Renaissance Case
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When you are sick, do you take medicine? When you think, are you able to express your thoughts? The power of thought is essential. I can think of nothing that is better than being able to think. The ability to formulate and express your own ideas may be something that in todays world we partially take for granted. This idea of thought and reason all began with the Enlightenment, as well as the Scientific Revolution. Both the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment in their own ways contributed to the rise of secularism and individualism in the West.
The Scientific Revolution opened a new way of thinking, along with creation and inventions of new ideas. The European idea towards science contributed to the focus on life as a human experience. This Revolution impacted the modern Western worldview, according to Coffin; scientific and technological power became one of the justifications for the expansion of Western Empires. This new revolution contributed to advancements within astronomy, mathematics, and physics. Inventors were now thinking of new ideas, and new ways to make things in the world better. The invention of these new theories turned into advancements of navigation, medicine and mechanics. The West was now becoming modernized. According to Coffin, seventeenth century natural philosophers had produced new answers to fundamental questions about the physical world. With this new and upcoming modernization and the new ideas of the world, the West was now beginning to have a new sense of technological knowledge.
The idea of thought was now extremely important. This period of time allowed for people to have their own theories about government and religion. This period was known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment established new concepts such as human secularism, individualism, scientific reasoning, progress, and becoming modern. The Enlightenment allowed for these new ideas to become the basis for the foundation of human society. This branched off from the accomplishments of the scientific revolution. According to Coffin, Isaac Newtons Physics were poorly understood yet his methods provided a model for scientific inquiry. The Enlightenment proposed that governments were public institutions for the protection of society rather than rights coming from religion and family. Immanuel Kant described the Enlightenment as intellectual independence. According to Coffin, Kant likened the intellectual history of humanity to the growth of a child; Enlightenment, in this view, was an escape from humanitys “self-imposed immaturity” and a long overdue break with humanitys self-imposed parental figure, the Catholic Church. The Enlightenment now allowed for public awareness and general concepts of reason, natural law, and toleration, all of these, which enabled a new society that was progressing. The idea of change was now becoming modernized. Change was now looked more towards something positive that