The Renaissance to the Enlightenment - Essay Example

In this period, a movement, called Humanism dominated the scene. Humanism “is the term generally applied to the predominant social philosophy and intellectual and literary currents of the period from 1400 to 1650” (Kreis “Renaissance Humanism”). Herein, humanists contributed to the rebirth of scholarship, literature, and art through the general emancipation of the individual. “The Renaissance passion for what was human and the discovery or rediscovery of this same inclination in the classical world we today call humanism” (Kreis, “The Medieval Synthesis”). Its emergence as a result and reaction towards the medieval period, i.e. The Middle Ages. During the middle ages, Christianity began to globalize, and along with it were challenges.

One major challenge was the development of human reason. This was characterized by man’s capacity to rationalize. The Church wanted to explain its teachings through faith alone. Thus, making reason a threat. To compensate for this, Humanist thinkers sought to reconcile religion and science, for according to the Church, they have one common factor, i.e. they both led to a single truth: “God exists” (Kreis, 2009b, n.p.). Furthermore, during the Middle Ages, the dominant view was that of geocentricism. Since the earth was known to be the center of the universe, human beings were made to feel central above all else. It is this view that the Church accepted and advocated. It was not until a major breakthrough by Nicolaus Copernicus that initiated the first and final break from religious dogma.

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Herein is the birth of modern science. Since the time of the publication of Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), religious authorities and teachings were attacked and questioned. In what ways did this revolution affect the previous worldview? The greatest impact was on how people thought and believed. Due to the rise of modern scientific methods, the geocentric view of the universe was replaced with the new heliocentric theory, which made the sun the center of the universe. Religion was forced to step down as the source of truth along with the decline of the authority of the Church. Not only did the power of religious authorities decline, so was the nature of human knowledge. “This, in turn, raised questions about the traditional Human Eternal Verities, i.e. how humans understood themselves in relation to 'God, Nature, and Man'” (“Hatch,” n.d., n.p.). Science was slowly overpowering the powerful image of God. “Science is faith. And the Gospel of that faith was written by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and others” (“Kreis,” 2009a, n.p.).

The foundation of religion is faith, while science stems from human reason, i.e. the capacity of human beings to think. The former hindered humanity’s potential to intellectually grow, while the latter paved the way towards a new era of human discovery. This is known as the Enlightenment.

Immanuel Kant (1784) defined Enlightenment as a “daring to know”. The emphasis herein is that during the Enlightenment, humanity started to realize that knowledge could be applied to practical human affairs. Thus, society conceived of science as that which could bring enlightenment to humankind. Read More