1300 - 1650
106 Bacon
Bacon was born in London, England, in 1561 CE. In 1579 his father died, and Bacon, having only a small income, studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1582. By 1619 he had risen to the position of Lord Chancellor with the title Baron Verulam. Bacon's ambition was to produce a new beginning for the investigation of nature, entitled in Latin, Magna Instauratio. This was to be in six parts, but only the first two, The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum were completed. The former surveyed the whole field of knowledge to identify deficits and hindrances to advancement, and to emphasize the dignity of knowledge and its true value.
107 Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1564 CE, and emerged into prominence as a playwright when he wrote the three Henry IV plays in 1591 and 1592, followed by Richard III in 1593, and Richard II in 1594 or 1595. Thereafter there was an outpouring of plays that finally ceased with the Tempest in 1612. In his early experience of writing about the struggles for the English crown, and of the civil wars and rebellions that ensued, Shakespeare developed his thoughts on the nature of kingly rule, the mayhem that followed usurpation of power, the suffering brought by wars, and the ambiguity of the concept of honor.
109 Galileo
Galileo (1564-1642 CE) was born in Pisa. He was professor of mathematics at Padua between 1592 and 1610, when he used the newly invented telescope to observe mountains on the moon and the rotation of the moons of Jupiter. He went to Rome to promote the Copernican view of the solar system to high officials in the Church, making enemies by arguing for a philosophy based on observation rather than on the writings of "authorities" like Aristotle. He was subsequently tried by the Inquisition, forced to recant his views under threat of torture, and sentenced to imprisonment. In 1636 he produced his major scientific work in which he explained that the effect of gravity on freely falling bodies results in a constant vertical acceleration; and that an unaccelerated horizontal motion can be superposed on this. These discoveries formed the basis of the theory formulated by Newton