The Enlightenment was a movement of thought and belief concerned with the connected ideas of God, reason, and nature. The Enlightenment was a period of much intellectual and social growth. The way people looked at the world changed. In the 18th century to be exact is when the scientific revolution came into account for many decision making kinds of situations. Back in the 18th century this was known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. “Historians do no necessarily cut off historic periods strictly by dates, and the portion of the 18th century known as the Age of Reason generally refers to the period from 1715 through 1789” (http://sageamericanhistory.net/colonies_empire/topics/enlighten.htm, paragraph 1). The Enlightenment was …show more content…
The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was one of these paradigm historical shifts, challenging the traditional notions of authority by investing reason with the power to change the human condition for the better. A key thinker of the early Enlightenment, the English Locke who was educated at Oxford but read wider than his course, gaining a degree in medicine. Rene Descartes was a French Philosopher and mathematician who made a significant amount of contribution to the philosophy of rationalism. The American Enlightenment is political evolution which was the thinking that led to the fomenting of a revolution against Great Britain and the creation of a modern republic. There are many Americans figures in the Enlightenment, however, the origins of the American Enlightenment were in the thinking of Roger Williams. Williams was a deeply religious man, however, was most of all as political philosopher and as such as thinking belongs in the discussion of American Enlightenment thought. His most important contribution to American thought is generally regarding the avocation if separation of state and