Encyclopédie

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers  
ENC 1-NA5 600px.jpeg
The title page of the Encyclopédie
Author Numerous contributors, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Country France
Language French
Subject(s) General
Genre(s) Reference encyclopedia
Publisher André Le Breton, Michel-Antoine David, Laurent Durand, and Antoine-Claude Briasson
Publication date 1751-72

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (English: Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts) was a general encyclopedia published in France 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 Enlightenment ideals. The Encyclopédie's self-professed aim was "to change the way people think." It was hoped that the work would eventually encompass all of human knowledge; Denis Diderot explained the goal of the project as "All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings."[1]

Contents

Origins

The Encyclopédie was originally meant to be simply a French translation of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728).[2] The translation was commissioned by Paris book publisher André Le Breton in 1743 to John Mills, 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.[3] Setting out to find a new editor, Le Breton engaged Jean Paul de Gua de Malves. Among those hired by Malves were the young Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Jean le Rond d'Alembert and Denis Diderot. Within thirteen months in August 1747 Malves was fired due to his rigid methods, and Le Breton hired Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert as the new editors. Diderot would remain editor for the next 25 years seeing the Encyclopédie through to completion.

Fig.2: Extract from the frontispiece of the Encyclopédie (1772). It was drawn by Charles-Nicolas Cochin and engraved by Bonaventure-Louis Prévost. The work is laden with symbolism: The figure in the centre represents truth — surrounded by bright light (the central symbol of the enlightenment). Two other figures on the right, reason and philosophy, are tearing the veil from truth. (entire frontispiece)

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 Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu.[4] The single greatest contributor was Louis de Jaucourt 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 superstitions while overtly providing access to human knowledge. It was a summary of thought and belief of the Enlightenment. In ancien régime France it caused a storm of controversy, due mostly to its tone of religious tolerance. The encyclopedia praised Protestant thinkers and challenged Catholic dogma, and classified religion as a branch of philosophy, 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;[5] but because it had many highly placed supporters, notably Madame de Pompadour, 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 Métiers.

Fig.3: "Figurative system of human knowledge", the structure that the Encyclopédie organised knowledge into. It had three main branches: memory, reason, and imagination.

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 méthodique. That work, enormous for the time, occupied a thousand workers in production and 2,250 contributors.

The Encyclopédie presented a taxonomy of human knowledge (See fig.3) which was inspired by Francis Bacon'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 Darnton 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 'Divination' and 'Black Magic'.

Influence

The Encyclopédie played an important role in the intellectual ferment leading to the French Revolution. "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:

The encyclopedians successfully argued and marketed their belief in the potential of reason and unified knowledge to empower human will and thus helped to shape the social issues that the French Revolution would address. Although it is doubtful whether the many artisans, technicians, or laborers whose work and presence and interspersed throughout the Encyclopédie actually read it, the recognition of their work as equal to that of intellectuals, clerics, and rulers prepared the terrain for demands for increased representation. Thus the Encyclopédie served to recognize and galvanize a new power base, ultimately contributing to the destruction of old values and the creation of new ones (12).

But note Frank Kafker, who explains that the Encyclopedists were not a unified group[6]

despite their reputation, [the Encyclopedists] were not a close-knit group of radicals intent on subverting the Old Regime in France. Instead they were a disparate group of men of letters, physicians, scientists, craftsmen and scholars ... Even the small minority who were persecuted for writing articles belittling what they viewed as unreasonable customs—thus weakening the might of the Catholic Church and undermining that of the monarchy—did not envision that their ideas would encourage a revolution.

While it is debatable that the editors intended to have a radical influence on French society, 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 Paris was the intellectual capital of Europe at the time and that many European leaders used French as their administrative language, these ideas had the capacity to spread.[7]

The Encyclopédie today survives through modern encyclopedias, including the free one known as wikipedia.

Contributors

Notable contributors to the Encyclopédie including their area of contribution (for a more detailed list, see French Encyclopédistes):

Statistics

Approximate size of the Encyclopédie:

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

Literature

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

References

  1. ↑ Denis Diderot as quoted in Lynn Hunt, R. Po-chia Hsia, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, and Bonnie G. Smith, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures: A Concise History: Volume II: Since 1340, Second Edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007), 611.
  2. ↑ Bryan Magee. The Story of Philosophy. DK Publishing, Inc., New York: 1998. page 124
  3. ↑ Philipp Blom (2005). Enlightening the World. pp. 35-37
  4. ↑ Bryan Magee. The Story of Philosophy. DK Publishing, Inc., New York: 1998. page 124
  5. ↑ Bryan Magee. The Story of Philosophy. DK Publishing, Inc., New York: 1998. page 125
  6. ↑ The Camargo Foundation : Fellow Project Details
  7. ↑ Bryan Magee. The Story of Philosophy. DK Publishing, Inc., New York: 1998. page 125

External links