The Encyclopédie's Domain Markers: An Attempt to Reconcile Alphabetical and Methodical Sequencing

The Encyclopédie’s subject indicators are presented in the editors’ preliminary discourse as a device for reconciling the alphabetical order followed in the work with the methodical order represented by the ‘Système figuré des connaissances’. Further study reveals, however, that nothing could be less regular and stable than the way the device is applied. This article considers several reasons for this, including the diversity of authors and the time taken to publish the whole. But above all we see that these subject indicators, which come from the ‘domain markers’ used in Universal Dictionaries from Furetière to Chambers and are in fact part of the definitions of the terms themselves, have often only a strained connection with the original a priori construction of the tree of knowledge.