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Everlasting Changes During the Enlightenment

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The Enlightenment marked the beginning of a revolution that began to utilize reason to base knowledge and truth. It was a new way of thinking and interpreting people and societies. Encompassing over seventy years, the Enlightenment spread drastically throughout the world, motivated by improving intellect and the human society. Scholars congregated at coffeehouses to debate and further their learning in a far less formal many than institutions. Enlightenment thinkers were a unique group intolerant of church and state and sought out to establish an improved way of life. Reason based science and religion were major controversial components of the Enlightenment. These two topics were discussed and debated constantly as conflicting ideologies and beliefs took shape. Influential scientists such as Aristotle and Nicholas Copernicus provided remarkable advances in the field of science. The Enlightenment period experienced immense changes in our view of the world that left everlasting effects to this day. As the Enlightenment began to flourish throughout the western world, the literacy of humans also took flight. This was one of the most powerful facilitators for expansion of the enlightenment. “Cafes were one of the new settings in which literate elites could discuss the “new philosophy”- what we now call “enlightenment philosophy” (Noble, Strauss, Osheim 551). Cafes were used as congregation sites for intellectual thought and debate. The enlightenment was unique as it didn’t

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