Daphné Esin - ‘Knowing the Brick Wall A Semiotic Disjunction Between the Making and the Knowing’

History and Theory Studies / Year 3 Knowledge: Explicit, Tacit, Situated

Daphné Esin Architectural Association Term 1, 2021-2022

This essay has been developed in the course

Knowledge: Explicit, Tacit, Situated, instructed by Klaus Platzgummer

Special thanks to Claire Potter and the Writing Centre

Knowing the Brick Wall A Semiotic Disjunction Between The Making and The Knowing

Img. 1 Volume I, Architecture and related subjects, Plate I: Architecture, Masonry (1756) engraved by Prévost Fécit

Table of Contents Prologue Architecture, Masonry Plate in The French Encyclopaedia

1

Memory of The Knowing How Architecture, Masonry plate as an impractical instruction

4

Reason of The Enlightened Plate The body and the intellect: division of our main faculties

6

Imagining The Invisible Infinite vibrations, infinitesimal connections

10

Epilogue Compassing a Bricolage

14

Bibliography

16

Image Credits

17

Appendix

18

Knowing the Brick Wall A Semiotic Disjunction Between The Making and The Knowing

Prologue Architecture, Masonry Plate in The French Encyclopaedia

A chaotic black and white scene where spaces are built and materials are worked. The frame holds a multiplicity of actions; through the rubbing of brushwood and earth, mortar flows and a block of stone is tapped into shape by chisel and hammer. The scene echoes the monotonous breaking of larger stones and the sound of cranes mechanically Img. 2 Architecture, Masonry plate’s tableau vivant engraved by Prévost Fécit (1756)

elevating

smaller

pieces.

Workers

are

highly

concentrated on their preoccupation and the construction work flows fluently without any distraction. In this extremely corporal environment driven by major movements, one can notice discrete tenures. The performance appears to be ambivalent with the presence of elements detached from their historical context creating a fragmented understanding of the scene. On one side, a raw, unworked wooden wall and a rudimentary portico that recalls The Middle Ages is depicted. On the other side, a very ornamented pediment belonging to a monumental Ancient Greek style façade made in crafted stone is portrayed. The characters are ambiguous, are they craftsmen or 2

military subjects? They craft stones in military costumes. A fantasy world merging wood and stone, body and intellect. Thus, is the socalled tableau vivant1(Image.2) illustrated in the Masonry plate of the Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts 2 (1765) written by Diderot and d'Alembert.

The work whose first volume we are presenting today has two purposes.

As an Encyclopedia, it is to set forth as well as possible the order and connection of the parts of human knowledge. As a Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, it is to contain the general principles that form the basis of each science and each art, liberal or mechanical, and the most essential facts that make up the body and substance of each.3

At a time of profound religious dominance, the Encyclopaedia4 (1765) jolted the ownership of knowledge. The introduction of such a project in the XVIIIth century had important repercussions and caused much controversy in conservative circles. The project faced strong opposition by the Church and was suppressed by the King’s Council as it conveyed the ideas of individualism and scientific knowledge. The representation of knowledge in the Encyclopaedia5 (1765) is organised in two sections; the first being composed of seventeen volumes of text, giving definitions in an alphabetical order and the second composed of eleven volumes of illustrations that contain plates representing trades, crafts, and materials which are classified under categories called domains.

Plates are commonly understood to be devices that aim the transfer of technical knowledge needed to perform a specific task through illustrations. However, as this essay will explore, what happens when illustrative plates fail to transfer the practical knowledge and knowhow that they so ostensibly are designed to impart? The Masonry plate

1. Roland Barthes, The Plates of The Encyclopaedia (Evanston: Northwestern Press, 2009), 2339. In his 1981 essay, “The plates of the Encyclopedia”, the literary critic Roland Barthes, suggests the word tableau vivant meaning living picture to define the french encyclopedic plate’s upper image.

2. “Architecture and related subjects – Masonry” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, accessed Dec. 9, 2021, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.371.

