The Enlightenment
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The Enlightenment
https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844230.book-part-001

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Abstract

The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century European and American movement to base thought on reason rather than on received authority, particularly religious authority. This was a revolutionary development in Western thought. It drew hope from the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century that major issues could be settled through reason. The scientific project, which to many eighteenth-century minds had culminated in Newtonian physics, exemplified what human reason could accomplish. The peaceful, though sometimes bitter conflicts between scientists contrasted with the bloody wars of religion in the seventeenth century. The methods of science could be extended to other spheres of life.

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