Encyclopédie

The Encyclopédie, or dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (French for 'Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts'), was a big book filled with knowledge. It was published in France between 1751 and 1772. Many smart people, called the Encyclopédistes, helped write it. The two main editors were Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

This encyclopedia is very important because it showed the ideas of the Enlightenment. This was a time when people wanted to learn more and think in new ways. Denis Diderot wanted it to help change how people think and share knowledge with everyone.

The Encyclopédie was special because it was the first encyclopedia to have many different writers. It also described mechanical arts, like crafts and skills, in detail. The first version had seventeen big books of text and eleven books of pictures. Later, smaller versions were made so more people across Europe could read it.

Origins

The Encyclopédie began as a plan to translate a book called the Cyclopaedia by Ephraim Chambers into French. Chambers wrote his Cyclopaedia in English, and it was well-known. A French bookseller named André Le Breton became very interested in translating it.

In 1745, Le Breton and a man named John Mills worked together on the translation, but they had problems. Le Breton decided to bring in new editors for the project. He chose the mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert and the philosopher Denis Diderot to lead the work. Diderot stayed with the project for many years and helped finish the Encyclopédie.

Publication

The Encyclopédie was a big book with many parts. It had 28 volumes with many articles and pictures. The first books came out between 1751 and 1765, and the pictures were ready by 1772. Many people read it, and it made money for the people who published it.

Some leaders did not like the Encyclopédie because they thought it had new ideas. At one point, the government stopped it for a short time, but people kept working on it in secret. The book was printed in different places to keep it safe.

Later, new versions of the Encyclopédie were made in other countries and in smaller, cheaper books. More parts and a big index were added after the first version was finished.

Contributors

The Encyclopédie needed many writers to share knowledge about many subjects. Over 140 people helped write articles for it. Famous thinkers, called philosophes, like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, wrote for it too. One writer, Louis de Jaucourt, wrote over 17,000 articles by himself!

Writers sometimes met to talk about their work. They had different ideas and wrote about many topics. The Encyclopédie was the first book to show who wrote each article using special symbols. Some writers were paid, while others helped for free. Writers were chosen because they knew a lot about certain subjects, like animals, science, or history.

Compilation and sources

The Encyclopédie was made from many existing books and dictionaries, not written completely new. Scholars have looked at how its writers used and changed other texts.

Two important sources were the Cyclopaedia and France’s old Jesuit encyclopedia called the Dictionnaire universal françois-latin (1704), also known as the Dictionnaire de Trévoux. Many articles from the Cyclopaedia were copied into the Encyclopédie with little change. The Dictionnaire de Trévoux also influenced the Encyclopédie, sometimes being copied directly.

Denis Diderot wrote about a plant called “Aguaxima,” showing his frustration with descriptions that told readers very little. He felt these entries didn’t help anyone learn much. Other books, like Johann Jakob Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae and George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, were also used in the Encyclopédie, sometimes word-for-word without clear credit.

Contents and controversies

Structure

The Encyclopédie had an introduction called the “Preliminary Discourse” by D'Alembert. This part talked about important ideas of the Enlightenment, a time when people thought more about reason and knowledge. It showed a way to organize all knowledge into three groups: History, Philosophy, and Poetry.

The Encyclopédie also had many links between its articles, like early web links. These helped readers connect ideas from different parts of the book.

Overall scope

The Encyclopédie focused mainly on science, arts, and crafts. It did not cover history as much as later books. Over time, it began to include more about people and language.

Religion

Some writers in the Encyclopédie talked about religion in traditional ways, while others used clever phrases to question religious ideas.

Politics and society

The Encyclopédie shared ideas about politics from the Enlightenment. It said that governments should get agreement from the people. It also talked about fair rights for everyone and opposed slavery. In business, it supported free markets and competition.

Technology

The Encyclopédie was a big collection of knowledge about technology and crafts. It shared ideas from workshops and books, showing what people knew in the early days of the Industrial Revolution.

Influence

By 1789, about 25,000 copies of the Encyclopédie had been sold across Europe. It was different from other encyclopedias because many writers worked on it together. This helped make the word "encyclopedia" well-known.

The Encyclopédie was important for sharing facts and ideas. It encouraged people to think in new ways, which helped lead to big changes, like the French Revolution. Some people thought the ideas in the Encyclopédie also supported changes in other places, such as the early United States and South America.

The Encyclopédie in relation to Wikipedia

The historian Dan O'Sullivan compares the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia. Like Wikipedia, the Encyclopédie was made by many writers and helpers. Denis Diderot and his team used new tools and ideas, just like people who work on Wikipedia today. They had to choose what information to share, how to link articles, and how to reach the most readers.

Statistics

The Encyclopédie was a very large book collection. It had 17 volumes with articles, published between 1751 and 1765, and 11 more volumes with pictures, published from 1762 to 1772. Together, it had 18,000 pages with about 75,000 different topics.

Quotations

Here are two interesting quotes from the Encyclopédie:

• "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." (Philosophers, Dumarsais)
• "If exclusive privileges were not granted, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth." (Wealth, Diderot)