We are the children of the Age of Enlightenment. The Age of Reason. Our rational discernment of the workings of the world was empowered by its scientific methods. It was in this age that our Cartesian Mindset was birthed.
>The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, the "Century of Philosophy".
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Some consider Descartes' 1637 statement "I think, therefore I am" to have sparked the period. Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687). French historians traditionally date the Enlightenment to between 1715 and 1789: from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution. Most end it with the turn of the 19th century.
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Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals, and pamphlets.
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The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
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