Source set · 8 sources ✓ Lesson ready

Could reason and new knowledge improve society?

Diderot, Franklin, Montagu, Voltaire, and Condorcet make the case for spreading knowledge, testing ideas, and tolerating differences, while Rousseau and Burke warn about its limits and Wollstonecraft asks who is included.

Timeline of key events →Unit: The Enlightenment →

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✓ Lesson ready

A ready-to-run lesson for this set: Enlightenment Salon: Can Reason Improve Society?. Slides include a hook, one slide per source, directions, a take-a-stand vote, an exit ticket, and a teacher script in the speaker notes.

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1. Hook: a striking quote 3-5 min

The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of engrafting, which is the term they give it.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, letter from Constantinople (1717)

Ask: It is 1717. A friend writes from the Ottoman Empire that local women can protect children from smallpox with a needle. Would you try it? What would convince you?

2. Main activity: Enlightenment Salon: Can Reason Improve Society?

Grouping: Four stations, groups of 4 to 6, rotating every 7 minutes

Materials (printables are in the Lesson Plan Doc)

Four station cards (printable pages in the Lesson Plan Doc), one per table
Station recording sheet (in the Lesson Plan Doc)
A spectrum line on the board from “Reason will improve everything” to “Reason has limits”

Launch 3 min
Explain the salon: Enlightenment thinkers met to discuss ideas. At each station students record what the author thinks reason can do and its limits.
Rotate 28 min
Four stations, 7 minutes each. Give a one-minute warning before each move.
Place the authors 7 min
Groups place each author on the spectrum line on the board and defend one placement with a quotation.
Take a stand 7 min
Use the vote slide.
Exit ticket 5 min
Students answer on a slip before leaving.

Take a stand: Could reason and new knowledge improve society?

Yes, reason improves society: Montagu’s inoculation saved lives, Franklin and Diderot wanted discoveries shared, and Condorcet expected progress without limit.
Reason alone has limits: Rousseau warned that learning weakened virtue, and Burke trusted inherited institutions over abstract theories.

3. Pacing options

15-minute bell-ringer

3 min Hook: Montagu and smallpox
8 min Run Station 3 only as a whole class: Rousseau and Burke as critics
4 min Exit ticket question 2

Full 50-minute lesson

4 min Hook: Montagu
3 min Launch the salon
28 min Four stations, 7 minutes each
7 min Place the authors
5 min Vote and exit ticket
3 min Buffer

4. Exit ticket

Name one way an Enlightenment author thought knowledge could improve life. Which source shows it?
Choose Rousseau or Burke. State his warning in one sentence and explain whether you think it still applies today.

5. Differentiation

Support

This set has no Adapted Docs yet; read key passages aloud or chunk them for struggling readers.
Start struggling readers at Station 2, which has the shortest passages.
Give the recording sheet with the author and date already filled in for each station.
Word bank: reason, toleration, inoculation, encyclopedia, progress, perfectibility, prejudice, inheritance.

Extension

Find one modern project that collects knowledge from many contributors. Compare its purpose with Diderot’s.
Write a short dialogue in which Condorcet and Burke discuss a new invention of today.

Suggested sequence

Leveled readings: 7 key passages in this set are adapted to about grade 4, 7, and 10 reading levels, shown next to the original wording.

Leveled readings (make a copy)

