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Date: Roughly 1543-1700s

Description: The Scientific Revolution was a period of rapid change in Europe, where old ideas about science, medicine, and the natural world were challenged. Thinkers began to use observation, experimentation, and reasoning to explain natural laws, rather than relying only on religious or traditional explanations. Key developments included the study of astronomy, anatomy, and physics. Doctors and scientists began to study the body more carefully, creating new understandings of circulation, disease, and biology.

Significance: The Scientific Revolution is significant because it laid the groundwork for modern medicine and public health. It introduced the scientific method, which became the foundation of evidence for medicine. Rather than using guesswork, medical practitioners began to rely on data and observation. This shift improved accuracy in diagnoses, treatments, and disease prevention. Without the Scientific Revolution, later advances like vaccination, sanitation laws, and public health programs would not have been possible.

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Years Lived: 1663-1728

Description: Cotton Mather was a Puritan minister in Boston, most famous for supporting smallpox during a deadly outbreak. He learned about the method from an enslaved man named Onesimus, who described African practices of protection against disease.

Significance: Mather's advocacy was groundbreaking in colonial America. Despite strong resistance from the public, he promoted preventive medicine and helped save lives. His work represents an early step toward vaccination and shows how cross-cultural knowledge shaped American public health.

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Years Lived: 1642-1727

Description: Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, astronomer, and physicist whose discoveries transformed the way people understood the universe. He is most famous for his laws of motion and universal gravitation, which explained how objects move on Earth and in space. He also advanced calculus, optics, and scientific reasoning.

Significance: Newton's scientific approach revolutionized the conduct of research, influencing not only physics but also medicine. His insistence on systematic observation, mathematical proof, and natural laws provided scientists with a model for studying the human body and diseases. This rigorous, evidence-based approach paved the way for medical research and public health advancements, encouraging future generations to seek rational solutions to health problems.

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Years Lived: 1632-1704

Description: John Locke was an English philosopher and political thinker, often called the Father of Liberalism. He argued that all people are born with natural rights, life, liberty, and property that governments must protect. His writings influenced the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence.

Significance: Locke's philosophy is deeply connected to public health because he argued that governments exist to protect people's lives and well-being. This idea later shaped health-related policies, including sanitation, disease control, and public safety laws. Locke's focus on life as a natural right supported the belief that governments have a responsibility to protect the health of their citizens.

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Years Lived: 1689-1755

Description: Montesquieu was a French philosopher and political thinker during the Enlightenment. He is best known for his ideas of separation of powers, dividing government into branches to prevent tyranny. His ideas directly influenced the U.S Constitution.

Significance: Montesquieu's ideas about fair government indirectly supported public health because they made government accountable to the people. The Constitution, shaped by his philosophy, included the idea that government should work for the welfare of citizens. By laying the framework for a balanced system of power, Montesquieu helped ensure governments could fairly enforce public health laws and protect communities.

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Years Lived: 1694-1778

Description: Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer and philosopher famous for his defense of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and tolerance. He criticized superstition and pushed for reason, progress, and individual rights.

Significance: Voltaire's advocacy for reason and tolerance created an environment where science and medicine could grow. By challenging religious restrictions on scientific ideas, he opened space for medical research and innovation. His writings supported freedom, which allowed doctors and scientists to pursue discoveries that improved public health.

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Years Lived: 1712-1778

Description: Rousseau was a French philosopher best known for his idea of the "social contract" that people agree to be governed in return for protection and support. He emphasized democracy, equality, and the common good.

Significance: Rousseau's belief that governments should act for the well-being of all citizens connects directly to public health. His ideas supported the idea that governments have responsibilities to provide sanitation, protect communities from disease, and make health decisions that benefit the whole population. His focus on equality also influenced later ideas about fair access to health care.

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Years Lived: 1728-1793

Description: John Hunter was a Scottish surgeon and anatomist, often called the "Father of Modern Surgery." He studied human anatomy in detail, collected thousands of specimens, and realized the importance of careful research and experimentation in medicine.

Significance: Hunter's contributions changed medicine by moving surgery away from superstition and toward science. He believed that surgeons should study the body scientifically before operating. His methods improved surgical safety and encouraged better hygiene and medical research. His influence can be seen in how modern surgery values preparation, evidence, and careful technique, which has saved countless lives.

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Years Lived: 1706-1790

Description: Franklin was a Founding Father, inventor, and scientist. He studied electricity, wrote widely on civic life, and founded important institutions in America. He supported and promoted public safety and helped establish the first public hospital in Pennsylvania.

Significance: Franklin linked Enlightenment science to practical health measures. He championed smallpox, organized the first fire department, and founded a hospital to care for the sick. His work shows how Enlightenment ideas directly shaped American public health, making him one of the most important figures in connecting science to everyday community health.

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Date: Early-mid 1700s

Description: As cities like Boston grew, sanitation became a major concern. Colonial governments passed laws to remove waste, clean streets, and regulate where animals could be kept. These laws aimed to reduce disease outbreaks caused by dirty living conditions.

Significance: These sanitation laws were important because they showed early recognition of public health responsibilities. They reduced the spread of infectious diseases like cholera and yellow fever. They also set a government involvement in public health, influencing later laws about sanitation, water systems, and disease control.

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Date: 1775-1783

Description: During the Revolutionary War, George Washington ordered mandatory smallpox vaccination for Continental Army soldiers. This was a risky but forward-thinking move at the time.

Significance: This decision was crucial in protecting the army and ensuring the survival of the revolution. By reducing outbreaks among troops, Washington's policy demonstrated the power of preventive medicine. It also showed how public health decisions could affect national security and the outcome of major historical events.

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Date: July 4, 1776

Description: The colonies declared independence from Britain, asserting their right to self. The Declaration focused on natural rights such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Significance: While not a medical document, the Declaration's focus on the right to life helped set the principle that protecting life is a core government responsibility. This principle later influenced public health measures, as governments became expected to safeguard citizens' lives and health.

