ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the leading ideas of the chief modern philosophers up to the end of the seventeenth century, with some digressions on the philosophical views or presuppositions of those pioneers of modern science who were not primarily philosophers. Giordano Bruno’s world view reflects at once the enthusiasm for the living beauty of Nature so characteristic of the Renaissance under the influence of the revived Neo-platonism, the broadness of outlook encouraged by the voyages of discovery which shook his age out of its naïve provincialism and the far-reaching effects on human orientation brought about by the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus. According to the materialistic philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, matter and motion are the only ultimate realities. They are at the basis of everything, even of feeling and thought, and therefore of all knowledge. The philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza may be described as the fullest expression of the tendency of modern thought to rely on itself.
