EnlightenmentEssay Preview: EnlightenmentReport this essayThe eighteenth-century Enlightenment was a movement of intellectuals who were greatly impressed with the achievements of the Scientific Revolution. One of the favorite words of these intellectuals was reason, by which they meant the application of the scientific method to the understanding of all life. They believed that institutions and all systems of thought were subject to the rational, scientific way of thinking if people would only free themselves from past, worthless traditions, especially religious ones.
Even though Enlightenment started in the eighteenth century, it was a result of intellectual ideas from the seventeenth century, especially those of two Englishmen, Issac Newton and John Locke. The intellectuals of he Enlightenment became convinced that the natural laws that governed politics, economics, and religions. John LockeÐЃfs theory of knowledge also made a great impact on eighteenth-century intellectuals. He believed human learn from reason, not from faith. LockeÐЃfs ideas suggested that people were molded by their environment, by the experiences that they received through their senses from their surrounding world. By changing the environment and subjecting people to the right influences, people could be changed and a new society created. Intellectuals came to assume that through a use of reason, an unending progress would be possible— progress in knowledge, in technological achievements, and even in moral values.
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In the case of the English philosopher, William G. Drake, his concept of rationality (or scientific rationalism). The philosopher, a rationalist, was influenced by the writings of two prominent Enlightenment thinkers. William G. Drake, who was also a noted philosopher and a prolific writer on philosophy, became a critic of Reason and his arguments against It led to his expulsion from Princeton University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and the University of Edinburgh.
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Despite the importance of intellectual values in human progress, even the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, when they were young, were unable to make this change. Although it was possible to have an intellectual education, many of them did not understand them in the basic sense of that language but were more interested in the ways in which they understood different things and made sense of them. While he (determined to understand the concepts of science and language) was at Princeton, he took a hard road (and by the fall of 1776, his career as a leading scholar was in jeopardy too) as a consequence of his failure to enter Cambridge for the first time. He ended up at Harvard, the same summer that Thomas Carlyle, his friend and successor philosopher, was in charge of Cambridge.
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While many of his fellow thinkers were educated in the classical world but they believed the concept of rationality to be inferior for the general welfare of mankind, there were still a wide range of Enlightenment ideas that came to their minds.
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Even though Enlightenment began more than a century earlier, it was a result of intellectual ideas from the seventeenth century, especially those of two Englishmen, Issac Newton and John Locke. The intellectuals of he Enlightenment became convinced that the natural laws that governed politics, economics, and religions. John LockeÐЃfs theory of knowledge also made a great impact on eighteenth-century intellectuals. He believed human learn from reason, not from faith. LockeÐЃfs ideas suggested that people were molded by their environment, by the experiences that they received through their senses from their surrounding world. By changing the environment and subjecting people to the right influences, people could be changed and a new society created. Intellectuals came to assume that through a use of reason, an unending progress would be possible― progress in knowledge, in technological achievements, and even in moral values.
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Empire of the Kings
The two philosophers of John Locke, an early American Enlightenment philosopher, sought to reconcile scientific and naturalistic rationalism and the political philosophies of the eighteenth century with the modern theories of the Enlightenment, which are largely based on the natural sciences.