About Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie revisited
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End-paper 3 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie5/8
End-paper 4 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie6/8
End-paper 7 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie7/8
End-paper 8 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie8/8
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End-paper 3 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie5/8
End-paper 4 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie6/8
End-paper 7 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie7/8
End-paper 8 from Diderot & d’Alembert’s first edition Encyclopédie8/8
Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie revisited
‘The purpose of an encyclopedia is to assemble the knowledge scattered over the surface of the earth; to explain its general plan to the men with whom we live and to transmit it to the men who come after us.’ Denis Diderot (1755)
This was Denis Diderot’s (1713-1784) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert‘s (1717–1783) stated aim with their Encyclopédie; ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers or Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts project. Published between 1762-1772 it stands as a monument of the Enlightenment showing how knowledge was mapped in the eighteenth century. Originally consisting of 17 text volumes and 11 volumes of engraved illustrations, known as the ‘planches’, it was later expanded, the complete editions contain approximately 70,000 articles contributed by thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Busson.
Google’s original mission statement echoed Diderot’s in stating that its aim is; ‘To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ (Newman, 2003). In considering the digitising of knowledge I became interested to explore the physical and digital versions of this monumental work. The digitised version of the Encyclopedie, a resource made available as a component of the ARTFL (Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) hosted by the University of Chicago which is available online was accessed. In each image the pages of a whole volume are recorded onto one sheet of film via a monitor. By contrast, borrowed from an antiquarian book seller, the marbelled endpapers of the physical books themselves reveal the human interaction with such editions over the years. The thing that particularly caught my interest was where at various times there would have been a sign inside saying this book belonged to or was held by, this had been cut out and pasted over with not quite matching paper. These telling the same story as Wooldridge suggests in his text regarding the Support Structures series in many ways. Wooldridge writes: ‘They reveal not specific use, but an accumulation of traces, similar to the apparition-like marks of an invigilator against a gallery’s white wall over an exhibition’s long run. They reveal therefore, a deep history…’
(Wooldridge, 2018)