For many historians, Diderot and D’Alembert’s famous Encyclopédie (1751-1772) presents the major intellectual enterprise of the Enlightenment. Directed by prominent philosophers and aided by many valuable contributors, it contributed to bringing the reflection upon language and the use of words to the heart of politics and ideology. The intellectual classifications it is built upon have occasioned many critical studies, as have the taxonomies of crafts (often illustrated with engravings), which have played a notable role in understanding the codifications of knowledge, and in exploring the relationships between techniques, the sciences, and the arts.

ENCCRE provides readers for the very first time with free access at enccre.academie-sciences.fr to an online critical edition of the Encyclopédie. As the first critical edition of this major work of the Enlightenment, ENCCRE gives full access not only to the encyclopaedia’s content on the arts, sciences and techniques, but also to what we now know about it thanks to research conducted by historians over the last decades. This project draws on the combined resources of an international team, currently made up of 120 (and growing) engineers, students and historians, and the use of a digital platform designed to facilitate collaboration on a dynamic edition that is constantly being amended.

In order to explore the various possibilities offered by this digital tool for the community of researchers, we aim to proceed in two stages: firstly, we will give a general presentation of the project, then we will set up an interactive workshop based on concrete examples. For historians in general, the Encyclopédie stands out as a seminal reference tool on account of the wide range of topics covered in many different fields of knowledge. We warmly encourage those who may be interested in a particular entry, definition, topic or author (whether related to 18th century sciences or not) to explore with us the related article as a starting point to foster more general discussion.

*I you wish to take an active part in the exercise (and we hope so!) please do let us know a little bit ahead ( marie-aline.thebaud-sorger@history.ox.ac.uk‎ ). Questions and suggestions more than welcome!

More information: www.mfo.cnrs.fr/calendar/workshop-enccre-edition-numerique-collaborative-et-critique-de-lencyclopedie