Denis Diderot: “Encyclopedia,” from the Encyclopédie (1755)
Essay · Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project (University of Michigan) · World: Revolutions (1750-1900) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 10 min
In the Encyclopédie’s own article on the word “encyclopedia,” its editor Denis Diderot explains the project’s purpose: to collect the knowledge scattered around the world, pass it on to future generations, and make people better instructed, more virtuous, and happier. The Encyclopédie was censored by French authorities and condemned by the pope.
Ask: According to Diderot, what is the purpose of an encyclopedia, and how will it change people?
Open with this source to frame the question.
Leveled reading Original ↗SOAPSTone Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER)
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Smallpox Vaccination in Turkey (1717)
Letter · Fordham University · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 5 min
Montagu's letter describing Ottoman smallpox inoculation, which she brought to England.
Ask: How do ideas travel between cultures?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
Benjamin Franklin: A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge (1743)
Document · Wikisource · Colonial Era (1607-1754) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 8 min
Franklin proposed a society of physicians, botanists, mathematicians, chemists, and other “ingenious men” across the colonies who would share observations and experiments by post, so that useful discoveries would not “die with the Discoverers.” The proposal led to the American Philosophical Society.
Ask: Why did Franklin think the colonies needed a society for sharing knowledge, and what did he hope it would achieve?
Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
Voltaire: Treatise on Toleration (1763)
Essay · Project Gutenberg (Toleration and Other Essays, trans. Joseph McCabe, 1912) · World: Revolutions (1750-1900) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 min
After a Protestant merchant, Jean Calas, was tortured and executed in Toulouse in 1762 on a false charge of killing his son, Voltaire wrote this treatise to clear his name and argue against religious persecution. He calls the supposed right of intolerance “absurd and barbaric” and asks France to tolerate peaceful Protestants.
Ask: Why does Voltaire argue that religious intolerance is wrong, and what does he want the French government to do?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750)
Essay · Project Gutenberg (trans. G. D. H. Cole, 1913) · World: Revolutions (1750-1900) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 min
Answering a prize question from the Academy of Dijon, Rousseau argued that the progress of the arts and sciences had not improved morals but corrupted them, making people polished in manners while weakening their virtue and liberty. The essay made him famous and challenged the Enlightenment’s faith in progress.
Ask: Why does Rousseau say the progress of the arts and sciences has harmed morals? Do you find his argument convincing?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER)
Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Document · Fordham University · World: Revolutions (1750-1900) · Grades 9-12 · ⏱ 20 min
Burke's conservative critique of the French Revolution.
Ask: Should change come quickly or slowly?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Mary Wollstonecraft)
Document · Project Gutenberg · World: Revolutions (1750-1900) · Grades 9-12 · ⏱ 30+ min
Wollstonecraft's 1792 argument for women's education and rights.
Ask: Why did Wollstonecraft focus on education?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
Marquis de Condorcet: Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795)
Essay · Internet Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University) · World: Revolutions (1750-1900) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 min
Written while he was hiding from arrest during the French Revolution, Condorcet’s final work predicts that the progress of reason, science, and education will end inequality between nations and classes and that the “perfectibility of man is unlimited.” He died in prison in 1794; the book was published the next year.
Ask: What did Condorcet predict reason and science would achieve? Were his hopes realistic?
Close with this source before writing.
Leveled reading Original ↗SOAPSTone Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER)

Quick check

Five questions built only from this set’s sources: four multiple choice and one short answer. Print it or assign it in Google Classroom. The answer key gives the source line for every answer.

Quick check (make a copy)Answer key (make a copy)

Preview the questions

Which source in this set contains this passage? “It is time to effect a revolution in female manners, time to restore to them their lost dignity, and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world.”
In his 1743 proposal, why did Benjamin Franklin say many useful discoveries were lost?
Which source in this set contains this passage? “The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of engrafting, which is the term they give it.”
How did Voltaire describe the supposed right of intolerance in his Treatise on Toleration?
Short answer: Choose two sources from this set. Using a specific detail from each, explain how they help answer the set’s question: “Could reason and new knowledge improve society?” Write 3 to 5 sentences.

Culminating writing prompt

Using evidence from at least three sources in this set, write an argument that answers the question: “Could reason and new knowledge improve society?” Cite each source by title, explain how its author, audience, and purpose affect its reliability, and respond to at least one counterargument.

Printable writing sheet (make a copy)

Build a DBQ

Students can plan with the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning organizer.