Several key events were influential in the development of the Enlightenment, an intellectual and philosophical movement in Europe from the late 17th to early 19th centuries:
- The Protestant Reformation (1517) challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, encouraging skepticism of traditional authority and promoting individual interpretation, which laid groundwork for Enlightenment thinking
- The Scientific Revolution (16th-17th centuries) introduced a new focus on empirical evidence and rational inquiry. Key figures like Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton revolutionized understanding of the natural world. Galileo's astronomical discoveries (1610) supported heliocentrism, and Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) formulated laws of motion and universal gravitation, providing a rational framework for the universe
- René Descartes' publication of Discourse on Method (1637) introduced systematic doubt and deductive reasoning, emphasizing reason as the path to knowledge
- Political and philosophical writings such as John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) advanced ideas of natural rights and limited government, influencing liberal political thought and later revolutions
- The founding of scientific societies , like the Royal Society in England (emerging from the Invisible College in 1646), fostered collaborative scientific inquiry and dissemination of knowledge
- The Enlightenment Encyclopédie (1751–1772) , edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, compiled and spread Enlightenment ideas widely across Europe
- Historical upheavals like the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) reshaped political power in Europe, weakening old regimes and enabling new ideas about governance and society
These events collectively shifted emphasis toward reason, science, individual rights, and skepticism of traditional authority, fueling the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment
. The ideas born from these developments influenced major social experiments such as the American and French Revolutions
