I have recently been reading Burchardt's classic account of the Renaissance in Italy.
It is much as I suspected. The Renaissance was an intellectual disaster for Western civilisation.
There was progress in art, in architecture and, to a much lesser extent, in music. But in 'thinking' there was no progress at all.
In order to escape the domination of the church with dogma and doctrine, the humanists went back to the ready made package of classic thinking: both Greek and Roman. This package was powerful, valuable and available. Because the package was so strong it served to counter Church thinking.
The end was a retrogressive step back to past thinking. This past thinking (the Gang of Three etc) has continued to dominate Western civilisation ever since. It is judgement based thinking ("what is") rather than design based thinking ("what can be"). All this is covered in my book "New Thinking for the New Millennium" (currently sold out in the UK).
If the Renaissance had not happened then it might have taken very much longer to escape the domination of Church thinking. But the escape might have been to new and more constructive thinking. There is no way of knowing.
My point is that the great reverence in which we hold the Renaissance is entirely misplaced when it comes to thinking.
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