Science and the Arts in France: The Limitations of an Encyclopedic Ideology

S c ie n c e a n d th e A r ts in F r a n c e : T h e L im ita tio n s o f a n E n c y c lo p e d ic ihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Id e o lo g y R O G E R H A H N It has become the standard practice among d ix -h u itie m is te s to extol the E n c y c lo p e d ic as a great monument to the Enlightenment, the ma­ jor collective effort of the age which furnishes a concrete embodiment to a glorious ideology. Cochin's dramatic frontispiece commemorates the illumination of the modern Muses by the rays of light emanating from Truth, and successively drawing attention to Reason, Philoso­ phy, Science, and the Arts, while Theology, on her knees, now seeks elsewhere for inspiration.1 The allegory, which some have inter­ preted as masonic in inspiration,2 represents the views of a much larger group of thinkers whose attitudes pervade the era. The E n c y ­ c lo p e d ic has rightly become the symbol for the Enlightenment's yearn­ ing for secular learning, for its criticism of established tradition, and for the diffusion of rational knowledge, each ultimately bringing about a transformation of eighteenth-century culture and, in Kant's memorable language, giving mankind the "courage to make use of one's own understanding." We know, too, that the effort to summarize all useful knowledge and to make it available to a wide-ranging public was masterminded by two of the age's most prominent figures: Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, the ascetic mathematician, equally at home with the rhetoric of salons 77 78 / HAHNihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA and the politics at Court, a master at academic speech-making and yet clever in wielding the sarcastic quip; and Denis Diderot, the am­ bitious provincial artisan's son whose quickness, literary imagina­ tion, artistic flair, and deep human sensibility, coupled with an un­ compromising sense of independence, pitted him from the outset against the Establishment. In the prospectus of the RQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA E n c y c lo p e d ic , in its preliminary discourse, in the explanation of the system of human knowledge, and in hundreds of articles d'Alembert and Diderot of­ fered the elements of an ideology for enlightenment and provided examples of its possibilities for the reform of mankind. Without wishing to cast any doubt on these accomplishments or on their historic significance, I want to take exception to the standard views often presented about the initial source for this encyclopedic ideology, and about the origins of the encyclopedic project itself. This viewpoint will also force us to raise some questions about the success of the E n c y c lo p e d ie if measured against the intent which originally guided its inception. There is need for such an examination because the praise and adulation heaped on the mammoth enterprise have been so lavish as often to becloud our historic insight. In symbolizing the age, the E n c y c lo p e d ie has been overloaded with the ascription of values that were not necessarily part of the intent of the original or­ ganizers; and the two editors' personal stands have been uncritically transferred to the work as a whole without taking into account an independent source for the encyclopedic ideal. I am particularly concerned by the notion that the E n c y c lo p e d ie , its editors, authors, and publishers were consciously building a m a c h in e d e g u e r r e against organized religion and state authority. That view, in part a reflection of the serious predicament for the editors following the publication of the first volumes, and in part publicized for com­ mercial reasons, was given considerable currency by the overt hostil­ ity of established religious authority and the attendant censorship. The anti-philosophic views expressed later by Jacobins reinforced this belief, thereby lending further support to the view that ency­ clopedists were irreverent plotters against Church...