Through Different Eyes

John Locke, widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was a British philosopher and physician at the end of the seventeenth century. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia Locke grew up and lived through one of the most extraordinary centuries of English political and intellectual history, a century where the conflicts between Crown and Parliament and the overlapping conflicts between Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics swirled into a civil war. Before his he was renowned for work in liberal democracy, Locke was born Aug. 29th, 1632 in Wrington to Puritan parents of modest means. His father, also named John Locke, was a country lawyer who served on the Puritan side in a cavalry company in the early stages of the English civil war. Stated from biography.com "Locke's family was sympathetic to Puritanism but remained within the Church of England, a situation that colored Locke's later life and thinking." His father's commander became the local MP, and it was his advocacy which allowed the young Locke to have an excellent education. Locke continued his education through Westminster school to Christ Church, Oxford where he devoted three and a half years to getting a B.A. mainly in logic and metaphysics and classical languages, followed by two more years to earn his M.A. Locke is often said to be one of the first of the great English empiricists. His reputation rests on his one of his greatest work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke was a productive writer, writing several additional essays such as The Two Treatises of Civil Government, A Letter Concerning Toleration, The Reasonableness of Christianity, and a several thoughts concerning education. Locke's writing Letters Concerning Toleration helped create a classic reasoning for religious tolerance. Locke's writings were based around three central arguments: 1) Earthly judges, the state in particular, and human beings generally, cannot dependably evaluate the truth-claims of competing religious standpoints; 2) Even if they could, enforcing a "true religion" would not have the desired effect, because violence can't enforce belief; 3) creating religious uniformity would cause more social disorder then allow for its unique diversity. Again, stated from biography.com "Locke's works is the best available introduction to the intellectual environment of the modern Western world."

Charles Darwin was born Feb. 12th, 1809 at the Mount in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. He was one of the first noted evolutionary biologists, also known as the originator for the concept of natural selection. Darwin's father was a doctor and his mother was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter. According to blupete.com Darwin first studied medicine, but soon found out that he was not cut out for a medical career and went on to train for the ministry. While studying at Cambridge, Darwin befriended a biology professor and his interest in zoology and geography grew. In 1859 Darwin went on to write The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, which is now recognized as a leading work in natural philosophy and in the history of mankind. To simply put it, his theory is that things, in particular life, evolves by a process which he referred to as "natural selection." Quoted from lucidcafe.com, "Darwin's theory of evolutionary selection holds that variation within species occurs randomly and that the survival or extinction of each organism is determined by the organism's ability to adapt to its environment." Darwin took the world of life and put it into the domain of natural law. It was no longer necessary or possible to imagine that every kind of animal or plant had been specially created for one purpose or another, but still had its reason to be. Darwin had gone to incredible lengths to prove to most scientists that evolution with modification was correct, and he was regarded as a great scientist who had revolutionized the very idea of evolution. Darwin also showed that the statistical analysis of heredity showed mental and moral human traits could be inherited, and principles of animal

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