Background:
Like most encyclopedias, the Encyclopédie attempted to collect and summarize human knowledge in a variety of fields and topics, ranging from philosophy to theology to science and the arts. The Encyclopédie was controversial for reorganizing knowledge based on human reason instead of by nature or theology. Knowledge and intellect branched from the three categories of human thought, whereas all other perceived aspects of knowledge, including theology, were simply branches or components of these man made categories. The introduction to the Encyclopédie, DAlemberts Preliminary Discourse, is considered an important exposition of Enlightenment ideals. Among other things, it presents a taxonomy of human knowledge (see Fig. 3), which was inspired by Francis Bacons The Advancement of Learning. The three main branches of knowledge are: Memory/History, Reason/Philosophy, and Imagination/Poetry. This tree of knowledge was created to help readers evaluate the usefulness of the content within the Encyclopédie, and to organize its content.[27] Notable is the fact that theology is ordered under Philosophy and that Knowledge of God is only a few nodes away from Divination and Black Magic.

Religious and political controversies
The authors of the Encyclopédie challenged religious authority. The authors, especially Diderot and dAlembert, located religion within a system of reason and philosophy. They did not reject all religious claims, but believed theology and notions of God must be proven. Louis de Jaucourt therefore harshly criticized superstition as an intellectual error in his article on the topic. The writers emphasized an individuals right to religious sovereignty. They therefore doubted the authenticity of presupposed historical events cited in the Bible and questioned the validity of miracles and the Resurrection. However, some contemporary scholars argue the skeptical view of miracles in the Encyclopédie may be interpreted in terms of Protestant debates about the cessation of the charismata. The writers emphasized an individuals right to religious sovereignty.
These challenges led to suppression from church and state authorities. The Encyclopédie and its contributors endured many attacks and attempts at censorship by the clergy or other censors, which threatened the publication of the project as well as the authors themselves. The Kings Council suppressed the Encyclopédie in 1759. The Catholic Church, under Pope Clement XIII, placed it on its list of banned books. Prominent intellectuals criticized it, most famously Lefranc de Pompignan at the French Academy. A playwright, Charles Palissot de Montenoy, wrote a play called Les Philosophes to criticize the Encyclopédie. When Abbé André Morellet, one of the contributors to the Encyclopédie, wrote a mock preface for it, he was sent to the Bastille due to allegations of libel.
To defend themselves from controversy, the encyclopedias articles wrote of theological topics in a mixed manner. Some articles supported orthodoxy, and some included overt criticisms of Christianity. To avoid direct retribution from censors, writers often hid criticism in obscure articles or expressed it in ironic terms. Nonetheless, the contributors still openly attacked the Catholic Church in certain articles with examples including criticizing excess festivals, monasteries, and celibacy of the clergy.

Politics and society
The Encyclopédie is often seen as an influence for the French Revolution because of its emphasis on Enlightenment political theories. Diderot and other authors, in famous articles such as Political Authority, emphasized the shift of the origin of political authority from divinity or heritage to the people. This Enlightenment ideal, espoused by Rousseau and others, advocated that people have the right to consent to their government in a form of social contract.
Another major, contentious component of political issues in the Encyclopédie was personal or natural rights. Articles such as Natural Rights by Diderot explained the relationship between individuals and the general will. The natural state of humanity, according to the authors, is barbaric and unorganized. To balance the desires of individuals and the needs of the general will, humanity requires civil society and laws that benefit all persons. Writers, to varying degrees, criticized Thomas Hobbes notions of a selfish humanity that requires a sovereign to rule over it.
In terms of economics, the Encyclopédie expressed favor for laissez-faire ideals or principles of economic liberalism. Articles concerning economics or markets, such as Economic Politics, generally favored free competition and denounced monopolies. Articles often criticized guilds as creating monopolies and approved of state intervention to remove such monopolies. The writers advocated extending laissez-faire principles of liberalism from the market to the individual level, such as with privatization of education and opening of careers to all levels of wealth.

Science and technology
At the same time, the Encyclopédie was a vast compendium of knowledge, notably on the technologies of the period, describing the traditional craft tools and processes. Much information was taken from the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers. These articles applied a scientific approach to understanding the mechanical and production processes, and offered new ways to improve machines to make them more efficient.[39] Diderot felt that people should have access to useful knowledge that they can apply to their everyday life.

