The Enlightenment is the common term to denote the intellectual movement in 17th- and 18th-century Europe that celebrated reason, knowledge, and human experience, but it owes its origins to the artistic and cultural achievements of the Renaissance that began in 14th-century Italy, the Protestant Reformation that began in the German states in the 16th century, and the philosophy of humanism that emerged from the work of thinkers like Galileo, Copernicus, Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton. In contrast to what was depicted as the intellectually darker Middle Ages, Enlightenment thinkers favored reason and curiosity over religious dogma and pursued an understanding of the natural world through the application of rigorous, systematic thought. At the same time, the European Age of Exploration expanded the world known to Western philosophers, further pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

In accordance with the conventions of the ancient Greeks, the exploration of natural phenomena up through the 18th century fell under the catch-all term of “natural philosophy,” which included the varied fields of chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, zoology, and astronomy. Scientific methods based on observation and experimentation gradually yielded more detailed knowledge that required specialized approaches and systematic organization, and societies devoted to various fields of study continued to differentiate and establish their own models for inquiry, critique, and training.