Cartesian Dualism was developed by René Descartes, a French philosopher of the early seventeenth century. It states that the spiritual and the material are two distinct worlds and are each subject to their own unique set of laws. According to Descartes, the spiritual word can only be examined through deductive reasoning (developing a theory and then looking for evidence), whereas the material world can be examined through inductive or experimental method.

William Wordsworth was an English poet who lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wordsworth, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote Lyrical Ballads, a book that both laid out the fundamental artistic vision of early literary Romanticism and exemplified those ideals in verse. In addition to writing many of the most famous early Romantic poems, Wordsworth also articulated the ethos of the movement, which was focused on the appreciation of nature and common everyday experiences and language. These artistic goals were rooted in a desire to move away from "high" or courtly poetic values.

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.

Leonardo Bruni was a Florentine politician and historian who lived in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He is most notable for producing a historical account of the development of Florence, one of the most famous historical works of the Early Modern period. Bruni's history of Florence was notable, and fairly unique for the time, because it was a secular history. He employed narrative structure and presented his historical analysis in a way that would still be familiar to readers today.

Dante was an Italian writer and poet who lived in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. His most famous works The Divine Comedy and The Inferno, were written in vernacular Italian rather than Latin. To write in vernacular Italian was innovative for the time period, and helped to lay the foundations for the modern Italian language.

The printing press had already been invented in China some centuries earlier by the time Gutenberg began to popularize it in the fifteenth century. His addition of movable type allowed books to be produced far more efficiently. Gutenberg's innovations caused a literary revolution in European society. Books began to be published in vernacular languages, and many more people suddenly had access to information and education. Ideas could be spread around the continent more quickly than ever, which would contribute to the success of the Protestant Reformation.

The scientific revolution began in the sixteenth century and really took off in the seventeenth century. Across Western and Central Europe, the age of religion was coming to an end, and the age of rationalism and skepticism was on the rise. The French Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London were both established in the seventeenth century in order to promote scientific research, inquiry, and understanding.

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.  

All of these men (particularly Chaucer, who lived in the fourteenth century) could lay claim to having dramatically influenced the direction of the modern English language; however, only one option from this list lived in the sixteenth century, and that was William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is widely considered the greatest writer in the history of the English language and often called the greatest writer of any language (although this is of course wildly subjective). He lived in the Elizabethan era and wrote plays, poems, and sonnets in vernacular English. Of particular note was his massive contribution of original words and phrases to vernacular English.

The Jesuit Order (also known as the Society of Jesus) was founded in the 1540s in the early years of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Among other things, they were tasked with establishing schools throughout Catholic Europe to give religious educations to young people, partly in order to convince them that salvation depended on them remaining in the Catholic fold. The Jesuit Order was (and remains) known for their emphasis on rigorous, intellectual religious training.