The Atheist's Bible

Abstract

Love is more difficult to explain than hunger, or so says the eighteenthcentury philosophe and explainer of difficult things, Denis Diderot. How could we disagree? Hunger is probably a more fundamental physiological need than the complex set of feelings called love. Even if the comparison nudges us to see love in terms of another physiological need, lust and the drive to procreate, we would probably still agree that it is harder to explain than hunger. And that is where we suppose 1 Throughout this book, I will give page references to the three current critical editions, in order of publication, in part to facilitate ease of reference for readers with access to only one of them, and in part because the most recent edition massively expands our understanding of the sources Diderot used when composing this work, and is therefore immediately a crucial referent. First, Jean Mayer's 1987 edition: Denis Diderot, Éléments de physiologie, ed. by Jean Mayer, vol. 17 (Paris: Hermann, 1987). This constitutes volume 17 of the ongoing OEuvres complètes of Diderot, known as DPV, after three of its founding editors, Herbert Dieckmann, Jacques Proust, and Jean Varloot. Second, Paolo Quintili's stand-alone edition: Denis Diderot, Éléments de physiologie, ed. by Paolo Quintili (Paris: Champion, 2004). Third, Motoichi Terada's edition: Denis Diderot, Éléments de physiologie, ed. by Motoichi Terada (Paris: Éditions Matériologiques, 2019). This makes available Terada's immense work on Diderot's sources, which very helpfully appeared as I was revising this manuscript. I will always signal when his indication of a source should be taken into account in our understanding of any given passage. Thus: DPV 494/PQ 328/ MT 307. 8 DPV 373/PQ 192/MT 192. 9 DPV 461/PQ 287/MT 277. 10 DPV 471/PQ 298/MT 286. 11 DPV 312/PQ 127/MT 135. 22 For a discussion of the term 'animal economy', see Philippe Huneman, 'Les théories de l'économie animale et l'émergence de la psychiatrie de l'Éncyclopédie à l'aliénisme', Psychiatrie Sciences Humaines Neurosciences, 2.2 (2004), 47-60 (p. 47), https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03006001. 23 Théophile de Bordeu, 'Recherches sur les glandes' (1759), in OEuvres complètes de Bordeu: précédées d'une notice sur sa vie et sur ses ouvrages, ed. by Anthelme Richerand (Paris: Caille et Ravier, 1818), vol. 1, p. 208. We discuss this claim and its implications below, in the section titled 'Major Debates in Physiology: Mechanism and Vitalism', in Chapter 4. 27 For the complete list, see Adams, 'Liste chronologique des éditions', in his