In contrast to other intellectual revolutions (looking at you "Scientific Revolution"), the Enlightenment was one of the first intellectual movements that sought to bring an understanding of fundamental topics outside of the confines of intellectual salons. Moreover, while the most important revolution happened through excessive violence, it is fascinating how during the Enlightenment, the "pens and pencils" of the thinkers had a more profound impact than any gun could ever have.
"Dare to know"
"'What is the Enlightenment?' wrote the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. His response was 'Dare to know! Have the courage to make use of your own understanding."
Mass appeal
"Unlike most scientist of the eighteenth century, they wanted their ideas to reach the general reading public."
Revolution through pens, not guns
"Their pens and pencils were their only weapons as they sought to change the way people thought. They communicated their ideas in letters, unpublished manuscripts, books, pamphlets, brochures, and through writing novels, poetry, drama, literary and art criticism, and political philosophy."
The "giants" of the period
"For all the variety and richness of the republic of letters, four philosopher dominated Enlightenment discourse with what were for the time truly starling ideas about society, religion, and politics: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau."
Of all the three periods of the Enlightenment, the most notable one was the period of the "high Enlightenment which began with Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the Laws" in 1748 and ended in 1778 with the death of Voltaire and Rousseau. After the death of the two important thinkers, the market for ideas became dominated by wannabes, most deriving their philosophy from the work of the previous period of the Enlightenment.
"the Enlightenment did not emerge spontaneously. Creating what David Hume called 'the science of the man,' the philosophes reflected the influence of the Scientific Revolution, whose proponents had espoused scientific method in the study of nature and the universe. Sir Issac Newton emphasized the science — reason and experimentation — holds the key to understanding nature, that mankind discovers knowledge, not through religious teaching, but through 'observation, analysis, and experiment.'"
Enlightenment thinkers were often thinking about ways for your "average Joe" to understand and even change the world. For them, "The Encyclopedia," covered a wide range of topics that would offer a broad knowledge base about the (natural) world and the necessary context to change it.
Achieving Enlightenment’s goal took the form of "The Encyclopedia"
"Voltaire had set a goal for the Enlightenment itself: to educate the literate and intellectually curious of the social elite, and perhaps people further down the social scale. The Encyclopedia at least partially fulfilled that goal."
"Published over a period of more than twenty years beginning in 1751, it consisted of 60,000 articles of 2,885 illustrations in twenty-eight volumes. [...] it was the first compilation in the West and was a bold attempt to organize and classify all knowledge gathered from 'over the face of the earth.' Its authors insisted that by learning more about the universe, men and women could improve the world."