This paper looks at how the "Enlightenment" was an intellectual movement that took place in the 17th and 18th centuries in
Europe and North America when a group of writers, philosophers, and scientists started to apply the
principles of science, empiricism, and rationalism to religious, social, political, and economic issues. It briefly describes the background of Enlightenment and discusses how the movement was an attempt to apply the principles of the scientific
revolution to the problems of society, a movement that declared scientific and empirical reasoning as the basis of all human knowledge. It looks at how it attacked superstition, and ignorance and believed that the problems of the society, such as economic well-being and politics, could be solved by the application of such knowledge.