Causation: Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment Practice Test

A secondary-source historian argues that seventeenth-century confidence in mathematically describable natural laws—associated with Galileo’s experiments and Newton’s synthesis—encouraged Enlightenment writers to search for comparable “laws” of politics and society. In this view, the prestige of scientific method made reason, observation, and skepticism toward inherited authority appear universally applicable, helping shift European elites from scholastic reliance on tradition toward reform-minded critique of church and monarchy. Based on this argument, which development was most directly caused by the Scientific Revolution’s intellectual authority?

A secondary-source account notes that scientific academies and salons created new spaces where educated Europeans exchanged findings, evaluated evidence, and cultivated reputations based on merit and publication rather than lineage. The author argues that these practices helped normalize public criticism and fostered Enlightenment “republic of letters” networks that could circulate reform proposals across borders. Which Enlightenment-era development was most directly caused by the social practices associated with Scientific Revolution institutions?