1. Renaissance Philosophers Joe Darville

2. Renaissance Philosophy ► New view of mankind ► Individualism – We are not only human beings, we are unique individuals ► Man did not exist purely for God’s sake ► Humanism - An outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.

3. Pantheism ► God is present in his creation ► If God is infinite, then He must be present in everything ► Nature is divine

4. Pico della Mirandola ► Great thinker – wrote book that centered all on human capacity and human perspective ► Wrote that religious truth was revealed to all, both Christians and non-Christians ► Tried to reconciliate every human philosophy and every human religion with Christianity ► Argued that everything in the universe was a symbol of God ► Argued that every individual could become anything they wanted in the universe, as low as an animal or as exalted as God in understanding through learning.

5. ► Empirical Method - Process of investigating nature with our senses. ► Every investigation of natural phenomena must be based on observation, experience, and experiment ► Knowledge based on Experience

6. Nicolaus Copernicus ► Claimed that the earth rotated around the sun. ► Pointed out that all observations of heavenly bodies were easier to understand if one assumed that both the earth and the other planets circled around the sun (the Heliocentric world picture)

7. Johannes Kepler ► Planets moved in eliptical (oval) orbits. ► The speed of a planet is greatest when closest to the sun (vice versa) ► Same physical laws apply everywhere throughout the universe

8. Galileo Galileo ► Moon is similar to the earth ► Discovered Jupiter had four moons ► Law of inertia

9. Isaac Newton ► Law of universal gravitation – every object attracts every other object with a force that increases in proportion to the size of the objects and decreases in proportion to the distance between the objects ► Gravitation is universal ► One set of laws ► Absence of God

10. Martin Luther ► Broke away from the Catholic Church ► People did not need the intercession of the priests or the church to receive God’s forgiveness. ► Man receives free redemption from faith alone. ► View of mankind – fallen from Grace