Editing Denis Diderot (section)

===''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>