The Development of Biological Science: Diderot (1713–84)

Abstract

‘Entre Leibniz et Goethe qui l’écrasent, Diderot est peut-être au dix-huitième siècle notre seul génie encyclopédique.’¹ The statement is provocative, as other names with solid claims to the title immediately spring to mind. Nonetheless, the range and flexibility of Diderot’s interests are vast and constantly overflow from one traditional category into another. We have earlier had occasion to look at his dramatic theory; our concern now is with a quite different field, the nature and origins of the physical human being. Yet both relate to that concern for mortal man which is the sheet-anchor of all Diderot’s research and writings. To Diderot infinity is a melancholy and sterile subject, because fundamentally outside the human domain. Le Rêve de d’Alembert fits perfectly into this context of humanist science.