The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought numerous advances in the sciences and the ways in which European thinkers understood the world. From Copernicus to Isaac Newton, scientists throughout Europe (Copernicus was Polish, Newton, English) contributed important insights into an expanding pool of knowledge. These contributions not only changed Europeans' views of the universe, but also the place of the earth and its inhabitants within this universe. Because of the profound shift in the world-view of the time, the seventeenth century is often referred to as the Scientific Revolution. From its beginnings, however, this revolution was a broad cultural movement, and, as the following readings reveal, depended upon the collective contributions of a variety of people.

The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant summarized the Enlightenment as the process by which humankind freed itself from self-imposed tutelage, or dependence on forces allegedly beyond human control. He emphasized, however, that this process was, in his day, far from complete. Echoing Kant, one of the great scholars of Enlightenment thought, Ernst Cassirer, described this process as a transition from "transcendence to immanence." By this he meant that the eighteenth century witnessed a transformation from a vision of human society informed by transcendent, allegedly absolute norms of divine provenance, to one of human society as permeated soley by immanent, worldly, man-made values and objectives. More recently scholars have called into question the extent to which Enlightenment values played any serious or sustained role in eighteenth-century life--or subsequently.

The "revolution in world view" that took place over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not just take place in a vacuum. The events of the time helped to shape both the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. From the appearance of comets in the skies to the ramifications of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Europeans tried to answer the questions of the day through an engagement in its philosophies and technological marvels. European leaders also attempted to make use of "enlightened" philosophies to rule their countries, and even corresponded with their favorite philosophers. This interaction in turn affected the ways in which Enlightenment thinkers and rulers alike developed their ideas. The following selections reveal some of the inspirations for the advances of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, as well as how these movements were broadly understood at the time.