3. Material World and Embodied Mind

Locating the Éléments de physiologie within the timeline of physiological theories on nature, Warman shows how Diderot was consciously responding to a long succession of philosophers stemming from Ancient Greece to late-eighteenth century France. The chapter is broken down into eight subsections that provide a summary of the key ideas addressed by the Éléments. Starting with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s and Charles Bonnet’s overlapping hypotheses on natural order, Warman shifts through a wide range of topics including living and dead matter, cognitive awareness, memory, and selfhood. In each case, she explains how Diderot drew overlapping branches of empiricist thought into one seamless materialist system.