Similarities Between The Renaissance And The Enlightenment

Descriptive Essay

Peter B. Brisbine

Saint Louis Community College – Florissant Valley

ENG 101 – College Composition I, Mr. White.

September 18th, 2017

How The Renaissance Printed Its Way To Enlightenment Connecting the roles communications theory, psychology and cultural performance played in the transition from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment is an interesting path printed in history. During the transition from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, communications became more important and more open than ever before. The invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg ushered in the ability for philosophers, doctors, theorists, musicians, artists, psychologists, the church, and many others to communicate their ideas

Social-cultural psychology is the study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence thinking and behavior. Social psychologists have found that we are attracted to others who share similar attitude and beliefs. This same phenomenon is what helped the Renaissance take hold in Europe and abroad. As others began to share like ideas, minor changes in those ideas spurred additional pondering, growth, and exploration. Not just in the mind as Descartes is to modern philosophy, the body as Leonardo da Vinci drew The Vitruvian Man, and Plato’s Neoplatonic philosophy of “the One”, but in the physical world as Copernicus offered the idea of

The dictionary defines Humanism as “the revival of classical letters, individualistic and critical spirit, and emphasis on secular concerns characteristic of the Renaissance”. Consider Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses against the contemporary practice of the church with respect to indulgences. To paraphrase Luther’s idea, he suggested that “indulgences are part of the economy of salvation.” His Theses is printed on a press, posted on the doors of the All Saints’ Church, and several hundred copies printed in Latin were distributed throughout Germany in 1517. This caused the Church’s power to decrease as they were no longer the only producers of manuscripts or the only ones able to read it.

Building upon the Church, books were now being translated from Latin into different languages. Luther questioned why services were not conducted in a language that all members of society, regardless of their level of wealth and education, could understand. Coincidentally, the first book to be printed in several volumes and in multiple copies was the Bible. Gutenberg and his partner Johann Fust published the first copies in 1452, some 65 years before Luther posted his Ninety-five