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Date: 1788

Description: The Constitution created the U.S. system of government with checks and balances. It also included the General Welfare Clause, which gave Congress the power to act for the well-being of citizens.

Significance: The Welfare Clause directly connects to public health by justifying government action in sanitation, disease control, and safety. It established a legal foundation for public health programs and policies that protect citizens. The Constitution made it clear that government responsibility includes protecting community health.

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Date: 1791

Description: The first 10 amendments to the Constitution guaranteed rights like freedom of speech, religion, and assembly. These rights protected people from government abuse and encouraged open debate.

Significance: The Bill of Rights is important to public health because it protects freedoms that allow scientific debate and medical progress. Freedom of speech and press meant doctors and scientists could not be restricted to one tradition, allowing for diversity in medical thought and practice.

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Date: 1600s-late 1700s

Description: The Enlightenment was a movement that was an important reason for progress and human rights. Thinkers like John Locke, Voltaire, and Montesquieu encouraged society to move away from blind tradition and to create governments that served the people. Enlightenment ideas reached across science, philosophy, and politics, encouraging freedom of thought and reforms.

Significance: The Enlightenment played a major role in shaping modern democracy and public health policy. It promoted the idea that governments should care for the well-being of their citizens and protect their natural rights to life and liberty. These values influenced laws about sanitation, safety, and community health. By putting together science and reason with civic duty, the Enlightenment ideas gave legitimacy to medical reforms and health systems that aimed to protect society as a whole.

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Scientific Revolution, drastic change in scientific thought that took place during the 16th and 17th centuries. A new view of nature emerged during the Scientific Revolution, replacing the Greek view that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years. Science became an autonomous discipline, distinct from both philosophy and technology, and it came to be regarded as having utilitarian goals. By the end of this period, it may not be too much to say that science had replaced Christianity as the focal point of European civilization. Out of the ferment of the Renaissance and Reformation there arose a new view of science, bringing about the following transformations: the reeducation of common sense in favour of abstract reasoning; the substitution of a quantitative for a qualitative view of nature; the view of nature as a machine rather than as an organism; the development of an experimental, scientific method that sought definite answers to certain limited questions couched in the framework of specific theories; and the acceptance of new criteria for explanation, stressing the "how" rather than the "why" that had characterized the Aristotelian search for final causes.

The growing flood of information that resulted from the Scientific Revolution put heavy strains upon old institutions and practices. It was no longer sufficient to publish scientific results in an expensive book that few could buy; information had to be spread widely and rapidly. Natural philosophers had to be sure of their data, and to that end they required independent and critical confirmation of their discoveries. New means were created to accomplish these ends. Scientific societies sprang up, beginning in Italy in the early years of the 17th century and culminating in the two great national scientific societies that mark the zenith of the Scientific Revolution: the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, created by royal charter in 1662, and the Académie des Sciences of Paris, formed in 1666. In these societies and others like them all over the world, natural philosophers could gather to examine, discuss, and criticize new discoveries and old theories. To provide a firm basis for these discussions, societies began to publish scientific papers. The old practice of hiding new discoveries in private jargon, obscure language, or even anagrams gradually gave way to the ideal of universal comprehensibility. New canons of reporting were devised so that experiments and discoveries could be reproduced by others. This required new precision in language and a willingness to share experimental or observational methods. The failure of others to reproduce results cast serious doubts upon the original reports. Thus were created the tools for a massive assault on nature's secrets.

The Scientific Revolution began in astronomy. Although there had been earlier discussions of the possibility of Earth's motion, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was the first to propound a comprehensive heliocentric theory equal in scope and predictive capability to Ptolemy's geocentric system. Motivated by the desire to satisfy Plato's dictum, Copernicus was led to overthrow traditional astronomy because of its alleged violation of the principle of uniform circular motion and its lack of unity and harmony as a system of the world. Relying on virtually the same data as Ptolemy had possessed, Copernicus turned the world inside out, putting the Sun at the centre and setting Earth into motion around it. Copernicus's theory, published in 1543, possessed a qualitative simplicity that Ptolemaic astronomy appeared to lack. To achieve comparable levels of quantitative precision, however, the new system became just as complex as the old. Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of Copernican astronomy lay in Copernicus's attitude toward the reality of his theory. In contrast to Platonic instrumentalism, Copernicus asserted that to be satisfactory astronomy must describe the real, physical system of the world.

The reception of Copernican astronomy amounted to victory by infiltration. By the time large-scale opposition to the theory had developed in the church and elsewhere, most of the best professional astronomers had found some aspect or other of the new system indispensable. Copernicus's book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI ("Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs"), published in 1543, became a standard reference for advanced problems in astronomical research, particularly for its mathematical techniques. Thus, it was widely read by mathematical astronomers, in spite of its central cosmological hypothesis, which was widely ignored. In 1551 the German astronomer Erasmus Reinhold published the Tabulae prutenicae ("Prutenic Tables"), computed by Copernican methods. The tables were more accurate and more up-to-date than their 13th-century predecessor and became indispensable to both astronomers and astrologers.

During the 16th century the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, rejecting both the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, was responsible for major changes in observation, unwittingly providing the data that ultimately decided the argument in favour of the new astronomy. Using larger, stabler, and better calibrated instruments, he observed regularly over extended periods, thereby obtaining a continuity of observations that were accurate for planets to within about one minute of arc-several times better than any previous observation. Several of Tycho's observations contradicted Aristotle's system: a nova that appeared in 1572 exhibited no parallax (meaning that it lay at a very great distance) and was thus not of the sublunary sphere and therefore contrary to the Aristotelian assertion of the immutability of the heavens; similarly, a succession of comets appeared to be moving freely through a region that was supposed to be filled with solid, crystalline spheres. Tycho devised his own world system-a modification of Heracleides'-to avoid various undesirable implications of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler placed the Copernican hypothesis on firm astronomical footing. Converted to the new astronomy as a student and deeply motivated by a neo- Pythagorean desire for finding the mathematical principles of order and harmony according to which God had constructed the world, Kepler spent his life looking for simple mathematical relationships that described planetary motions. His painstaking search for the real order of the universe forced him finally to abandon the Platonic ideal of uniform circular motion in his search for a physical basis for the motions of the heavens.

