Broadly speaking, the Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement, largely based in Europe, that spanned about a century—from the mid-to-late 1600s to the late 1700s. It was a time of major intellectual upheaval, characterized by the rise of reason and the scientific method as tools for understanding the world and bringing about progress. In fact, many of the radical ideas that came about in the Enlightenment period would ultimately lay the foundation for the liberal democratic