The world we live in today – with its smartphones, scientific discoveries, and emphasis on reason and individual rights – has its roots in two remarkable periods of European history: the Scientific Revolution (roughly 1550-1700) and the Age of Enlightenment (approximately 1700-1800).

The Scientific Revolution: A New Way of Understanding the World

Imagine living in a time when most people believed the Earth was the center of the universe, and illness was caused by an imbalance of “humors” in the body. This was Europe before the Scientific Revolution. But everything was about to change.

During the Scientific Revolution, brave thinkers challenged these old ideas. Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of our solar system. Galileo Galilei used his telescope to prove Copernicus right, though he faced persecution for his ideas. Meanwhile, Andreas Vesalius revolutionized our understanding of human anatomy by actually dissecting and studying the human body.

The most important development wasn’t just what these scientists discovered – it was how they made their discoveries. They developed what we now call the scientific method:

Making observations
Forming hypotheses
Conducting experiments
Drawing conclusions based on evidence

The Age of Enlightenment: Reason Takes Center Stage

The Scientific Revolution’s success in explaining the natural world led to an exciting question: Could the same logical thinking be applied to human society? This idea sparked the Age of Enlightenment.

Enlightenment thinkers (called philosophes) believed that reason and evidence – not tradition or superstition – should guide human progress. Some key ideas they promoted:

Individual rights and freedoms
Separation of church and state
The importance of education
Government by consent of the people
Important Enlightenment thinkers included:

John Locke, who argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property
Voltaire, who championed freedom of speech and religious tolerance
Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated for women’s rights and education
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who developed ideas about democracy and the “social contract”

Impact on Our World

These two periods fundamentally changed how we think about:

Knowledge and truth (requiring evidence rather than accepting authority)
Human rights and government (leading to democratic revolutions)
Education (promoting critical thinking and scientific inquiry)
Religion (separating scientific and religious explanations)
The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment laid the foundation for our modern world. When you question authority, demand evidence for claims, or assert your rights as an individual, you’re building on ideas that emerged during these revolutionary times.

Legacy

Many of the freedoms and rights we enjoy today – freedom of speech, religious tolerance, democratic government, and the scientific approach to understanding our world – came from these two transformative periods. The next time you read about a new scientific discovery or participate in a class debate, remember that you’re carrying forward a tradition that began with these bold thinkers who dared to question everything and imagine a different way of understanding our world.

Crash Course Content

• The Scientific Revolution (Crash Course History of Science)
• The Enlightenment

Sources

Nicolaus Copernicus, The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, 1543

Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615

Johannes Kepler, Laws of Planetary Motion, c. 1630

Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
John Locke, “On the Origin of Government” (Chapter VIII) [full text here]
Giambattista Vico, The New Science (1725)

Voltaire, Patrie, in The Philosophical Dictionary, 1752
Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men” (1754) [full text here]
Rousseau, “Discourse on Political Economy” (1755)
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792