the brightest minds of the Enlightenment were stumped over how far the Earth is from the sun. The transits of the 1760s helped answer that question, providing a virtual yardstick for the universe.

The Enlightenment is the age that valued the ... Both assumed a classical, deterministic, matter-in-motion view of the universe, and believed that, at bottom, people were just complicated ...

Enlightenment is a term that feels elusive and vague. Some people associate it with a Hindu guru, sitting on top of a mountain contemplating the universe. Or a Buddhist monk living in a monastery ...

The Enlightenment’s legacy ... man’s unique place in the universe seemed poised to disappear, along with the threadbare remnants of his immortal soul. Yet even those who embraced the advance ...

What was the Enlightenment, and what is its relevance ... Spinoza indeed argued that the universe was only one substance—if God did exist, it was not as transcendent creator, extraordinary ...

In fact, the Enlightenment declared war on the excesses ... Human reason, that leads us to comprehend our place in the universe, leads us also toward a new moral imperative, perfectly secular ...

Sap in the trees' limbs still lavishes memories. You grow to another millennium. My change of mind is toward another enlightenment—not the one that imagined its universe within the form of "I think" ...