Answer:
The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the 18th century that emphasized reason about superstition and science about blind faith. By using the power of the media, Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Isaac Newton and Voltaire questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, research and religious tolerance in Europe and America. Many consider the Enlightenment to be an important turning point in Western civilization, an era of light that replaces an era of darkness.
Explanation:
All ideas dominated the thinking of the Enlightenment, including rationalism, empiricism, progressivism and cosmopolitanism.
Rationalism is the idea that humans are able to use their faculty of reason to gain knowledge. This was a sharp change from the prevailing idea that people needed to rely on Scripture or church authorities to gain knowledge.
Experimentation promotes the idea that knowledge comes from experience and observation of the world. The other methodology which is also widely used is progressisum i.e. it is the confidence that above their influences of reason and observation, humans can make unlimited linear progress over time; this belief was especially important in response to the carnage and agitation of the English Civil Wars in the seventeenth century.
Finally, cosmopolitanism reflected the vision of the Enlightenment thinkers of themselves as actively engaged citizens of the world rather than provincial and closed-minded individuals. In total, Enlightenment thinkers strove to be governed by reason, not prejudice.
