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The Age of Enlightenment refers to either the eighteenth century in European philosophy, or to the historical intellectual movement The Enlightenment, which advocated Reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, government, and logic, which, it was supposed, would allow human beings to obtain objective truth about the universe. Emboldened by the revolution in physics commenced by Newtonian kinematics, Enlightenment thinkers argued that same kind of systematic thinking could apply to all forms of human activity. Its intellectual leaders regarded themselves as a courageous elite who would lead the world into progress from a long period of doubtful tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny, which they imputed to the Dark Ages.
The movement helped create the intellectual framework which led to the American and French Revolutions...
