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The enlightenment was the time after the scientific revolution when many new thoughts regarding government, religion, economics and education all came into play. It stressed the power of individual's and self-reliance, and it shaped many aspects of Western Civilization.

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People that were considered the social critics of that time. They believed that people could apply reason to all facts of life

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Thomas Hobbes wrote the book "Leviathan" and said that all men are naturally wicked and selfish. He said that humans need laws and government to function. He called it the social contract, when people give their rights to a leader in exchange for protection. Hobbes thought the best government was an absolute monarchy.

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John Jocke believed that all men are born free, and have 3 natural rights, life, liberty and property, and the purpose of government is to protect these rights, and if they fail to do so, the people have the right to overthrow the government. He influenced the modern government we have today.

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Baron de Montesquieu was a French writer who studied political liberty. He came up with the idea of checks and balances, which would later be used in the U.S government.

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Jean Jacques Rousseau studied individual freedom, and wrote the book, The Social Contract.In this book he said that man is born free, and should live like that. He believed that the government should be created by the people that are being governed.

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Wrote more than 70 books about politics and philosophy. He frequently disagreed with leaders and was sent to prison twice. He never stopped fighting for religious freedom and freedom of speech. He was probably one of the most influential writers of the enlightenment.

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The social contract was made by Thomas Hobbes which said that people must hand over their rights to a strong leader in exchange for law and order

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The scientific revolution began in the mid 1500's, when many scholars published new theories to replace old ones. It was mainly a change in thinking about the natural world.

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Believed that women's education should not be second to mens. She fought for women's rights all throughout her life, and wrote, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her daughter would later go one to write Frankenstein.

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Nicolaus Copernicus was a polish astronomer who became interested in the Greek idea the the sun is in the center of the universe, and studied it for more than 25 years. He concluded the sun is the center of the universe, and called it the heliocentric theory. He did not publish his works until the last year of his life, know the church would reject them.

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The geocentric theory was originally Aristotle's idea that the earth is in the center of the universe. It was believed that the sun, stars and planets all traveled in a circular orbit around earth.

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Galileo Galilei was an Italian scientist who expanded on old theories about astronomy. He built his very own telescope in 1609. Then he published his own book about his new theories in 1610. The book talked about Jupiters moons, dark spots on the sun, and denied Aristotle's ideas that stars were a perfect, smooth substance. The church immediately rejected his ideas and was forced to say Copernicus' ideas were false and was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

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The heliocentric theory is Copernicus' idea that the sun is in the center of the universe, while planets and start orbit around it.

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Isaac Newton was an English scientist who studied math at Cambridge University. He published his ideas in what is considered one of the most important scientific book ever written, "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy". Newton said that the universe is a giant clock and all its parts worked together in a way the could be expressed mathematically.

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Ptolemy was a Greek astronomer who studied Aristotle's theory of an earth-centered universe around the 2nd century C.E.

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The scientific method is a logical procedure for gathering and testing ideas. It was developed with the help of Francis Bacon and René Descartes.

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The theory created by Isaac Newton which said that all physical objects are equally effected by the same forces, and that every object in the universe attracts to one another.

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Johannes Kepler was Tycho Brahe's assistant, and when Brahe died, Kepler continued his work and discovered that planets do not orbit in a perfect circle, but more of an oval.