Linguistic Notes

I figured it was about time to publish some of my language observations, so as to keep to the promise in the title of my blog!

In my French studies in the classroom, I always learned that in French, only the first word of a title is capitalized. However, a bit of research has presented conflicting viewpoints on how titles are capitalized in French. Some say that only proper nouns are capitalized; some say that proper nouns and their descriptors are capitalized; the variations continue. In English, typically each word that is not an article or preposition (of, the, to, etc.) is capitalized. Also, the Oxford Comma is never used in French. It is used based on writer preference in English. In the same sentence in L’Encyclopédie and in the Plan of the French Encyclopedia, the Oxford Comma is omitted in the French print while it is included in the English print.

When I first began to read the Encyclopedia, I had to adjust myself to a couple of things. Other than becoming accustomed to handling three-hundred-year-old original prints, there were differences in the language and format, some of which I expected. The most glaring difference was the way the letter “s” is sometimes printed. Printing presses of the time often printed the lowercase “s” so it looks more like an “f”. This occurs when an “s” appears at the beginning or in the middle of the word, but never at the end of a word. I was baffled; it seemed impossible that “s” used to be “f” in every old French word. I soon deciphered the problem – Mr. Ring informed me of the printing difference.  

A difference in actual language, however, is that the typical “ais,” “ait,” “aient” endings used in some verb tenses were instead “ois,” “oit,” and “oient.” In addition, the first “a” in the word “connaissances” is an “o” in L’Encyclopédie. A brief reading of the Wikipedia article “French Verb Morphology” shed light on this situation: using an “o” where there is now an “a” was simply a part of Old French, “not…abandoned by the Académie Française until 1835.” Specifically, this difference appears frequently in verbs conjugated in the imperfect tense, used to signify actions in the past.

Recueil de Planches, sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Mechaniques, avec leur explication

“Collection of Plates on the Sciences, the Liberal Arts, and the Mechanical Arts, with their explanation”

As mentioned in previous posts, planches are the 11 volumes of plates and drawings that accompany the 17 volumes of text, making for 28 total books that make up L’Encyclopédie. The benefit of the planches is obvious: visual aids help readers understand and conceptualize ideas better. Naturally, not every topic in the text has an accompanying planche drawing – it would be difficult to draw the soul, wouldn’t it? The depictions included are those of material things, especially lots of industrial machinery and the like. As is the case with the text of L’Encyclopédie, you can find a drawing of pretty much anything, though. I flipped open to a page in the middle of the book and found pages and pages of architectural drawings of elaborate buildings and homes. Then, a few pages later, I found drawings of Art Militaire, or the Art of Military. Often included with the drawings are short descriptions of what is being depicted and sometimes, when applicable, instructions for its use. This particular book of planches (the first in the series) has 269 drawings. The first drawings are of agriculture, including everything from drawings of people doing agriculture to drawings of the machines used. The planche concludes with drawings of artificier, or pyrotechnics, included in the military section of this planche. The photo included above is of the table of contents which, as you can see, is quite extensive and detailed.

Including these drawings as I see it, allows descriptions of things in the text to be more complete. The authors of L’Encyclopédie were obviously masters of language, but no matter how well they describe an object or idea, nothing compares to a visual representation.

L'Âme

The entry for "l’âme", the soul, spans an entire twenty-six encyclopedia pages and is surely one of the longest entries in the series. It covers both the human soul and the animal soul, and it starts by raising four questions about the soul:

1.     What is its origin?

2.     What is its nature?

3.     What is its destiny?

4.     What are the beings in which it resides?

The author of this particular article, Claude Yvon, explains that there are a multitude of opinions on the soul and that it has been a highly debated subject throughout history. He explores the prominent ideas and theories, from those of the ancient Greek philosophers and Cicero to Spinoza and Descartes.

On one hand, there are philosophers who see the soul as a “pure quality” that is necessarily destroyed when the being in which it resides dies. Most philosophers, however, view the soul as a “subsistence…[that] is nothing more than a part of a whole.”

The article continues as such for about fifteen pages and then turns specifically to “l’Âme Des Bêtes,” or the animal soul. At this time, the author addresses the fact that of the four initial questions raised about the soul, philosophers have had the most interest in the question of its nature. This part of the article is essentially a discussion and critique of the Cartesian automata model, which is one of Rene Descartes’ most famous philosophies.  According to the article, Descartes was forcibly led to distinguish between the soul and the body. He classified humans as “pure machines,” or automata, which explained objections against the immortality of the soul and the goodness of God, two issues that were very central in Descartes’ work. In the automata model, the human body is viewed as a machine, and the soul is a separate entity that controls emotion and intellect. It is not hard to understand why Descartes reasoned that the body is a machine: our blood flows, our organs work, and our balance stabilizes all on their own. Bodily functions work independently of human control and the human mind. Yvon investigates views of different thinkers on the Cartesian model, and then he offers his own analysis on the theory as a whole and its validity. This evaluation of Descartes is noteworthy, but like many other interesting things I have come across, it is too long to discuss here.

As a student of philosophy, I was naturally drawn to this article because it addresses what is one of the most debated metaphysical questions among philosophers. I was not surprised in the least bit by the article’s length or by its reflective discussion. Treatises on the question of the soul are simultaneously fascinating and frustrating because they seem to give plausible options but never a truly definitive answer. I studied Descartes and the Cartesian model in a western philosophy class I took last fall, so I was particularly interested in the second half of the article.

Descartes is a really interesting guy -- read more about him and his work here.  

