Table of Contents
From the chart below, we can see that Western enlightenment began with Francis Bacon and ended with Adam Smith, which is around 200 years.
After that, darkness crept in with Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx until it reached its peak with Einstein amd Hitler.
Thinker
1550
1600
1650
1700
1750
1800
1850
1900
Francis Bacon
1561–1626
Galileo
1564–1642
Hobbes
1588–1679
Descartes
1596–1650
Huygens
1629–1695
Spinoza
1632–1677
John Locke
1632–1704
Jacob Bernoulli
1655–1705
Newton
1643–1727
Leibniz
1646–1716
Johann Bernoulli
1667–1748
Maupertuis
1698–1759
Daniel Bernoulli
1700–1782
David Hume
1711–1776
Adam Smith
1723–1790
Euler
1707–1783
Lagrange
1736–1813
Gauss
1777–1855
1550
1600
1650
1700
1750
1800
1850
1900
* Scale: 0.4% per year (350-year span from 1550–1900)
Person
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2000
Napoleon
1769–1821
J. S. Mill
1806–1873
Charles Darwin
1809–1882
Karl Marx
1818–1883
J. C. Maxwell
1831–1879
Léon Walras
1834–1910
Nikola Tesla
1856–1943
Max Planck
1858–1947
E. Rutherford
1871–1937
A. Einstein
1879–1955
Niels Bohr
1885–1962
Schrödinger
1887–1961
Adolf Hitler
1889–1945
Mao Zedong
1893–1976
W. Heisenberg
1901–1976
Hirohito
1901–1989
Paul Dirac
1902–1984
Von Neumann
1903–1957
R. Feynman
1918–1988