Modern philosophy will determine the scope of one's use of "modern philosophy." How much of Renaissance intellectual history is part of modern philosophy is disputed: the Early Renaissance is often considered less modern and more medieval compared to the later High Renaissance. By the 17th and 18th centuries the major figures in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics were roughly divided into two main groups. The "Rationalists," mostly in France and Germany, argued all knowledge must begin from certain "innate ideas" in the mind. Major rationalists were Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Nicolas Malebranche. The "Empiricists," by contrast, held that knowledge
Islamic philosophy and religion. The social philosopher and Ash'ari polymath Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was the last major Islamic philosopher from Tunis, North Africa. In his "Muqaddimah", he developed the earliest theories on social philosophy, in formulating theories of social cohesion and social conflict. His "Muqaddimah" was also the introduction to a seven volume analysis of universal history. Ibn Khaldun is considered the "father of sociology", "father of historiography", and "father of the philosophy of history" by some, for allegedly being the first to discuss the topics of sociology, historiography and the philosophy of history in detail. Islamic philosophy found an audience with