The Enlightenment was a time of change and new emerging ideas. People began to advocate for things such as more personal freedoms, and moving away from the church and other absolute authority. They emphasized reason and rationality, and began to try new styles of government. Ideas such as separate government branches and other federal system ideas began to come into play. People began to mistrust religious authority during the Enlightenment. The scientific method was developed, and discoveries by observation (such as with telescopes) started to change how people viewed truth and the world. Rationalism became more and more common, as people began preferring to rely on reason and experiment as opposed to what church officials told them to believe.
