Viewpoints Comparative Questions

  1. What did Peter the Great hope to accomplish by hiring Leibniz? What did Leibniz believe was necessary to achieve Peter’s goals? What might Bacon have suggested if he had been in a position to advise Peter?
  2. Compare the visions of science articulated in these documents with the understanding of science that prevails today. What similarities and differences do you note? Would you describe either Bacon or Leibniz as “scientists”? Why or why not?

A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, ed. George Vernadsky (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 2:367; copyright © 1972 Yale University. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press. Anthony Anemone, “The Monsters of Peter the Great: The Culture of the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera in the Eighteenth Century,” Slavic and East European Journal, 44:4 (Winter 2000): 592.