ENCYCLOPÆDIA GRICEIANA

ENCYCLOPÆDIA GRICEIANA -- Encyclopædia Griceiana -- Encyclopedia, in , Encyclopédie; full English title: Encyclopedia, or a Descriptive Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Trades. Launched in 1747 by the Parisian publisher Le Breton, who had secured d’Alembert’s and Diderot’s editorship, the Encyclopedia was gradually released from 1751 to 1772, despite a temporary revocation of its royal privilege. Comprising seventeen folio volumes of 17,818 articles and eleven folio volumes of 2,885 plates, the work required a staff of 272 contributors, writers, and engravers. It incorporated the accumulated knowledge and rationalist, secularist views of the  Enlightenment and prescribed economic, social, and political reforms. Enormously successful, the work was reprinted with revisions five times before 1789. Contributions were made by the philosophes Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, d’Holbach, Naigeon, and Saint-Lambert; the writers Duclos and Marmontel; the theologians Morellet and Malet; enlightened clerics, e.g. Raynal; explorers, e.g. La Condamine; natural scientists, e.g. Daubenton; physicians, e.g. Bouillet; the economists Turgot and Quesnay; engineers, e.g. Perronet; horologists, e.g. Berthoud; and scores of other experts. “The purpose of an Encyclopedia,” wrote Diderot, “is to collect the knowledge dispersed on the surface of the earth, and to unfold its general system” “Encyclopedia,” Vol. 5, 1755. The Encyclopedia offered the educated reader a comprehensive, systematic, and descriptive repository of contemporary liberal and mechanical arts. D’Alembert and Diderot developed a sensationalist epistemology “Preliminary Discourse” under the influence of Locke and Condillac. They compiled and rationally classified existing knowledge according to the noetic process memory, imagination, and reason. Based on the assumption of the unity of theory and praxis, their approach was positivistic and utilitarian. The Encyclopedists vindicated experimental reason and the rule of nature, fostered the practice of criticism, and stimulated the development of new sciences. In religious matters, they cultivated ambiguity to escape censorship. Whereas most contributors held either conciliatory or orthodox positions, d’Alembert, Diderot, and d’Holbach barely concealed their naturalistic and atheistic opinions. Their radicalism was pervasive. Supernaturalism, obscurantism, and fanaticism were among the Encyclopedists’ favorite targets. They identified religion with superstition and theology with black magic; asserted the superiority of natural morality over theological ethics; demanded religious toleration; and championed human rights. They innovatively retraced the historical conditions of the development of modern philosophy. They furthermore pioneered ideas on trade and industry and anticipated the relevance of historiography, sociology, economics, and linguistics. As the most ambitious and expansive reference work of its time, the Encyclopedia crystallized the confidence of the eighteenth-century bourgeoisie in the capacity of reason to dispel the shadows of ignorance and improve society.