For the most part, medieval scholars turned to authoritative texts for information and ideas about the natural world. Placing their faith in the Bible and in the insights of ancient scholars, they forged a vision of the universe and its workings that infused classical models with Christian implications. Those models were first challenged and then overturned over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as direct observation and experiment combined with increasingly sophisticated mathematics to produce a revolution in the study of the natural world. This process culminated at the end of the seventeenth century in the discoveries of Isaac Newton, whose work would provide the fundamental framework for Western physics well into the twentieth century. By the eighteenth century, the spirit of this “scientific revolution” had spread to human affairs. Philosophers and scientists of the European Enlightenment, particularly in France, began to question traditional forms of social and political organization. Some thinkers rejected the legitimacy of absolutism and divine right. Others challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In the climate of the age, even absolutist monarchs saw advantages to embracing aspects of Enlightenment thought, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success. ■