3. D’Alembert, Jean le Rond, Discours Préliminaire (Édition électronique: Les Échos du Marquis, 2011) 4. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

5. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

3

from Diderot's Encyclopaedia6 (1765) addressed in this essay, can be seen as example of an inability to impart tacit knowledge described by Polanyi in his essay The Tacit Dimension7 (1967) as a type of knowledge that is not captured by written or oral expressions but instead only by its action. Through a contextualising composition staging time and actors related to the craft in question, alongside tabulated illustrations showing technical drawings, the plates remain insufficient to transmit tacit knowledge8. Therefore, one could argue that the deviation of practical knowledge into its intellectualisation is at the origin of the Encyclopaedic project’s failure as a practical knowledge transmission apparatus. This can be rendered in particular by a specific encyclopaedic plate under the Architecture domain that relates the topic of masonry. By deciphering in a small scale the intrinsic character of the Architecture, Masonry9 plate, the research will demonstrate its impracticality as a knowledge transmission tool. It is by widening the study to the emancipation of knowledge from the body, in other words, the understanding of knowledge as “memory” rather than “physical experience” that this essay will reveal the plates are intellectualising technical knowledge. Consequently, bypassing the corporal dimension of knowledge results in a semiotic reading, creating multiple realities and interpretations of knowledge put forward by the plates.

6. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

7. Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 1966), 3-25.

Tacit knowledge is the term used by Polanyi in his 1966 essay “The Tacit Dimension” to describe a type of knowledge that is not captured by written or oral expressions. Because of this elusive character, we can see it only by its action.

8. Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 1966), 3-25.

9. “Architecture and related subjects – Masonry” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, accessed Dec. 9, 2021, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.371.

4

Memory of The Knowing How Architecture, Masonry plate as an impractical instruction

The Architecture, Masonry plate describes how to build a brick wall (Appendix A). The plate is divided into two sequences, one-third (the

upper sequence) is dedicated to a tableau vivant showing how brick walls were built by the 18th century craftsmen and two-thirds (the lower sequence) depicts eight perspectival brick wall typologies representing different brick laying methods and compositions. The upper part is devoted to a contextualisation of the object, whereas the lower part is committed to technical information. The plate aims to transmit technical knowledge on brick wall making, especially with the tableau vivant showing the different gestures and actions of the making process. While the experienced will understand the craft thought by the plate, it will be less obvious for the profane to grasp the visual content of it, as the plate does not convey the Knowing How10. Hence, the plate addresses our memory as we recognise that the object in question is a brick wall when we examine the lower part since we have the visual trace of the object subscribed in our memory. Similarly, when we look at the tableau vivant, we understand that the plate communicates the making of brick walls. However, one cannot understand how to build a brick wall by reading the visual information provided by the plate. The plate does not convey the practical knowledge one can acquire by physical experience. The reader understands that the liquid mixed by the children is mortar because they know the required materials for the construction of a brick wall

(Img.3). Still, the way the mortar is made is not communicated by the plate. The English philosopher Gilbert Ryle argues in his essay, Knowing How and Knowing That : The Presidential Address11 (1945) that the “Knowing That” and the “Knowing How” are two distinct knowledges. He writes, “There is a distinction between the museum-

10. Gilbert Ryle, Knowing How and Knowing That : The Presidential Address (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), 1-16. Ryle remarks in his essay “Knowing How and Knowing That” that knowledge can be distinguished into two: "Knowing that" is the fact that a person knows "what" happens or has happened, whereas, "Knowing how" implies that the person understands the mechanism that makes something happen.

11. Gilbert Ryle, Knowing How and Knowing That: The Presidential Address (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), 1-16.

5

Img. 3 Engraving by Prévost Fécit (1756) showing children workers mixing mortar - Edited by the author.

possession and the workshop-possession of knowledge”12. According to Ryle, knowledge emerging from the domain of memory can only deal with facts which he calls the Knowing That, whereas knowledge deriving from experience is able to show the way things are done, in other words, the Knowing How. Although the aforementioned Architecture, Masonry plate seems to transmit knowledge, – which is the primary aim of the Encyclopaedia13 (1765) – it overpasses a third epistemological dimension: the Tacit Knowledge. The Masonry plate tries to transmit knowledge through graphic expressions; yet, by nature, the third dimension of knowledge cannot be expressed through illustrations, words, or any other expression. The philosopher and chemist, Michael Polanyi contends in his book The Tacit Dimension14 (1966) that “we can know more than we can tell”15. The technical knowledge of knowing how to do things can primarily be transmitted by experience and physical trials. The plate fails to communicate all the necessary knowledge in the understanding of what is to build a brick wall and how to build it. The tableau vivant showcases craftsmen working with stone in different ways. For instance, the craftsman situated in the foreground seems to measure stone but one cannot know how to measure the stone, how to use the measuring tool or to which end the stone is measured by examining the visual content (Img.4). Does the drawing illustrate a worker measuring the stone to set dimensions before it being cut, or is he measuring it to verify the dimensions of the block after being cut? Therefore, we can argue that the Architecture, Masonry plate is an impractical apparatus in the transmission of technical knowledge; Img. 4 Engraving by Prévost Fécit (1756) illustrating a craftsman measuring stone - Edited by the author.

betraying the Encyclopaedia’s practical knowledge dissemination aim.

