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Bacon, Sir Francis (1561-1626) English statesman, essayist, and philosopher, one of the great precursors of the tradition of British empiricism and of belief in the importance of scientific method. He emphasized the use of inductive reasoning in the pursuit of knowledge.
Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832) English philosopher, and one of the founders of utilitarianism. Bentham was a highly influential reformer of the British legal, judicial, and prison system. He is the author of Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation .
Berkeley, George (1685-1753) Irish philosopher and an Anglican bishop, one of the British empiricists. Berkeley held to a "subjective idealism." He believed that everything that exists is dependent on being perceived by a mind. According to this view, material objects are simply collections of "ideas" in the mind of a person or of God. His works include Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision and A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge .
Boethius (c. 475-535) Roman statesman, philosopher, and translator of Aristotle, whose Consolation of Philosophy (written in prison) was widely read throughout the Middle Ages; it showed reason's role in the face of misfortune and was the link between the ancient philosophers and the Scholastics.
Buber, Martin (1878-1965) German-Israeli philosopher influenced by Jewish mysticism and existentialism, a major force in twentieth-century Jewish thought and philosophy of religion. His I and Thou held that God and man can have a direct and mutual "dialogue."
Comte, Auguste (1798-1857) French founder of positivism and social reformer. Comte put forth a "religion of humanity" that replaced the notion of God with the notion of humankind as a whole. He invented the term sociology .
Democritus (c. 460-370 B.C.) Greek philosopher who proposed a mechanistic theory of the world that required no supernatural forces, only the constant motion of the indestructible atoms of which everything is composed. He held that perception is an unreliable source of knowledge and knowledge can be obtained through reason only.
Descartes, Rene (1596-1650) French philosopher and scientist, considered the father of modern philosophical inquiry. Descartes tried to extend mathematical method to all knowledge in his search for certainty. Discarding the medieval appeal to authority, he began with "universal doubt," finding that the only thing that could not be doubted was his own thinking. The result was his famous "Cogito, ergo sum, " or "I think, therefore I am." His major works are the Discourse on Method and Meditations .
Dewey, John (1859-1952) Leading American philosopher, psychologist, and educational theorist. Dewey developed the views of Charles S. Peirce (1839 - 1914) and William James into his own version of pragmatism. He emphasized the importance of inquiry in gaining knowledge and attacked the view that knowledge is passive.
Diderot, Denis (1713-84) Materialist thinker of the French Enlightenment and originator of the Encyclopedie .
Diogenes (c. 400- 325 B.C.) Greek founder of cynicism who rejected social conventions and supposedly lived in a tub in defiance of conventional comforts.
Empedocles (c. 495-435 B.C.) Greek pre-Socratic philosopher who believed the universe to consist of the four elements, air, fire, water, and earth. Empedocles held that the interaction between love and hate causes the mixing of the elements.
Engels, Friedrich (1820-95) German socialist thinker and historian, and the cofounder of Marxism; Marx's lifelong collaborator and coauthor of the Communist Manifesto ; and an originator of the philosophy of dialectical materialism.
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