Diderot

Diderot, D. (1747). Quoted from Peverelli, J. L., Thema (Magazine for Research and Science of Swiss Universities), Lausanne, No. 9 (June 1990), p. 31 [Preface]. 

Diderot, Denis and Jean le Rond d Alembert, eds. Encyclopedia of Diderot d Alembert collaborative translation project.. S.v. "Alchemy," by... 

Fortunately for a poor, would-be chemist like Leblanc, France s aristocratic passion for the physical sciences crossed economic, social, and political borders. Intellectuals such as Rousseau and Diderot cultivated the sciences with enthusiasm and compiled encyclopedias and dictionaries of natural substances. Local academies and institutes in the far-flung provinces sponsored chemical studies. Crowds flocked to hear chemists lecture and to watch their flashy laboratory demonstrations. Even the future revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, experimented with fire, electricity, and light and tried—in vain—to become a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. In America, Benjamin Franklin abandoned his printing and publishing business for physics, and in England his friend Jane Marcet wrote Mrs Marcet s Conversations in Chemistry for women and working-class men. 

Universite Pierre et Marie Curie Universite Denis Diderot Interfaces, Traitements, Organisation et Dynamique des Systemes (ITODYS) UMR-CNRS 7086 2 Place Jussieu 75252 Paris Cedex 05 France... 

Jean-Michel Saveant Laboratoire d Electrochimie Moleculaire, Unite Mixte de Recherche Universite - CNRS No 7591, Universite de Paris 7 -Denis Diderot, 2 place Jussieu, 75251 Paris, Cedex 05, France... 

Laboratoire d Electrochimie Moleculaire Universite de Paris 7 - Denis Diderot Paris... 

Institut de Topologie et de Dynamique des Systemes de I Universite Paris 7-Denis Diderot, associe au CNRS, U PRES A 7086, 1, rue Guy de la Brosse, 75005 Paris, France... 

Quitte G (2001) Etude des meteorites a Taide du systeme Hf-W Contraintes sur les evenements du systeme solaire primitif. These Universite Denis Diderot (Paris VII)... 

A. Arneodo, F. Argoul, E. Bacry, J. Elezgaray, and J.-F. Muzy, Ondelettes Multifractales et Turbulences de I ADN aux Croissances Cristallines, Diderot Editeur, Arts et Sciences, Paris, (1995). 

M. Touchon, Biais de composition chez les mammiferes. Role de la transcription et de la replication. Ph.D. thesis, University Denis Diderot, Paris Vll, France, 2005. 

Institut Jacques Monod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Universite Denis Diderot Paris 7, et Universite P. et M. Curie Paris 6, 2 place Jussieu, 75251, Paris Cedex 05, France. E-mail prunell ccr.jussieu.fr Department of General and Molecular Genetics, National Shevchenko University,... 

Audouze J., Cass6 M. Carriere J.C. (1998) Conversations sur Tinvisible (Plon, Paris). Audouze J., Musset P. Paty M. (1990) Les Particules et I univers. Nouvelle Ency-clopidie Diderot (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris). 

Diderot even criticized a portrait of himself by Louis-Michel (exhibited at the Salon of 1767) in which he is shown holding a pen to paper looking up from his work. Diderot felt he looked more like a diplomat than a philosopher, since he is not captured deep in thought, but rather, in an artificial way (112). It would have been better if the painter left his subject alone, abandoned to his reveries (113). 

Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Berkeley University of California Press, 1980. 

Universite Paris 7-Denis Diderot, Paris, France... 

Another of the French Stahlists, Gabriel-Fran ois Vend (1723-1775), wrote most of the chemical articles in Diderot s Encyclopedic, thus providing further influential expression of his teacher s views. The last of the French Stahlists of significance, though less well-known today, was the prominent experimenter and writer, Antoine Baumd (1728-1804). 

Chemical systems in those days were little more than assemblies of more or less independent rules and concepts, lacking the interdependent structure of a coherent system of concepts and practice we would today call a theory. The rejection of one part did not necessarily invalidate any of the others. This is certainly the case with the chemistry of Rouelle, whose teaching nonetheless colored the attitudes and writings of his pupils. The two major expressions of Rouelle s influence are found in the writings of Gabriel-Fran ois Venel (1723-1775), the principle contributor of the chemical articles in the Encyclopedie of Denis Diderot (1713-1784), and the textbook and Dictionary of Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-1784). 

Richard N. Schwab, Translators Introduction to d Alemberts Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia of Diderot, (Indianapolis Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), xi. 

It was not only chemistry in the eighteenth century that illustrates the problem of discontinuity and distinct identity. Denis Diderot in the Prospectus for the great EncyclopMe, 1751, described the recalcitrant tendency of nature to resist categorization Nature presents us only with particular things, infinite in number and without firmly established divisions. Everything shades off into everything else by imperceptible nuances. ... 

Guedon, Jean-Claude. The Still Life of a Transition Chemistry in the Encyclopedic of Diderot. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Wisconsin, 1974-... 

The Enlightenment was more than the Academy and the Jardin du roi. If Voltaire was its embodiment in person, then the great Encyclopedia of midcentury was its embodiment in print. If one talks about the encyclopedia today, different people will think of different encyclopedias. There was no such confusion in mid-eighteenth-century France. Everyone knew that the encyclopedia was the work edited by Diderot and d Alembert, the Encyclopedia, or Analytical Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades Gabriel Francois Venel (1723-75), a pupil of Rouelle, wrote the article on chemistry. He told his readers that it was a mistake to seek to reduce chemistry to physics. Chemists had their own independent science, which could penetrate beneath the surface of things and get to their true nature, their inner essence. Physicists, in contrast, dealt only with external and accidental characteristics of bodies. Chemistry was and had to be an autonomous science, practiced by specialists. 

The Encylopedie of Diderot and d Alembert was the manifesto of the French Enlightenment. It was an ideological statement as well as a wonderfully optimistic account of the role of science and its practitioners in the progress of civilization. Progress is one of the key terms in the Enlightenment, and it assumes the perfectibility of humankind and the improvement of material culture. It was at least the incubator of the ideas of democracy and equality, the intellectual precursor of the constructive side of the French Revolution of 1789. 

Diderot, D., Encyclopedic, ou Dictionaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et metiers, par une societe de gens de lettres, Briasson, Paris, 1765. 

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