Book: Encyclopédie

Overview
The Encyclopédie, first volume published in 1751, is a monumental Enlightenment reference work directed by Denis Diderot with mathematician Jean le Rond d’Alembert as co-editor. Issued under the full title Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, it set out to collect, organize, and disseminate all available human knowledge, scientific, technical, philosophical, and artistic, for the benefit of a broader reading public. Across 28 volumes completed between 1751 and 1772, it offered more than seventy thousand alphabetized articles and thousands of engraved plates detailing the mechanical arts, making it both a dictionary of concepts and a practical compendium of techniques.

Origins and Aim
The project grew from a proposed French translation of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia but quickly became an original enterprise. Diderot envisioned a work that would not merely transmit information but transform how readers think by grounding knowledge in observation, utility, and reason rather than tradition and authority. D’Alembert’s Preliminary Discourse articulated its intellectual architecture, adapting Francis Bacon’s taxonomy of human faculties, memory, reason, and imagination, into a tree of knowledge that guided both the classification and the cross-referencing of entries.

Organization and Innovations
While alphabetically arranged, the Encyclopédie wove an internal web of cross-references that encouraged readers to move laterally across fields, discovering hidden connections among mechanics, natural philosophy, jurisprudence, and aesthetics. Its most striking innovation was the unprecedented attention to crafts and trades. Teams visited workshops to observe processes firsthand, and the eleven volumes of plates rendered lathes, looms, kilns, typesetting, glassmaking, and countless other operations with clarity and precision. The emphasis on the mechanical arts elevated skilled labor to the same intellectual dignity as abstract speculation, embodying an Enlightenment ideal of useful knowledge.

Contributors and Content
Hundreds of contributors wrote entries of widely varying length and tone, from concise definitions to discursive essays. The Chevalier de Jaucourt alone supplied tens of thousands of articles, especially in later volumes. Rousseau contributed on music and political economy; Voltaire wrote on history, literature, and toleration; d’Alembert handled mathematics and physics; Diderot himself addressed philosophy, aesthetics, and technology. The articles promoted empiricism, religious toleration, freedom of thought, and scrutiny of inherited authority. Even the network of “see also” references could be playful or subversive, nudging readers from orthodox topics to more heterodox reflections.

Censorship and Production Struggles
The work faced sustained opposition from church and state. After early volumes drew fire, the royal privilege was suspended in 1752, restored, and then definitively revoked in 1759 after papal condemnation. D’Alembert withdrew from editorial duties in the late 1750s amid controversy. Diderot continued clandestinely, coordinating contributors, correcting proofs, and shepherding the remaining text volumes to completion by 1765. He later discovered that the printer, Le Breton, had silently excised or softened politically and religiously sensitive passages, a betrayal that underscored the precarious balance between bold ideas and the realities of publication under censorship.

Philosophy and Impact
The Encyclopédie modeled a secular, systematic method for organizing knowledge, privileging demonstration over dogma and utility over mystique. By dignifying crafts, mapping the sciences, and questioning unfounded authority, it helped erode intellectual foundations of the ancien régime while equipping readers with a new vocabulary for political economy, natural rights, and scientific inquiry. Its subscribers included nobles, professionals, and urban artisans, ensuring a wide and influential readership. Beyond its immediate controversies, the work reshaped the genre of the reference book, inspired later encyclopedic projects, and stands as a defining achievement of the Enlightenment’s ambition to render knowledge public, critical, and transformative.