ABSTRACT
The major theme of the period between 1600 and 1800 was the triumph of science, in particular, Newtonian science, over the old, medieval, theological worldview. In the seventeenth century, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton demonstrated the power of a new kind of understanding of nature. The new scientific view substituted the idea of universal mathematical order for the older idea of universal meaning in nature. Humanity's view of nature changed greatly. Nature had been a book of signs revealing the invisible world beyond. Now it became an indifferent machine that could be known only in a limited way, via mathematics. Nature lost its meaningfulness, but humanity gained power over it from mathematically precise predictions. Alexander Pope (1688–1744), the English poet, caught the spirit of the Enlightenment view of human nature before the French Revolution.
