As a part of his sweeping reform of French domestic policy, Napoleon made universal state-sponsored education available to the masses for the first time in the early nineteenth century. Napoleon believed the introduction of universal state-sponsored education would both help the people of France and allow him to recruit more and better military officers.

Sigmund Freud pioneered a new school of psychological interpretation called psychoanalysis. It allowed for the rigorous study, classification, and treatment of psychological disorders. Freud believed that there were many conscious and unconscious associations between dreams and the inner workings of a persons mind, and relied heavily on dream interpretation during his clinical work.

Scottish economist Adam Smith advocated private enterprise, free trade, and lassiez-faire economics in his classic work popularly known as The Wealth of Nations (1776).

Michel de Montaigne was a French writer who lived in the sixteenth century (1533-1592). He is best remembered for developing the modern essay form. Montaigne wrote short treatments of a wide variety of topics, from historical figures to human nature in general. In his essays, he advocated for rationalism and logical reasoning and demonstrated these traits with the structure and style of his work.

As the Roman Empire was falling apart and being invaded by Germanic tribes, learned monks realized the value of knowledge and the preservation of their Roman ancestry. Since Christianity was the only universally untouchable institution at the time, monks were able to freely transcribe and translate Greek and Roman philosophical texts for posterity.

During the Middle Ages (500-1350 CE), scientific knowledge did not evolve very much. Scholars studied the works of the old scientific thinkers, and accepted their findings as true without question. They began to ask questions and do experiments and found that the results did not always match up to the old accepted theories. This led to an explosion in scientific innovation and methodology which resulted in inventions and discoveries like the telescope, the barometer, the thermometer, the microscope and the scientific revolution. Scientific inquiry, observation and experimentation as we know it today was pioneered by the leaders of the scientific revolution- Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Nicolas Copernicus, Rene Descartes, Galileo and others.

Erasmus is the most well-known of the Northern Christian humanists. He lived in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and wrote extensively on the gradual reform of society and the importance of peace and reason. He was a devout Catholic, but also unafraid to be sharp in his criticism of the church. His most famous book In Praise of Folly is a criticism of many of the excesses of the church. His second most famous work Handbook of a Christian Knight was written as an educational manual for humanist Christians, advising them how to live practically and successfully as pious humanists.

Johannes Müller, usually referred to by his Latin name Regiomontanus, was a mathematician and astronomer in the fifteenth century. His work trying to situate the positions of various “heavenly bodies” relative to Earth was instrumental in the greater understanding of mathematics and astronomy that would emerge during and after the Copernican Revolution.

In the late fifteenth century, Italian scholars developed a new form of education that they branded "humanism," which quickly spread across all of Europe and helped ignite both the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. The start of humanism began with the rediscovery of Latin and Greek texts, which prompted new ideas and focuses, including a Christian neoplatonism, a focus on the individual, and a challenge to traditional religion.

James Watt did not invent the telegraph; that honor belongs to Samuel Morse, who also developed Morse Code. James Watt did, however, invent the first reliably functioning and efficient steam engine.