19 New Worldviews And Ways of Life 1540–1790

> How and why did Europeans’ understanding of the natural world and human society change in the early modern period? Chapter 19 examines the impact of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment on European life. From the mid-sixteenth century on, age-old patterns of knowledge and daily life were disrupted by a fundamental shift in the basic framework for understanding the natural world and the methods for examining it known collectively as the “Scientific Revolution.” In the eighteenth century self-proclaimed members of an “Enlightenment” movement extended the use of reason from nature to human society. The expression of new ideas was encouraged by changes in the material world. During the eighteenth century ships crisscrossing the Atlantic circulated commodities, ideas, and people to all four continents bordering the ocean. As trade became more integrated and communication intensified, an Atlantic world of mixed identities and vivid debates emerged.