The Enlightenment And The Scientific Revolution:
The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution:
Men of Ideas Creating Change
Nicole Hill
The eighteenth century is often referred to as the Enlightenment. The ideas of many individuals combined to create a movement that would not only sweep across Europe, but reach as far as the America's. The idea of a world without caste, class or institutionalized crudity was what many were striving to achieve. Coinciding with the Enlightenment was the Scientific Revolution. Advancements in astronomy, technology, medicine and mathematics were but a few of the areas of remarkable discovery. The conclusions and observations brought forward by the Scientific Revolution in the eighteenth century have survived and thrived through to modern times.
There are many facets in the ideas of the Enlightenment. "What we call the Enlightenment gradually took shape in individual minds, over several generations, before it became conscious of itself as a movement during the late 1740's." "It was primarily a French movement because French culture dominated Europe and because their ideas were expressed in the environment of the Parisian salon." It has been said that the Enlightenment was "
a group of writer, working self-consciously for over a hundred years, sought to enlighten men, using critical reason to free minds from prejudices and unexamined authority." "Among these writers and thinkers, there were many who have been given the name of philosophe". The most influential were Frenchman: men like
Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert and Condillac. "The philosophes had no common programme, or manifesto. The nearest they had to one was the Encyclodedie, which Diderot and d'Alembert published, in seventeen volumes, between 1751 and 1772, and to which many of the leading philosophes contributed."
The men of the Enlightenment were driven to achieve. "Overwhelmingly the greatest single emotional drive behind the Enlightenment...
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