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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.
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.