Results: The History of News and Communication * Part Nine * The Age of Enlightenment produced numerous books, essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions.

The Enlightenment's important 17th-century precursors included the Englishmen Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, the Frenchman René Descartes and the key natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Philosophies on Rights, Freedom, Liberty, Justice and Government were discussed by John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Which of these great thinkers are you familiar with?

There was no single, unified Enlightenment. Individual Enlightenment thinkers often had very different approaches. Locke differed from David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau from Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson from Frederick the Great. Their differences and disagreements, though, emerged out of the common Enlightenment themes of rational questioning and belief in progress through dialogue. Which of the following Great Philosophers are you familiar with?

Some of the most important ideas developed in the Age of Enlightenment. John Locke's Natural Rights; granted at birth - Life, Liberty & Property. Good Government is required to protect the people's rights. Jean Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, Government's control derives from the people's consent. Operating with Just laws that the people should submit. Unjust laws can result in the people over throwing or choosing a new government. Voltaire's Individual Rights provide that censorship is dangerous, ignorance destroys society, people have the right to freedom of worship and speech. Rousseau believed that the only reason philosophers were famous and well known was because their works were published. He thought that there were probably philosophers in each generation, but we cannot learn about them because there are no written records of them or their ideas. That is why it is called the Dark Ages there are no records. He also believed that philosophy, sciences, and the arts were the downfall of Empires. Do you agree with Rousseau's ideas, which ones?

For the first time ever writers could publish their work and people from all over could read what they had to say. Philosophers took advantage of this and spread their ideas far and wide. Since so much information was being spread through writing, literacy rates increased throughout Europe. Without the printing press, the age of Enlightenment would have been a much different time. It's strange to think how important something like a printer is. The fact that people were able to communicate to large audiences without having to be geographically close to them is an amazing development in history. Do you agree?

Academics at Stanford University in California say the information overload facing us today is simply a replay of the avalanche of communication that challenged Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. Illustrated with this stunning quote from Robert Burton's 1621 work The Anatomy of Melancholy: " What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast Chaos and confusion of Books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning. For my part I am one of the number--one of the many--I do not deny it..". Harvard historian Ann Blair argued that readers from about 1550 to 1700 struggled with the onslaught of books made possible by the printing press, but that they came up with strategies for coping with the problems. If you like this stuff, you must read Blair's 2003 paper in the Journal of the History of Ideas. Have you ever felt overwhelmed with too much information?

In Part Ten we will start delving into the History of Newspapers! The modern newspaper is a European invention. The oldest direct handwritten news sheets circulated widely in Venice as early as 1566. These weekly news sheets were full of information on wars and politics in Italy and Europe. Were you aware that the first New Sheets were handwritten and passed out in Venice, Italy in 1556?