Mechanique, Pl. I

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About Mechanique, Pl. I

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) L’Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Paris: 1751-1772. Copperplate engravings. Discoloration throughout the top quarter of the plate. The language of natural law, inherent freedoms, self-determination, which seeped so deeply into the American grain, was the language of the Enlightenment. Denis Diderot (1713-1784) one of the most active and famous leaders from the Enlightenment, was born in the eastern French city of Langres in 1713. Diderot grew up hitting three of the great earmarks of someone destined for greatness: intelligence, rebellion and risk. In 1732, he earned a Master of Arts degree in philosophy from the Lycée Louis le Grand, yet he defied his father by turning away the respectable calling of law and medicine to instead live a vagabond existence as a bookseller in Paris. In 1743, Diderot further alienated his father by marrying beneath his class to Antoinette Champion. Several years later, after serving a 100 days sentence as a crown prisoner in the fortress of Vincennes, due to the regime of Louis XV perceiving his philosophical writings as too radical, he began working on the most difficult and important project of his life: the construction of L’Encyclopédie. Diderot intended for L’Encyclopédie "to assemble the knowledge scattered over the surface of the Earth; to explain its general plan to men with whom we live and to transmit it to the men who come after us; in order that the labors of centuries past may not be in vain during the centuries to come; that our descendants, by becoming better instructed, may as a consequence be more virtuous and happier, and that we may not die without having deserved well of the human race.” After his release from prison in 1749, Diderot began to collect the works of all the active writers, all the new ideas, all the new knowledge that was beginning to flourish during the Enlightenment. Contributors included the most prominent philosophers: Voltaire,