Enlightenment philosophers
John Locke
John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Brighton. He was a philosopher but also a doctor, and he is considered the father of the classic liberalism, of the modern empiricism and one of the most influent forerunners of Enlightenment and criticism (that was lately theorized by Immanuel Kant).
Anticipating the progress of this theme, Locke was not interested to physiological, ontological materialism or spiritual researches, regarding the proceedings of the consciousness; on the contrary, he wanted to start by the mind of the man, formed by ideas, meaning with this definition everything that signified image, notion, species, or whatever was object of cognitive activities.
His main works are:
-An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690): Locke described the basis of his philosophy, an empiricist conception of knowledge as the product of sensory perceptions and experiences.
-Two Treatises of Government(1690): Locke claimed that all people have innate rights, such as the right of life, liberty and property, anticipating the revolutionary ideas concerning society by intellectuals such as Rousseau and Voltaire.
Locke died in High Laver on 28th October 1704.
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642 in Woolstorphe-by-Castleworth. He was not only a philosopher, but also a mathematician, a physicist, an astronomer and a theologist. He was the founder and the developer of a completely new philosophic conception, known as “natural philosophy”, which tried to explain the mysteries of the universe through the experimental method, established previously by Galileo Galilei and Kepler. His new rationalistic and scientific view of world was not seen as a challenge to religion in England, but rather as a means to a full and a better understanding of the harmony of the universe that was created by God.
The theories of Newton converged in his most successful and acclaimed work, named “Philosophiae Naturalis Principie Mathematica”(1687), a treaty, divided into three books, in which the scientist enunciated the laws of dynamics and of universal gravitation, by which the planets move in their orderly courses.
His ideas spread very fast in England, and the influence of his theories can be seen also nowadays.
One of the most popular events regarding Isaac Newton is, doubtlessly, the episode of the apple, happened in 1666, known as “annus mirabilis”: an apple fell from a tree and hit him on his head, making him thinking of the gravity and of its role in our universe.
Later in his life, he became a parliamentarian in the British Parliament (from 1689 to 1690 and in 1701) and he also became president of the Royal Society(1705) and a very important member of the Acadèmie des Sciencies.
He died in Kensington, London, on 20th March,1726.
William Blake,”The Divine Geometer”(Isaac Newton), 1795
Webliography and bibliography:
https://www.biography.com/scientist/isaac-newton
https://www.biography.com/scholar/john-locke
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Leyton- Performer Heritage (pp194-195)