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Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text, possible missing pages, missing text and other issues beyond our control. ... Read more

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Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot expresses the hopes, dogmas, assumptions, and prejudices that have come to characterize the French Enlightenment. In this preface to the Encyclopedia, d'Alembert traces the history of intellectual progress from the Renaissance to 1751. Including a revision of Diderot's Prospectus and a list of contributors to the Encyclopedia, this edition, elegantly translated and introduced by Professor Richard Schwab, is one of the great works of the Enlightenment and an outstanding introduction to the philosophes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Reason's raison d'etre: The Discourse
The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert, ancestor of all the others, was an attempt to arrange and systematize the knowledge developed in a scattered and fragmentary manner, on the ruins of the scholastic philosophy and the medieval encyclopedism.

D'Alembert wrote a preliminary discourse as justification of the work plan. The Encyclopedia suggested a genetic order ofthe knowledge, decided on the model of the Locke's empiricism, andfollowed a classification of the sciences, founded on the Bacon's Knowledge Tree (Memory/History, Reason/Philosophy and Imagination/Poetry).

The work was also a "reasoned dictionary of sciences, arts and trades" as it explained the general principles of every science and arts, both liberal and mechanics, and their most remarkable details.

The part of the Discourse that perhaps the reader will appreciate more, concerns the history of the progress of human thought: here the science is considered in the prospect of the modern civilization's making and triumph. Of particulat interest is the passage where D'Alembert honours Bacon and Descartes as forerunners of Enlightenment's Age and prophets ofthe intellectual freedom.

The Encyclopedia offered to the middle class a new cultural model, of laical approach, rationally determined, bound to experience and turned to real life. The Enlightenment's faith in reason/rationality and progress fed on revolutionary conquests of rising middle class ( even Marx and Engels had words of admiration for the bourgeois enterprise).

Who wouldn't want a book recommended by Friederich the Great
The preliminary discourses are a surprisingly entertaining description of D'Alembert's ideas about knowledge and learning.This introduction to the great Encyclopedia of Diderot is an important work of the Enlightenment initself. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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This Book Is In French. Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text. ... Read more

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This Book Is In French. ... Read more

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This Book Is In French. ... Read more

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This Book Is In French. ... Read more

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This Book Is In German. ... Read more

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This Book Is In French. ... Read more

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This Book Is In English. ... Read more

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This Book Is In French. ... Read more

Product Description
This Book Is In French. Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text. ... Read more

Product Description
This Book Is In French. ... Read more

Product Description
This Book Is In French. ... Read more

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This book examines the origins of d'Alembert's philosophical ideas, and shows how abstract concepts such as force and mass were clarified and assimilated into the structure of classical mechanics. But more than this, the book is a study of the relations between science and philosophy during the Enlightenment, as reflected in the life and work of Jean d'Alembert, one of that period's most prominent spokesmen. By showing the interactions of one philosophe with the scientific, social and philosophical communities of the eighteenth century, Professor Hankins reveals how Enlightenment philosophy borrowed heavily from the methods and goals of science. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Physique de salon"
This book furnishes us with an interesting opportunity to highlight an important instance of the fallacy of putting the cart before the horse.

Perhaps the cleanest illustration is provided by a discussion of Newton's "marvellous" (p. 183) proof of the law of equal areas. In this "marvellous" proof, "the gravitational force is assumed to consist of [discrete] periodic blows driving the planet towards the sun" (p. 183). Hankins rationalises this assumption as follows: "If Newton believed in the existence of perfectly hard bodies (and he apparently did), it is understandable why he made forces proportional to finite changes in momentum" (p. 183; thus the assumption in the proof of the law of equal areas would be true if gravity was caused by an 'aether' of such bodies).

I say that Hankins gets things entirely backwards when he tries to rationalise "marvellous proofs" in terms of philosophical or metaphysical doctrines (such as the existence of perfectly hard bodies). The arrow of justification goes in the opposite direction: we adhere to whatever philosophical or metaphysical principles that will enable us to produce "marvellous proofs."

To see that a "marvellous proof" is the horse and metaphysics the cart in the case of d'Alembert, one need only understand the character of the "physique de salon" (p. 97) in which he was engaged.

"The salons, the opera, the academies, and the daily round of conversations with his friends were what sustained his interest. ... many letters testify to his ability to charm an audience. [E.g.:] '[D'Alembert's conversation] offers all that can instruct and refresh the mind. He lends himself with as much ease and willingness to whatever topic is most pleasing and brings to it his good-nature and naiveté with an almost inexhaustible source of ideas, anecdotes and curious recollections. ...' The importance of such an endowment should not be underestimated in a society where the bon mot and the witty epigram were frequently the measure on one's worth." (pp. 15-16)

If you want to "charm an audience" in this way, the unit of progress is a "bon mot," i.e., a "marvellous proof." Shifting metaphysical assumptions is not a problem; it merely reflects your ability to "lend yourself to whatever topic is most pleasing."

But even with this evidence in front of his eyes, poor old Hankins clings to the notion that these Parisian "philosophes" must share a philosophical core. It is amusing to watch Hankins try to get all these horses to follow his cart. For instance we read:

"d'Alembert fought consistently to further the cause of philosophie. The battle was real enough and so was d'Alembert's vigorous involvement in it, but the cause for which the philosophes expended so much energy is not so easy to describe. The attempt to define a philosophe or state his creed usually leads first to embarrassment and then to paradox. ... Unfortunately the philosophes were in frequent disagreement, changed their minds, and ... were not at all clear about some of the important ideas they professed. As a result, we can find philosophes who argued both sides of almost any question, and the paradoxes can be multiplied without limit." (pp. 12-13)

As we have seen, the "embarrassment" and alleged "paradoxes" is merely the result of looking for the common denominator in the wrong sphere---that of philosophical premises rather than that of "marvellous proofs."

To see the same point demonstrated again, consider, if you like, how d'Alembert first got involved in this business of "fermentation of minds" (p. 70), as he himself called it.

In his youth, d'Alembert became friends with Diderot, Condillac and Rousseau "in the bohemian café society of Paris" (p. 66). "One wonders how this group of four relatively unknown intellectuals ever came together in a city the size of Paris; or what critical combination of talents carried them all to fame. Again one searches in vain for a common denominator, either social, political, or intellectual, that would obviously have united them in a common cause. The Abbé Condillac, not devout, but certainly not anti-religious, was a philosopher in the traditional sense. He read his predecessors with care and exponded his ideas on the theory of knowledge, scientific method, etc., in well-organized, logical treatises, every one bearing his name on the title page. Diderot usually published clandestinely, saw his books condemned, visited the dungeon at Vincennes, and continued to produce books full of philosophical insight, vigorous prose, dangerous propaganda, and general disorder. Rousseau was unique. A Genevan vagabond, who was probably attracted to Diderot and d'Alembert by a common interest in music, he proved to have the greatest fund of sensibilité and the best romantic prose of any Enlightenment author. These were the men who turned d'Alembert's head to philosophy." (p. 27)

I say: "search in vain" no more. It was their appreciation of "marvellous proofs" that united "this little philosophical band" (p. 27). ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more