1.

The Enlightenment, sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason,

was a confluence of ideas and activities that took place
throughout the eighteenth century in Western Europe, England,
and the American colonies. Scientific rationalism, exemplified by
the scientific method, was the hallmark of everything related to
the Enlightenment. Following close on the heels of the
Renaissance, Enlightenment thinkers believed that the advances
of science and industry heralded a new age of egalitarianism and
progress for humankind. More goods were being produced for
less money, people were traveling more, and the chances for the
upwardly mobile to actually change their station in life were
significantly improving.
2. The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason

Summary: In the 16th-18th centuries, Europeans began to question the way that
they looked at the natural world and at human society. Rather than seeking a
religious or even superstitious explanation, they began to use the scientific
method to understand the world around them. Likewise, they looked at questions
such as the purpose of government, education, and crime and punishment with a
new sense of logic to try and devise better ways of governing society.
3.
4. Divine right of kings, in European history, a political doctrine in defense
of monarchical absolutism, which asserted that kings derived
their authority from God and could not therefore be held accountable for
their actions by any earthly authority such as a parliament. Originating in
Europe, the divine-right theory can be traced to the medieval conception of
God’s award of temporal power to the political ruler, paralleling the award
of spiritual power to the church. By the 16th and 17th centuries, however,
the new national monarchs were asserting their authority in matters of
both church and state.
The divine right of kings, divine right, or God's mandate is a political and
religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It stems from a specific
metaphysical framework in which the king (or queen) is pre-selected as an heir
prior to their birth. By pre-selecting the king's physical manifestation, the
governed populace actively (rather than merely passively) hands the
metaphysical selection of the king's soul – which will inhabit the body and thereby
rule them – over to God. In this way, the "divine right" originates as a
metaphysical act of humility or submission towards the Godhead.
Consequentially, it asserts that a monarch (e.g. a king) is subject to no earthly
 authority, deriving the right to rule directly from a divine authority, like
the monotheist will of God.
5. Theories of the social contract differed according to their purpose: some
were designed to justify the power of the sovereign, while others were
intended to safeguard the individual from oppression by a sovereign who
was all too powerful.

6. John Locke (1632-1704) argued that the law of nature obliged

all human beings not to harm “the life, the liberty, health, limb,
or goods of another”:
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and
reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being
all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health,
liberty, or possessions… (and) when his own preservation comes not in
competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and
may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or
what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of
another.

7. The separation of powers is a representation for the governance of a state. Under this model, a state's
government is divided into branches, each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities so
that powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches. The typical division is into
three branches: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary, which is the trias politica model.

United Kingdom[edit]
Main article: Separation of powers in the United Kingdom

 Parliament – legislature
 Prime Minister, Cabinet, Government Departments and Civil Service – executive
 Courts – judiciary
The development of the British constitution, which is not a codified document, is based on fusion in the person of the
Monarch, who has a formal role to play in the legislature (Parliament, which is where legal and political sovereignty
lies, is the Crown-in-Parliament, and is summoned and dissolved by the Sovereign who must give his or her Royal
Assent to all Bills so that they become Acts), the executive (the Sovereign appoints all ministers of His/Her Majesty's
Government, who govern in the name of the Crown) and the judiciary (the Sovereign, as the fount of justice,
appoints all senior judges, and all public prosecutions are brought in his or her name).
Although the doctrine of separation of power plays a role in the United Kingdom's constitutional life, the constitution
is often described as having "a weak separation of powers" (A. V. Dicey) despite it being the one to which
Montesquieu originally referred. For example, the executive forms a subset of the legislature, as did—to a lesser
extent—the judiciary until the establishment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister, the
Chief Executive, sits as a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, either as a peer in the House of
Lords or as an elected member of the House of Commons (by convention, and as a result of the supremacy of the
Lower House, the Prime Minister now sits in the House of Commons). Furthermore, while the courts in the United
Kingdom are amongst the most independent in the world,[citation needed] the Law Lords, who were the final arbiters of most
judicial disputes in the U.K.
8. The AGE OF REASON, as it was called, was spreading rapidly across Europe. In the late 17th
century, scientists like ISAAC NEWTON and writers like JOHN LOCKE were challenging the old
 order. Newton's laws of gravity and motion described the world in terms of natural laws
beyond any spiritual force. In the wake of political turmoil in England, Locke asserted the right
of a people to change a government that did not protect natural rights of life, liberty and
property. People were beginning to doubt the existence of a God who could predestine human
beings to eternal damnation and empower a tyrant for a king. Europe would be forever
changed by these ideas.
Quick Description

The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which colonists in
the Thirteen American Colonies rejected the British monarchy and aristocracy, overthrew the authority of Great
Britain, and founded the United States of America.
The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France that lasted from 1789
until 1799, and was partially carried forward by Napoleon during the later expansion of the French Empire. The
Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and
finally culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon that rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and
beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history,
triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies.