But here's the real question. Was the American Revolution what the historian Jonathan Israel called a revolution of mind? Did it change the way we think about what people are and how we should organize ourselves? Addressing those questions will involve a brief foray into the history of ideas. Let's study the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was primarily a celebration of humans' ability to understand and improve the natural world through reason. The Enlightenment had a number of antecedents, including the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.