The Enlightenment was a turning point in European history because of the breakthroughs in scientific discovery that led to new beliefs in human nature and the differing opinions between religion. The first important development that led to the origins of the Scientific Revolution was the creation and establishment of universities. The Scientific Revolution was the breakthrough that led into the start of the Enlightenment. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, discoveries about intellectual thought created the modern worldview we possess today. Scientific and mathematical thought was the way of thinking during these centuries and the Scientific Revolution used modern science. “In the eighteenth century philosophers extended the use
Scientific Revolution
The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the 17th and 18th centuries. It concentrated on reason, logic, and freedom over blind faith. During this time more and more people reject absolute authority of the church and state. The driving force of the enlightenment across Europe and England came from a small group of thinkers and writers that are known today as “philosophes.” The English Enlightenment differed from other European countries, like France.
The Impact of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment on the West
The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment period were both a time of immense growth in scientific discovery and an increase in the secular view of the world. The Scientific Revolution would include the use of direct observation and experimentation, dependence on mathematical confirmation, and inventions to test new scientific discoveries (Kwak). The new discoveries of the Scientific Revolution led the growing number of literate middle class individuals in the Enlightenment period. This growth of enlightened individuals led to more intellectual and cultural attitudes that shaped modern history throughout the world (Fiero, 134).
The Enlightenment was a period of history throughout the mid-decades of the seventeenth century and during the course of the eighteenth century, in which intense revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics occurred. This part of history was important because it was an enormous departure from the Middle Ages. Seldom before and after this time, did the Church have as much power as it did during the Enlightenment. There were three main eras of the Enlightenment: The Early Enlightenment, The High Enlightenment, and The Late Enlightenment and Beyond. Each era had a few important people related to the movement. There were also other factors contributing to the Enlightenment. These include Rationalism, Empiricism, and skepticism. How we see nature and what we know about it as it changes with the changes of modern science. “It belongs centrally to the agenda of Enlightenment philosophy to contribute to the new knowledge of nature, and to provide a metaphysical framework within which to place and interpret this new knowledge.” The Enlightenment eventually presented an approach to the nineteenth-century Romanticism.
The Scientific revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries changed the way that people views the world. Scientific philosophers such as Galileo and Descartes threw out the old teachings of the church and challenged them with new ways of thinking. These men sought to prove that rational thought could prove the existence of God. They also challenged that it was an understanding of a series of rational thoughts, not faith, would bring understanding of how the world worked. Traditional ways of thinking were ultimately challenged by logical and sensible rationale.
Discuss the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment along with the subsequent reaction as embodied by the Romantic movement. Give specific examples of how these movements affected the arts. What was their eventual impact on the western intellectual world.
The Middle Ages were marked by a long period of stability in the intellectual world. Generally, people were discouraged from rational inquiry, as the Catholic Church heavily monitored all scientific and metaphysical thought. With the invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, the dogmatic and human-centeredness views of the Middle Age world scholars were tested. Humans began reading and making inferences about documents that they held to be sacred and at the center of life and, by the sixteenth century, books were printed in mass quantities throughout Eurasia. Leading scientists and theologians, such as Galileo Galilei, began to argue that both Scripture and science can be right with the latter helping to better interpret the former. (AR 2) Born out of the revolutionary ideas of Galileo, and many others, were the hopeful theories of the Enlightenment. However, when these inspiring theories met cold-hard reality, the resulting tensions had a profound impact on daily life throughout the early modern period.
During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Age of Enlightenment was a time period that many individuals questioned and a time period in which the way people looked at the world changed drastically. It was a time that gave people the opportunity to reason and find truth on their own. Religion became one of the main “optimist” ideas of the Enlightenment, and belief that enlightenment is taught through others. The scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century brought new skeptic views on religion, of which philosophers focused on reason and truth. Also during the Reformation, religious views were the set of controversy. Both
The conflict between religion and science was one of the major issues of the enlightenment. New theories were being developed (like Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation) which went against the teachings of the c...
Eighteenth Century Europe was in turmoil, “characterized by dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics” (Bristow, 2011, para. 1). Revolution was afoot in France, while earlier scientific discoveries from Copernicus to Newton drastically changed how humans understood the world. Empiricism and Skepticism rose with modern science to challenge the prevailing Rationalism (Murphy, 2010).