The Enlightenment adopted the classical figure of travel to express and explore its own relationship to knowledge, which in turn influenced and was influenced by its relations with peoples from other societies with different manners or, to use the philosophes' own term, mœurs.

The centrality of this particular trope can been seen in the vignette adorning the opening page of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–72). In the middle of the engraving is a ship in full sail; to the right is a printing press; in the foreground are a number of figures representing the various arts and sciences. In the ship can be seen an allusion to the work of Francis Bacon, hailed by d'Alembert in his ‘Discours préliminaire’ as one of the precursors to the philosophes. For it was a ship that had been chosen as the emblem for the frontispiece of the English philosopher's Instauratio Magna (1620), sailing between the Pillars of Hercules that marked the boundaries of the classical world. In his writing, in which voyaging and the progress of knowledge are constantly equated, Bacon recharged this classical image with all the excitement and prestige associated with the voyages of discovery, which, beginning with Columbus in 1492, had quite literally opened up a New World to Europeans.