<P> The Enlightenment was a powerful, widespread cultural movement of intellectuals beginning in late 17th - century Europe emphasizing the power of reason rather than tradition; it was especially favourable to science (especially Isaac Newton's physics) and hostile to religious orthodoxy (especially of the Catholic Church). It sought to analyze and reform society using reason, to challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and to advance knowledge through the scientific method . It promoted scientific thought, skepticism, and intellectual interchange . The Enlightenment was a revolution in human thought . This new way of thinking was that rational thought begins with clearly stated principles, uses correct logic to arrive at conclusions, tests the conclusions against evidence, and then revises the principles in the light of the evidence . </P> <P> Enlightenment thinkers opposed superstition . Some Enlightenment thinkers collaborated with Enlightened despots, absolutist rulers who attempted to forcibly impose some of the new ideas about government into practice . The ideas of the Enlightenment exerted significant influence on the culture, politics, and governments of Europe . </P> <P> Originating in the 17th century, it was sparked by philosophers Francis Bacon (1562--1626), Baruch Spinoza (1632--1677), John Locke (1632--1704), Pierre Bayle (1647--1706), Voltaire (1694--1778), Francis Hutcheson, (1694--1746), David Hume (1711--1776) and physicist Isaac Newton (1643--1727). Ruling princes often endorsed and fostered these figures and even attempted to apply their ideas of government in what was known as enlightened absolutism . The Scientific Revolution is closely tied to the Enlightenment, as its discoveries overturned many traditional concepts and introduced new perspectives on nature and man's place within it . The Enlightenment flourished until about 1790--1800, at which point the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason, gave way to Romanticism, which placed a new emphasis on emotion; a Counter-Enlightenment began to increase in prominence . The Romantics argued that the Enlightenment was reductionistic insofar as it had largely ignored the forces of imagination, mystery, and sentiment . </P> <P> In France, Enlightenment was based in the salons and culminated in the great Encyclopédie (1751--72) edited by Denis Diderot (1713--1784) and (until 1759) Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717--1783) with contributions by hundreds of leading intellectuals who were called philosophes, notably Voltaire (1694--1778), Rousseau (1712--1778) and Montesquieu (1689--1755). Some 25,000 copies of the 35 volume encyclopedia were sold, half of them outside France . These new intellectual strains would spread to urban centres across Europe, notably England, Scotland, the German states, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Italy, Austria, and Spain, as well as Britain's American colonies . </P>

How did the political balance of europe change between 1922 and 1937