Nevertheless, through a deeper reading of the Masonry plate, we can demonstrate its underlying character of being a propagandic object that spreads the Enlightenment ideologies through the tableau vivant.

12. Ryle, Knowing How and Knowing That: The Presidential Address, 16.

13. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

14. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, 3-25.

15. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, 4.

6

Reason of The Enlightened Plate The body and the intellect: division of our main faculties

Through the explanation of Arts and Crafts, the Encyclopaedia16 (1765) spread the Enlightenment ideologies and has been a political object in which the plates reveal to be subjacent propaganda devices. The tableau vivant in Architecture, Masonry plate is sequenced and designed in a way that clearly shows the will to communicate a meliorative vision of the Enlightenment and its values. The symmetrical composition of the tableau vivant conveys an opposition between the right side (Img.5) which shows the traditional, rural lifestyle and the right side (Img.6) which characterises the progress brought by the Enlightenment. The opposition is enhanced by the use of light and shadow. The right side is shaded by the modernity of the construction on the left side which is much brighter. The passage from darkness, viz. ignorance is done through scientific knowledge represented by the craftsmen situated in

Img. 5 Engraving by Prévost Fécit (1756) showing craftsmen and an Ancient Greek façade with columns, a pediment, and ornaments - Edited by the author.

the very middle of the tableau vivant. The craftsmen in the centre of the scene are the only ones using scientific tools; they act like the transition from rural to urban, roughness to crafted, and manual to mechanical. They perhaps represent the thinker, in other words, the architect of the construction site. In this regard, one can draw parallels between the XVIIIth century and Antiquity – notably, with the Ancient Greek style façade in the background suggesting Antiquity.

Both periods have been the cornerstone of division between the Body and the Intellect. In Ancient Greece, the passage from timber to stone symbolised the moment when somebody had to think in order for somebody else to do the physical work, the moment when geometry and math started to be intellectualised and theoreticised (Img.7). This division of theory and labour saw its reproduction in the XVIIIth century when the craftsmen became pacified subjects – almost objects – and no longer genesis of knowledge.

16. d’Alembert, Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

7

Img. 6 Engraving by Prévost Fécit (1756) illustrating a wooden portico and a Church in the horizon - Edited by the author.

Img. 7 Diagram showing the compositional analysis of the tableau vivant – Author’s analysis.

The aim of the Encyclopaedia’s (1765) authors was to transmit practical knowledge not only to their contemporaries but also to future generations. The Eencyclopaedic project ends out to be an intellectual gathering of practical knowledge. Intellectual because it organises, connects, and divides knowledge in sections; it proposes a written part : the dictionary ; and a graphic part: the plates. Moreover, the whole human knowledge is synthesised in a three-entry grid called Map of the System of Human Knowledge17 (Img.8) & (Appendix B). The grid represents the general distribution of human knowledge into history, which is related to memory; into philosophy, which emanates from reason; and into poetry, which arises from imagination. Surprisingly enough, if the Architecture, Masonry plate’s tableau vivant is mirrored (Img.9), its compositional analysis reveals that it follows the triptical pattern of the Knowledge grid. Into the bargain, although the tableau vivant appears to be drawn the way it is visualised on the plate, it is in fact a lithographic print thus inverted during the printing process.

17. “Map of The System of Human Knowledge” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, accessed December 9, 2021, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/tree.html.

8

Img. 8 Diagram indicating how the tableau vivant follows the Map of the System of Human Knowledge grid’s pattern – Edited by the author.

