolute authority to ensure the common defense. In his introduction, Hobbes describes this...

Dialogues concerning two new sciences

In this, the last and greatest of his works, Galileo laid the foundations of two new subjects— strength of beams and uniformly accelerated motion. The book is in the form of dialogues between Salviati, a student of Galileo, the Academician, and Sagredo and Simplicimus, the one a broad-minded seeker after truth, the other an uncompromising...

Macbeth

Author William Shakespeare Year Written c. 1606 Type Play Genre Tragedy Summary Set in medieval Scotland, Macbeth traces the rise and fall of the title character as he gains and loses the throne of Scotland. As the play opens, Macbeth is described as the Thane of Glamis, indicating that he is a Scottish nobleman. (The...

The advancement of learning

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was perhaps the most gifted of early modern England's intellectual luminaries insofar as he played important roles in law, politics, literature, philosophy and science. His thought is credited with contributing to the seventeenth-century scientific revolution and inspiring the institution of the Royal Society (1660), England's first research academy of scientists. The text...

On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres

Copernicus argued that the Sun rather than the Earth lies in the center of the universe. The Earth moves as a planet around the Sun. In 1543 little proof was available that the Earth moves; there were many reasons not to accept it. Ptolemaic astronomy, as represented in the Epitome of Regiomontanus, was neither overly...

Utopia

Author Sir Thomas More Year Published 1516 Genre Philosophy, Satire At a Glance Utopia is an imaginative work of social and political satire that had a tremendous impact on both politics and literature. It marks the very first use of the term utopia to describe a "perfect place." Thomas More, the author, uses a variety of techniques to...

The Prince

Author Niccolò Machiavelli Year Written 1513 Summary The Prince is a manual for how to effectively govern. Machiavelli is addressing this advice to the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, a member of a noble family of Renaissance Italy. To support his argument for how an effective prince should govern, Machiavelli points to successful rulers from history whose...

Leonardo’s Notebooks

Leonardo da Vinci—artist, inventor, and prototypical Renaissance man—is a perennial source of fascination because of his astonishing intellect and boundless curiosity about the natural and man-made world. During his life he created numerous works of art and kept voluminous notebooks that detailed his artistic and intellectual pursuits. The collection of writings and art are drawn...

The Canterbury Tales

Author Geoffrey Chaucer Years Written c. 1387–1400 Type Epic Poem Genre Satire Perspective and Narrator The Canterbury Tales begins in first-person point of view, as Chaucer the pilgrim—often thought of as a distinct character in the story rather than the author himself—relates the formation of the storytelling company. This first-person point of view reappears on occasion...