The Journey from Blind Faith to KnowledgeAlthough the period called The Enlightenment is often associated with a sudden and revolutionary change in thinking in historical Europe, it was actually a movement which slowly evolved over time. The idea that reason could explain much of what was then mysterious, that critical thinking could provide human beings with some influence on their destiny, did not arise overnight. The development can be traced back to the rediscovery of antiquity and the research inspired by it which established a new scientific approach: the Scientific Revolution. From Aristotle to HumanismAncient thought such as that of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, well supported by Thomas Aquinas, was well known and applied in medieval Europe. However, the logic promoted by these early Greek scholastics often contradicted the teachings of the strong European Catholic Church. It is not surprising that a new group of faithful thinkers in the 14th-15th centuries, the humanists, introduced the idea of ​​a capable human being, created in the image of God, who used his intellect to fulfill his divine purpose in this world. In the 16th century, some humanists began to question religious dogmas and found growing support from researchers in the fields of physics, astronomy, and medicine, who began to encounter increasing difficulty in explaining their observations with traditional approach. One of these scholastics was Galileo Galilei. Church Doctrine vs. Development Galileo Galilei applied the same approach used by the ancient scholastics - the observation of natural events - but when his observations suggested that the earth must rotate close to the sun contrary to the deeply held religious belief that the sun simply moved through ... the center of the paper ... contributed significantly to Europe's development from blind faith and medieval superstition to rational and critical thinking. The Closed Cycle As noted above, the Enlightenment was not a sudden event, and revolutions such as the Scientific Revolution that produce the foundations were not sudden events. Europe's development from medieval witch hunts to the scientific approach to modern philosophy was long and rocked by inconveniences and internal conflicts. It is difficult, if not impossible, to really draw the line or pinpoint the moment that opened the door to the thoughts of the Enlightenment. There would have been no doubt that it was pushing for a scientific revolution without the logic suggested by ancient Greece. There may have been no claims of equality during the Enlightenment undoubtedly raised and investigated through a modern scientific approach.