Out of the Scientific Revolution came the downfall of many long-held doctrines and much satire. Both the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 sought independence from monarchies, with the Declaration of Independence signed in 1776. In 1719, Defoe’s castaway Robinson Crusoe replicated elements of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment on his remote island. In 1726, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels satirized Crusoe’s heroic individualism, and in 1729 Swift’s A Modest Proposal provided a satirical solution for poverty. Raspe’s Baron Munchausen in 1785 featured a braggart soldier’s exaggerated tales. Encyclopedias attempted to summarize all knowledge of the time. From 1751 to 1772, Diderot released the massive 28-volume Encyclopédie, a “systematic dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts”, with approximately 71,818 articles and 2,784 illustrations. In Japan, during a long period of anti-globalization, Toriyama Sekien produced a four-volume parody of encyclopedias, his illustrated books of yōkai, from 1776 to 1784.
| Era Enlightenment and Neoclassicism Eras (1700 – 1795) |
| Alternative Names 18th Century |
| Total Entries 31 |
| Articles Age of Enlightenment – Wikipedia Robinson Crusoe – Wikipedia Gulliver’s Travels – Wikipedia |
| Description Out of the Scientific Revolution came the downfall of many long-held doctrines and much satire. Both the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 sought independence from monarchies, with the Declaration of Independence signed in 1776. In 1719, Defoe’s castaway Robinson Crusoe replicated elements of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment on his remote island. In 1726, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels satirized Crusoe’s heroic individualism, and in 1729 Swift’s A Modest Proposal provided a satirical solution for poverty. Raspe’s Baron Munchausen in 1785 featured a braggart soldier’s exaggerated tales. Encyclopedias attempted to summarize all knowledge of the time. From 1751 to 1772, Diderot released the massive 28-volume Encyclopédie, a “systematic dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts”, with approximately 71,818 articles and 2,784 illustrations. In Japan, during a long period of anti-globalization, Toriyama Sekien produced a four-volume parody of encyclopedias, his illustrated books of yōkai, from 1776 to 1784.
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a European intellectual and philosophical movement that flourished primarily in the 18th century. Characterized by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence, and scientific method, the Enlightenment promoted ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress, and natural rights. Its thinkers advocated for constitutional government, the separation of church and state, and the application of rational principles to social and political reform. The Enlightenment emerged from and built upon the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, which had established new methods of empirical inquiry through the work of figures such as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton… The dating of the period of the beginning of the Enlightenment can be attributed to the publication of René Descartes’ Discourse on the Method in 1637, with his method of systematically disbelieving everything unless there was a well-founded reason for accepting it, and 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… The movement was characterized by the widespread circulation of ideas through new institutions: scientific academies, literary salons, coffeehouses, Masonic lodges, and an expanding print culture of books, journals, and pamphlets… ~ Age of Enlightenment – Wikipedia
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