The Fibrous Thoughts of Denis Diderot

Abstract

The article aims to outline Denis Diderot’s “fibrous philosophy.” Numerous references to his fascination with the craft of weaving suggest that Diderot’s thought exhibits a distinctly “fibrous” quality on three interconnected levels: object-based, linguistic, and methodological. The argument begins by exploring the historical context of 17th- and 18th-century medicine, focusing on the period when the theory of the fibrous structure of living organisms gained prominence. The shift from humoralism to solidism, combined with advances in microscopy, established the fiber as the fundamental building block of the human body. The article subsequently examines how the language of fibrous theory is employed in French biological philosophy (notably by Descartes, La Mettrie, and Bonnet). The discussion then turns to the context of modern metaphysics and Diderot’s materialism, drawing conceptual parallels between the categories of the molecule and the fiber. Furthermore, the article outlines Diderot’s fibrous anthropology, which encompasses (1) epistemology, (2) the physiology and pathology of the human organism, (3) materialist psychology, and (4) embryogenesis, ontogenesis, and phylogenesis (including the fiber-network ontology of nature). Finally, it addresses Diderot’s rhapsodic (or “weaving”) method of thought, which mirrors the anti-systematic character of his philosophy.