The Age of the Enlightenment Trivia Quiz

Sample The Age of the Enlightenment Quiz Questions

A mix of easy, medium and hard — questions run from warm-up to expert, so there's a real challenge at every level. Think you know the answers? Play to find out.

1. 1.This English scientist formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, publishing them in his 1687 masterwork "Principia Mathematica."

   Difficulty: Easy
   • Isaac Newton
   • Galileo Galilei
   • Robert Boyle
   • Edmund Halley

2. 2.This 18th-century intellectual movement emphasized reason, science, and individual rights over tradition and religious authority.

   Difficulty: Medium
   • The Renaissance
   • The Reformation
   • The Enlightenment
   • The Romantic Era

3. 3.This Leibniz principle states that no two distinct things can have exactly the same properties, used to argue against Newtonian absolute space.

   Difficulty: Hard
   • The principle of sufficient reason
   • The identity of indiscernibles
   • The principle of pre-established harmony
   • The law of continuity

4. 4.This famous French writer and philosopher championed freedom of speech and religious tolerance, often using satire to criticize the Catholic Church.

   Difficulty: Easy
   • Denis Diderot
   • Montesquieu
   • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
   • Voltaire

5. 5.This type of religious belief, popular among Enlightenment thinkers, accepted the existence of God but rejected organized religion and divine intervention in human affairs.

   Difficulty: Medium
   • Atheism
   • Pantheism
   • Agnosticism
   • Deism

6. 6.This German philosopher coined the term "aesthetics" and wrote the first systematic philosophy of beauty and artistic judgment.

   Difficulty: Hard
   • Immanuel Kant
   • Christian Wolff
   • Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
   • Johann Joachim Winckelmann

7. 7.This English philosopher argued that humans are born as a "blank slate" and that all knowledge comes from experience.

   Difficulty: Easy
   • John Locke
   • Thomas Hobbes
   • David Hume
   • Francis Bacon

8. 8.This controversial materialist work by Baron d'Holbach, published anonymously in 1770, argued that humans are entirely physical beings without souls or free will.

   Difficulty: Medium
   • The Social Contract
   • The System of Nature
   • The Spirit of the Laws
   • Discourse on Method

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