A Brill Calendar: July 1

Few works of scientific learning can claim to have changed the world.

Perhaps there is just one: ‘Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers’. Its first volume came off the press on July 1 1751.

The gigantic effort was brought to completion in 1780, resulting in 35 folio tomes. If the year 1745 can be seen as the start of the project – when publisher André le Breton fancied a French version of Ephraim Chambers’s ‘Cyclopaedia’ (1728) by interesting his friend Denis Diderot (Langres October 5 1713 – Paris July 30 1772) in a translation – the enterprise took 35 years, a little less than half the life-span of the erudite Diderot, Director & Editor-in-chief as well as heart & soul of this flagship of Enlightenment.

Praising the ‘Encyclopédie’ amounts to carrying coals to Newcastle. Athens and owls come to mind as well. It is seldom that rational inquiry into the professions, arts and sciences displayed its strength so impressively. And after all the revolutions in physics and mathematics of the 17th century, such a comprehensive documentation took so little time, all things considered.

In panegyrics on this work, little mention is made of the unparalleled economical experiment with all kinds of risk, (including those of censorship, jail and bankruptcy) that the authors of the work juggled with. It is important to remember that this immensely successful printing & publishing effort was also a business supposed to generate a profit and aiming at a world-wide readership. When the ‘Encyclopédie’ was completed, Denis Diderot had no capital on his name.