In what has become known as the Age of Enlightenment, men and women interested in the world around them embraced the scientific method and the search for knowledge to discover the natural laws of earth and the heavens, rather than falling back on culture, religion, or aristocratic rule. These thinkers began to focus on fact and reason, instead of old social and religious traditions, to make sense of the world. In part, the new ideas of Locke and the Enlightenment thinkers who followed him reflected the need of Europeans to make sense of the new information coming from the North American
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