*Engraving from the 1772 edition of the [Encyclopédie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die "Encyclopédie"); Truth, in the top center, is surrounded by light and unveiled by the figures to the right, Philosophy and Reason.* The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, most often describes a 17th and 18th century intellectual and philosophical movement in Europe associated with rationalism, empiricism, humanism, and progress. Politically, the movement championed ideas of natural (rather than divine) law, liberty, a social contract between governors and governed, individual rights, constitutional government, and separation of church and state. Many intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment were early scientists who called themselves natural philosophers, such as Francis Bacon, Galileo, Huygens, Kepler, and Newton. Others are more remembered as philosophers (although many of them also practiced science): Beccaria, Descartes, Diderot, George Berkeley, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Leibniz, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Spinoza, and Voltaire. The scientific worldview of the Enlightenment challenged the certainties of religion and the focus on individualism had profound implications for politics. Social reformers and later revolutionaries used Enlightenment ideas to reshape society. Popular writers like [[Thomas Paine]], [[Benjamin Franklin]], and [[Dan's History Web/US 1/Notes to Fill/Ethan Allen]] translated these ideas into plain language and communicated them to large numbers of people. Both developments helped create the conditions for the [[American Revolution]] and establishment of the United States. Recently some scholars have suggested that the social organization and consensus culture of Native American societies such as the [[Dan's History Web/US 1/Topic Index/Iroquois|Haudenosaunee]] or [[Dan's History Web/US 1/Topic Index/Huron|Wendat]] may have provided inspiration and examples for Enlightenment thinkers in Europe. One recently-cited example is the series of conversations between [[Kandiaronk]] and the French author [[Lahontan]] at [[Dan's History Web/US 1/Notes to Fill/Michilimackinac]] that were published and widely read in Europe, giving rise to the idea of the [[Noble Savage]] and also perhaps some of the concepts of individual freedom and the social contract which we now associate with European thinkers such as Rousseau and Locke.