Background Essay Enlightenment Mina The Enlightenment Philosophers: What was Their Main Idea? ‘The late 17th and 18th century was a period patterns in the physical universe. Newton proved of many changes. Between discoveries in sci- that the force that pulls objects to earth is the ence and disagreements over religion, people _same as the force that holds the planets in orbit were questioning traditional around an unmoving sun, New- ways of living and knowing. ton called this force “gravity” Thinkers called philosophes and described how it worked in “philosophers” in French) were several strokes of genius we call particularly hopeful that they “Newton's laws.” might discover new ways to The philosophes believed understand and improve their that what Newton learned about society. planets they could learn about One belief that the philos- people. In other words, if there ophes shared is that Nature is an were rules that explain how excellent teacher. They believed objects in the sky behave, there that there are natural laws or must be natural rules or laws truths that people do not always that explain how people behave. recognize. They believed that if They believed these laws were people observe their surround- universal; that is, they could be ings they could discover patterns found everywhere, and simply in nature that could be applied had to be discovered. Many a to human activities like govern- philosophe hoped that he or she ment and economics Voltaire could become the Isaac Newton Another belief the philos- of the social sciences. ophes shared was their confi- This Mini-Q presents the dence in people’s ability to use , ideas of four philosophes wri reason to discover truths. In fact, ing about four different areas of human society: government, religion, the economy, and the social role of women. Your first {job is to understand what they are saying, Their language is not always easy but the passages are short. Then, as you move from document to document, ask yourself if there is one impor- tant idea that keeps reappearing, an idea that is basic to all four thinkers. In other words, answer the question before us: The Ei lightenment Philosophers: What was their main idea? this Enlightenment period in history is often called the Age of Reason. Intellectuals believed that if they used the reason- ing powers God or nature had given them, they could answer any question. A combination of careful observation and clear- headed reasoning were the two keys to understanding the truth of all things. ‘One reason the philosophes believed in the existence of natural laws was the work of the famous scientist Isaac Newton (1642-1727). By making new observations and studying the observations of other physicists before him, Newton noticed Mary Wollstonecraft ‘o2012 meDea Pret Ths page may be reproduced for classroom use 2