Consequently, the right side composed of elements of the past represents “Memory”, the centre with the focus on the thinkers stands for the “Reason” and the left side of the Tableau Vivant showing a mechanical and architectural environment symbolises progress and secular knowledge which can be related to “Imagination” as it is the ideal to which humanity should tend for from an Enlightenment point of view. This way of schematisation of the knowledge which was until then, disseminated anarchically and mostly available only orally, translates a will of intellectualisation of knowledge. Though, the craftsman is the one that can transmit the know-how of things, the authors of the Encyclopaedia are intellectuals. Consequently, the 9

Architecture, Masonry plate intellectualises practical knowledge by ignoring the tacit dimension embodied within it. In this process of translation, knowledge is fragmented and diminished. It is transformed into a poetic, oneiric, and romanesque18 image that ingrains in itself signs and their infinite vibrations 19.

12

2 1

13

11 8 5

9 7

4

Wooden portico Bucolic scene 3. Earth ground 4. Wet environment 5. Major movements

1.

2.

10

6

3

Wooden floor Discrete movements 8. Scientific tools 9. Brick wall as limit / threshhold 6.

10. Solid

7.

11.

structure - arches Stone floor 12. Mechanical movements 13. Ancient Greek façade: columns, ornaments, and pediment

Img. 9 Diagram indicating how the tableau vivant follows the Map of the System of Human Knowledge grid’s pattern – Edited by the author.

18. Roland Barthes, The Plates of The Encyclopedia (Evanston: Northwestern Press, 2009), 2339. In “The Plates of The Encyclopedia”, Barhes describes the informative system of the Encyclopedic image as being “poetic, oneiric, and romanesque”.

19. Barthes, The Plates of The Encyclopedia, 34. Barthes defines Poetics as the sphere of infinite amount of vibrations, in other words, meanings.

10

Imagining The Invisible Infinite vibrations, infinitesimal connections

The Architecture, Masonry plate’s tableau vivant is constituted by a multiplicity of signs. A semiotic reading of it, opens the stage for not only a romanesque scrutiny but also for an infinite amount of interpretations. The information does not end with what the image could communicate to the reader of its period. The contemporary reader obtains from this old image a portion of information which the Encyclopedists could not foresee. Time breach is the primary impetus for the different semiotic readings that result in an un-universal knowledge transfer. The French literary critic Roland Barthes asserts,

There is a depth in the Encyclopedic image, the very depth of time which transforms the object into myth. This leads to what we must call the Poetics of the Encyclopedic image, if we agree to define Poetics as the sphere of the infinite vibrations of meaning, at the center of which is placed the literal object.20

Thus said, the transmission of knowledge through a tableau vivant can be questioned in terms of its correctness. If we consider the tableau vivant a gathering of signs or even a sign in itself, and admit that the preliminary knowledge the contemporary subject has, differs from the one the eighteenth century individual had, one can argue that the tableau vivant does not achieve its aim of rational and true transmission of knowledge. The contemporary reader has difficulties in understanding the work done by the craftsman engaged with a tapestry weaving-like machine at the back rural side of the construction site. Since the machine object – as a sign – reminds us of a loom (Img.10). Thus different vibrations or meanings can be understood from the same sign. As the German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl asserts in his theory of time and consciousness, knowledge has two directions. The past direction

20. Barthes, The Plates of The Encyclopedia, 34.

11

Img. 10 Engraving by Prévost Fécit showing a stone sawyer (1765) – Edited by the author.

which he calls “retention”, in other words, knowledge gained through past experiences and the future direction, “protention”, which is the application of signs. In this sense, it is consistent to claim that the tableau vivant – as a sign – has two directions. It is a projection, an imagination of something, we read it and try to make sense. Therefore, the subject of the tableau vivant is related to something other than “itself”, embodying the mark of the past elements, and corrupted by the ones of its relation to the future elements. We can construct multiple movements of signification, give them different significations and even sometimes, everything but the significance of the practical illustration of building a brick wall. The contextualisation of the tableau vivant is made through an effort of putting the tabulated21 elements – of the plate’s lower part – into context that creates a frame of signs.

This contextualisation and situatedness is perhaps a summary of what the encyclopaedic project is. There is a dichotomy between the Encyclopaedia of Arts and Crafts (1765) being an Encyclopaedia and Reasoned Dictionary. One must say, the tableau vivant is the epitome of this polarity and undecidedness of being an encyclopaedia or a dictionary. These two framings of the general knowledge are established through three visual and textual features in Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s Encyclopaedia (1765): the written definitions, the Map of The System of Human Knowledge grid, and the plates. The written definitions are an alphabetical arrangement of the entries that shows a will to tabulate things. The Map of The System of Human Knowledge, portrayed as a grid, perhaps is the paragon of tabulation as it represents only outlines stripped from commentaries, whereas the tableau vivant has an intermediate function between connecting and tabulating knowledge. The tabulation of elements in an imaginary scene is made through an abstract thinking process. It is important to state that the exercise of creating a tableau vivant is done through the abstraction of signs in order to bring things into life and bind them together through the depiction of actions in which the actors are involved.

21. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, (London: Routledge, 1989), 125-132. Foucault argues in his book “The Order of Things” that the Classical age gave history making, a different meaning: undertaking a meticulous examination of things themselves and transcribing what it has gathered in smooth neutralised faithful words. He writes, “the locus of this history is [now] a non-temporal rectangle in which, stripped of all commentary, of all enveloping language, creatures present themselves one beside another, their surfaces visible, groped according to their common features, and thus already virtually analysed, and bearer of nothing but their own individual names.” (127,1989).

12

This abstraction of signs works in two directions. The artist creating the tableau vivant engages with abstract thinking in order to produce an image, but the reader would decipher the signs of knowledge contained in the plates by appealing to their memory, translating their past experiences, and also by using their capacity of abstraction by imagining beyond what we see, for the interpretation of the signs representing the objects, tools or actions illustrating the described craft. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida explains in his book L’écriture et La Différence22 (1967) that in the non-alignment of oral and written signs, there is a hidden dimension between them, a tacit monument23 as he would call it. Derrida demonstrates his theory using the French word “différence”. He remarks that graphical possibilities of writing the word “différence” with “en” and “différance” with “an”' can only be noticed graphically and not heard, not apprehended in speech. Derrida writes,

Now it happens, I would say in effect, that this graphic difference (a instead of e), this marked difference between two apparently vocal notations, between two vowels, remains purely graphical: it is read, or it is written, but it cannot be heard. It cannot be apprehended in speech, and we will see why it also bypasses apprehension in general. It is offered by a mute mark, by a tacit monument, I would even say by a pyramid. 24

If we agree on considering the plate as the translation of oral knowledge to written form, Derrida’s theory could be applicable to the tableau vivant. In fact, until the Renaissance, craftsmen – as knowing objects – held the monopole of practical knowledge which they transmitted orally and physically to their apprentice via making and oral signs. The plates lay out the knowledge on a written platform.

With this shift of medium, knowledge is captured on the move, and as such immobilized. Expressed in this static visual frame, knowledge is presented in a graphic language; be it through writing or through the image of the plate. Diderot writes in the Discours Préliminaire25 (1751) that some notions cannot be well described by words but need to be illustrated, and thus the plates are crucial materials in the

22. Jacques Derrida, L’écriture et La Différence (Paris: Aux Editions du Seuil,1967).

23. Derrida, L’écriture et La Différence, 3-4.

24. Derrida, L’écriture et La Différence, 3-4.

25. D’Alembert, Discours Préliminaire.

13

understanding of the explained object. Nevertheless, this judgment is only pertinent for inert objects and not for the explanation of professions that involve physical – in movement – gestures which is the very essence of craft and know-how. Therefore, a craftsman telling how to build a brick wall does not convey the same knowledge as a plate illustrating it; during the translation process from words and physical movements to still images something is lost by means of graphic representation: the tacit dimension.

14

Epilogue Compassing a Bricolage

The Architecture, Masonry plate tries to depict a hidden dimension of knowledge, the tacit dimension, the knowledge which is embedded in the making of things. The plate tries to enlighten the masonry craft showing its know-how but eventually fails to acknowledge that there are actions involved that cannot be spelled out and presented. Polanyi and Ryle propose that the containment of knowledge goes well beyond our possibilities of telling and presenting things “We can know more than we can tell”26. The Encyclopaedia27 (1765) is the praise of the Enlightenment’s ideology and the domination of the scientific rational knowledge over the practical, tradition tainted knowledge.

The substitution of the body with the intellect in the establishment and transmission of knowledge, in other words the intellectualisation of knowledge operated in the Encyclopaedia28 (1765) reveals that the tacit dimension is lost in the process of the translation from making to writing. The multiple interpretations of signs on the scale of time alter the transmission of the true and original knowledge. Besides, the artist’s abstraction while creating the tableau vivant differs from the reader’s abstraction, each of them interpreting it according to their respective past experiences. Moreover, in the process of substitution of the sign for the object itself appears a décalage: the tacit dimension of knowledge.

