Topic > The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment, also known as The Enlightenment, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century. The Enlightenment, or the Century of Philosophy, played an important role in the period from 1700 to 1799. That period was the first in which people seriously questioned their existence and led to greater achievements in scientific and philosophical fields. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay On the surface, the most obvious cause of the Enlightenment was the Thirty Years' War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648. This horribly destructive war forced German writers to write a series of critiques regarding the ideas of nationalism and warfare . These great writers, such as Hugo Grotius and John Comenius, were some of the first mentors to fire the first bullet against tradition to propose the best solutions. At the same time, right in the heart of Europe, thinkers and scholars began to pay more attention to the tangible world to develop more scientific studies, while greater exploration of the world exposed Europe to other cultures and philosophies. Eventually, centuries of mistreatment by monarchies and the Church brought average citizens in Europe to a breaking point, and the most intelligent and determined finally decided to speak out. The Enlightenment developed through a snowball effect: small advances triggered larger advances, and before Europe and the world knew it, nearly two centuries of philosophy and innovation had followed. These studies generally began in the fields of Earth sciences and astronomy, as notables such as John Kepler and Galileo Galilei took Aristotle's ancient, beloved “truths” and disproved them. Thinkers like René Descartes and Francis Bacon overhauled the scientific method, setting the stage for Isaac Newton and his seminal discoveries in physics. In the mid-18th century, Paris, the center of Europe, saw an explosion of philosophical and scientific activity that challenged traditional doctrines. and dogmas. The philosophical movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based on reason rather than faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, and for a science based on experiment and observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of ​​separation of powers in a government, a concept that was enthusiastically adopted by the framers of the United States Constitution. Although the philosophers of the French Enlightenment were not revolutionaries and many were members of the nobility, their ideas played an important role in undermining the legitimacy of the Old Regime and shaping the French Revolution. The True: Science, Epistemology, and Metaphysics in the Enlightenment. In this era dedicated to human progress, the progress of natural sciences is considered the main exemplification and driver of such progress. Isaac Newton's epochal feat in his Principia Mathematica (1687), which, described very briefly, consists in understanding a variety of physical phenomena – notably the motions of celestial bodies, together with the motions of sublunary bodies – in a relatively simple few , universally applicable mathematical laws, were a great stimulus to the intellectual activity of the 18th century and served as a model and inspiration for the researchers of numerous Enlightenment thinkers. Newton's system strongly encourages the Enlightenment conception of nature as an ordered domain governed by rigid mathematical-dynamic laws and the conception of ourselves as capable of knowing those laws and of grasping the secrets of nature through the unaided exercise of our faculties . Here.