To change the historical changes in thought & belief, to changes in social & institutional organization, that unfolded in Europe between roughly 1550-1700; beginning with Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), who asserted a heliocentric (sun-centered) cosmos, it ended with Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who proposed universal laws and a Mechanical Universe.
The concept that many political leaders thought would help end the slavery issue was the concept of "popular sovereignty, meaning that the inhabitants of each new state would choose to be "slave" or "free".
