The Creation of Encyclopedia :: History Philosophy Philosophers essays

The Creation of Encyclopedia Websters New World vocabulary defines the Enlightenment as an 18th-century European philosophical act characterized by rationalism, an heading toward learning, and a spirit of skepticism and empiricism in social and policy-making thought. During this period of enlightenment, the way the world was viewed changed in a large bit because of the group of philosophers know as the philosophes. During the Enlightenment the greatest philosophical movement of the philosophes was the creation of the Encylopedie ou Dicionnaire raisonne des sciences des arts et des mtiers, or in English the rational dictionary of the sciences, the arts and the crafts, otherwise known as the Encyclopedia. The philosophes encyclopedia is regarded so highly because it brought about a red-hot way of thinking, an enlightened way of thinking. The encyclopedia, according to the Electric Library, dates back to Aristotle and his attempts at compiling large amounts of informatio n. Other encyclopedias were written after Aristotles attempt, including one that was make just a few years before the philosophes Encyclopedia, the Ephraim Chamberss Cyclopaedia. (1) According to the Denis Diderot news report web page, the Ephraim Chamberss Cyclopaedia was the inspiration for the philosophes Encyclopedia. The intention was to create a French translation of the Ephraim Chamberss Cyclopaedia, but when Denis Diderot was hired as editor, the outlook of the Encyclopedia changed. Diderot did non want a mere translation instead he valued an encyclopedia that would enlighten and explain every aspect of existence. (1) Denis Diderot and another editor, dungaree le Rond dAlembert, a noted scientist and mathematician, started working on the Encyclopedia in 1745. Among the many responsibilities of creating such a big compilation of experience, was finding authors to economise the Encyclopedia. To accomplish this task, Diderot and dAlembert employed the services of some of the greatest minds of the time plenty like Voltaire, Turgot, Quesnay, dHolbach, Montesquieu, Buffon, and Rousseau. Robert Morrissey summed up the philosophes efforts by saying that, these great minds (and some lesser ones) collaborated in the goal of assembling and disseminating in clear, accessible prose the fruits of accumulated knowledge and learning. (2) The Encyclopedia itself consists of seventeen volumes with a total of roughly 72,000 terms and 16,500 pages. According to Morrisey, the representative article includes the head word, its part of speech and gender, the category of knowledge to which the article belongs (e.