In the mid 16th Century scientists and thinkers such as Bacon, Descartes, Copernicus and Newton began to, through their discoveries; challenge the Christian perspective of the world. The earth was displaced as center of the universe and the natural laws governing it like gravity were proven to be mathematical not moral. These discoveries challenged the traditional Christian explanation of creation as well as the moral, social and political world orders the church had created. In this enlightened environment of science and reason thinkers began to look for alternative scientific explanations for phenomena that Christian cosmology could no longer explain. Evolutionary Theory was one idea that arose in the nineteenth century to try and explain the emergence of biology and society. These theories were adopted by scientists and thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Hebert Spencer, Edward Burnett Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, and Sigmund Freud. …
