Essai d’une Distribution Généalogique des Sciences et des Arts Principaux (Essay on a Genealogical Distribution of the Primary Sciences and Arts)

Robert Bernard, Essai d’une Distribution Généalogique des Sciences et des Arts Principaux (Essay on a Genealogical Distribution of the Primary Sciences and Arts)

Robert Bernard, artist

Essai d’une Distribution Généalogique des Sciences et des Arts Principaux (Essay on a Genealogical Distribution of the Primary Sciences and Arts), 1780

Portfolio/Series title: Table analytique et raisonnée des matieres contenues dans les XXXIII volumes in-folio du dictionnaire des sciences, des arts et des métiers, et dans son supplément (Systematic and Analytical Table of the Topics Contained in the Thirty-Three Folio Volumes of the Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts, and In Its Supplement) Paris: Panckoucke

Where object was made: Paris, France

Credit line: Emporia State University, Rare Materials

Accession number: EL2009.029

Not on display

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Exhibition Label:
"Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture," Mar-2009, Steve Goddard
The great Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot with his colleague Jean le Rond d’Alembert, appeared between 1751 and 1772. The Encyclopédie included a schematic table of human knowledge. Under the primary heading, Understanding, were the categories of Memory, Reason, and Imagination. The exhibited engraving recasts this table in the form of a tree. Understanding (L’Entendement) is at the base of the tree. From Understanding the conceptual underpinnings of the Encyclopédie branch forth, allowing us to visualize the relationships between its parts. The first branch at the lower right, for example, extends from Imagination to Poetry, Painting (and its siblings: Printmaking and Sculpture), Music, and Architecture. The scheme of the Encyclopédie was based in part on a work by the philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who coined the phrase “knowledge is power.”