The portable age of reason reader Book

"I think, therefore I am," said Descartes in 1637, and his maxim helped to usher in a period when men trusted to reason to solve all the problems of human society. It was a period which witnessed the first flowering of natural science, the rise of classical drama in France, the Augustan Age in England, and the brilliantly skeptical writing of the French Encyclopedists. All these movements are represented in this volume by lively selections from a hundred authors. Besides key passages from scientists, philosophers, and political thinkers, there are also stories, aphorisms, scenes from plays, and intimate details of courtly life reported in letters and memoirs, so that the book serves as the autobiography of a fascinating era.