Enlightenment dicovering world (hardback): Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century. - Softcover

Using a variety of methods to gather and classify their burgeoning knowledge of the world, these pioneering studies of nature and man became the foundations for our modern understanding of the world and gave birth to countless new disciples - from palaeontology, archaeology and ethnography to the history of art. This book charts man's voyage of intellectual discovery by permitting the collectors and their collections to speak for their century, just as the books on the shelves of the original King's Library once did.

The Enlightenment was a period of intense activity devoted to discovery and learning about the natural world, the past and other civilizations. Classification, collecting and deciphering were all important stages on the way to understanding the world and its inhabitants. The King's Library was built to house the books donated from the royal libraries of King George II and his grandson King George III, and they epitomize the interest in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in scholarship and study. Aimed at the general reader and relevant to many academic diciplines, this book explores the ways people acquired new information, organized their ideas and reached their conclusions.