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The controversial origins of the Encyclopedia - Addison Anderson
The controversial origins of the Encyclopedia - Addison Anderson
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0:06
Denis Diderot left a dungeon outside Paris on November 3, 1749.
0:12
He'd had his writing burned in public before,
0:15
but this time, he'd gotten locked up under royal order
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for an essay about a philosopher's death bed rejection of God.
0:24
To free himself, Denis promised never to write things like that again.
0:28
So he got back to work on something a little like that,
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only way worse,
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and much bigger.
0:34
In 1745, publisher André le Breton had hired Diderot
0:38
to adapt the English cyclopedia,
0:41
or a universal dictionary of arts and sciences
0:45
for French subscribers.
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A broke writer, Diderot survived by translating,
0:50
tutoring,
0:51
and authoring sermons for priests,
0:53
and a pornographic novel once.
0:55
Le Breton paired him with co-editor Jean le Rond d'Alembert,
0:58
a math genius found on a church doorstep as a baby.
1:02
Technical dictionaries, like the cyclopedia, weren't new,
1:05
but no one had attempted one publication covering all knowledge,
1:09
so they did.
1:11
The two men organized the French Enlightenment's brightest stars
1:14
to produce the first encyclopedia,
1:17
or rational dictionary of the arts, sciences, and crafts.
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Assembling every essential fact and principle in, as it turned out,
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over 70,000 entries,
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20,000,000 words
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in 35 volumes of text and illustrations
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created over three decades of researching,
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writing,
1:40
arguging,
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smuggling,
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backstabbing,
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law-breaking,
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and alphabetizing.
1:46
To organize the work,
1:48
Diderot adapted Francis Bacon's "Classification of Knowledge"
1:52
into a three-part system based on the mind's approaches to reality:
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memory,
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reason,
1:58
and imagination.
2:00
He also emphasized the importance of commerce,
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technology,
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and crafts,
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poking around shops to study the tools and techniques of Parisian laborers.
2:10
To spotlight a few of the nearly 150 philosoph contributers,
2:14
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Diderot's close friend,
2:17
wrote much of the music section in three months,
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and was never reimbursed for copy fees.
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His entry on political economy holds ideas he'd later develop further
2:27
in "The Social Contract."
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D'Alembert wrote the famous preliminary discourse,
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a key statement of the French Enlightenment,
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championing independent investigative reasoning
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as the path to progress.
2:39
Louis de Jaucourt wrote a quarter of the encyclopedia,
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18,000 articles,
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5,000,000 words,
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unpaid.
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Louis once spent 20 years writing a book on anatomy,
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shipped it to Amsterdam to be published uncensored,
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and the ship sank.
2:55
Voltaire contributed entries,
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among them history,
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elegance,
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and fire.
3:01
Diderot's entries sometimes exhibit slight bias.
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In "political authority," he dismantled the divine right of kings.
3:09
Under "citizen,"
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he argued a state was strongest without great disparity in wealth.
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Not surprising from the guy who wrote poetry about mankind strangling its kings
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with the entrails of a priest.
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So Diderot's masterpiece wasn't a hit with the king or highest priest.
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Upon release of the first two volumes,
3:29
Louie XV banned the whole thing but enjoyed his own copy.
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Pope Clement XIII ordered it burned.
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It was "dangerous,"
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"reprehensible,"
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as well as "written in French,"
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and in "the most seductive style."
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He declared readers excommunicated
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and wanted Diderot arrested on sight.
3:49
But Diderot kept a step ahead of being shut down,
3:52
smuggling proofs outside France for publication,
3:55
and getting help from allies in the French Regime,
3:58
including the King's mistress, Madame de Pompadour,
4:01
and the royal librarian and censor, Malesherbes,
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who tipped Diderot off to impending raids,
4:07
and even hid Diderot's papers at his dad's house.
4:11
Still, he faced years of difficulty.
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D'Alembert dropped out.
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Rousseau broke off his friendship over a line in a play.
4:18
Worse yet, his publisher secretly edited some proofs
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to read less radically.
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The uncensored pages reappeared in Russia in 1933,
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long after Diderot had considered the work finished
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and died at lunch.
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The encyclopedia he left behind is many things:
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a cornerstone of the Enlightenment,
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a testament to France's crisis of authority,
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evidence of popular opinions migration from pulpit and pew
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to cafe, salon, and press.
4:51
It even has recipes.
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It's also irrepressibly human,
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as you can tell from Diderot's entry about a plant named aguaxima.
5:00
Read it yourself, preferably out loud in a French accent.
