The Roots of The Enlightenment

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The Roots of The Enlightenment

In its essence, the Enlightenment is the product of a shift in the the way society was organized. This shift was the result of many different factors and periods of time, among them being the Scientific Revolution, the Reformation, and the Renaissance.

The key and perhaps the most important change in the Enlightenment was the shift from religion-based government to reason-based government. This can be seen mainly as the result of the Scientific Revolution. Before, religion was the basis of government because it provided a set of morale codes for people to follow and it helped explain the unexplained. During the Scientific Revolution, prolific thinkers such as Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, and Francis Bacon began discovering and explaining things previously attributed to the Christian God. Therefore, when science and reason started to explain things more accurately than religion, it resulted in a shift in which they took over as the basis of government.

The Enlightenment can also see a lot of its roots in Ancient Greek and Roman le...

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