By Ed Bernstein, IRI President, and Greg Holden, Business Writer

In general, the seventeenth and eighteenth century period known as the Enlightenment is considered a time when a new methodology was being imposed onto governments and accepted by societies across Europe and the “New World.” The parts making up this methodology included the use of reason, skepticism, and the scientific method in order to challenge long-established practices stemming from traditions, superstitions and religions that stretched back into antiquity. However, enlightenment itself is not about merely changing the way one looks at the world, as the Age of Enlightenment philosophers set out to do, it is also about destruction. Enlightenment is the dismantling and discarding of old, deep-seated beliefs in exchange for new ideas which are better supported by the available evidence.

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