The uncertainty of the Encyclopaedia of Arts and Crafts29 (1765) being a dictionary and an encyclopaedia reflects Diderot’s ambiguous position after his release from prison. It shows his will to spread the Enlightenment’s ideas by denouncing obscurantism and clericalism, and the threat of being censored or banned. His project can be seen as a concession to the Enlightenment thinking and a way that brings him back to grace; but Diderot is doing it with a heavy heart and confused feelings as he would like to publish a radical work without being censured. This can be seen in his encyclopaedic project that one 26. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, 4.

27. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

28. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

29. d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts.

15

must call a total bricolage with ideas borrowed from German and English examples30 but with French questions and identity. The fact that the only book Diderot took with him during his incarceration was Milton’s Paradise Lost31 (1667) is very symbolic, as Milton had been censored and imprisoned for his progressist ideas, nearly one century ago. Diderot seems to say to his prosecutors, you might put me in prison but you cannot stop ideas. In Paradise Lost (1667) we find the following words:

… and in his hand He took the golden Compasses prepar’d In God's Eternal store, to circumscribe This Universe, and all created things: One foot he center’d, and the other turn’d Round through the vast profunditie obscure, And said, thus farr extend, thus farr thy bounds, This be thy just Circumference, O World..32

This interpretation of the world in which all things are created by a God who draws the human limits goes against the Enlightenment’s philosophy expressed in the Architecture, Masonry plate’s tableau vivant: God is substituted by the thinker, the architect who circumscribes the world with his compass at the centre of the illustration (Img.11). The tableau vivant is a visual embodiment of Milton’s Paradise Lost33 (1667).

The Encyclopaedia wants to circumscribe the entire Human knowledge but fails to do so. The Map of The System of Human Knowledge grid is rigid in its structure.

It sets limits between knowledge domains; though, there seems to be leakages, moments of tacit knowledge, and one must say these obscure knowledge areas are intangible in the encyclopaedic plates; yet, they are primordial in the understanding of practical knowledge.

30. Encyclopedia: Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia or A universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1728).

31 . John Milton, Paradise Lost. (London : Penguin, 1996).

32. John Milton, Paradise Lost, 147.

33. John Milton, Paradise Lost.

16

Img. 11 Engraving by Prévost Fécit showing the use of a compasses by two craftsmen (1765) – Edited by the author.

17

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barthes, Roland. New critical essays. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Northwestern University Press, 2009. d’Alembert, Jean le Rond. Discours Préliminaire. Édition électronique: Les Échos du Marquis, 2011.

Derrida, Jacques. L’écriture et la Différence. Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1967.

Evans, Robin. Translations from drawing to building and other essays.

London : Architectural Association, 1997.

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. London : Routledge, 1989.

Ginzburg, Carlo. Clues, myths, and the historical method. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. London : Penguin, 1996.

Panofsky, Erwin. Iconology Humanistic themes In Art of the Renaissance.

Westview Press, 1972.

Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. University of Chicago Press, 1966.

Ryle, Gilbert. Knowing How and Knowing That: The Presidential Address.

Oxford University Press, 1945.

Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2008.

Web content l’Académie des sciences et de son comité D’Alembert. “Édition Numérique Collaborative et Critique de l’Encyclopédie.” Accessed December 9, 2021. http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr MIT. “Engraving the Plates.” Accessed December 9, 2021. https://libraries.mit.edu/exhibits/diderots-encyclopedia-exhibitpreview/engraving-the-plates/# University of Michigan Library, “The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project.” Accessed December 9, 2021, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/tree.html.

18

IMAGE CREDITS Image 1

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 2

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 3

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 4

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 5

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 6

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 7

d’Alembert, Jean le Rond and Diderot, Denis.

Map of System of Human Knowledge Michigan: University of Michigan Library, 2015.

Image 8

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017. d’Alembert, Jean le Rond and Diderot, Denis.

Map of System of Human Knowledge Michigan: University of Michigan Library, 2015.

Image 9

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 10

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

Image 11

Fécit, Prévost. Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts Paris: Académie des Sciences, 2017.

19

APPENDIX Appendix A

Volume I, Architecture and related subjects, Plate I: Architecture, Masonry (1756) engraved by Prévost Fécit

20

Appendix B

Grid by d’Alembert and Diderot showing the organisation of knowledge.

21