The Enlightenment
Math + telescope=The Enlightenment. Okay, it's not that simple, but the mathematic and astronomical discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton established the primacy of reason over blind faith. Above all, the Scientific Revolution set the stage for a new way of looking at the world, and its philosophical underpinning of rationality led to what historians now call The Enlightenment, an intellectual, social, and literary movement that began in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Writers such as John Locke (our minds begin tabula rasa -- with a blank slate), Voltaire, Jeremy Bentham ("the greatest good for the greatest number"), Jean-Jacques Rousseau ("the Noble Savage" -- we'll see him again when we look at Romanticism), Montesquieu, and our own Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine all challenged the accepted hierachies and mindset of the current world.
Below you'll find a list of the primary tenets of the Enlightenment -- other overviews can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wickipedia. At the end of this page are more detailed explanations of each of these tenets.
One note on the term "The Enlightenment" -- the light did not burn brightly for all. Many (most?) women, minorities, and poor people did not directly benefit from these supposedly enlightened ideals. Thus some historians and writers frown on the term. But it did start the kind of egalitarian thinking that moved cultures toward more "enlightened" views of women, minorities, and the poor -- and a host of other ideals -- and thus does have its usefullness.
This view undercut the authority of the church by shifting the emphasis from God to man. Additionally, the emphasis on rationality weakened the powers of organized religion and meant that the Catholic church, which had held sway over much of Europe for centuries, was now questioned. And thus the supremacy of the pope -- and of the Jesuits, an order both respected for their intellectual pursuits and suspected as being spies for the Vatican -- were weakened.
© 2007 David Bordelon