In 1609 Kepler announced two new planetary laws derived from Tycho's data: (1) the planets travel around the Sun in elliptical orbits, one focus of the ellipse being occupied by the Sun; and (2) a planet moves in its orbit in such a manner that a line drawn from the planet to the Sun always sweeps out equal areas in equal times. With these two laws, Kepler abandoned uniform circular motion of the planets on their spheres, thus raising the fundamental physical question of what holds the planets in their orbits. He attempted to provide a physical basis for the planetary motions by means of a force analogous to the magnetic force, the qualitative properties of which had been recently described in England by William Gilbert in his influential treatise, De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus et de Magno Magnete Tellure (1600; "On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet of the Earth"). The impending marriage of astronomy and physics had been announced. In 1618 Kepler stated his third law, which was one of many laws concerned with the harmonies of the planetary motions: (3) the square of the period in which a planet orbits the Sun is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the Sun.

A powerful blow was dealt to traditional cosmology by Galileo Galilei, who early in the 17th century used the telescope, a recent invention of Dutch lens grinders, to look toward the heavens. In 1610 Galileo announced observations that contradicted many traditional cosmological assumptions. He observed that the Moon is not a smooth, polished surface, as Aristotle had claimed, but that it is jagged and mountainous. Earthshine on the Moon revealed that Earth, like the other planets, shines by reflected light. Like Earth, Jupiter was observed to have satellites; hence, Earth had been demoted from its unique position. The phases of Venus proved that that planet orbits the Sun, not Earth.

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Scientific Revolution | Definition, History, Scientists, Inventions, & Facts

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Scientific Revolution, drastic change in scientific thought that took place during the 16th and 17th centuries. A new view of nature emerged during the Scientific Revolution, replacing the Greek view that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years. Learn more about the Scientific Revolution in this article.

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French:

siècle des Lumières (literally "century of the Enlightened")

When and where did the Enlightenment take place?

What led to the Enlightenment?

Who were some of the major figures of the Enlightenment?

What were the most important ideas of the Enlightenment?

What were some results of the Enlightenment?

Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics. Central to Enlightenment thought were the use and celebration of reason, the power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

A brief treatment of the Enlightenment follows. For full treatment, see Europe, history of: The Enlightenment.

The age of reason: human understanding of the universe

The powers and uses of reason had first been explored by the philosophers of ancient Greece. The Romans adopted and preserved much of Greek culture, notably including the ideas of a rational natural order and natural law. Amid the turmoil of empire, however, a new concern arose for personal salvation, and the way was paved for the triumph of the Christian religion. Christian thinkers gradually found uses for their Greco-Roman heritage. The system of thought known as Scholasticism, culminating in the work of Thomas Aquinas, resurrected reason as a tool of understanding. In Thomas's presentation, Aristotle provided the method for obtaining that truth which was ascertainable by reason alone; since Christian revelation contained a higher truth, Thomas placed the natural law evident to reason subordinate to, but not in conflict with, eternal law and divine law.

The intellectual and political edifice of Christianity, seemingly impregnable in the Middle Ages, fell in turn to the assaults made on it by humanism, the Renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation. Humanism bred the experimental science of Francis Bacon, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo and the mathematical investigations of René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Isaac Newton. The Renaissance rediscovered much of Classical culture and revived the notion of humans as creative beings, and the Reformation, more directly but in the long run no less effectively, challenged the monolithic authority of the Roman Catholic Church. For Martin Luther, as for Bacon or Descartes, the way to truth lay in the application of human reason. Both the Renaissance and the Reformation were less movements for intellectual liberty than changes of authority, but, since they appealed to different authorities, they contributed to the breakdown of the community of thought. Received authority, whether of Ptolemy in the sciences or of the church in matters of the spirit, was to be subject to the probings of unfettered minds.

The successful application of reason to any question depended on its correct application-on the development of a methodology of reasoning that would serve as its own guarantee of validity. Such a methodology was most spectacularly achieved in the sciences and mathematics, where the logics of induction and deduction made possible the creation of a sweeping new cosmology. The formative influence for the Enlightenment was not so much content as method. The great geniuses of the 17th century confirmed and amplified the concept of a world of calculable regularity, but, more importantly, they seemingly proved that rigorous mathematical reasoning offered the means, independent of God's revelation, of establishing truth. The success of Newton, in particular, in capturing in a few mathematical equations the laws that govern the motions of the planets, gave great impetus to a growing faith in the human capacity to attain knowledge. At the same time, the idea of the universe as a mechanism governed by a few simple-and discoverable-laws had a subversive effect on the concepts of a personal God and individual salvation that were central to Christianity.

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Enlightenment | Definition, Summary, Ideas, Meaning, History, Philosophers, & Facts

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Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that emphasized the use of reason to advance understanding of the universe and to improve the human condition. The goals of the Enlightenment were knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

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Isaac Newton | Biography, Facts, Discoveries, Laws, & Inventions

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Isaac Newton, the brilliant physicist and mathematician, revolutionized our understanding of the universe with his laws of motion and universal gravitation, forever changing the course of scientific inquiry.

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What are John Locke's most famous works?

What contributions did John Locke make to epistemology?

What contributions did John Locke make to political theory?

How did John Locke influence the Enlightenment?

How did John Locke influence the design of U.S. government?

John Locke, (born August 29, 1632, Wrington, Somerset, England-died October 28, 1704, High Laver, Essex), English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of modern philosophical empiricism and political liberalism, classical liberalism in particular. He was an inspirer of both the European Enlightenment and the Constitution of the United States. His philosophical thinking was close to that of the founders of modern science, especially Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, and other members of the Royal Society. His political thought was grounded in the notion of a social contract between citizens and in the importance of toleration, especially in matters of religion. Much of what he advocated in the realm of politics was accepted in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 and in the United States after the country's declaration of independence in 1776.