Approximate size of the Encyclopédie:
- 17 volumes of articles, issued from 1751 to 1765
- 11 volumes of illustrations, issued from 1762 to 1772
- 18,000 pages of text
- 75,000 entries
- 44,000 main articles
- 28,000 secondary articles
- 2,500 illustration indices
- 20,000,001 words in total
Print run: 4,250 copies (note: even single-volume works in the 18th Century seldom had a print run of more than 1,500 copies)

Diderot, Denis 1713 - 1784
Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts) along with Jean le Rond d Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment.
Diderot began his education by obtaining a Master of Arts degree in philosophy at a Jesuit college in 1732. He considered working in the church clergy before briefly studying law. When he decided to become a writer in 1734, his father disowned him for not entering one of the learned professions. He lived a bohemian existence for the next decade. He befriended philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1742.
Though his work was broad as well as rigorous, it did not bring Diderot riches. He secured none of the posts that were occasionally given to needy men of letters; he could not even obtain the bare official recognition of merit that was implied by being chosen a member of the Académie française. He saw no alternative to selling his library to provide a dowry for his daughter. Empress Catherine II of Russia heard of his financial troubles and commissioned an agent in Paris to buy the library. She then requested that the philosopher retain the books in Paris until she required them, and act as her librarian with a yearly salary. Between October 1773 and March 1774, the sick Diderot spent a few months at the empress court in Saint Petersburg.
Diderot died of pulmonary thrombosis in Paris on 31 July 1784, and was buried in the cities Église Saint-Roch. His heirs sent his vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the National Library of Russia. He has several times been denied burial in the Panthéon with other French notables. The French government considered memorializing him in this fashion on the 300th anniversary of his birth, but this did not come to pass.
Diderots literary reputation during his lifetime rested primarily on his plays and his contributions to the Encyclopédie; many of his most important works, including Jacques the Fatalist, Rameaus Nephew, Paradox of the Actor, and D Alemberts Dream, were published only after his death.

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts better known as Encyclopédie, was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-edited by Jean le Rond d Alembert.
The Encyclopédie is most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment. According to Denis Diderot in the article Encyclopédie, the Encyclopédies aim was to change the way people think and for people to be able to inform themselves and to know things. He and the other contributors advocated for the secularization of learning away from the Jesuits. Diderot wanted to incorporate all of the worlds knowledge into the Encyclopédie and hoped that the text could disseminate all this information to the public and future generations.
It was also the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors, and it was the first general encyclopedia to describe the mechanical arts. In the first publication, seventeen folio volumes were accompanied by detailed engravings. Later volumes were published without the engravings, in order to better reach a wide audience within Europe.
The work consisted of 28 volumes, with 71,818 articles and 3,129 illustrations. The first seventeen volumes were published between 1751 and 1765; eleven volumes of plates were finished by 1772. Engraver Robert Bénard provided at least 1,800 plates for the work. Because of its occasional radical contents, the Encyclopédie caused much controversy in conservative circles, and on the initiative of the Parliament of Paris, the French government suspended the encyclopedias privilège in 1759. Despite the suspension, work continued in secret, partially because the project had highly placed supporters, such as Malesherbes and Madame de Pompadour. The authorities deliberately ignored the continued work; they thought their official ban was sufficient to appease the church and other enemies of the project.
During the secretive period, Diderot accomplished a well-known work of subterfuge. The title pages of volumes 1 through 7, published between 1751 and 1757, claimed Paris as the place of publication. However, the title pages of the subsequent text volumes, 8 through 17, published together in 1765, show Neufchastel as the place of publication. Neufchastel (now Neuchâtel) is safely across the French border in what is now part Switzerland but which was then an independent principality, where official production of the Encyclopédie was secure from interference by agents of the French state. In particular, regime opponents of the Encyclopédie could not seize the production plates for the Encyclopédie in Paris because those printing plates ostensibly existed only in Switzerland. Meanwhile, the actual production of volumes 8 through 17 quietly continued in Paris.
In 1775, Charles Joseph Panckoucke obtained the rights to reissue the work. He issued five volumes of supplementary material and a two-volume index from 1776 to 1780. Some scholars include these seven extra volumes as part of the first full issue of the Encyclopédie, for a total of 35 volumes, although they were not written or edited by the original authors.
From 1782 to 1832, Panckoucke and his successors published an expanded edition of the work in some 166 volumes as the Encyclopédie méthodique. That work, enormous for its time, occupied a thousand workers in production and 2,250 contributors.
Since the objective of the editors of the Encyclopédie was to gather all the knowledge in the world, Diderot and D Alembert knew they would need various contributors to help them with their project. Many of the philosophes (intellectuals of the French Enlightenment) contributed to the Encyclopédie, including Diderot himself, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. The most prolific contributor was Louis de Jaucourt, who wrote 17,266 articles between 1759 and 1765, or about eight per day, representing a full 25% of the Encyclopédie. The publication became a place where these contributors could share their ideas and interests.