La « folie » de l'ordre alphabétique et l'« enchaînement » des sciences. L'Encyclopédie comme système entre le XVIIIe et le XXe siècle - article ; n°1 ; vol.18, pg 139-156
Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie - Année 1995 - Volume 18 - Numéro 1 - Pages 139-156Walter Tega : The Folly of Alphabetical Order and the Linking of Science. The Encyclopédie as a system between the 18th and 20th Centuries. The encyclopaedia form used by Diderot and D'Alembert aimed at a coordination of science which nevertheless left room for the expansion and development of knowledge. The Enlightenment Encyclopédie, an open totalisation, had also an anti-systemic and anti-metaphysical aim, linked to a desire to transform society. Later ones rejected this characteristic : the Encyclopédie méthodique went back to a systematic order ; Hegel's Encyclopœdia of Philosophical Sciences showed the architecture of thought rather than how sicences were linked ; and the preface to Coleridge's Encyclopœdia Metropolitana subordinated the exposition of arts and sciences to moral and religious aims. Only with the encyclopaedia projects of the 1930s (Febvre's Encyclopédie française, Neurath and Carnap's International Encyclopœdia of Unified Science, or the Encyclopœdia of the Social Sciences) do we see the reappearance of the critical and antidogmatic aim of the Enlightenment encyclopaedia. 18 pages Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.