Timeline: 17th Century Europe/North America

Philosophy
1620: Bacon - Great Instauration
1624: Gassendi - Exercitationes paradoxicae
1625: Grotius - On the Law of War and Peace
1637: Descartes - Discourse on Method
1651: Hobbes - Leviathan
1660: Pascal- Pensées
1677: Spinoza - Ethics 
1690: Locke - Essay Concerning Human Understanding
1692: Bayle - Dictionaire

Classical Music
The whole of the 17th Century falls within the musical period classified as the baroque.
Gabrieli (1557-1612)
Monteverdi (1567-1643)
Allegri (1582-1652)
Corelli (1653-1713)
Vivaldi (1678-1741)
J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
Handel (1685-1759)

Visual Arts
El Greco (1541-1614)
Rubens (1577-1660)
Poussin (1593-1665)
Bernini (1598-1680)
Valazguez (1599-1660)
Rembrandt (1606-1669)

Literature
1603: Shakespeare - Hamlet
1605: Cervantes - Don Quixote (Bk. 1)
1666: Moliere - The Misanthrope
1667: Milton - Paradise Lost
1677: Racine - Phaedra

Social/Political/Political Economy: Theory
1602: Campanella - The City of the Sun
1629: Bacon - The New Atlantis
1646: Walwyn - Tolleration Justified, etc.
1656: Harrington - The Commonwealth of Oceana
1690: Locke - Two Treatises of Government

Science & Technology
1600: William Gilbert - De Magnete (postulating Earth behaves as a magnet)
1608: Hans Lippershey - manufactures first telescope
1609: Johannes Kepler (1571- 1630) publishes Astronomia nova (New Astronomy).
1610: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) publishes The Starry Messenger.
1619: Kepler - Harmonices mundi (Harmonies of the World)
1628: William Harvey (1578-1657) publishes On the Motions of the Heart and Blood.
1632: Galileo - Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
1643: Evangelista Torricelli - invents barometer
 1645: Pascal invents 1st calculating machine
1661: Robert Boyle - The Skeptical Chymist
1662: Robert Boyle (1627-1691) develops theory of gasses
1665: Robert Hooke (1635-1703) - Micrographia (Small Drawings)
1665: Newton & Leibniz independently invent calculus
1676: Ole Christensen Romer (1644-1710)determines the velocity of light
1676: Anton van Leeuwenhoek - discovers living organisms in pond water using 200x microscope
1678: Christiaan Huygens (1629-95)- Traite de la lumiere (espousing a wave theory of light)
1686: John Ray - Historia Planyarum (Vol. 1 of 3) (classification of 18,600 different plant species)
1687: Isaac Newton (1643-1727) publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).


Social/Political/Political Economy: Practice
Various war throughout the century
Reformation & Counter-Reformation continue until 1648, the end of the Thirty Years' Wars.
1600: Bruno burned at the stake in Rome for heresy
1600-04: British, Dutch and French East India Companies chartered
1616: Catholic church issues edict against Copernicanism
1618-48: Thirty Years' War
1619: 1st African slaves in Virginia
1620: Mayflower lands in Plymouth
1624-42: Richelieu prime minister
1631: 1st newspaper published (Paris)
1633: Galileo convicted of heresy
1642-46: English Civil War
1643: Louis XIV takes throne
1648: Treaty of Westphalia (ending Thirty Years' War)
1649: Charles I beheaded
1653: Cromwell named Lord Protector 
1662: Restoration of English monarchy - Charles II takes the throne
1665: Great Plague in London
1682: Peter I (the Great) becomes tsar.
1688: "Glorious Revolution"
1692: Witchcraft trials in Salem
1694: Bank of England incorporated

©Carl Mickelsen