ABSTRACT
Immanual Kant, the Prussian philosopher's response came to define the age: Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed inability to use his own understanding without guidance from church, prince, or emperor. The first home of Enlightenment ideas was the salons of Paris, where the greatest wits of the age, male and female, met to discuss literature, philosophy, sex, and court intrigues. Immanual set up his own household in the town of Ferney, and it was there that he wrote the works that brought the Enlightenment beyond the salons and royal courts to the reading public. Therefore the emphasis placed by philosophes on reason and on the scientific achievements of the preceding century gave the study of natural science greater prestige and attracted more people to scientific inquiry. The New Chemistry was characteristic of Enlightenment ideals in its emphasis on experiment; it was also characteristic in its concern for language.
