In What Ways Did Enlightenment Thinkers Build on or Make Use of the Ideas of Newton and Locke?

The Enlightenment is also known as the Age of Reason. It was characterized by the reformation of society using reason, the challenging of ideas grounded in tradition in faith, and the advancing of knowledge through the scientific method. It promoted scientific thought, skepticism, and intellectual interchange; and it opposed superstition, intolerance, and abuses of power by the church and state. These ideas didn't just pop out of the ground like daisies. The masterminds and creators of the Enlightenment thought were the philosophers and scientists, two of the most important of which were John Locke and Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton was extremely influential during the Scientific Revolution, which immediately preceded the Enlightenment. There is no doubt that the Enlightenment was extremely influenced by the Scientific Revolution. Many believe that he was the greatest genius who ever lived. He was a physicist and mathematician who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time, and as a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. He laid the foundations for classical mechanics, and formulated the laws of motion and of universal gravitation. With these establishments came the understanding that the motion of objects on the Earth and of the celestial bodies could be described by the same principles, which was an extremely valuable discovery for his peers who were still baffled by the movements in the solar system. This also removed every last doubt about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos. Newton also built the first ever practical reflecting telescope (as opposed to refractive telescopes), developed a theory of color (based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into all of the colors of the visible spectrum), formulated an empirical law of cooling, and studied the speed of sound. His span of interests and knowledge was impressively vast. As a mathematician, Newton studied power series, generalized the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, and developed what is now known as "Newton's Method" for approximating the roots of a function. These all contributed to the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment in the department of mechanicism. He was a guide to Enlightenment philosophers and guarantor of their applications of the concept of nature and natural law in every physical and social field of everyday life. Newton's conception of the Universe based on Natural and rationally understandable laws became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology.

John Locke is known as the Father of Classical Liberalism. As a Philosopher and a physician, he is often regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers of all time. He was an empiricist, meaning that he believed that in order to have knowledge a person had to learn primarily from sensory experiences. His works also had a major impact on the development of epistemology and political philosophy.

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