I’m reading Philipp Blom’s Enlightening the World about the 18th Century French Encyclopedia put together by Diderot and D’Alembert, an amazing project. The passages from the Encyclopedia highlight one of the things I miss about Wikipedia: Style.

The Encyclopedia entries are frequently witty, lively, highly-styled. Wikipedia’s commitment to a neutral point of view tends to drive style out of the articles so they talk in a matter-of-fact, affectless, voiceless tone of voice. I guess that’s the price we pay for Wikipedia’s approximation of neutrality.

Blom’s book is largely about the Encyclopedia as a political tract into which Diderot smuggled anti-authoritarian messages. For example, its choice of topics put more emphasis on manufacturing and craft techniques than on aristocratic and theological concerns. Wikipedia, on the other hand, surfaces and removes smuggled messages. There’s obviously good reason to do so, but it removes the double edge so conducive to great writing.

Not a complaint. There are lots of places on the Web where you can get all the voice and opinionatedness you want but precious few where you can get what the Wikipedia gives us.

If you want to read some of the Encyclopedia in English, there’s a collaborative translation project underway. And don’t miss Benjamin Heller’s translation of the Map of the System of Human Knowledge. As Blom’s book points out, putting Theology under Science of God, and having it lead to superstition, divination and black magic could not have made the French establishment very happy. (Wikipedia has a good article on the Tree.)

BTW, it’s interesting to see which of the articles have been translated so far: I didn’t see any on manufacturing, but lots on big abstract nouns. [Technorati tags: wikipedia EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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