Word: diderot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Europe's Enlightenment was in full vigor; Denis Diderot's French Encyclopedic had just come out, and Britain was ripe for an up-to-date compendium of all knowledge. The Britannica's founders were Colin Macfarquhar, a small-business man of Edinburgh, and Andrew Bell, an engraver of dog collars, who stood 4½ ft. tall, and had a nose so embarrassingly big that he used to mock his mockers with an even larger one of papier-mache. Smellie, their 28-year-old choice for editor, spieled long Latin poems when drunk, and was celebrated...
...cure for contemporary troubles would therefore hardly appear to lie in an attempt to revivify the Bible or reanimate the Christian revelation. The Christian heritage proved incapable of answering Bacon and Diderot. And while these men failed to provide a lasting alternative, they defined the work of any future religion. No future synthesis can simply ignore the problems raised by empirical science or temporal Utopianism. It must incorporate these elements into a new vision, making its Revelation relevant to contemporary dilemmas...
...cure for contemporary troubles would therefore hardly appear to lie in an attempt to revivify the Bible or reanimate the Christian revelation. The Christian heritage proved incapable of answering Bacon and Diderot. And while these men failed to provide a lasting alternative, they defined the work of any future religion. No future synthesis can simply ignore the problems raised by empirical science or temporal Utopianism. It must incorporate these elements into a new vision, making its Revelation relevant to contemporary dilemmas...
Previous to joining the University staff in 1953, Geary taught at the University of Maine and at Columbia. He has edited a critical edition of one of the recently-discovered Diderot manuscripts...
...little to do with their greatness. The academy's mythical "41st chair," reserved by legend for those who never made the grade, has been occupied by such greats as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose loose living and houseful of illegitimate children were too much for the academicians; Encyclopedist Denis Diderot, who was a deal too outspoken; and plump, ill-dressed, Bohemian Honoré de Balzac, who seemed just too much of a mess...