Knowledge of Nature in the Thought of the Enlightenment

Abstract

. In nature’s design, the philosophy of the Enlightenment evolves from the selffounding thinking of the Middle Ages, centred around the existence of God, by accepting and overcoming the mathematical model of nature’s conception, to the biological model, laying the foundation of evolutionism. Mechanicism is a common ground of the era, the model of a clock’s mechanism being applied from the conception of the universe to the level of living beings. In response, the biologist model understands any part of the world as a living organism, whether it is talking about astronomical systems or social systems. These are the quests of the Enlightenment in an age that oscillates between rationalism and empiricism, an age that boils with effervescence and enthusiasm and that traces all the directions of knowledge that live to the present day.

Keywords

• knowledge
• nature
• god
• the middle ages
• the enlightenment
• mathematical model
• mechanicism