Editing Denis Diderot (section)

== Early works ==
Diderot's earliest works included a translation of [[Temple Stanyan]]'s ''History of Greece'' (1743). In 1745, he published a translation of [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Shaftesbury]]'s ''Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit'', to which he had added his own "reflections".<ref name=AoV />{{rp|625}} With two colleagues, [[François-Vincent Toussaint]] and [[Marc-Antoine Eidous]], he produced a translation of [[Robert James (physician)|Robert James]]'s ''Medicinal Dictionary'' (1746–1748).<ref>Mark Twain, "A Majestic Literary Fossil", originally from ''Harper's New Monthly Magazine'', vol. 80, issue 477, pp. 439–444, February 1890. [http://www.harpers.org/AMajesticLiteraryFossil.html Online] at ''Harper's'' site. Accessed 24 September 2006.</ref>

===''Philosophical Thoughts''===
{{main|Philosophical Thoughts}}
In 1746, Diderot wrote his first original work: the ''[[Philosophical Thoughts]]'' (''Pensées philosophiques'').<ref name="Furbank 1992 27">{{cite book|title=Diderot: A Critical Biography|author=P.N. Furbank|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|page=27|year=1992}}</ref><ref>Bryan Magee. The Story of Philosophy. DK Publishing, Inc., New York: 1998. p. 124</ref> In this book, Diderot argued for a reconciliation of reason with feeling so as to establish harmony. According to Diderot, without feeling there is a detrimental effect on virtue, and no possibility of creating sublime work. However, since feeling without discipline can be destructive, reason is necessary to control feeling.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|625}}

At the time Diderot wrote this book he was a deist. Hence there is a defense of [[deism]] in this book, and some arguments against atheism.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|625}} The book also contains criticism of Christianity.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|626}}

===''The Skeptic's Walk''===
{{main|The Skeptic's Walk}}
In 1747, Diderot wrote ''The Skeptic's Walk'' (''Promenade du sceptique'')<ref name="Fellows 1977 41">{{cite book|title=Diderot|author=Otis Fellows|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|page=41|year=1977}}</ref> in which a [[deist]], an [[atheist]], and a [[pantheist]] have a dialogue on the nature of divinity. The deist gives the [[Teleological argument|argument from design]]. The atheist says that the universe is better explained by physics, chemistry, matter, and motion. The pantheist says that the cosmic unity of mind and matter, which are co-eternal and comprise the universe, is God. This work remained unpublished until 1830. Accounts differ as to why. It was either because the local police, warned by the priests of another attack on Christianity, seized the manuscript, or because the authorities forced Diderot to give an undertaking that he would not publish this work.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|626}}

===''The Indiscreet Jewels''===
{{main|The Indiscreet Jewels}}
In 1748, Diderot needed to raise money on short notice. His wife had borne him a child, and his mistress [[Madeleine de Puisieux]] was making financial demands of him. At this time, Diderot had told his mistress that writing a novel was a trivial task, whereupon she challenged him to write one. As a result, Diderot produced ''[[The Indiscreet Jewels]]'' (''Les bijoux indiscrets''). The book is about the magical ring of a Sultan that induces any woman's "discreet jewels"<ref name="Furbank 1992 44">{{cite book|title=Diderot: A Critical Biography|author=P.N. Furbank|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|page=44|year=1992}}</ref><!--START OF NOTE-->{{refn|group=note|''Bijou'' is a slang word meaning the vagina.<ref name="Furbank 1992 44"/>  <!--END OF NOTE-->}} to confess their sexual experiences when the ring is pointed at them.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|626–627}} In all, the ring is pointed at thirty different women in the book—usually at a dinner or a social meeting—with the Sultan typically being visible to the woman.<ref name="RousseauPorter1990"/><ref name=AoV />{{rp|627}} However, since the ring has the additional property of making its owner invisible when required, a few of the sexual experiences recounted are through direct observation with the Sultan making himself invisible and placing his person in the unsuspecting woman's boudoir.<ref name="RousseauPorter1990">{{cite book|last=Rodin Pucci|first=Suzanne|editor1=George Sebastian Rousseau|editor-link1=George Rousseau|editor2=Roy Porter|editor-link2=Roy Porter|title=Exoticism in the Enlightenment|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TNNRAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA156|access-date=12 December 2016|year=1990|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0719026775|page=156|chapter=The discreet charms of the exotic: fictions of the harem in eighteenth-century France}}</ref>

Besides the bawdiness, there are several digressions into philosophy, music, and literature in the book. In one such philosophical digression, the Sultan has a dream in which he sees a child named "Experiment" growing bigger and stronger till the child demolishes an ancient temple named "Hypothesis". The book proved to be lucrative for Diderot even though it could only be sold clandestinely. It is Diderot's most published work.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|627}}

The book is believed to draw upon the 1742 [[libertine novel]] [[The Sofa: A Moral Tale|''Le Sopha'']] by [[Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon]] (Crébillon fils).<ref name=AoV />{{rp|627}}

===Scientific work===
Diderot kept writing on science in a desultory way all his life. The scientific work of which he was most proud was ''Memoires sur differents sujets de mathematique'' (1748). This work contains original ideas on [[acoustics]], tension, [[air resistance]], and "a project for a new organ" that could be played by all. Some of Diderot's scientific works were applauded by contemporary publications of his time such as ''The Gentleman's Magazine'', the ''Journal des savants''; and the Jesuit publication ''Journal de Trevoux,'' which invited more such work: "on the part of a man as clever and able as M. Diderot seems to be, of whom we should also observe that his style is as elegant, trenchant, and unaffected as it is lively and ingenious."<ref name=AoV />{{rp|627}}

On the unity of nature Diderot wrote, "Without the idea of the whole, philosophy is no more," and, "Everything changes; everything passes; nothing remains but the whole." He wrote of the temporal nature of molecules, and rejected ''[[wikt:emboîtement|emboîtement]]'', the view that organisms are pre-formed in an infinite regression of non-changing germs. He saw minerals and species as part of a spectrum, and he was fascinated with [[hermaphroditism]]. His answer to the universal attraction in [[Corpuscularianism|corpuscular]] physics models was universal elasticity. His view of nature's flexibility foreshadows the discovery of [[evolution]], but it is not [[Darwinistic]] in a strict sense.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gillispie |first=Charles Coulston |author-link=Charles Coulston Gillispie |title=The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas |url=https://archive.org/details/edgeofobjectivit00char/page/190 |url-access=registration |year=1960 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=0691023506 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/edgeofobjectivit00char/page/190 190–191] }}</ref>

===''Letter on the Blind''===
Diderot's celebrated ''[[Letter on the Blind]]'' (''Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient'') (1749) introduced him to the world as an original thinker.{{sfn|Morley|1911}} The subject is a discussion of the relation between reasoning and the [[knowledge]] acquired through perception (the [[sense|five senses]]). The title of his book also evoked some ironic doubt about who exactly were "the blind" under discussion. In the essay, blind English mathematician [[Nicholas Saunderson]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stephens |first1=Mitchell |title=Imagine there's no heaven: how atheism helped create the modern world |date=2014 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=978-1137002600 |oclc=852658386 |pages=123–124 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WN-dAgAAQBAJ&q=9781137002600&pg=PA123 |access-date=21 June 2014}}</ref> argues that, since knowledge derives from the senses, mathematics is the only form of knowledge that both he and a sighted person can agree on. It is suggested that the blind could be taught to read through their sense of touch. (A later essay, ''Lettre sur les sourds et muets'', considered the case of a similar deprivation in the [[deaf]] and [[speech disorder|mute]].) According to [[Jonathan Israel]], what makes the ''Lettre sur les aveugles'' so remarkable, however, is its distinct, if undeveloped, presentation of the theory of [[Genetic variability|variation]] and [[natural selection]].<ref>Diderot's contemporary, also a Frenchman, [[Pierre Louis Maupertuis]]—who in 1745 was named Head of the Prussian Academy of Science under [[Frederic the Great]]—was developing similar ideas. These proto-evolutionary theories were by no means as thought out and systematic as those of [[Charles Darwin]] a hundred years later.</ref>

<blockquote>This powerful essay, for which [[La Mettrie]] expressed warm appreciation in 1751, revolves around a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, rejects the arguments of a [[Deism|deist]] clergyman who endeavours to win him around to a belief in a [[Divine Providence|providential]] God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a neo-[[Spinoza|Spinozist]] [[Naturalism (philosophy)|Naturalist]] and [[fatalist]], using a sophisticated notion of the [[Spontaneous generation|self-generation]] and natural evolution of species without creation or supernatural intervention. The notion of [[Materialism|"thinking matter"]] is upheld and the "[[argument from design]]" discarded (following La Mettrie) as hollow and unconvincing.

The work appeared anonymously in Paris in June 1749, and was vigorously suppressed by the authorities. Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author, had his manuscripts confiscated, and he was imprisoned for some months, under a ''[[lettre de cachet]]'', on the outskirts of Paris, in the dungeons at [[Vincennes]] where he was visited almost daily by [[Rousseau]], at the time his closest and most assiduous ally.<ref>Jonathan I. Israel, ''Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750.'' ([[Oxford University Press]]. 2001, 2002), p. 710</ref></blockquote>

[[Voltaire]] wrote an enthusiastic letter to Diderot commending the ''Lettre'' and stating that he had held Diderot in high regard for a long time, to which Diderot sent a warm response. Soon after this, Diderot was arrested.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|629–630}}

Science historian [[Conway Zirkle]] has written that Diderot was an [[History of evolutionary thought|early evolutionary thinker]] and noted that his passage that described [[natural selection]] was "so clear and accurate that it almost seems that we would be forced to accept his conclusions as a logical necessity even in the absence of the evidence collected since his time."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Zirkle |first=Conway |author-link=Conway Zirkle |date=25 April 1941 |title=Natural Selection before the 'Origin of Species' |journal=[[Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society]] |location=Philadelphia, PA |publisher=[[American Philosophical Society]] |volume=84 |issue=1 |pages=71–123 |jstor=984852 |issn=0003-049X}}</ref>