Samuel Johnson (American educator)
Samuel Johnson was a clergyman, educator, linguist, encyclopedist, historian, and philosopher in colonial America. He was a major proponent of both Anglicanism and the philosophies of William Wollaston and George Berkeley in the colonies, founded and served as the first president of the Anglican King's College, which was renamed Columbia University following the American Revolutionary War, and was a key figure of the American Enlightenment.
Samuel Johnson (American educator)
"An attempt to land a bishop in America", an illustrated cartoon in the Political Register in 1768
Samuel Johnson by John Smybert, a member of the George Berkeley Group in Rhode Island that Johnson met with between 1729 and 1731
Portrait of Johnson as Columbia University president from 1754 to 1763, now housed in the Columbia Trustees Room
George Berkeley – known as Bishop Berkeley – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism". This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are ideas perceived by the mind and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism.
Portrait of Berkeley by John Smybert, 1727
A group portrait of Berkeley and his entourage by John Smibert
Whitehall, Berkeley's home in Middletown, Rhode Island