Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general
encyclopediaAn encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles with one article on each subject covered...
published in
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.
Its introduction, the
Preliminary Discourse, is considered an important exposition of
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
ideals. The
Encyclopédies self-professed aim was "to change the way people think." It was hoped that the work would eventually encompass all of human knowledge; Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
explained the goal of the project as "All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings."
The Encyclopédie
was originally meant to be simply a French translation of Ephraim ChambersEphraim Chambers , was an English writer and encyclopedist, who is primarily known for producing the Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. -Early life:...
's CyclopaediaCyclopaedia: or, A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences was an encyclopedia published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, and reprinted in numerous editions in the 18th century...
(1728).
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general
encyclopediaAn encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles with one article on each subject covered...
published in
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.
Its introduction, the
Preliminary Discourse, is considered an important exposition of
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
ideals. The
Encyclopédies self-professed aim was "to change the way people think." It was hoped that the work would eventually encompass all of human knowledge; Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
explained the goal of the project as "All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings."
Origins
The Encyclopédie
was originally meant to be simply a French translation of Ephraim ChambersEphraim Chambers , was an English writer and encyclopedist, who is primarily known for producing the Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. -Early life:...
's CyclopaediaCyclopaedia: or, A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences was an encyclopedia published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, and reprinted in numerous editions in the 18th century...
(1728). The translation was commissioned by Paris book publisher André Le BretonAndré François le Breton was a French publisher. He was one of the four publishers of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, along with Michel-Antoine David, Laurent Durand, and Antoine-Claude Briasson...
in 1743 to John MillsJohn Mills was an encyclopedist on the Encyclopédie. He was originally a writer on agricultural matters from England...
, an English resident in France. In May 1745 Le Breton announced the work as available for sale - however to Le Breton's dismay, Mills had not done the work he was commissioned to do; in fact, he could barely read and write French and did not even own a copy of Cyclopaedia. Le Breton had been swindled, and so he physically beat Mills with a cane—Mills sued on assault charges, but Le Breton was acquitted in court as being justified. Setting out to find a new editor, Le Breton engaged
Jean Paul de Gua de MalvesJean Paul de Gua de Malves was a French mathematician who published in 1740 a work on analytical geometry in which he applied it, without the aid of differential calculus, to find the tangents, asymptotes, and various singular points of an algebraic curve.He further showed how singular points and...
. Among those hired by Malves were the young
Étienne Bonnot de CondillacÉtienne Bonnot de Condillac was a French philosopher.-Biography:He was born at Grenoble of a legal family, and, like his elder brother, the well-known political writer, abbé de Mably, took holy orders at Saint-Sulpice in Paris and became abbé de Mureau.In both cases the profession was hardly more...
,
Jean le Rond d'AlembertJean le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist and philosopher. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
and Denis Diderot. Within thirteen months, in August 1747, Malves was fired due to his rigid methods. Le Breton then hired Diderot and Jean d'Alembert as the new editors. Diderot would remain editor for the next 25 years, seeing the Encyclopédie
through to completion.
Publication
The work comprised 35 volumes, with 71,818 articles, and 3,129 illustrations. The first 28 volumes were published between 1751 and 1766 and were edited by Diderot - although some of the later picture-only volumes were not actually printed until 1772. The remaining five volumes were completed by other editors in 1777, along with a two volume index in 1780. Many of the most noted figures of the French enlightenment contributed to the work including VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defense of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every...
, RousseauJean Jacques Rousseau was a major philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.His novel, Emile: or, On Education, which he considered his most...
, and MontesquieuCharles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu , was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Era of the Enlightenment...
. The single greatest contributor was Louis de JaucourtChevalier Louis de Jaucourt was a French scholar and the most prolific contributor to the Encyclopédie. He wrote about 18,000 articles on subjects including physiology, chemistry, botany, pathology, and political history, or about 25% of the entire encyclopedia, all done voluntarily...
who wrote 17,266 articles, or about 8 per day between 1759 and 1765.
The writers of the encyclopedia saw it as a vehicle to covertly destroy superstitionSuperstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason, knowledge, or experience. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to folk beliefs deemed irrational. This leads to some superstitions being called "old wives' tales"...
s while overtly providing access to human knowledge. It was a summary of thought and belief of the Enlightenment. In ancien régimeAncien Régime refers primarily to the aristocratic, social, and political system established in France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties...
France it caused a storm of controversy, due mostly to its tone of religious tolerance. The encyclopedia praised Protestant thinkers and challenged CatholicThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
dogma, and classified religion as a branch of philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
, not as the ultimate source of knowledge and moral advice. The entire work was banned by royal decree and officially closed down after the first seven volumes in 1759; but because it had many highly placed supporters, notably Madame de PompadourJeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour , was a member of the French court, and was the official maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV from 1745 to 1750....
