Encyclopedia
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The Encyclopédie was published in France in 17 volumes, the first appearing in 1751, and comprising 72,000 entries by 1772, compiled primarily by Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot (French, 1713-1784), with help from Jean le Rond d'Alembert (French mathematician and philosopher, 1717-1783). The Encyclopédie, subtitled the Analytical Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Trades, was the embodiment of the Enlightenment and of the Philosophes— French thinkers of the eighteenth century who put faith in human reason. Among them was Jacques de Vaucanson (French inventor, 1709-1782), who constructed a precursor to the Jacquard Loom. Unlike philosophical tracts of the time, the work was dedicated to more than the arts and sciences; it also had sections on the trades in an attempt to break down the barriers between the "liberal" and the "mechanical" arts. Diderot made comparisons between the workings of machinery and those of the human mind. Further, the work contained a complicated series of cross-references between entries, intended to challenge the fixed knowledge structures of the Church.
In truth the aim of an encyclopedia is to collect all the knowledge scattered over the face of the earth, to present its general outlines and structures to the men with whom we live and to transmit this to those who will come after us, so that the work of the past centuries will be useful to the following centuries it could only belong to a philosophical age to attempt an encyclopedia. - Denis Diderot (French philosopher, 1713-1784), Encyclopédie
See Also
- Wonder Cabinet
- Encyclopedia
- Commerce
- Cabinet
- TS Eliot
- WTC
