View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, Mathematics and the Exact Sciences.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Descartes's "quantity of motion" is equivalent to our modern principle of the conservation of ________.
(a) Momentum.
(b) Formalism.
(c) Hermeneutics.
(d) Impression.

2. Leibniz, in his differential calculus, broke up the curve into many little straight lines, creating a ________, in Chapter 2 of "Science and the Enlightenment."
(a) Pentagon curve.
(b) Centripetal curve.
(c) Diagonal curve.
(d) Polygon curve.

3. According to Chapter 1, who made Newton into a supreme rationalist whose laws of motion were a priori deductions of pure thought?
(a) Maupertuis.
(b) Fontenelle.
(c) Roberts.
(d) Marquis de l'Hopital.

4. What was the name of the problem of finding the shape of a surface of maximum area for a perimeter of given length as found in Chapter 2?
(a) Brachistachrone.
(b) Cycloid.
(c) Isoperimeters.
(d) Involute.

5. In Chapter 1, who claimed that his "principle of least action" proved the existence of God?
(a) Malebranche.
(b) Leibniz.
(c) Newton.
(d) Pierre-Louis-Moreau de Maupertuis.

Short Answer Questions

1. In 1688, Fontenelle wrote a treatise on the nature of the eclogue or ________.

2. In Chapter 2, who was the greatest analyst of the Enlightenment and created mathematical theories to predict the buckling of columns and beams?

3. Chapter 1 states that in 1700, ________ first talked about an "almost complete revolution in geometry" that had begun with the analytic geometry of Descartes.

4. Who stated in 1665 that "Analysis...seems to belong no more to Mathematics than to Physics, Ethics or any other Science"?

5. Who stated in the introduction to their book that, "There are no figures in this book. The methods that I demonstrate here require neither constructions, nor geometrical or mechanical reasoning, but only algebraic operations, subject to a regular and uniform development"?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 272 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample