Some papers on Diderot's Encyclopedia

자료:

1. Heritage of Technology Education: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v6n1/pdf/pannabecker.pdf
2. Diderot and Encyclopedic Order: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000617/061777eb.pdf

자료 1: Diderot, the Mechanical Arts, and the Encyclopédie: In Search of the Heritage of Technology Education

• 지은이: John Pannabecker, Professor in the Technology Department, McPherson College, McPherson, KS.
• 출처: Journal of Technology Education, Vol. 6 No. 1, Fall 1994

(... 전략) This paper contributes to a history of technology education by focusing on one of the most ambitious attempts in early modern history to describe technological knowledge — Diderot's Encyclopédie (Diderot & d'Alembert, 1751-1772).[1] In Diderot's time, the idea of representing technological topics was not new, but Diderot's Encyclopédie was distinctive in several ways.[2] (....)

Purpose

The main purpose of this paper is to show what Diderot considered critical in systematizing and representing the mechanical arts in two-dimensional form. In so doing, he left an important heritage for our understanding of the development of technology, especially the ways it has been organized and represented for the purposes of dissemination. It is in examining such historical

precedents that technology educators today can gain a better understanding of how the historical “packaging” of technology has influenced our own educational “delivery systems.”

Some attempt will be made to show parallels between Diderot's concerns, problems, and frustrations and those faced by technology educators today. But the central focus remains Diderot's approach to representing the mechanical arts. (......)

The first section examines the historical context in which Diderot and his writers produced the Encyclopédie. The main section describes Diderot's work and four issues that are pertinent to the heritage of technology education: (a) conceptual framework; (b) systematic method of analysis and description; (c) theory and practice; and (d) technology and society.

Background

In the late 1740s to the 1760s, Denis Diderot (1713-1784) worked tirelessly to conceptualize and represent knowledge collected from craft communities, private and state industry, and existing documents to create a systematic understanding of the mechanical arts. But Diderot also emphasized the integration of the mechanical arts with the liberal arts and sciences. Darnton, a leading historian of French culture, noted that it was the mechanical arts that “constituted the most extensive and original part of the Encyclopédie itself” (1984, p. 198). (.....)

The method of describing each mechanical art grew out of Diderot's concept of a science, which he viewed as “a system of rules or facts relative to a certain object” (“Prospectus,” p. xxxvij). In order to organize knowledge of the mechanical arts, Diderot outlined in the “Prospectus” (p. xxxix) a framework which was simple in appearance and presumably applicable to all the mechanical arts.

Here is the method we have followed for each art and craft. We treated the following questions:

1. The materials and the places where they are found, the manner in which they are prepared, their good and bad qualities, the different kinds available, the required processing before and during their utilization.

2. The main products that are made with them and how this is done.

3. We have supplied the names, descriptions, and diagrams of tools and machines, with their parts when taken apart and assembled; the section of certain molds and other instruments if it is appropriate to know about the interior design, their contours, etc.

4. We have explained and represented the workmanship and the principal operations in one or several plates where sometimes only the hands of the craftsman can be seen and sometimes the entire craftsman in action, working at the most important task in his art or trade.

5. We have collected and defined in the most accurate way possible the terms that are peculiar to a given art or trade. (Gendzier, 1967, pp. 39-40)

( ..... ) Diderot claimed that he and his contributors visited the shops, questioned the artisans and took dictations from them, developed their thoughts, and organized terms and facts into tables (p. xxxix). (See Proust, 1967, however, for a realistic evaluation of the extent to which Diderot immersed himself in the shops, which was probably quite minimal, pp. 192-195).

Apparently as a result of these visits, Diderot concluded that “most of those who perform the mechanical Arts have taken them up by necessity, & work only by instinct. We can hardly find one dozen out of a thousand capable of explaining clearly the instruments they use and the products they make” (“Prospectus,” p. xxxix). His experiences led him to express his editorial role as “the painful and delicate function of helping to give birth to their minds [or spirits], obstetrix animorum” (“Prospectus,” p. xxxix).

Thus Diderot sought to find exceptional people who could both understand thoroughly each art and describe it. According to him, one writer did not seem to know enough about his subject matter; another only grazed the surface, treating the material more as a man of letters than as an artisan; and a third produced a richer text which was more the work of an artisan, but which was too short, with little detail on machines and operations (“Prospectus,” p. xxxix). But he also acknowledged that space limitations imposed by his publication necessitated limiting the extent of detail (“Prospectus,” p. xl). ...........