Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment, or simply the Enlightenment, was an intellectual as well as philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th in addition to 18th centuries with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment referenced a range of ideas centered on the benefit of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such(a) as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

The Enlightenment has its roots in a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism and was also preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the draw of Francis Bacon, among others. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment back to the publication of René Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum "I think, therefore I am". Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica 1687 as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. European historians traditionally date its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. numerous historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest introduced year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.

Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals, and pamphlets. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the advice of the monarchy and the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A bracket of 19th-century movements, including liberalism, communism, and neoclassicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.

In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were , where the phrase Sapere aude Dare to know can be found.

Science

Science played an important role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional controls in favour of the development of free speech and thought. Scientific remain during the Enlightenment included the discovery of carbon dioxide constant air by the chemist Joseph Black, the parametric quantity for deep time by the geologist James Hutton and the invention of the condensing steam engine by James Watt. The experiments of Lavoisier were used to take the first innovative chemical plants in Paris and the experiments of the Montgolfier Brothers enabled them to launch the number one manned flight in a hot-air balloon on 21 November 1783 from the Château de la Muette, most the Bois de Boulogne.

The wide-ranging contributions to mathematics of Leonhard Euler 1707–1783 included major results in analysis, number theory, topology, combinatorics, graph theory, algebra, and geometry among other fields. In applied mathematics, he presented essential contributions to mechanics, hydraulics, acoustics, optics, and astronomy. He was based in the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg 1727–1741, then in Berlin at the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and Belles Lettres 1741–1766, and finally back in St. Petersburg at the Imperial Academy 1766–1783.

Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress. The study of science, under the heading of natural philosophy, was divided up into physics and a conglomerate cut of chemistry and natural history, which included anatomy, biology, geology, mineralogy and zoology. As with most Enlightenment views, the benefits of science were non seen universally: Rousseau criticized the sciences for distancing man from style and not operating to make people happier. Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centres of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were also the backbone of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important coding was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population. Philosophes introduced the public to many scientific theories, most notably through the Encyclopédie and the popularization of Newtonianism by Voltaire and Émilie du Châtelet. Some historians have marked the 18th century as a drab period in the history of science. However, the century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine, mathematics and physics; the development of biological taxonomy; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline, which determine the foundations of modern chemistry.

Scientific academies and societies grew out of the Scientific Revolution as the creators of scientific knowledge in contrast to the scholasticism of the university. During the Enlightenment, some societies created or retained links to universities, but contemporary sources distinguished universities from scientific societies by claiming that the university's usefulness was in the transmission of knowledge while societies functioned to create knowledge. As the role of universities in institutionalized science began to diminish, learned societies became the cornerstone of organized science. Official scientific societies were chartered by the state to dispense technical expertise. Most societies were granted permission to oversee their own publications, control the election of new members and the administration of the society. After 1700, a tremendous number of official academies and societies were founded in Europe and by 1789 there were over seventy official scientific societies. In source to this growth, Bernard de Fontenelle coined the term "the Age of Academies" to describe the 18th century.

The influence of science also began appearing more ordinarily in poetry and literature during the Enlightenment. Some poetry became infused with scientific metaphor and imagery, while other poems were a thing that is said directly about scientific topics. Sir Richard Blackmore dedicated the Newtonian system to verse in Creation, a Philosophical Poem in Seven Books 1712. After Newton's death in 1727, poems were composed in his honour for decades. James Thomson 1700–1748 penned his "Poem to the Memory of Newton", which mourned the destruction of Newton, but also praised his science and legacy.