Early years

Locke's family was sympathetic to Puritanism but remained within the Church of England, a situation that coloured Locke's later life and thinking. Raised in Pensford, near Bristol, Locke was 10 years old at the start of the English Civil Wars between the monarchy of Charles I and parliamentary forces under the eventual leadership of Oliver Cromwell. Locke's father, a lawyer, served as a captain in the cavalry of the parliamentarians and saw some limited action. From an early age, one may thus assume, Locke rejected any claim by the king to have a divine right to rule.

After the first Civil War ended in 1646, Locke's father was able to obtain for his son, who had evidently shown academic ability, a place at Westminster School in distant London. It was to this already famous institution that Locke went in 1647, at age 14. Although the school had been taken over by the new republican government, its headmaster, Richard Busby (himself a distinguished scholar), was a royalist. For four years Locke remained under Busby's instruction and control (Busby was a strong disciplinarian who much favoured the birch). In January 1649, just half a mile away from Westminster School, Charles was beheaded on the order of Cromwell. The boys were not allowed to attend the execution, though they were undoubtedly well aware of the events taking place nearby.

The curriculum of Westminster centred on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, mathematics, and geography. In 1650 Locke was elected a King's Scholar, an academic honour and financial benefit that enabled him to buy several books, primarily classic texts in Greek and Latin. Although Locke was evidently a good student, he did not enjoy his schooling; in later life he attacked boarding schools for their overemphasis on corporal punishment and for the uncivil behaviour of pupils. In his enormously influential work Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), he would argue for the superiority of private tutoring for the education of young gentlemen ( see below Other works).

Oxford

In the autumn of 1652 Locke, at the comparatively late age of 20, entered Christ Church, the largest of the colleges of the University of Oxford and the seat of the court of Charles I during the Civil Wars. But the royalist days of Oxford were now behind it, and Cromwell's Puritan followers filled most of the positions. Cromwell himself was chancellor, and John Owen, Cromwell's former chaplain, was vice-chancellor and dean. Owen and Cromwell were, however, concerned to restore the university to normality as soon as possible, and this they largely succeeded in doing.

Locke later reported that he found the undergraduate curriculum at Oxford dull and unstimulating. It was still largely that of the medieval university, focusing on Aristotle (especially his logic) and largely ignoring important new ideas about the nature and origins of knowledge that had been developed in writings by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), René Descartes (1596-1650), and other natural philosophers. Although their works were not on the official syllabus, Locke was soon reading them. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1656 and a master's two years later, about which time he was elected a student (the equivalent of fellow) of Christ Church. At Oxford Locke made contact with some advocates of the new science, including Bishop John Wilkins, the astronomer and architect Christopher Wren, the physicians Thomas Willis and Richard Lower, the physicist Robert Hooke, and, most important of all, the eminent natural philosopher and theologian Robert Boyle. Locke attended classes in iatrochemistry (the early application of chemistry to medicine), and before long he was collaborating with Boyle on important medical research on human blood. Medicine from now on was to play a central role in his life.

The restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 was a mixed blessing for Locke. It led many of his scientific collaborators to return to London, where they soon founded the Royal Society, which provided the stimulus for much scientific research. But in Oxford the new freedom from Puritan control encouraged unruly behaviour and religious enthusiasms among the undergraduates. These excesses led Locke to be wary of rapid social change, an attitude that no doubt partly reflected his own childhood during the Civil Wars.

In his first substantial political work, Two Tracts on Government (composed in 1660 but first published three centuries later, in 1967), Locke defended a very conservative position: in the interest of political stability, a government is justified in legislating on any matter of religion that is not directly relevant to the essential beliefs of Christianity. This view, a response to the perceived threat of anarchy posed by sectarian differences, was diametrically opposed to the doctrine that he would later expound in Two Treatises of Government (1689).

In 1663 Locke was appointed senior censor in Christ Church, a post that required him to supervise the studies and discipline of undergraduates and to give a series of lectures. The resulting Essays on the Law of Nature (first published in 1954) constitutes an early statement of his philosophical views, many of which he retained more or less unchanged for the rest of his life. Of these probably the two most important were, first, his commitment to a law of nature, a natural moral law that underpins the rightness or wrongness of all human conduct, and, second, his subscription to the empiricist principle that all knowledge, including moral knowledge, is derived from experience and therefore not innate. These claims were to be central to his mature philosophy, both with regard to political theory and epistemology.

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John Locke | Philosophy, Social Contract, Two Treatises of Government, & Facts

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John Locke, English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of modern philosophical empiricism and political liberalism. He was an inspirer of both the European Enlightenment and the Constitution of the United States. Learn more about Locke's life and career.

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Cotton Mather (born February 12, 1663, Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony [U.S.]-died February 13, 1728, Boston) American Congregational minister and author, supporter of the old order of the ruling clergy, who became the most celebrated of all New England Puritans. He combined a mystical strain (he believed in the existence of witchcraft) with a modern scientific interest (he supported smallpox inoculation).

The son of Increase Mather and the grandson of John Cotton and Richard Mather, Cotton Mather lived all his life in Boston. He entered Harvard at the age of 12, easily passing entrance requirements to read and write Latin and to "decline the Greek nouns and verbs." He devoted himself unremittingly to study and prayer. At 18 he received his M.A. degree from the hands of his father, who was president of the college.

Mather once noted that his life was "a continual conversation with heaven," but he spent agonizing hours convinced that he was damned and equal time in ecstasies that he was not. For a while, he feared he could not enter the ministry because of a speech impediment, and he considered becoming a physician; the subject of medicine was of lifelong interest to him. After a friend persuaded him "to oblige himself to a dilated Deliberation in speaking," he conquered his weakness and returned to religious studies. He preached his first sermon in his father's church in August 1680 and in October another from his grandfather John Cotton's pulpit. He was formally ordained in 1685 and became his father's colleague.

He devoted his life to praying, preaching, writing, and publishing and still followed his main purpose in life of doing good. His book, Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good (1710), instructs others in humanitarian acts, some ideas being far ahead of his time: the schoolmaster to reward instead of punish his students, the physician to study the state of mind of his patient as a probable cause of illness. He established societies for community projects.

