{"id":33,"date":"2010-11-22T10:02:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-22T15:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/exhibits\/"},"modified":"2010-11-22T10:02:35","modified_gmt":"2010-11-22T15:02:35","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/exhibits\/diderots-encyclopedia-exhibit-preview\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to the Encyclop\u00e9die"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Title page<\/p><\/div>\n

In the exhibit, MIT\u2019s copy of the first volume of text of the folio edition was opened to its frontispiece and title page. The association of four Parisian publishers responsible for printing the work, listed near the bottom of the title page, delivered the unbound sheets of the first volume in 1751. Subscribers were initially charged 280 livres, but over the years, as the work expanded in size, the cost rose to a total of 980 livres, and by the end of the 1770s, copies of this first folio edition of text and plates sold for 1200 to 1500 livres. (A livre was equal to one day\u2019s wages for a manual laborer in eighteenth-century France.) MIT\u2019s copy of the first folio edition entered its collection in 1951, when the Institute shrewdly purchased the 17 volumes of text, 11 volumes of plates, and 5 supplemental volumes for five dollars per volume!<\/p>\n

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Frontispiece<\/p><\/div>\n

The frontispiece to the Encyclop\u00e9die<\/em> is an allegorical composition in which female figures representing Reason and Philosophy unveil the figure of Truth, positioned in the upper center of the composition. A radiant light emanates from her, while to the left Imagination prepares to adorn her with a garland of flowers. Other allegorical figures representing the arts, sciences and trades look on or display instruments or texts specific to their fields. Interestingly, the frontispiece was not designed and engraved until 1772, well after the publication of the seventeen text volumes had concluded in 1765 and Diderot had turned his attention to the plates.<\/p>\n

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Tree of Knowledge<\/p><\/div>\n

The \u201cSystem of Human Understanding,\u201d often referred to as the \u201cTree of Knowledge,\u201d also appeared in the first volume of the work. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Englishman John Locke had argued that the human mind at birth was a blank slate; he thought that we came to understand ourselves and the world around us via the intake of sensory perceptions which the mind then organized into rational categories. Based on this sensationalist psychology, Diderot and d\u2019Alembert argued in the \u201cPreliminary Discourse\u201d to the Encyclop\u00e9die<\/em> that human knowledge consisted of three branches:<\/p>\n