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The European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was a movement inspired by the era preceding it; the seventeenth century was full of scientific discovery which challenged age-old beliefs and built faith in man's reason rather than superstition and religion. Impressed with the works and philosophies of men such as Descartes and Galileo, intellectuals began to construct new ways of thinking that relied on man's ability to apply reason to not only physics, but to human nature. The conceptual force behind the Enlightenment therefore began in the seventeenth century with the rise of human reason above blind faith, and the concept took form and flourished in the eighteenth century due to a group of writers and intellectual thinkers called the philosophes. These men, among who were the influential Voltaire and Diderot, believed that reasoning and education could dispel the darkness of the past and propel people into progression.

The seventeenth century has been called the......

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