How can you set things up in European history so that appeals to reason cut no ice at all in the 17th and 18th centuries?
"Using reason to attempt to arrive at truth and understanding was already a major thing for the Scholastics centuries earlier."
Yeah, I got this. I studied the Scholastics and I always wondered about what the fuss with the Enlightenment about, since the whole thing seemed less interesting than what intellectuals were doing in the 12th century. It seems to be another 19th century trash the Middle Ages thing.
However, there was some substance. I'm pretty sure the abolition of slavery, freedom of conscience, equality before the law, and universal suffrage were all Enlightenment projects. Same with a whole bunch of other rationalization and reform projects, of which the metric system was probably the most successful.
Also, and argument can be made that after Okham, intellectual life in Europe went backwards from the Scholastics. What you were getting around 1600 just wasn't that impressive. Could it have stayed in that rut?