Letter on the Blind
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| - | # | + | ==An Essay on Visual Perception== |
| + | In ''Letter on the Blind'' (French: ''Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient''), [[Denis Diderot]] takes on the question of visual perception, a subject that, at the time, experienced a resurgence of interest due to the success of medical procedures that allowed surgeons to operate on certain cases of [[blindness]] from birth. Speculations were then numerous upon what the nature and use of vision was, and how much perception, habit, and experience allow individuals to identify forms in space, to perceive distances and to measure volumes, or to distinguish a realistic work of art from [[reality]]. | ||
| - | ([[24 July]]). Diderot is arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes as author of the [[Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient]]. After a month, he is permitted to see his friends, d'Alembert and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his publishers, who fear that his absence will hurt the Encyclopédie. | + | According to Diderot’s essay, a blind person who is suddenly able to see for the first time does not immediately understand what he sees, and he must spend some amount of time establishing rapports between his experience of forms and distances (understandings that he first acquired by [[touch]]) and the images that were thereafter apparent to him by [[sight]]. |
| - | ([[3 November]]). Diderot is liberated and immediately begins work again. | ||
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| - | # [[1750]] (November). 8.000 copies of the definitive Prospectus are issued; 10 in-folio volumes including 2 volumes of plates are anticipated. Subscription costs: 60 livres deposit, 36 livres to be paid on delivery of the first volume, announced for June 1751; 24 livres for each additional volume to be delivered every six months, 40 livres for the eighth volume with the two volumes of plates; total 372 livres. | ||
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| - | # [[1751]] (January). In the Journal de Trévoux, the Jesuit Berthier criticizes the imitation of Francis Bacon's [[tree of knowledge]] in the Prospectus. | ||
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| - | # 1751 ([[28 June]]). Publication of the first volume; 2.050 copies printed with the Discours préliminaire written by d'Alembert. | ||
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| - | (October). Violent attacks in the [[Journal de Trévoux]] ; the Jesuits accuse the authors of the Encyclopédie of criticizing their teaching methods, denigrating kings and saints, preaching freedom of speech and plagiarizing the [[Dictionnaire de Trévoux]]. The archibishop of Mirepoix, Boyer, warns the King against the dangerous tendencies of the Encyclopédie; Malesherbes, the new director of the book trade, is required to name three censors who will look over the articles. | ||
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An Essay on Visual Perception
In Letter on the Blind (French: Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient), Denis Diderot takes on the question of visual perception, a subject that, at the time, experienced a resurgence of interest due to the success of medical procedures that allowed surgeons to operate on certain cases of blindness from birth. Speculations were then numerous upon what the nature and use of vision was, and how much perception, habit, and experience allow individuals to identify forms in space, to perceive distances and to measure volumes, or to distinguish a realistic work of art from reality.
According to Diderot’s essay, a blind person who is suddenly able to see for the first time does not immediately understand what he sees, and he must spend some amount of time establishing rapports between his experience of forms and distances (understandings that he first acquired by touch) and the images that were thereafter apparent to him by sight.
