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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alberto Vanzo, Anik Waldow and the anonymous referees for the journal for comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Funding
The research for this paper was supported by the Marsden Fund of New Zealand [grant number UOO0815].
Notes
1. See, for example, Anstey, “Experimental Versus Speculative Natural Philosophy”, Gaukroger, Emergence of a Scientific Culture, Chap. 10 and Shapiro, “Newton's ‘Experimental Philosophy’”.
2. See, for example, Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Vol. 1, 4. For a full-fledged work of this “experimental moral philosophy”, see Turnbull, The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy, Vol. 1. For a similar sentiment in France see Helvétius, De l'esprit, i–ii.
3. Chambers, Cyclopedia, 368.
4. The Encyclopédie comprised 17 volumes of articles and 11 volumes of plates.
5. For an early study of the uptake of experimental philosophy in France, see Torlais, “La physique expérimentale”. Torlais's article fails to mention d'Alembert or the Encyclopédie.
6. Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, 89–101, 95. See also, for example, Voltaire to Prince Frederick, 20 May 1738, Oeuvres de Voltaire, Vol. 34, 480.
7. Buffon, Preface to La statique des végétaux, et l'analyse de l'air, iii–vi.
8. Observations sur les écrits modernes, tome dix-septième, 101. See also page 226 for the distinction between ‘physique spéculatif’ and ‘physique expérimentale’.
9. “Natural philosophy is the knowledge of the causes and effects of nature. It is experimental or conjectural. Experimental natural philosophy is certain knowledge; conjectural natural philosophy is often only ingenious. The one conducts us to the truth, the other leads to error”, Dictionnaire philosophique, 261.
10. Dunton, The Young-Students-Library, vi–vii.
11. It is worth noting that in England the Plumian Chair in Experimental Philosophy and Astronomy was established in Cambridge in 1708 and first held by Roger Cotes.
12. Diderot, Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature, article XXIII, quoted, with changes, from Diderot Interpreter of Nature: Selected Writings, 46; cf. article XXIV, Oeuvres philosophique, 193–4.
13. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, 23–4 (modified). Schwab translates d'Alembert's physique as ‘physics' whereas the evidence presented below shows that it is more accurately translated ‘natural philosophy’.
14. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 75.
15. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 84. For Locke and experimental philosophy see my John Locke and Natural Philosophy.
16. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 84. It is important to note that ‘metaphysics' in the mid-eighteenth century often refers to pneumatology or the study of the soul or understanding. This is the sense that d'Alembert has in mind when he says that Locke “created metaphysics, almost as Newton had created physics”, ibid., 83.
17. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 86.
18. See also the Chapter entitled “Physique générale” in his Élémens de philosophie, 450–72.
19. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 24.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 25.
22. Ibid., 7.
23. Ibid., 22.
24. Ibid., 24. Hypotheses have no place in natural history either, see ibid., 147.
25. Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 297: “Les spéculations les plus subtiles & les méditations les plus profondes ne sont que de vaines imaginations, si elles ne sont pas fondées sur des expériences exactes”.
26. See, for example, Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, in Works of Robert Boyle, Vol. 2, 10–14.
27. It is important to stress that Condillac was not opposed to systems simpliciter, but only to those based upon principles and speculation. See Hine, A Critical Study of Condillac's Traité des systèmes, 25–6.
28. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 94.
29. Ibid., 95. See also the article in the Encyclopédie on “Systême”, Encyclopédie, Vol. 15, 777–8.
30. Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 298: “On appelle Philosophie expérimentale, celle qui se sert de la voie des expériences pour découvrir les lois de la Nature”.
31. Encyclopédie, Vol. 12, 539: “La Physique expérimentale qui cherche à decouvrir les raisons & la nature des choses, par le moyen des expériences, comme celles de la Chimie, de l'Hydrostatique, de la Pneumatique, de l'Optique, &c. Voyez l'article Expérimentale, où on a traite en détail de cette espece de physique, qui est proprement la seule digne de nos recherches”.
32. Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 300: “Le premier objet réel de la physique expérimentale sont les propriétés générales des corps, que l'observation nous fait connoître, pour ainsi dire, en gros, mais dont l'expérience seule peut mesurer & déterminer les effets; tels sont, par exemple, les phénomenes de la pesanteur”.
33. D'Alembert, Élémens de philosophie, 464.
34. Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 301.
35. Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 300; Élémens de philosophie, 464.
36. Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 300; Élémens de philosophie, 464–65.
37. Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 300.
38. D'Alembert, Élémens de philosophie, 42.
39. Encyclopédie, Vol. 1, 634; Vol. 1, 703, 704; Vol. 4, 209; Vol. 5, 497; Vol. 6, 326; Vol. 6, 603; Vol. 9, 277; Vol. 13, 605; Vol. 14, 387; Vol. 17, 332 bis.
40. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 3.
41. Ibid., 4.
42. Ibid., 152.
43. Ibid., 233–34, cf. 101.
44. See Home, “Out of a Newtonian Straightjacket”, 245: “D'Alembert was perhaps a little more extreme than most eighteenth-century mathematicians in his disdain for experimental inquiry”; James Franklin, “Artifice and the natural world: mathematics, logic, technology”, 821; Ballstadt, Diderot: Natural Philosopher, 71. See also Richard Schwab who claims that d'Alembert's philosophy grafts “the spirit of the rationalism of Descartes onto the empiricism inherited from Bacon, Locke and Newton: a fusion of two traditions, which is at the basis of the Encyclopédie, and in fact of the whole era of luminaries”, “Introduction” to d'Alembert's Élémens de philosophie, xxv.
45. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 13.
46. Ibid., 516.
47. Ibid., 516, see also 711.
48. Ibid., 516.
49. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 780, see also 846.
50. The third part is a revised version of Diderot's Prospectus of November 1750.
51. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 5; cf. Condillac, Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines, in Oeuvres complètes de Condillac, Vol. 1, 7.
52. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 5.
53. Ibid., 6.
54. Ibid., 6.
55. The term ‘innate idea’ does not appear until the fourth and final chapter of Book One of the Essay. See Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, I. iv. 3.
56. See, for example, Chapter two on “Des Sensations” in Condillac's Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines, in Oeuvres complètes de Condillac, Vol. 1, 26–35.
57. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 7.
58. Ibid., 40.
59. Ibid., 44.
60. Locke, Essay IV. xvii.
61. See Élémens de philosophie, Éclaircissement V, 80–2.
62. Locke, Essay IV. ii–iii.
63. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 49.
64. See Daston, “D'Alembert's critique of probability theory”, 260.
65. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 48–9.
66. See, for example, Locke, Essay III. iii. 1, 6, 13, 14.
67. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 366.
68. For d'Alembert's references to Spinoza see Encyclopédie, Vol. 2, 480 and Vol. 10, 190. For the term ‘Spinosiste’ see the “Avertissement des éditeurs”, Encyclopédie, Vol. 3, xii.
69. Encyclopédie, Vol. 9, 496.
70. Encyclopédie, Vol. 3, 637; Locke, Abregé de l'essay de Mr. Locke sur l'entendement humain.
71. Encyclopédie, Vol. 4, 706.
72. Encyclopédie, Vol. 2, 719. See also ‘Élémens des sciences', Encyclopédie, Vol. 4, 494 for another instance of d'Alembert's Lockean theory of ideas.
73. Le Ru, D'Alembert philosophe, 132–35.
74. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 842.
75. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 90.
76. Ibid., 91.
77. De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, in Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. 4, 413.
78. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 146–48.
79. For Diderot and Baconian natural histories see Encyclopédie, Vol. 5, 647A. For d'Alembert on Buffon and natural history see D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 94. For the relation between Buffon and Bacon and Diderot and Bacon see Anstey, “Bacon, Experimental Philosophy and French Enlightenment Natural History”.
80. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 76.
81. See Graham Rees, “Introduction” to Francis Bacon Philosophical Studies c.1611–c.1619, xxxvi–lxix and Giglioni, “Mastering the Appetites of Matter: Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum”.
82. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 76. See also 159.
83. Ibid., 52–3, 55, 77 and 159. The divisions of medicine in the d'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse” tree are derived from Boerhaave, see ibid., 159.
84. See especially Diderot's articles on “Arte”, Encyclopédie, Vol. 1, 713–17 and “Encyclopédie”, ibid., Vol. 5, 635–48A.
85. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 57–8.
86. See, for example, the italicized comment on theology in d'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 160. For a discussion of differences between Bacon's tree and that of d'Alembert and Diderot see Yeo, “Classifying the sciences”, 260–3.
87. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 50–5. For Bacon, see De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, in Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. 4, 292.
88. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 50 and 143.
89. Ibid., 40. See also 44 and 49 and Encyclopédie entries for ‘Spéculatif’, Vol. 15, 448 and ‘Practique’, Vol. 13, 264. For the claim that the practical/speculative distinction is a precursor to the experimental/speculative distinction, see Anstey and Vanzo “The origins of early modern experimental philosophy”.
90. Further evidence of d'Alembert's close reading of the De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum is in his éloge to Johann Bernoulli where he alludes to Book III, Chap. V; see Oeuvres complètes de d'Alembert, Vol. 3, 343.
91. See Élémens de philosophie, 457–9 which shares the sentiment of d'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 74–5. For d'Alembert's translations of some of Bacon's Essays, see Oeuvres complètes de d'Alembert, Vol. 4, 227–49.
92. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 95.
93. Nor does the fact that one performs experiments entail that one is an advocate of experimental philosophy.
94. See, for example, Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, Works of Robert Boyle, Vol. 2, 13–14.
95. Wolff, “Praefatio Physicae Electivae Jo. Christoph. Sturmii Tomi II”, 143. Alberto Vanzo alerted me to this reference.
96. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 96.
97. See Grimsley, Jean d'Alembert, 294.
98. Ibid., 181.
99. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 24.
100. Encyclopédie, Vol. 10, 178. Cited in Hankins Jean d'Alembert, 164. See Newton, Principia, 701.
101. Newton, Principia, 806–7.
102. Ibid., 416. See Wesftall, Never at Rest, 418–19.
103. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 185.
104. D'Alembert, Traité de dynamique, 2nd edition, 13–15. See the discussion in Le Ru, D'Alembert philosophe, 45–7.
105. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 115.
106. Ibid., 3.
107. Ibid.
108. Ibid., 115.
109. Ibid., 3.
110. Ibid.
111. D'Alembert, Traité de dynamique, xi.
112. Ibid., xi–xii.
113. Kurt Ballstadt in Diderot: Natural Philosopher, 71, follows Hankins's interpretation of d'Alembert's attitude to experiment, citing d'Alembert's claim in Élémens de philosophie that for the acquisition of knowledge by experiment we can reserve the name ‘occult natural philosophy’ and implying that this use of ‘occult’ is pejorative. But Ballstadt cites selectively, for d'Alembert goes on to explain that he means by this not what some modern natural philosophers mean by the term but merely that experiment reveals hidden facts. See d'Alembert, Élémens de philosophie, 450–1. Diderot uses ‘occulte’ to mean hidden in the “Prospectus” and this is reproduced in the “Preliminary Discourse”, 155, as did Keill in his Introductio, 3, a work with which d'Alembert was familiar.
114. Hankins, Jean d'Alembert, 117: “[t]here can be little doubt as to d'Alembert's source of this vision; it was unquestionably the rational philosophy of René Descartes”.
115. Keill, Introductio, 3–5.
116. See, for example, Encyclopédie, Vol. 4, 1075; Vol. 9, 722; and especially “Odeur” in Vol. 11, 348.
117. D'Alembert, Traité de l’équilibre et du mouvement des fluides, vi.
118. Encyclopédie, Vol. 3, 442; Vol. 16, 272. An earlier autograph version of Cotes' lectures survives at Bodleian Library Add. C 272, 61–160.
119. Cotes, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures.
120. Encyclopédie, Vol. 1, 236; Vol. 1, 626; Vol. 2, 82.
121. Encyclopédie, Vol. 1, 23; Vol. 1, 24, 25; Vol. 3, 678; Vol. 5, 300; Vol. 8, 696; Vol. 9, 719; Vol. 11, 286; Vol. 11, 324; Vol. 13, 270.
122. Musschenbroeck, Traité de physique, Tome I, 1739, v–vii. D'Alembert cites various volumes of the Traité de physique at Encyclopédie, Vol. 1, 599; Vol. 5, 187; Vol. 5, 264; Vol. 5, 497; Vol. 5, 740; Vol. 6, 254; Vol. 8, 31; Vol. 9, 860; Vol. 16, 272.
123. Article on “Baconisme”, Encyclopédie, Vol. 2, 10: “avant le chancelier Bacon, n'avoit connu la Philosophie expérimentale”.
124. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 75.
125. Ibid., 81.
126. Maclaurin, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, 77. D'Alembert cites this work in “Newtonianisme ou Philosophie Newtonienne”, Encyclopédie, Vol. 11, 123.
127. D'Alembert, “Preliminary Discourse”, 78–9; cf. d'Alembert, Recherches sur la précession des equinoxes et sur la nutation, xxxviii. For other such brief histories of experimental philosophy see d'Alembert's article entitled “Expérimental” in the Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 298–300, which is recycled in Élémens de philosophie, 451–61.
128. See especially the humorous Anti-physique passage in Élémens de philosophie, 90–4 and 470–1, which has Descartes in its sights. See also Crane, “Jean d'Alembert between Descartes and Newton”, 275–6, and d'Alembert's claim against Descartes and Bacon that they would have been more useful had they been “plus physiciens de pratique & moins de théorie”, Encyclopédie, Vol. 6, 299. For Voltaire on Descartes see Lettres philosophiques, 118–30.
129. See, for example, Gaukroger et al., Descartes' Natural Philosophy.
130. Diderot, Oeuvres philosophiques, 192.
131. Diderot, Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature and Other Philosophical Works, 44.