1750-1800



=General=

The [|Age of Enlightenment] refers to the era in Europe when new values like reason, logic, and science were becomming more popular. In this time, philosophers began to question the institutions that previously presided over their lives. The institutions most commonly criticized were the governments and the Church.

Areas of science were becomming increasingly popular, building on the findings of [|Copernicus], [|Galileo], [|Newton], and [|Kepler]. It was earlier in the Scientific Revolution when the scientific method was starting to be applied universally and with these new scientific discoveries, people began to wonder what else could be discovered. The earliest example of this is when Copernicus created a theory countering what the Church had taught people to believe about the universe. Copernicus's sun-centered "solar system" led to Johannes Kerpler's three laws of planetary motion: planets move in an ellipse around the sun, the planets round the curve of an ellipse and pick up speed, and the time it takes the planets to revolve around the sun is proportional to its distance from the sun. These ideas contrasted the Church's earth-centered beliefs (which placed humans at the center as God's most significant creation).

This time was gernally one of peace and mostly concentrated in the upper classes. Some timeless ideas that came about from this time include the "intellectual framework" for both the [|American Revolution] and the [|French Revolution]. Liberalism, capitalism, socialism, and the separation of powers all characterize some of these new "enlightened" ideas that greatly inspired the new views of government.



People and Ideas

Philosophical Movements