4. A Brief History of Critical Thinking, Pt. 4: Agora Underground

Though it is typically associated with its spectacular art, the Renaissance which followed the Middle Ages also gave rise to a new philosophy. Many at the time thought that underlying all of the world's religious traditions was a thread of universal - "divine" - truth. Perhaps more importantly, there arose an idea that the physical world was bound together by some sort of rational "force" - a force which could be understood, if only man paid close attention to the subtle behavior of nature. Of course, such a concept is easy to take for granted now, as it is the bedrock of our modern, materialistic, scientific worldview.

Critical thought was revolutionized in the 17th and 18th centuries, as daring thinkers experimented with old materials to create new technologies, and even went so far as to create new types of political organization. This is the story of science and its early social implications. This is the story of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

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