Question

What is an important similarity between the way scientists were thinking during the scientific revolution and the way philosophers were thinking during the enlightenment?

Answer 1

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

An important similarity between the way scientists were thinking during the scientific revolution and the way philosophers were thinking during the enlightenment was the use of observation, logic, and reason to understand the different phenomenon and come up with innovations. Scientists used the scientific method to create new inventions. Thinkers and philosophers in the Enlightenment used reason and logic to develop new ideas about politics, society, and liberties. That was the case of Baron of Montesquiou, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jaques Rosseau.

Answer 2

The answer is rationalism.

The scientific revolution encompassed the 16th and 17th centuries, it took place in Europe and continued during the 18th century. It refers to the emergence of modern science with new achievements, ideas, and knowledge acquired in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology. It emerged in the context of the Renaissance and it was an inflection point that changed the mindset from the religious Middle Ages to the rational Modern Era. The most important scientist of this era were Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, among many others. This process influenced strongly on the cultural and intellectual movement known as Enlightenment, which took place mainly during the 18th century.

The Enlightenment was formed by well-educated writers, activists, politicians, and aristocrats who were known as Humanists because the Human being was in the center of their ideology and conception of the universe. It inspired new social, cultural, philosophical, and political ideas that shaped the social world of the Modernity. This movement shared many concepts with the common thought of the scientific revolution. The most important of these common concepts was rationalism.

Both, scientists and Humanists thought that the most important value of the Human Being was the use of reason, which allowed them to understand how the universe works and how to change it in order to take advantage of it. That is why scientists and philosophers of the Modernity wanted to abandon religion, ignorance, and superstition that ruled the society for many centuries and lead the society to the rule of reason, progress, and science.