... expected, people were worried about the new order that was starting to emerge, and they began to think more systematically about what all the changes meant for their future. The resulting intellectual movement is sometimes referred to as 'The Enlightenment' because the hold of religion, tradition, and dogma on intellectual thinking was finally broken. Science could now emerge fully as a way of thinking about the world, and physics and, later, biology was able to overcome persecution by religious elites and establish them as a path of knowledge. Along with growing influences of science came a burst of thinking about the social universe. Much of this thought was speculative, assessing the nature of humans and the first societies unfiltered by the difficulties of the modern world. Some of this thought was moralistic, but not in a religious sense. Rather, the proper type of society and the fundamental relationship ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now