The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was the name given to a time of new ideas, beginning in the 1600s, and lasting until the end of the 1700s. It was also called the ‘Age of Reason’, because people began to look for reasons why certain things happened as they did. Modern science developed from this line of questioning. New ideas about government and how people should live were also central to the Enlightenment.

Some European rulers took up Enlightenment ideas with enthusiasm, as did ordinary people who were no longer willing to be told what to do, and who wanted a say in government. Other people feared that this new way of thinking would overturn the old world for ever. The French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) argued that only an idea that could be shown to be true, by evidence or by reasoning, was true. Such arguments troubled the heads of the Christian Church.

These arguments also troubled kings and queens throughout Europe who believed they had a ‘divine’ (God-given) right to rule. Another French thinker, Voltaire, criticized both the Church and government of his day. So did Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas helped to shape the events that led up to the American and French revolutions.

The Enlightenment was a period of many practical discoveries as well as philosophical theories. The English scientist Isaac Newton published theories on light and the spectrum, as well as his laws of motion and the existence and the effects of gravity. Other scientists took to studying the living world in great detail, including the Dutch scientist Carl von Linne (Linnaeus), who started to define the various parts of the plants and animal kingdoms. These scientists were aided by the development of improved scientific equipment, such as more powerful telescopes and microscopes.

Other leading lights of the Enlightenment were Benjamin Franklin, scientist, inventor and Statesman; Adam Smith the economists; David Hume the historian; the philosopher Immanuel Kant; and the writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The belief that every person had the right to knowledge, freedom and happiness inspired a new revolutionary and democratic fervor, which was to shape the world of the 19^th century.

INFLUENTIAL WOMEN

New ideas were exchanged at meetings of artistic and educated people. They gathered, often in the homes of wealthy women, to discuss the latest scientific discoveries, plays, books and issues of the day. Two such women were Madame Geoffrin and Marie-Anne Lavoisier, wife of the chemist Antoine Lavoisier.