The Enlightentment of Age of Reason Sparked Change

The Enlightenment brought new thinking, making people closely examine the world around them, which sparked change. Also known, as the Age of Reason there was a questioning of authority as people became enlightened and this caused new thoughts such as liberalism, conservatism, skepticism, and Francis Bacon’s empiricism brought over from the scientific revolution. The Enlightenment was a maturity of mankind to higher level thinking, not just following the status quo. It was a raise in education against established traditions and beliefs, which caused a huge shift from the social norms of society to using reason and logic to disclaim previous ideas. There is a growth of optimism that the human race will become educated about the social and physical environment, finding new information through reason and logic to become enlightened. Although there was a focus on logic and reason, there was also a look towards economics with British enlightened thinker Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations. Fighting for public, as well as private interest, maximizing private incomes and the nations wealth. There was many ways that the scientific revolution impacted the Enlightenment, but the most important was it caused a social change towards established principles with logic and reason. This caused the abolition of slavery, changed thought from religious to scientific and paved the way for the start of women’s equality. As philophes became educated they saw a human inequality with slavery.