The Age of Enlightenment Carries the Scientific Revolution Forward

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the way educated people viewed the natural world and their relationship to it underwent a radical transformation. Known as the Scientific Revolution, this change was based on the work of such scientists and philosophers as Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Nicolas Copernicus, René Descartes, Galileo Galilei, William Harvey, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, and John Locke. It reached its crowning achievement with the publication of Isaac Newton's laws of motion in 1687.

As a result of the Scientific Revolution, by the beginning of the eighteenth century people had great confidence in the ability of reason to explain the natural world. They believed that scientific methods (such as those that had led to Newton's achievements in physics) could give rational explanations for all phenomena. Not only were Newton, Leibniz, and Locke still alive as the...