He joined his father in cautioning judges against the use of "spectre evidence" (testimony of a victim of witchcraft that he had been attacked by a spectre bearing the appearance of someone he knew) in the witchcraft trials and in working for the ouster of Sir Edmund Andros as governor of Massachusetts. He was also a leader in the fight for inoculation against smallpox, incurring popular disapproval. He was introduced to the idea by Onesimus, an enslaved West African man in his household. When Cotton inoculated his own son, who almost died from it, the whole community was wrathful, and a bomb was thrown through his chamber window. Satan seemed on the side of his enemies; various members of his family became ill, and some died. Worst of all, his son Increase was arrested for rioting.

Mather's interest in science and particularly in various American phenomena-published in his Curiosa Americana (1712-24)-won him membership in the Royal Society of London. His account of the inoculation episode was published in the society's transactions. He corresponded extensively with notable scientists, such as Robert Boyle. His Christian Philosopher (1721) recognizes God in the wonders of the earth and the universe beyond; it is both philosophical and scientific and, ironically, anticipates 18th-century Deism, despite his clinging to the old order.

Mather was not against the institution of slavery, and he enslaved a number of people in his household. Many Puritans, including members of his own congregation, actively participated in slave trafficking and were involved in the selling of Native Americans overseas and the importation of Africans. He defended the practice as being biblically rooted and famously asserted that the souls of black-skinned slaves were washed white with baptism and that they become "the Free-men of the Lord" while still enslaved ( A Good Master Well Served: A Brief Discourse on the Necessary Properties & Practices of a Good Servant in Every-Kind of Servitude [1696]). In The Negro Christianized (1706), a pamphlet widely attributed to Mather, he urged slave-owners to teach their "servants" Christianity, accepting them as spiritual brethren, and to treat them justly and kindly.

Cotton Mather wrote and published more than 400 works. His magnum opus was Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), an ecclesiastical history of America from the founding of New England to his own time. His Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726) was a handbook of advice for young graduates to the ministry: on doing good, on college love affairs, on poetry and music, and on style. His ambitious 20-year work on biblical learning was interrupted by his death.

He died only five years after his father, whose colleague he had been for 40 years. He was widowed twice and had 15 children by his three wives-Abigail Phillips, Elizabeth ( née Clark) Hubbard, and Lydia ( née Lee) George-only two survived him.

Cotton Mather's heritage from his two grandfathers, Richard Mather and John Cotton, was both fortunate and unfortunate. Like them, he had an active mind and the will to use it. He lived in the shadow of their greatness and expected to carry on the tradition and to assume their role in the Puritan community. Unfortunately, he could not see that the old order was passing. As colonial communities became more secure from earlier hardships of settlements, they also became more complacent and less in need of a confining spiritual leadership. Cotton fought for the continuance of the old order of the ruling clergy, sometimes with frustration, sometimes in anger. His Diary was edited by W.C. Ford (1911-12).

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Cotton Mather | Biography, Beliefs, & Facts

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Cotton Mather, American Congregational minister and author, supporter of the old order of the ruling clergy, who became the most celebrated of all New England Puritans. He combined a mystical strain with a modern scientific interest. Learn more about his life, beliefs, and legacy.

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Early life and career

Montesquieu's father, Jacques de Secondat, belonged to an old military family of modest wealth that had been ennobled in the 16th century for services to the crown, while his mother, Marie-Françoise de Pesnel, was a pious lady of partial English extraction. She brought to her husband a great increase in wealth in the valuable wine-producing property of La Brède. When she died in 1696, the barony of La Brède passed to Charles-Louis, who was her eldest child, then aged seven. Educated first at home and then in the village, he was sent away to school in 1700. The school was the Collège de Juilly, close to Paris and in the diocese of Meaux. It was much patronized by the prominent families of Bordeaux, and the priests of the Oratory, to whom it belonged, provided a sound education along enlightened and modern lines.

Charles-Louis left Juilly in 1705, continued his studies at the faculty of law at the University of Bordeaux, graduated, and became an advocate in 1708; soon thereafter he appears to have moved to Paris in order to obtain practical experience in law. He was called back to Bordeaux by the death of his father in 1713. Two years later he married Jeanne de Lartigue, a wealthy Protestant, who brought him a respectable dowry of 100,000 livres and in due course presented him with two daughters and a son, Jean-Baptiste. Charles-Louis admired and exploited his wife's business skill and readily left her in charge of the property on his visits to Paris. But he does not appear to have been either faithful or greatly devoted to her. In 1716 his uncle, Jean-Baptiste, baron de Montesquieu, died and left to his nephew his estates, with the barony of Montesquieu, near Agen, and the office of deputy president in the Parlement of Bordeaux. His position was one of some dignity. It carried a stipend but was no sinecure.

The young Montesquieu, at 27, was now socially and financially secure. He settled down to exercise his judicial function (engaging to this end in the minute study of Roman law), to administer his property, and to advance his knowledge of the sciences-especially of geology, biology, and physics -which he studied in the newly formed academy of Bordeaux.

In 1721 he surprised all but a few close friends by publishing his Lettres persanes (Persian Letters, 1722), in which he gave a brilliant satirical portrait of French and particularly Parisian civilization, supposedly seen through the eyes of two Persian travellers. This exceedingly successful work mocks the reign of Louis XIV, which had only recently ended; pokes fun at all social classes; discusses, in its allegorical story of the Troglodytes, the theories of Thomas Hobbes relating to the state of nature. It also makes an original, if naive, contribution to the new science of demography; continually compares Islam and Christianity; reflects the controversy about the papal bull Unigenitus, which was directed against the dissident Roman Catholic group known as the Jansenists; satirizes Catholic doctrine; and is infused throughout with a new spirit of vigorous, disrespectful, and iconoclastic criticism. The work's anonymity was soon penetrated, and Montesquieu became famous. The new ideas fermenting in Paris had received their most-scintillating expression.

