Changes

Part of the central thrust of Enlightenment thought was the idea of the essential nature of man. It was thought that if knowledge could be possessed, if society could be imagined, then man stood at the core of that achievement. Previous to this moment in Western conceptions of society, knowledge was considered the preserve of the Divine. Enlightenment presaged a secular authority for knowing. Knowledge was the way that humans could encounter reality. The logical extension of these notions was that whatever needed to be could be known and that reality could be measured.