Reformation uncertainty made skepticism and the search for certainty primary

Evidence

The skeptical movement, based on a renewal of interest in ancient writings on skepticism, was itself a response to the social uncertainty created by the Reformation. After 1560, skeptical ideas became widely known, making the search for certainty in knowledge a primary intellectual problem in the early seventeenth century. The dispute over standards for truth could not be resolved without criteria by which to judge the arguments, but until the dispute itself had been resolved, the criteria could not be decided. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 763