Enlightenment is the term given to a historical era in the eighteenth century, roughly, that falls between the Scientific Revolution and the American and French Revolutions. As befits an epoch that followed the Scientific Revolution, the chief hallmark of the Enlightenment was a faith in reason and rationality -- the basic notion was that the scientific progress achieved by Sir Isaac Newton meant that the human mind might be capable of understanding all things in the same way. Accordingly, Babcock notes that another commonly used term for the Enlightenment is "the Age of Reason" (Babcock 221).

Because America was founded during the Enlightenment, there are plenty of traces of Enlightenment modes of thinking available in America today, built into the American system from its inception. Babcock notes (for example) that the rationalistic "Neoclassical" style of art popular during the Enlightenment was exemplified in architecture by the designs of Thomas Jefferson...
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