SCRIPT OF NARRATION All About the Enlightenment: The Age of Reason

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, is the name given to an important period in the history of western civilization that followed the Renaissance. The Enlightenment occurred roughly from the mid-1600s up through the end of the 1700s and was a time when the human ability to reason was glorified. The word "enlightenment" means "a time of illumination." The era was given this name because it was a time when an influential group of scholars, writers, artists, and scientists actively sought to use the clear light of reason, that is rational thought, to rid the world of superstition and ignorance. As a result of their efforts, tremendous improvements in the understanding of mathematics and science occurred. And bold new ideas regarding basic human rights and democracy were developed that served as major inspirations to revolutionaries in both America and France.

The Scientific Method: Francis Bacon and Ren Descartes

Near the end of the Renaissance, during the first half of the 17th century, two men, Francis Bacon and Ren Descartes, each published important books that came to inspire generations of scientists and scholars. In fact, many historians consider these two men to be the "Fathers of the Enlightenment." Francis Bacon was born in England in 1561, and it was during his days as a student here at Cambridge University's Trinity College that many of his important new ideas began to take shape. Bacon came to believe that science could free ordinary people from ignorance and allow them to lead more productive and comfortable lives. But he knew, that in order for this to happen, the minds of human beings first had to be freed from the careless and uncritical ways of thinking that were prevalent at that time. And that was why Francis Bacon promoted a rational approach to science based on experimentation and arriving at generalized conclusions based on careful observation. Meanwhile, across the English Channel, here in France, the brilliant French mathematician Ren Descartes published a book that proclaimed that reason and mathematics were all that one really needed to discover truth in the sciences. Descartes likened the universe to a perfect clock, that had been designed and built by a master clockmaker -that is, by an all-powerful God, a God who had set the universe into motion, and then left it alone. Descartes was a pioneer in mathematically formulating the basic laws that govern the movement of things, from the rolling of ocean waves, to the spinning of windmills. And he invented a new type of mathematics called analytic geometry. The ideas promoted by Descartes and Bacon proved to be extremely important because they led to the development of what is called the scientific method, a series of simple rational steps that can be followed to help solve even the most complicated scientific problems.

The World of Isaac Newton

As the use of the scientific method developed by Francis Bacon and Ren Descartes took hold during the Enlightenment, an incredible growth in the understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology occurred, thus greatly accelerating the Scientific Revolution that began late in the Renaissance. The great English Enlightenment era mathematician and physicist,

Isaac Newton, owes much to the ideas of Descartes and Bacon, but he stands out among others of his time for the sheer brilliance of his work. Newton was born in this house in England in 1642, just six years before Descartes died. The year Newton was born, Jamestown, the original settlement in England's first American colony, Virginia, was just 35 years old; only twenty-two years had passed since the Pilgrims founded their colony of Plymouth on the shores of Cape Cod Bay. And just eight years had gone by since the first ships carrying English settlers arrived in the new colony of Maryland.