Montesquieu now sought to reinforce his literary achievement with social success. Going to Paris in 1722, he was assisted in entering court circles by the duke of Berwick, the exiled Stuart prince whom he had known when Berwick was military governor at Bordeaux. The tone of life at court was set by the rakish regent, the duc d'Orléans, and Montesquieu did not disdain its dissipations. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of the English politician Viscount Bolingbroke, whose political views were later to be reflected in Montesquieu's analysis of the English constitution.

In Paris his interest in the routine activities of the Parlement in Bordeaux, however, had dwindled. He resented seeing that his intellectual inferiors were more successful than he in court. His office was marketable, and in 1726 he sold it, a move that served both to reestablish his fortunes, depleted by life in the capital, and to assist him, by lending colour to his claim to be resident in Paris, in his attempt to enter the Académie Française. A vacancy there arose in October 1727. Montesquieu had powerful supporters, with Madame de Lambert's salon firmly pressing his claims, and he was elected, taking his seat on January 24, 1728.

This official recognition of his talent might have caused him to remain in Paris to enjoy it. On the contrary, though older than most nobility starting on the grand tour, he resolved to complete his education by foreign travel. Leaving his wife at La Brède with full powers over the estate, he set off for Vienna in April 1728, with Lord Waldegrave, nephew of Berwick and lately British ambassador in Paris, as traveling companion. He wrote an account of his travels as interesting as any other of the 18th century. In Vienna he met the soldier and statesman Prince Eugene of Savoy and discussed French politics with him. He made a surprising detour into Hungary to examine the mines. He entered Italy, and, after tasting the pleasures of Venice, proceeded to visit most of the other cities. Conscientiously examining the galleries of Florence, notebook in hand, he developed his aesthetic sense. In Rome he heard the French minister Cardinal Polignac and read his unpublished Latin poem Anti-Lucretius. In Naples he skeptically witnessed the liquefaction of the blood of the city's patron saint. From Italy he moved through Germany to Holland and thence (at the end of October 1729), in the company of the diplomat and wit Lord Chesterfield, to England, where he remained until the spring of 1731.

Montesquieu had a wide circle of acquaintances in England. He was presented at court, and he was received by the prince of Wales, at whose request he later made an anthology of French songs. He became a close friend of the dukes of Richmond and Montagu. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He attended parliamentary debates and read the political journals of the day. He became a Freemason. He bought extensively for his library. His stay in England was one of the most formative periods of his life.

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Montesquieu | Biography, Spirit of the Laws, Separation of Powers, Books, & Facts

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Montesquieu, French political philosopher whose principal work, The Spirit of Laws, was a major contribution to political theory. It inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States. Learn more about Montesquieu's life and work.

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Table of Contents

What did Voltaire write?

What was Voltaire's philosophy?

What did Voltaire contribute to the Enlightenment?

Read a brief summary of this topic

Voltaire, pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet, (born November 21, 1694, Paris, France-died May 30, 1778, Paris), one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty. Through its critical capacity, wit, and satire, Voltaire's work vigorously propagates an ideal of progress to which people of all nations have remained responsive. His long life spanned the last years of classicism and the eve of the revolutionary era, and during this age of transition his works and activities influenced the direction taken by European civilization.

Heritage and youth

Voltaire's background was middle class. According to his birth certificate he was born on November 21, 1694, but the hypothesis that his birth was kept secret cannot be dismissed, for he stated on several occasions that in fact it took place on February 20. He believed that he was the son of an officer named Rochebrune, who was also a songwriter. He had no love for either his putative father, François Arouet, a onetime notary who later became receiver in the Cour des Comptes (audit office), or his elder brother Armand. Almost nothing is known about his mother, of whom he hardly said anything. Having lost her when he was seven, he seems to have become an early rebel against family authority. He attached himself to his godfather, the abbé de Châteauneuf, a freethinker and an epicurean who presented the boy to the famous courtesan Ninon de Lenclos when she was in her 84th year. It is doubtless that he owed his positive outlook and his sense of reality to his bourgeois origins.

He attended the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he learned to love literature, the theatre, and social life. While he appreciated the classical taste the college instilled in him, the religious instruction of the fathers served only to arouse his skepticism and mockery. He witnessed the last sad years of Louis XIV and was never to forget the distress and the military disasters of 1709 nor the horrors of religious persecution. He retained, however, a degree of admiration for the sovereign, and he remained convinced that the enlightened kings are the indispensable agents of progress.

He decided against the study of law after he left college. Employed as secretary at the French embassy in The Hague, he became infatuated with the daughter of an adventurer. Fearing scandal, the French ambassador sent him back to Paris. Despite his father's wishes, he wanted to devote himself wholly to literature, and he frequented the Temple, then the centre of freethinking society. After the death of Louis XIV, under the morally relaxed Regency, Voltaire became the wit of Parisian society, and his epigrams were widely quoted. But when he dared to mock the dissolute regent, the duc d'Orléans, he was banished from Paris and then imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year (1717). Behind his cheerful facade, he was fundamentally serious and set himself to learn the accepted literary forms. In 1718, after the success of Oedipe, the first of his tragedies, he was acclaimed as the successor of the great classical dramatist Jean Racine and thenceforward adopted the name of Voltaire. The origin of this pen name remains doubtful. It is not certain that it is the anagram of Arouet le jeune (i.e., the younger). Above all he desired to be the Virgil that France had never known. He worked at an epic poem whose hero was Henry IV, the king beloved by the French people for having put an end to the wars of religion. This Henriade is spoiled by its pedantic imitation of Virgil's , but his contemporaries saw only the generous ideal of tolerance that inspired the poem. These literary triumphs earned him a pension from the regent and the warm approval of the young queen, Marie. He thus began his career of court poet.

