Period Of Enlightenment Essay

The period of enlightenment transpired in the eighteenth century and it bolstered logic and the use of the scientific method in order to investigate beliefs that had been “truths” asserted by a religion. For instance, Christian scriptures declared to believers that the Earth was at the center of the universe and were shamed if they believed otherwise. However, the period of enlightenment induced people to question these principles and led to intellect over faith. It is relevant to note that “Philosophy aligned itself with the pure and natural sciences, and metaphysics was subsumed into scientific hypothesis and theorization” (R&H,26). Science proved to Christians that the Earth was in fact not at the center of the universe, so believers questioned

It was now revealed to be all “unprovable assumptions” (Kanaris) about existence that we left in the dirt after this period of enlightenment negated many theories. It was no longer the ultimate truth. This division really only took place in the West as the East was not notably involved in philosophy (they did not even have a word for religion or philosophy). The two core factors to this rational were thought and thinking and these were speculated as the foundation of personal existence and the analysis of reality. Rene Descartes was one of the very important contemporary thinkers and famously stated “i think therefore i am”. He said that people can doubt anything except they can’t doubt that they are thinking they’re doubting. A core idea of his thinking was that “the human mind filters all our sensory experiences of the world and thus limits our capacity to know what might actually be true” (R&H,25). If our mind cannot fully master a concept, then it might as well not exist, something we regard today.With this advanced reasoning, faith and reasoning clashed and Descartes said he could prove God’s existence without the use of