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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
0:18
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,
0:31
only way worse,
0:32
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.
0:47
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.
1:22
Assembling every essential fact and principle in, as it turned out,
1:27
over 70,000 entries,
1:30
20,000,000 words
1:32
in 35 volumes of text and illustrations
1:36
created over three decades of researching,
1:39
writing,
1:40
arguging,
1:41
smuggling,
1:42
backstabbing,
1:43
law-breaking,
1:44
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:
1:56
memory,
1:57
reason,
1:58
and imagination.
2:00
He also emphasized the importance of commerce,
2:02
technology,
2:03
and crafts,
2:05
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,
2:20
and was never reimbursed for copy fees.
2:23
His entry on political economy holds ideas he'd later develop further
2:27
in "The Social Contract."
2:29
D'Alembert wrote the famous preliminary discourse,
2:32
a key statement of the French Enlightenment,
2:35
championing independent investigative reasoning
2:37
as the path to progress.
2:39
Louis de Jaucourt wrote a quarter of the encyclopedia,
2:43
18,000 articles,
2:45
5,000,000 words,
2:46
unpaid.
2:48
Louis once spent 20 years writing a book on anatomy,
2:51
shipped it to Amsterdam to be published uncensored,
2:53
and the ship sank.
2:55
Voltaire contributed entries,
2:57
among them history,
2:58
elegance,
2:59
and fire.
3:01
Diderot's entries sometimes exhibit slight bias.
3:04
In "political authority," he dismantled the divine right of kings.
3:09
Under "citizen,"
3:10
he argued a state was strongest without great disparity in wealth.
3:14
Not surprising from the guy who wrote poetry about mankind strangling its kings
3:20
with the entrails of a priest.
3:23
So Diderot's masterpiece wasn't a hit with the king or highest priest.
3:27
Upon release of the first two volumes,
3:29
Louie XV banned the whole thing but enjoyed his own copy.
3:34
Pope Clement XIII ordered it burned.
3:37
It was "dangerous,"
3:38
"reprehensible,"
3:40
as well as "written in French,"
3:42
and in "the most seductive style."
3:44
He declared readers excommunicated
3:46
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,
4:05
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.
4:14
D'Alembert dropped out.
4:15
Rousseau broke off his friendship over a line in a play.
4:18
Worse yet, his publisher secretly edited some proofs
4:23
to read less radically.
4:25
The uncensored pages reappeared in Russia in 1933,
4:30
long after Diderot had considered the work finished
4:32
and died at lunch.
4:35
The encyclopedia he left behind is many things:
4:38
a cornerstone of the Enlightenment,
4:40
a testament to France's crisis of authority,
4:43
evidence of popular opinions migration from pulpit and pew
4:48
to cafe, salon, and press.
4:51
It even has recipes.
4:53
It's also irrepressibly human,
4:55
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.
