Research Paper on:
Diderot's Agnus Scythicus and Enlightenment Ideas

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
for the new and innovative, which brought great revolution to nearly every facet of society. The Encyclopedie by Diderot exemplifies many of the ideas of the Enlightenment and from this  document a fairly good understanding of the age can be undertaken. There seem to be those whose brief presence on the planet serves as a catalyst for the day and  age in which these individuals live. Diderot would seem to have been of this school. Many of the ideas which he wrote about and theorized about in the Encyclopedia would  be used decades, even centuries after he was long gone. More importantly still, he was able to debunk many of the illogical superstitions and suppositions which had lingered for years,  and thus ushered in rational thought and reasoning. A great example of this was his response to the long held idea about the Agnus Scythicus (Scythian Lamb) which was  a plant long touted by ancient botanists for its properties. They stated that this plant grew on the steppes near the Black Sea and that it was shaped like a  sheep, wooly and thick so that people could actually make clothes out of it. They also claimed that its medicinal properties cured the spitting up of blood. The plants flesh  would bleed when cut, but when cooked it tasted like shrimp. Oddly enough, they also claimed that the plant was invasive and would feed, not like other plants, but on  a certain type of plant which grew near-by. Without this other plant the Scythian Lamb would die(Legras 1972). Diderot reports that another botanist was dispatched to the steppes near the  Black Sea and that the plant found was as far removed from the long held description so as to be ludicrous. The plant was a fern that was covered in