The Renaissance and Enlightenment were two different periods in European history that brought significant changes in culture, art, philosophy, science, and mathematics. The Renaissance was a golden age of artistic, cultural, and intellectual thought and production during the 14th-16th centuries, while the Enlightenment from 1650-1800 ushered in new paradigms of morality based on logic and reason. Both eras saw great contributions to various fields, including astronomy, painting, architecture, philosophy, and science. Innovations in technology, politics, and finance contributed to these advancements.
The Renaissance and the Enlightenment name two distinctly different periods in European history. Both heralded great changes in culture, art, philosophy, science and mathematics. The Renaissance is associated with advances in literature, architecture, humanism, and the world economy, while the Enlightenment is associated with the scientific method, industrialization, rationality, astronomy, and calculus.
The Renaissance occurred during the 14th-16th centuries, after the Middle Ages. In French, the name translates as “rebirth”, which means that this was a golden age of artistic, cultural and intellectual thought and production. During this era great contributions were made to music, astronomy, painting, architecture, poetry, theater and philosophy. Some famous people from this period include Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Niccolo Machiavelli.
Financial, political and technological innovations have contributed to this explosion of civilization. The Black Death killed many people, but ended up redistributing wealth, remapping cities, and establishing a literate middle class. Gutenberg’s press allowed people to translate and widely distribute written materials. The advent in shipbuilding and ocean navigation allowed for closer economic ties between all of Europe and the Orient, not to mention the New World. Knowledge was accessible when Greek and Roman texts were translated from Latin into Italian, French, and English, so scholars could delve into ancient wisdom.
From about 1650-1800, Europe and the New World experienced an Enlightenment that ushered in new paradigms of morality. This too was a time of discovery, but it is generally confined to the realm of science, mathematics and technology. Logic and reason reigned as thinkers became convinced that society and the natural world were like one gigantic united machine which, though it may be complicated, could eventually be dismantled, studied and mastered. The scientific method, which was based on the notion of objective observation leading to testable conclusions, stimulated developments in astronomy, philosophy, medicine and physiology, transportation, chemistry and ethics.
Empirical data has suddenly replaced people’s superstitious notions of how the world worked by explaining mystical phenomena such as lightning, eclipses, disease, or hallucinations. The new authority in this part of the world was research and science, rather than the Church and God. Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei and Gottfried Liebnitz are associated with new fields of science such as calculus, cosmology and physics. Society valued truth and the acquisition of knowledge as useful activities that informed philosophy. Ethical behavior to treat everyone fairly has been described in treatises by Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza.
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