This note is a part of my Zettelkasten. What is below might not be complete or accurate. It
is also likely to change often.
Secular Knowledge (also called Enlightenment in someplaces) is one of the many factors which gave rise to modernity. Enlightenment refers to the confidence europeans started having in their own reasoning, sometime in the 18th century.
Before this, knowledge production was mainly through interpretation of signs and scripture. Enlightenment created the belief that using reason, humans could produce knowledge and use that knowledge to pursue progress.
The new belief became that nothing is out of reach for reason, nothing is a mystery.