OPPapers.com

Enlightenment

The Enlightenment is a designation given by historians to an intellectual and rational movement that was prevalent in the Western world during the 18th century. The term Enlightenment can be described just as its name denotes, an "illumined" contrast to the supposed dark and superstitious character of the Middle Ages. Liberated from feudal commitments that bound peasants and nobles to the land and to each other, associates of the new urban middle class desired to advance their individual capabilities. Also of substantial influence were the scientific and industrial revolutions and by the aftermath of the long religious conflict that followed the Reformation. During this time there were also changes that took place both in the ways of politics and in philosophy that greatly distinguished it from earlier times.
One of the most significant of these changes was the Scientific Revolution of the 1500s and 1600s. The Enlightenment's devotion to reason and comprehension did not pop up out of nowhere. After all, scholars had for centuries been adding to humanity's accumulation of knowledge. The new emphasis however, was on “empirical” knowledge: that is, knowledge or opinion grounded in experience. This experience might include scientific experiments or firsthand observation or experience of people, behavior, politics, society or anything else touching the natural and the human(Brians). In the course of the Scientific Revolution, European scholars tore down the imperfect and incoherent set of scientific dogma laid down by the ancients and purported by the Church. During the Scientific Revolution, physics, philosophy, earth science, astronomy, and mathematics all experienced bold new innovations(Benton and DiYanni). The thinkers of the Scientific Revolution generated the notations of inductive and deductive reasoning, as well as the overall observe-hypothesize-experiment methodology known as the scientific method. Ultimately, these movements yielded the work of Newton,...