Age of Enlightenment: Revolutionary Viewpoints Spreading Essay

The enlightenment was a period during late 17th and 18th century in Europe. People with a high level of education would meet in french salons and English drawing rooms to discuss political, religious, economic, and social questions. These people were known as philosophes, or philosophers. Those discussions helped shape the capitalistic, democratic world where we live today.

“The Age of Enlightenment” was a period during the 18th Century that was committed to the rise of human intellect and rationality in evaluating society (Waters and Crook, 1993). Enlightenment emerged out of the scientific revolution, it challenged traditions, more specifically Christianity and started building a new framework that separated religion from politics.

The Enlightenment period, also known as The Age of Reason, was a period of social, religious, and political revolution throughout the 18th century which changed the thoughts of man during this “awakening” time. It was a liberation of ignorant thoughts, ideas, and actions that had broken away from the ignorant perception of how society was to be kept and obeyed thus giving little room for new ideas about the world. Puritan society found these new ideas of thought to be extremely radical in comparison to what they believed which was a belief of strong rational religion and morality. Enlightened society believed that the use of reason would be a catalyst of social change and had a demand of political representation thus resulting in a time

The Enlightenment era was a new intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought and the power of individuals to solve problems. Even though different philosophers approached their goal differently, they achieved it none the less. They all approached their goal differently due to their different upbringings, their different backgrounds, and most importantly their different environments. A few among the many enlightened thinkers were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron Do Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau. While some of their idea’s are not used in modern society, they were all instrumental to the modern society we live in today.

The Enlightenment was a philosophical time period that was placed in the eighteenth century. It was also known as the “Age of Reason”. Most thinkers argued that the things of nature could be understood by using human reason. This time period is when people began to question certain authorities. People began to notice that the sake of humanity could be fixed or saved by using reason to think and improve society. Although they sometimes differed in favoring inductive or deductive reasoning, Enlightenment thinkers often worked towards the same general goal which was changing society for the better by using science, logic, and education.

The Enlightenment was a change in the hearts and minds of men. It left a significant impact on the world we know today and gave us great men to remember. The Enlightenment was a intellectual movement that brought change to the views of Christianity, the importance of reason, the understanding of nature and humanity, and the equality of man. Those of the later will be the focus of this paper. Curiosity for understanding the natural world led to new scientific exploration as well as new discoveries. The philosophical aspects of the period made their way into effecting politics from its time and on. The Age of Enlightenment began in the early 17th century and officially continued into the 18th century. The movement at the time held high praise for intellectual developments made with its roots in reason. This was so much so that the movement was also known as the Age of Reason. This basis that the world and humanity could be bettered through the application of reason spread from the influence of Greek philosophy1. Greek philosophy played a role in the development of Scholasticism, which was the questioning of scholarly Christians trying to solve new philosophical questions2.

The Enlightenment was a period characterized by the idea that people’s use of reason could unlock the mysteries of the world around them. Thinkers of the Enlightenment saw all aspects of the world—religion, wealth, and the earth itself—as being understandable through natural laws. The reliance on and application of reason on the different aspects of the world used by Enlightenment thinkers was directly informed by the Scientific Revolution. In essence the presentation of and descriptive power of Enlightenment theories and ideas would not have been possible without the strengthened exploratory and explanatory rigor established in the Scientific Revolution.

During the Enlightenment period, many people were opposed to religious beliefs. According to the bible and religious people, everything on earth and the

And Enlightenment criticized Christianity oriented values and they argued that people should look at the world with rationality that only the human have. And after the scientific revolution (16th ~18th century), Enlightenment began to provoke people, in earnest. Through out Scientific revolution, people started to believe real things (scientifically proved things), then the people started to stay away form supernatural things, and view of world also changed into rationally. There were 3 famous scientist existed during the revolution, who are Galileo Galilee, who claimed that Earth is rotating, Earth is not a center of the universe, William Harvey who presented circulation of blood, blood from heart send to other veins and come back to the heart again [7] and Isaac Newton, who presented Universal gravitation, which was things existed in the world can move by themselves without God’s interference, because each of them has gravity [8]. All of these happened during scientific revolution and it helped pave the way to the Enlightenment in the 18th

The age of Enlightenment was a progression of the cultural and intellectual changes in Europe that had resulted from the scientific revolution during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The scientific revolution and the discoveries made about the natural world would ultimately challenge the way people perceived the world around them. Scientist found real answers, by questioning flawed ancient beliefs that were widely held and maintained by the church. Ultimately, these discoveries and scientific advancements would evolve and effect social, cultural, and political developments in Europe over the course of time. The scientific revolution had provided certainty about the natural world that had long been questioned. With these new

The ideas from the Enlightenment and its thinkers greatly influenced the world today, everything from our ideas of modern government to our view of everyday life. Important Enlightenment philosophes such as Locke, Montesquieu, Hobbes and Voltaire established controversial ideas and theories on human nature, natural rights, and how government should be run and which form of it was superior. These ideas were all never even thought of before, and shattered many of the previous notions of ideas, such as ideas of how to run government, that had already been established and taken as a standard for several hundreds of years.

Improved education was also another cause of enlightenment as a growth of print culture led to the circulation of ideas faster through books, journals, newspapers, and pamphlets. As a matter of fact, some Scholars like Isaac Newton and John Locke’s became the basis of Enlightenment in which their ideas were put to the public. Newton 's revelations in

The leading figures of the Enlightenment were known as philosophers; they were literary people, professors, journalists, statesmen, and social reformers above all. They emerged from various social classes though most were French. They helped shape the culture in France and most importantly, Paris, but their movement soon spread across Europe and to the West. Although they had different backgrounds, they all shared a common point which was to discuss and attempt to change the world. Philosophers relied on scientific methods to explain events and applied rational criticism on all their works. A few dominant men left us with lasting impressions.

A free society during the Enlightenment caused many of the Enlightenment’s key thinkers to easily spread their ideas. Resulting in a large

In the video Heroes of the Enlightenment by Humanist Society of Australia Inc, the author explains how during the seventeenth and eighteenth -century European philosophy, science and politics were reoriented as part of a movement known as the Age of Enlightenment. The objective of the Enlightenment was to inform the public, aiming to persuade others about the main hero’s ideas within that era. As well as, how they shaped the world that we live in today.