Final answer:
The beginnings of modern philosophy in the seventeenth century are linked with the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. The Enlightenment focused on reason and skeptical scrutiny of traditional structures, and the Scientific Revolution marked a shift in understanding of the natural world, promoting empirical evidence and rationality.
Step-by-step explanation:
Modern philosophy began in the seventeenth century and is typically associated with two main lines of thought: the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. The Enlightenment represented a cultural and intellectual movement that celebrated reason, science, and human progress, while casting skepticism on traditional structures from religion to monarchy. Key figures included thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who proposed social contract theory concerning the protection of individual freedoms.
The Scientific Revolution, on the other hand, marked a fundamental shift in how we understand the natural world. Inspired by great minds such as Newton and Galileo, this revolution in scientific thought, based on empirical evidence and reason, fundamentally altered our views on the nature of the universe, and by extension, our place in it.
Both of these movements provided a foundation for a profound reevaluation of existing knowledge and social structures, leading to a greater emphasis on observation, rationality, and critical thinking to expand the frontiers of human understanding.
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