Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot

by Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot expresses the hopes, dogmas, assumptions, and prejudices that have come to characterize the French Enlightenment. In this preface to the Encyclopedia, d'Alembert traces the history of intellectual progress from the Renaissance to 1751. Including a revision of Diderot's Prospectus and a list of contributors to the Encyclopedia, this edition, elegantly translated and introduced by Professor Richard Schwab, is one of the great works of the Enlightenment and an outstanding introduction to the philosophes.

Genres: Philosophy, France, Nonfiction, Science, French Literature, Politics, History

170 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

French mathematician and philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert wrote the influential Treatise of Dynamics (1743) and also contributed to Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot.

This mechanic, physicist, and music theorist until 1759 also co-edited. His named formula obtains solutions to his wave equation.

Carl Friedrich Gauss caught an error in his proof of the known fundamental theorem of algebra.

He also created his ratio test to see whether a series converges.

His operator, which first arose in his analysis of vibrating strings, plays an important role in modern theoretical physics.

He made great strides in physics and also famously incorrectly argued in Croix ou Pile that the probability of a coin landing heads increased for every time that it came up tails. In gambling, people therefore call the strategy of decreasing bet the more one wins and increasing bet the more one loses his system, a type of martingale.

The French explorer Nicolas Baudin during his expedition to New Holland in South Australia named Ile d'Alembert, a small inshore island in southwestern Spencer Gulf. People better know the alternative English name of Lipson island, a conservation park and seabird rookery.

Reviews

[Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really like this. It's useful if you're writing a dissertation on the subject. But not much else.

[K80 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun to read, compelling content-wise, and absolutely steeped in some of the best French intellectual-historical gossip ever

[Megan]

'L'ouvrage dont nous donnons aujourd'hui le premier volume, a deux
objets: comme encyclopédie, il doit exposer autant qu'il est possible, l'ordre et
l'enchaînement des connaissances humaines: comme dictionnaire raisonné des
sciences, des arts et des métiers, il doit contenir sur chaque science et sur
chaque art, soit libéral, soit mécanique, les principes généraux qui en sont la
base, et les détails les plus essentiels, qui en font le corps et la substance. "
-Assez révolutionnaire, étant donné que la Bible servait comme texte / manuel pour la vie et pour l'éducation

"On peut diviser toutes nos connaissances en directes et en réfléchies. Les
directes sont celles que nous recevons immédiatement sans aucune opération de
notre volonté; qui trouvant ouvertes, si on peut parler ainsi, toutes les portes de
notre âme, y entrent sans résistance et sans effort. Les connaissances réfléchies
sont celles que l'esprit acquiert en opérant sur les directes, en les unissant et en
les combinant. "
--Connaissances directes: celles que l'on reçoit par les sens
Unité des sensations et des idées

These two types of knowledge lead to the three main types of thinking and their corresponding divisions of human knowledge: memory, which corresponds with History; reflection or reason, which is the basis of Philosophy; and what d'Alembert refers to as "imagination," (50) or imitation of Nature, which produces Fine Arts.

"La première chose que nos sensations nous apprennent, et qui même n'en
est pas distinguée, c'est notre existence; d'où il s'ensuit que nos premières idées
réfléchies doivent tomber sur nous, c'est-à-dire, sur ce principe pensant qui
constitue notre nature, et qui n'est point différent de nous-mêmes."

" La seconde
connaissance que nous devons à nos sensations, est l'existence des objets
extérieurs, parmi lesquels notre propre corps doit être compris, puisqu'il nous
est, pour ainsi dire, extérieur, même avant que nous ayons démêlé la nature du
principe qui pense en nous"

La capacité de l'homme de ressentir et donc de réfléchir sur ce qu'il ressens, ce qu'il voit, etc.

"et n'imitons point ces philosophes dont parle Montaigne, qui
interrogés sur le principe des actions humaines, cherchent encore s'il y a des
hommes. Loin de vouloir répandre des nuages sur une vérité reconnue des sceptiques même lorsqu'ils ne disputent pas, "

"De tous les objets qui nous affectent par leur présence, notre propre corps
est celui dont l'existence nous frappe le plus; parce qu'elle nous appartient plus
intimement: mais à peine sentons-nous l'existence de notre corps, que nous nous
apercevons de l'attention qu'il exige de nous, pour écarter les dangers qui
l'environnent. "
-Embodiment?

La volupté (lien possible à Montaigne)

Organisation de l'encyclopédie

Système figuré des connaissances humaines - trois branches: mémoire (sacrée, ecclesiastique), imagination (sacrée, profane - les beaux arts), raison (metaphysique générale, science de l'être)

The method of the Discourse and the Encyclopedia marked a shift from Descartes’ rationalism toward the empiricism of John Locke and Isaac Newton. In the Discourse, d’Alembert rejects a priori, indemonstrable speculations that lead to error and “intellectual despotism” and assumes a method based on hard facts and evidence (xxxv). A main objective of the “Encyclopedia” was not only to organize a collection of known information, but also to establish a cohesive method of gathering facts and principles yet to be discovered.

[Jerin Tahapary]

Stresses both 'empiric' and 'fact' reasons a philosophy qua Baconian com Lockean forming the basic philosophic foundation of this Encyclopedia.
Therefrom it complexes - and turns to vast enterprise - the consummation of this Encyclopedia.

Yet an ironic 'fact' it was, for a Bacon 'n Locke inspired, that the authors of this Encyclopedia failed to utilize the Principle of Sufficient Reason to its very highest order (unlike Leibniz).
For otherwise, pervasively would be - (figuratively speaking) - 'metaphysical Big Bangs' inherent within all the ratiocinations of this Encyclopedia.
Meaning - there would always be "'something' 'beyond'" our mere mainstream com experience-based understandings of the sciences.
Grasped only intuitively and peradventure solely a-chosen-ly. .

Qua its classification of the knowledges, the Encyclopedia may be obsolete, but its archaic philosophy 's superior compared to our now current operating Information Age Encyclopedia(s).
Perchance a cause of 18th century Scottish Enlightenment philosophy (Adam Smith et al) pervading throughout its then political sphere, enabling and enlightening a few unknowns some superb ratiocinating powers, nowaday absent 'cause of current fast-age infos.
And maybe due too to the Principle of Sufficient Reason stating - only a few true and never a mass attains..
For by it be bibliothecography, as science and discipline both submerged and subsumed.
And the users of our Information Age Encyclopedia(s) are certainly vast, compared to the users of this Encyclopedia..

Still, all this - a mere infinitesimal information, in correlation to our far future advanced and universal - Encyclopedia Galactica.

[Madelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Nous ne chercherons point à comparer ce dictionnaire aux autres ; nous reconnoissons avec plaisir qu'ils nous ont tous été utiles, et notre travail ne consiste point à décrier celui de personne. C'est au public qui lit à nous juger : nous croyons devoir le distinguer de celui qui parle."