001- Voltaire
1694-1778
Born at a time when the authorities: Church and State were seriously questioned regarding their authoratative manner of prescribing how people should conduct their lives. Voltaire took up the cudgel to state that certainty is absurd, as nearly everything accepted as factual has been revised at some point in time, and as such are at best a working hypothesis for the present.
A well known writer even in his day, embroiled in several scandalous affairs, and once even exiled from France. He saw no means of ever reaching more than fleeting agreement regarding anything, proposing that some system needed to be found in order to determine what can be reasonably accepted as truth. Regarding his death bed the approcipal story is told that he was asked to repent before it is to late, and that his last words were: 'Now is not the time to make new enemies.'