“Système figuré des connoissances humaines” - Map of the System of Human Knowledge

By far the coolest thing I’ve found comes next: Diderot and d’Alembert created a detailed map of their system of human knowledge. This map is as much a visual aid for readers as it is a bolstering agent for the validity of their work. It clearly organizes and solidifies their idea of how this “system” of human knowledge works. It also, as I mentioned in my last post, allows the authors to display how they both were inspired by Bacon’s work and expanded upon it. As seen in the Preface as well, Diderot and d’Alembert obviously wanted to substantiate their designs and work – the idea of the containment of such a large amount of information was so revolutionary, they really needed to. The diagram certainly helps them to cover all of their bases by explaining the connections between disciplines. Plus, it’s pretty interesting to look at.

At first glance, a couple of things we already knew are confirmed. First, there are three categories of knowledge, memory (history), reason (philosophy), and imagination (poetry). Second, poetry is much shorter than the other two sections; this difference is even starker when it is laid visually out as such. This map is exciting, though, because their system is now so clear and easy to understand. I found myself bogged-down by the enormous amount of text that Diderot and d’Alembert provided in the preface to explain the system. The map is still complex, sure, but it includes simply the names of disciplines and displays how each is connected to the others. The lengthy explanations in the preface were almost counterproductive in describing the classification of knowledge just because they were so long. The system of human knowledge, I think, is much more accessible to readers thanks to this map.

How would thoughts be organized differently today if the project were done at the present time? 50 years later? What would be added? Taken out? These are all questions that are valid to reflect upon. Diderot and d’Alembert credit Bacon for inspiring the creation of their map, but the two French editors certainly had discretion in terms of what to add or subtract from the map.  The inclusion and exclusion of concepts from this map undoubtedly impacted society. Exploring this assertion alone could be a project in itself!

Another important thing to note is that despite including an elaborate diagram to explain the organization of knowledge, entries were categorized alphabetically, as opposed to being organized by their place on the map. I’m sure this organizational choice was made to make the volumes easier to navigate.

Here’s a picture of the map itself, scanned directly from the Watkinson edition of L’Encyclopédie. Click here to see the map translated into English via the University of Michigan translation project.

The System of Human Knowledge

            Recall from my last post that I examined the authors’ preface but stopped before I arrived at the method Diderot and d’Alembert used to organized the topics to be included in L’Encyclopédie. I wanted to reserve an entire post (and another corresponding post following this one) for this subject because I find it to be very important and quite fascinating.

Knowledge is divided into three categories: “memoire,” “raison,” and “imagination.” The related disciplines within each subtopic are discussed at length in the Preface, and each is summarized in the “Explication détaillée du système des connaissances humaines” (Detailed explanation of the system of human knowledge). As the title indicates, this section explores human knowledge and how its branches are both distinct and interrelated.

Memoire, or memory, is associated with history, which is further divided into religious history, societal history, and natural history. This section is particularly important because in addition to covering the natural sciences, it encompasses man’s “productions in the arts, trades, and manufactures.” As I will discuss later, the explanation of arts and trades is a primary focus for Diderot and d’Alembert in this project.

Raison, or reason, is what the authors call philosophy, and it is split into the science of God, the science of man, and the science of nature. While the authors state that philosophy is synonymous with science, it is not “science” in the same connotation most commonly used today. Rather, it is intended to be thought of as “a science of reflection,” a science of reasoning.

Imagination, which is a cognate (means the same thing in French and in English), refers to poetry, or “that which is fiction”: narrative, dramatic, or parabolic. Diderot and d’Alembert describe poetry as “an imitation of historical beings.” Poetry is also related to the arts of architecture, music, sculpture, and engraving, because the masters of all of these arts “imitate and counterfeit nature.” 

In the section that follows, Diderot and d’Alembert address the fact that their division of the system of human knowledge was inspired by Chancellor Bacon’s work. They explain, however, that the philosophical branch is completely their own, as it was not included in Bacon’s work. According to the authors of L’Encyclopédie, Bacon originally applied his divisions to theology as well but later discarded this idea because it “appeared to be more ingenious than solid” (page li).

Including Bacon’s theories in the Encyclopedia, I believe, serves two main purposes. First, it further qualifies the project by showing that the concept is not completely unprecedented but is still providing an addition to the realm of knowledge. Second, it is not unreasonable to imagine that having the name of a distinguished academic and scientist tied to one’s work would be appealing both to readers and to the esteem of the authors.

Something I’m finding to be puzzling is the length of the last category, poetry (imagination). Even at the time of L’Encyclopédie’s publication, writing and literature and poetry were well-established traditions worldwide. It seems strange to me that this section is not longer because literature is such a vast field; so much could be included.

According to The European Graduate School, while Diderot included the faculties of history and poetry in the work, “the focus of [L’Encyclopédie] was to explicate varying technologies as to make them understood by anyone” (EuropeanGraduate School, Denis Diderot). It was intended to investigate the world of manufacturing, something that had yet to be accomplished. A great deal of this focus on manufacturing and the mechanical arts can be seen in the supplemental plate volumes, in which drawings and engravings are included. This explains why reason and the mechanical arts are the most thoroughly “worked-out” both in the map of human knowledge and are most extensively covered throughout the work. While this rationalization does shed some light on my confusion, I’m not quite satisfied and still do not understand why poetry is so much less extensive than the history and philosophy sections. I hope to find more clarification about this as I continue my research; if anyone knows the answer, let me know!

In my next post, I will explore the map of the system of human knowledge that accompanies the written explanation of the system.

À bientôt,

Christina