, work continued "in secret". In truth, secular authorities did not want to disrupt the commercial enterprise which employed hundreds of people. To appease the church's enemies of the project, the authorities had officially banned the enterprise, but they turned a blind eye to its continued existence.
It was also a vast compendium of the technologies of the period, describing the traditional craft tools and processes. Much information was taken from the Descriptions des Arts et MétiersDescriptions des Arts et Métiers, faites ou approuvées par messieurs de l'Académie Royale des Sciences was published by the Académie Royale des Sciences of Paris between 1761 and 1788....
.
In 1750 the full title was Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, mis en ordre par M. Diderot de l'Académie des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de Prusse, et quant à la partie mathématique, par M. d'Alembert de l'Académie royale des Sciences de Paris, de celle de Prusse et de la Société royale de Londres. The title-page was amended as d'Alembert acquired more titles.
In 1775, Charles Joseph Panckoucke obtained the rights to reissue the work. He issued five volumes of supplementary material and a two volume index from 1776 to 1780. Some include these seven volumes as part of the first full issue of the Encyclopédie, for a total of 35 volumes, although they were not written or edited by the original famed authors.
From 1782 to 1832, Panckoucke and his successors published an expanded edition of the work in 166 volumes as the
Encyclopédie méthodiqueThe Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières is a 206-volume encyclopedia that was published between 1782 and 1832 by the French publisher Charles Joseph Panckoucke, and his daughter, Thérèse-Charlotte Agasse...
.
That work, enormous for the time, occupied a thousand workers in production and 2,250 contributors.
The Encyclopédie
presented a taxonomy of human knowledgeThe "figurative system of human knowledge", sometimes known as the tree of Diderot and d'Alembert, was a tree developed to represent the structure of knowledge itself, produced for the Encyclopédie by Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot....
(See fig.3) which was inspired by Francis BaconFrancis Bacon,1st Viscount St Alban KC , son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
's Advancement of Knowledge. The three main branches of knowledge are: "Memory"/History, "Reason"/Philosophy, and "Imagination"/Poetry. Notable is the fact that theology is ordered under 'Philosophy'.
Robert DarntonRobert Darnton is an American cultural historian, recognized as a leading expert on eighteenth-century France.-Life:He graduated from Harvard University in 1960, attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. in history from Oxford in 1964, where he studied with Richard...
argues that this categorisation of religion as being subject to human reason and not a source of knowledge in and of itself, was a significant factor in the controversy surrounding the work. Additionally, notice that 'Knowledge of God' is only a few nodes away from '
DivinationDivination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of a standardized process or ritual. Diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact with a supernatural agency...
' and '
Black MagicBlack magic or dark magic is a form of sorcery that draws on assumed malevolent powers. This type of magic would be invoked to kill, to steal, to injure, to cause misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful consequences to others. As a term, "black magic" is normally...
'.
Influence
The Encyclopédie
played an important role in the intellectual ferment leading to the French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
. "No encyclopaedia perhaps has been of such political importance, or has occupied so conspicuous a place in the civil and literary history of its century. It sought not only to give information, but to guide opinion," wrote the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
. In The Encyclopédie and the Age of Revolution
, a work published in conjunction with a 1989 exhibition of the Encyclopédie at the University of California, Los Angeles, Clorinda Donato writes the following:
But note Frank Kafker, who explains that the Encyclopedists were not a unified group
While it is debatable that the editors intended to have a radical influence on
French societyFrench people can refer to:* The legal residents and citizens of France, regardless of ancestry. For a legal discussion, see French nationality law.* People whose ancestors lived in France or the area that later became France....
, it can hardly be denied that it did. The Encyclopédie denied that the teachings of the Catholic Church could be treated as authoritative in matters of science. The editors also refused to treat the decisions of political powers as definitive in intellectual or artistic questions. Given that
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
was the intellectual capital of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
at the time and that many European leaders used
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
as their administrative language, these ideas had the capacity to spread.
Contributors
Notable contributors to the Encyclopédie
including their area of contribution (for a more detailed list, see French EncyclopédistesThe Encyclopédistes were a group of 18th century writers in France who compiled the Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Like Pierre Bayle , who created the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, the Encyclopédistes were part of the intellectual group known as the...
):
- Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist and philosopher. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
— editor; science (esp. mathematics), contemporary affairs, philosophy, religion, among others
- André Le Breton
André François le Breton was a French publisher. He was one of the four publishers of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, along with Michel-Antoine David, Laurent Durand, and Antoine-Claude Briasson...
— chief publisher;
printer's ink article
Étienne Bonnot de CondillacÉtienne Bonnot de Condillac was a French philosopher.-Biography:He was born at Grenoble of a legal family, and, like his elder brother, the well-known political writer, abbé de Mably, took holy orders at Saint-Sulpice in Paris and became abbé de Mureau.In both cases the profession was hardly more...