United with other thinkers of his day-literary men and scientists-in the belief in the efficacy of reason, Voltaire was a philosophe, as the 18th century termed it. In the salons, he professed an aggressive Deism, which scandalized the devout. He became interested in England, the country that tolerated freedom of thought; he visited the Tory leader Viscount Bolingbroke, exiled in France-a politician, an orator, and a philosopher whom Voltaire admired to the point of comparing him to Cicero. On Bolingbroke's advice he learned English in order to read the philosophical works of John Locke. His intellectual development was furthered by an accident: as the result of a quarrel with a member of one of the leading French families, the chevalier de Rohan, who had made fun of his adopted name, he was beaten up, taken to the Bastille, and then conducted to Calais on May 5, 1726, whence he set out for London. His destiny was now exile and opposition.

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Voltaire | Biography, Works, Philosophy, Ideas, Beliefs, & Facts

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Voltaire, pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet, (born November 21, 1694, Paris, France-died May 30, 1778, Paris), one of the greatest of all French writers. Although only a few of his works are still read, he continues to be held in worldwide repute as a courageous crusader against tyranny, bigotry, and cruelty.

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Benjamin Franklin, (born January 17 [January 6, Old Style], 1706, Boston, Massachusetts [U.S.]-died April 17, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. One of the foremost of the Founding Fathers, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers, represented the United States in France during the American Revolution, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He made important contributions to science, especially in the understanding of electricity, and is remembered for the wit, wisdom, and elegance of his writing.

Early life

Franklin was born the 10th son of the 17 children of a man who made soap and candles, one of the lowliest of the artisan crafts. In an age that privileged the firstborn son, Franklin was, as he tartly noted in his Autobiography, "the youngest Son of the youngest Son for five Generations back." He learned to read very early and had one year in grammar school and another under a private teacher, but his formal education ended at age 10. At 12 he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. His mastery of the printer's trade, of which he was proud to the end of his life, was achieved between 1718 and 1723. In the same period he read tirelessly and taught himself to write effectively.

His first enthusiasm was for poetry, but, discouraged with the quality of his own, he gave it up. Prose was another matter. Young Franklin discovered a volume of The Spectator-featuring Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele's famous periodical essays, which had appeared in England in 1711-12-and saw in it a means for improving his writing. He read these Spectator papers over and over, copied and recopied them, and then tried to recall them from memory. He even turned them into poetry and then back into prose. Franklin realized, as all the Founders did, that writing competently was such a rare talent in the 18th century that anyone who could do it well immediately attracted attention. "Prose writing" became, as he recalled in his Autobiography, "of great Use to me in the Course of my Life, and was a principal Means of my Advancement."

In 1721 James Franklin founded a weekly newspaper, the New-England Courant, to which readers were invited to contribute. Benjamin, now 16, read and perhaps set in type these contributions and decided that he could do as well himself. In 1722 he wrote a series of 14 essays signed "Silence Dogood" in which he lampooned everything from funeral eulogies to the students of Harvard College. For one so young to assume the persona of a middle-aged woman was a remarkable feat, and Franklin took "exquisite Pleasure" in the fact that his brother and others became convinced that only a learned and ingenious wit could have written these essays.

Late in 1722 James Franklin got into trouble with the provincial authorities and was forbidden to print or publish the Courant. To keep the paper going, he discharged his younger brother from his original apprenticeship and made him the paper's nominal publisher. New indentures were drawn up but not made public. Some months later, after a bitter quarrel, Benjamin secretly left home, sure that James would not "go to law" and reveal the subterfuge he had devised.

Youthful adventures

Failing to find work in New York City, Franklin at age 17 went on to Quaker-dominated Philadelphia, a much more open and religiously tolerant place than Puritan Boston. One of the most memorable scenes of the Autobiography is the description of his arrival on a Sunday morning, tired and hungry. Finding a bakery, he asked for three pennies' worth of bread and got "three great Puffy Rolls." Carrying one under each arm and munching on the third, he walked up Market Street past the door of the Read family, where stood Deborah, his future wife. She saw him and "thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward ridiculous Appearance."

A few weeks later he was rooming at the Reads' and employed as a printer. By the spring of 1724 he was enjoying the companionship of other young men with a taste for reading, and he was also being urged to set up in business for himself by the governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith. At Keith's suggestion, Franklin returned to Boston to try to raise the necessary capital. His father thought him too young for such a venture, so Keith offered to foot the bill himself and arranged Franklin's passage to England so that he could choose his type and make connections with London stationers and booksellers. Franklin exchanged "some promises" about marriage with Deborah Read and, with a young friend, James Ralph, as his companion, sailed for London in November 1724, just over a year after arriving in Philadelphia. Not until his ship was well out at sea did he realize that Governor Keith had not delivered the letters of credit and introduction he had promised.

In London Franklin quickly found employment in his trade and was able to lend money to Ralph, who was trying to establish himself as a writer. The two young men enjoyed the theatre and the other pleasures of the city, including women. While in London, Franklin wrote A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), a Deistical pamphlet inspired by his having set type for William Wollaston's moral tract, The Religion of Nature Delineated. Franklin argued in his essay that since human beings have no real freedom of choice, they are not morally responsible for their actions. This was perhaps a nice justification for his self-indulgent behaviour in London and his ignoring of Deborah, to whom he had written only once. He later repudiated the pamphlet, burning all but one of the copies still in his possession.

By 1726 Franklin was tiring of London. He considered becoming an itinerant teacher of swimming, but, when Thomas Denham, a Quaker merchant, offered him a clerkship in his store in Philadelphia with a prospect of fat commissions in the West Indian trade, he decided to return home.

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Benjamin Franklin | Biography, Inventions, Books, American Revolution, & Facts

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Benjamin Franklin, American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. One of the foremost of the American Founding Fathers, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He also made important contributions to science, especially in the understanding of technology.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Biography, Education, Philosophy, Achievements, Beliefs, Social Contract, & Facts

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation. Although he was the least academic of modern philosophers, he was also in many ways the most influential.

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John Hunter | Pioneer of Surgery, Anatomy & Pathology | Britannica

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John Hunter was a surgeon, founder of pathological anatomy in England, and early advocate of investigation and experimentation. He also carried out many important studies and experiments in comparative aspects of biology, anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Hunter never completed a course of

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What is smallpox?

