ABSTRACT

Taking mathematics and the sciences as their model, philosophers concluded that reason is not only humanity’s greatest gift but also the tool for understanding everything about the universe. Thinkers like the Englishman John Locke, writing in the seventeenth century, and the Frenchmen René Descartes and Montesquieu, writing in the eighteenth century, explored the subject of human nature. They concluded that humans are essentially rational beings who can be improved through education and whose laws and politics should rest on ideals of equality and self-determination. Writers like Voltaire advanced principles of toleration and self-expression. And philosophers even used reason to explain the phenomenon of religion. They developed a philosophy called deism, which pictured the universe as an enormous, intricate, mechanical system that God created and then left alone to operate according to set laws. Deists believed that humans can discover these laws with the careful and systematic application of reason and scientific method.