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Encylopedias and Knowledge: from Diderot to Wikipedia

Diderot: Encyclopedie creator, satirist, radical. Biographer Andrew S Curran discusses Diderot's writings on nature, occultism, monarchy and art with Shahidha Bari.

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclop茅die. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first encyclopedia. Plus writer and publisher Tariq Goddard on the work and legacy of his collaborator and friend, the critical theorist Mark Fisher who analysed the culture of Capitalism following the economic crash of 2008. Shahidha Bari presents.

Diderot and the art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S Curran is out now.
k-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2017) edited by Darren Ambrose is out now.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find a playlist of programmes on the Free Thinking website on The Way We Live Now exploring ideas from boredom, to whether doctors should cry? the joy of sewing to ideas about consent. /programmes/p072637b

Available now

44 minutes

Broadcasts

  • Wed 6 Feb 2019 22:00
  • Tue 5 May 2020 22:00

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