Denis+Diderot

Jake and David

Denis Diderot




 * Born on October 5, 1713; Died on July 31, 1784 at age 70
 * Co-founder, chief editor, and contributor for the Encyclopédie
 * He wrote lots of articles talking about gambling, morality rates, and the inoculation against smallpox for the Encyclopédie
 * He rejected the Idea of Progress, an idea that said that advancements in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in our society. Basically it says that people can become happier when they improve their quality of life through modernization and science, and technology.
 * All of his philosophy on the study of probabilities and experiments
 * He speculated on free will and held a completely materialistic view of the universe
 * He believed that all human behavior is determined by heredity
 * He was born to a family noted for their church connections but became an atheist later in life
 * The Encyclopedia implicitly denied that religious teaching was a valid source of factual information about the world, and thus denied any intellectual authority to the Bible or the Church.

Sources :

 "Dennis Diderot." // Wikipedia //. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Mar. 2012. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. .

 "Idea of Progress." // Wikipedia //. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Mar. 2012. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. .

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">"Denis Diderot (1713-1784)." //www.humanism.org.uk//. British Humanist Association. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <http://www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/enlightenment/denis-diderot>.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">"Diderot The Encyclopedist." //Revolutionary French Thinkers//. 124-125. Print.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">BrainyQuote //. Xplore. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/denis_diderot.html>.


 * Gamble Endnotes:**

The "Encycolpedia" for which Diderot was so largely responsible was an enormous contribution to the gathering of knowledge up to that time. Voltaire and Montesquieu were also major contributors. However, this knowledge was presented from an explicitly atheistic and materialistic viewpoint, and so the influence which the Encyclopedia had also carried forth this materialistic influence, denying as it did, the idea that religious teaching was a valid source of information about the world. It also helped establish and continue French and France as the leading intellectual nation of the day.

Diderot's challenging of the idea of inevitable progress was a new one, one which is a challenge to us today when the idea of "evolution" has become so ingrained as an assumption in so many areas of life, the idea that man, thought, practice, etc always move forward. This is what Diderot challenged.