Throughout history, disease outbreaks sparked fear for many. Before the invention of vaccinations in 1796, people had very few ways to protect themselves from disease. Without the advancements of modern medicine, many contracted illnesses proved fatal. Among the deadliest and most widespread diseases was smallpox, caused by the microscopic variola virus. Symptoms of smallpox include fever, nausea, vomiting, body aches, and the characteristic pustules or pox. Smallpox likely originated in northeastern Africa around 10,000 B.C.E., though the exact location and time frame is uncertain. The disease later spread to Asia and Europe. When Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors arrived in the Americas, they brought smallpox with them, which devastated the Indigenous populations of South and Central America. During the French and Indian War, British forces used smallpox as a biological weapon to weaken the Indigenous tribes that assisted the French.

With every smallpox outbreak, people observed that those who had survived the infection typically did not get smallpox again. For those who contracted smallpox a second time, the infection was much less severe and usually not fatal. These observations led to the creation of inoculation, the process of contracting smallpox on purpose to induce immunity and reduce the risk of death. Smallpox inoculation was a simple procedure: a doctor removed pus from an active pustule of an infected person, and then inserted that pus into the skin of a non-infected person via a small incision. The insertion of the pus resulted in the inoculated person contracting smallpox. Despite being infected, the inoculated person usually experienced only mild symptoms that were not life threatening. Inoculation had been practiced for centuries in parts of Asia and northeastern Africa before being introduced to Europe, and eventually the North American colonies.

Smallpox, both the naturally contracted disease and the inoculated version, were common in the crowded cities of Europe. Most Europeans did not make it through childhood without contracting the disease, and those who survived became immune. Doctors inoculated those who did not contract the disease naturally. Not only was most of Europe immune to smallpox, but most of the British military was as well. During this era, most American colonists lived in the countryside far from their neighbors, which reduced smallpox transmission. Because few American colonists had contracted the disease before, the colonies experienced sporadic and deadly outbreaks of smallpox. There was never a widespread epidemic that resulted in herd immunity.

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Smallpox, Inoculation, and the Revolutionary War (U.S. National Park Service)

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Throughout history, disease outbreaks sparked fear for many. Before the invention of vaccinations in 1796, people had very few ways to protect themselves from disease. Without the advancements of modern medicine, many contracted illnesses proved fatal. Among the deadliest and most widespread diseases was smallpox, caused by the microscopic variola virus.

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Declaration of Independence | Summary, Definition, Date, Signatures, & Text | Britannica

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Declaration of Independence, document approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. On July 2 the Congress had resolved that ‘these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.’

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The U.S. Constitution | Constitution Center

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Learn about the text, history, and meaning of the U.S. Constitution from leading scholars of diverse legal and philosophical perspectives.

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Bill of Rights, in the United States, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were adopted as a single unit on December 15, 1791, and which constitute a collection of mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and of limitations on federal and state governments.

The Bill of Rights derives from the Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689), the colonial struggle against king and Parliament, and a gradually broadening concept of equality among the American people. Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights, drafted chiefly by George Mason, was a notable forerunner. Besides being axioms of government, the guarantees in the Bill of Rights have binding legal force. Acts of Congress in conflict with them may be voided by the U.S. Supreme Court when the question of the constitutionality of such acts arises in litigation ( see judicial review).

The Constitution in its main body forbids suspension of the writ of habeas corpus except in cases of rebellion or invasion (Article I, section 9); prohibits state or federal bills of attainder and ex post facto laws (I, 9, 10); requires that all crimes against the United States be tried by jury in the state where committed (III, 2); limits the definition, trial, and punishment of treason (III, 3); prohibits titles of nobility (I, 9) and religious tests for officeholding (VI); guarantees a republican form of government in every state (IV, 4); and assures each citizen the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several states (IV, 2).

Popular dissatisfaction with the limited guarantees of the main body of the Constitution expressed in the state conventions called to ratify it led to demands and promises that the first Congress of the United States satisfied by submitting to the states 12 amendments. Ten were ratified. (The second of the 12 amendments, which required any change to the rate of compensation for congressional members to take effect only after the subsequent election in the House of Representatives, was ratified as the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992.) Individual states being subject to their own bills of rights, these amendments were limited to restraining the federal government. The Senate refused to submit James Madison's amendment (approved by the House of Representatives) protecting religious liberty, freedom of the press, and trial by jury against violation by the states.

Under the First Amendment, Congress can make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, or abridging freedom of speech or press or the right to assemble and petition for redress of grievances. Hostility to standing armies found expression in the Second Amendment's guarantee of the people's right to bear arms and in the Third Amendment 's prohibition of the involuntary quartering of soldiers in private houses.

The Fourth Amendment secures the people against unreasonable searches and seizures and forbids the issuance of warrants except upon probable cause and directed to specific persons and places. The Fifth Amendment requires grand jury indictment in prosecutions for major crimes and prohibits double jeopardy for a single offense. It provides that no person shall be compelled to testify against himself and forbids the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process of law and the taking of private property for public use ( eminent domain) without just compensation. By the Sixth Amendment, an accused person is to have a speedy public trial by jury, to be informed of the nature of the accusation, to be confronted with prosecution witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel. The Seventh Amendment formally established the right to trial by jury in civil cases. Excessive bail or fines and cruel and unusual punishment are forbidden by the Eighth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment protects unenumerated residual rights of the people, and, by the Tenth, powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the states or the people.

After the American Civil War (1861-65), slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens thereof. It forbids the states to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States or to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Beginning in the early 20th century, the Supreme Court used the due process clause to gradually incorporate, or apply against the states, most of the guarantees contained in the Bill of Rights, which formerly had been understood to apply only against the federal government. Thus, the due process clause finally made effective the major portion of Madison's unaccepted 1789 proposal.

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Bill of Rights | Definition, Origins, Contents, & Application to the States

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Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted as a single unit in 1791. They constitute a collection of mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and of limitations on federal and state governments. The guarantees in the Bill of Rights have binding legal force.