— philosophy
Daubenton — natural history
Denis DiderotDenis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
— chief editor; economics, mechanical arts, philosophy, politics, religion, among others
Baron d'HolbachPaul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris...
— science (chemistry, mineralogy), politics, religion, among others
Chevalier Louis de JaucourtChevalier Louis de Jaucourt was a French scholar and the most prolific contributor to the Encyclopédie. He wrote about 18,000 articles on subjects including physiology, chemistry, botany, pathology, and political history, or about 25% of the entire encyclopedia, all done voluntarily...
— economics, literature, medicine, politics, among others
MontesquieuCharles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu , was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Era of the Enlightenment...
— part of the "goût" article (English: concept of taste)
François QuesnayFrançois Quesnay was a French economist of the Physiocratic school. He is known for publishing the "Tableau économique" in 1758 , which provided the foundations of the ideas of the Physiocrats...
— Farmers and Grains article
Jean-Jacques RousseauJean Jacques Rousseau was a major philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.His novel, Emile: or, On Education, which he considered his most...
— music, political theory
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de LauneAnne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, often referred to as Turgot , was a French economist and statesman...
— economics, etymology, philosophy, physics
VoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defense of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every...
— history, literature, philosophy
Statistics
Approximate size of the Encyclopédie:
- 17 volumes of articles, issued from 1751 to 1765
- 11 volumes of illustrations, issued from 1762 to 1772
- 18,000 pages of text
- 75,000 entries
- 44,000 main articles
- 28,000 secondary articles
- 2,500 illustration indices
- 20,000,000 words in total
Print run: 4,250 copies (note: even single-volume works in the 18th Century seldom had a print run of more than 1,500 copies)
Quotes
- "Reason is to the philosopher what grace is to the Christian... Other men walk in darkness; the philosopher, who has the same passions, acts only after reflection; he walks through the night, but it is preceded by a torch. The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility; he takes for truth what is true, for forgery what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy." (Philosophers article, Dumarsais)
- "If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare." (Wealth article, Diderot)
Literature
- Preliminary discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, translated by Richard N. Schwab, 1995. ISBN 0-226-13476-8
- Jean d'Alembert by Ronald Grimsley. (1963)
- The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800 by Robert Darnton
Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian, recognized as a leading expert on eighteenth-century France.-Life:He graduated from Harvard University in 1960, attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. in history from Oxford in 1964, where he studied with Richard...
(1979) ISBN 0674087852
- The Encyclopedists as individuals: a biographical dictionary of the authors of the Encyclopédie by Frank A. Kafker and Serena L. Kafker. Published 1988 in the Studies of Voltaire and the eighteenth century. ISBN 0-7294-0368-8
- Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Editions Flammarion, 1993. ISBN 2-080704265
- Diderot, the Mechanical Arts, and the Encyclopédie, John R. Pannabecker, 1994. With bibliography.
- L'Encyclopédie de Diderot et d'Alembert, édition DVD, Redon, ASIN: B0000DBA4X—the complete Encyclopédie on DVD-ROM
- Enlightening the World: Encyclopedie, The Book That Changed the Course of History by Philipp Blom
Philipp Blom is a historian, novelist, journalist and translator. He was born in Hamburg, Germany, and studied in Vienna and Oxford. He holds a DPhil in Modern History from Oxford University...
(2005). ISBN 1403968950
- The Encylopédie and the Age of Revolution. Ed. Clorinda Donato and Robert M. Maniquis. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1992. ISBN 0-8161-0527-8
Facsimiles
Readex Microprint Corporation, NY 1969. 5 vol The full text and images reduced to 4 double-spread pages of the original appearing on one folio-sized page of this printing.
Later released by the Pergamon Press, NY and Paris with ISBN 0080901050
External links
- On-line version in original French
French is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
- On-line version with an English
English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
interface and the dates of publication
- Encyclopédie collaborative translation project, currently contains a rather small but growing collection of articles translated into English (654 articles as of May 26, 2009).
- The Encyclopedie, discussion on the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a domestic UK radio station that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967.-Outline:...
programme In Our TimeIn Our Time is a live BBC radio discussion programme hosted by Melvyn Bragg. Each week, three guest speakers cover a specific historical, philosophical, religious, artistic or scientific topic...
, broadcast on 26 October 2006. With Judith Hawley, Senior Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London, Caroline Warman, Fellow and Tutor in French at Jesus College, Oxford, David Wootton, Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York, and presented by Melvyn BraggMelvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg, FRSL, FRTS is an English author, broadcaster and media personality who, aside from his many literary endeavours, is perhaps most recognised for his work on The South Bank Show.-Biography:...
.
- Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers on French Wikisource